Blood Will Tell by Nick Carter - HTML preview

CHAPTER IX.
 THE CLOSED DOOR.

Nick Carter needed to hear no more than the significant remarks already made, nor really needed to have heard them, in fact, to convince him that his earlier suspicions and deductions, as well as the theory he had formed concerning the terrible crime were almost absolutely correct.

Nick now felt reasonably sure, too, since learning that Cora Cavendish had sent the three crooks out there, that Patsy must have got on her track before that was done, and he was borrowing no trouble as to the outcome of his own situation.

The only point that Nick now wanted to clear up, in fact, was the precise relations that had existed between Madison and this gang of thugs, and he knew that he was in a fair way of doing so.

John Madison had not stirred from the swivel chair in which he was seated. Nor had he spoken, or even changed countenance, during the vicious remarks that had passed between the several crooks. He really appeared indifferent to them, and he now wore the grimly determined aspect of a man who had made up his mind what to do, and had the nerve, and stamina to do it.

Deland was quick to observe all this, and his evil eyes had an uglier gleam when he resumed his seat at the desk to continue his talk with the lawyer, while Daggett, Flynn, and Tobey occupied chairs near by.

“Now, Madison, let’s get right down to cases,” Deland began, whipping out each word with ominous asperity. “I’ll say what I mean and you do the same. You are up against one of two things. You’re going to settle with us, as you agreed to do, or you’re going to be sent up for the murder of Tilly Lancey. There’s no middle course for you.”

“H’m, I see,” thought Nick, already sizing up the situation. “No middle course for him, eh? I’ll lay one out for him, then, unless I’m much mistaken.”

Madison did not reply for a moment. He drew up his powerful figure a little higher in his chair, and bestowed a frowning glance upon each of the rascals confronting him. His gaze finally settled upon Deland’s evil face, however, and remained there.

“I will be sent up for the murder of Tilly Lancey, will I?” he slowly answered.

“That’s what you will,” Deland nodded. “That’s one course.”

“How can I be sent up for a crime that you scoundrels committed?”

“We’ll swear it onto you, and we have the stuff to fix it so it will stay. I’ve got the bunch of letters you wrote to her. We’ll chuck them in for evidence. We’ll frame you up, all right, and in a way that will let us down dead easy. You can bank on that.”

“And bank on it good and strong, too,” put in Plugger Flynn, pounding the desk top with his fingers.

“You fellows are a fine gang with which to do business,” said Madison, with manifest contempt in his deep voice. “Either one of you would double cross his own mother. I ought to have known it in the beginning, but I was caught by the bait you threw me. The only other course is for me to settle, you say?”

“You heard what I said,” snapped Deland.

“I’ll have my say, now, for a moment,” Madison returned. “You approached me a week ago, Deland, with a proposition that in a way appealed to me. You said you could get from Tilly Lancey a number of letters with which she has threatened me, and also that you could do it in such a way as to have it publicly appear that my political opponent, Arthur Gordon, had been trying to buy them and was secretly an intimate friend of that woman.”

“Well, come to the point,” said Deland. “We admit all that.”

“Good enough,” thought Nick, calmly taking it all in. “That admission will cost you something, Deland, and may save him. I’ll wait and see which way the cat jumps.”

“I apprehended defeat in the coming election,” Madison went on deliberately. “For that reason, only, your proposition appealed to me. I foresaw that I could, with those letters restored to me and Gordon in a measure defamed, easily carry the election. I asked you what you would accept for doing the job?

“And you agreed to pay it, ten thousand dollars, and told us to go ahead,” said Deland.

“True,” Madison darkly nodded. “But I did not agree to bloodshed. You did not tell me that a murder was to be committed. You did not even hint that Tilly Lancey’s life was to be taken. Not for a moment, you double-dyed knave, would I have considered that hideous proposition. You said——”

“Never mind what we said,” Deland cut in sharply. “We know what we said and to what you agreed. We have our own way of doing things, and we have delivered the goods. It now is up to you to settle. We have put Gordon in wrong. I have your letters in my pocket. You’re going to settle, too, or——”

“Stop right there, Deland,” Madison interrupted, leaning forward to bang the desk with his fist. “There will be no settlement between you fellows and me. As I told Cora Cavendish two hours ago, you will not get a copper from me.”

“We won’t, eh?”

Deland’s hand went to his hip pocket.

“Not one copper!” Madison thundered. “You say I have only one of two courses. I say, however, that I have a third course, and that’s the course I will take. There is only one way for me to settle this infamous business, and that was shown me by this man on the floor. I will confess the truth, take my medicine for what I have done, and accomplish one other thing—that of sending you miscreants to the fate you deserve! That’s the way I’ll settle with you—and the only way!”

It would be hard to say what might have followed, but for one startling and utterly unexpected incident.

Nick Carter sat straight up on the floor and shouted:

“Good for you, Madison! Stick to that and I’ll pull you out! Against any man but Gordon—I’d give you my vote!”

Nick had more than one reason for this sudden outbreak. From where he was lying on the floor, he could see through the alcove and into the dimly lighted conservatory.

He could see Chick Carter and Patsy Garvan crouching there, each with revolvers drawn.

Their timely arrival was not due to anything extraordinary. Patsy had trailed Cora Cavendish to an East Side saloon, and had seen her meet Flynn and give him Deland’s instructions. Patsy then had followed Flynn, and later Daggett and Tobey, learning positively in the meantime that they were to join Deland in Madison’s residence. Seizing an opportunity to telephone home, also, Patsy found that Chick had returned, and quick arrangements were made to meet on the Madison place. They had done so just in time to see the three crooks enter the conservatory—whither they soon stealthily followed them.

Before Nick’s ringing words were fairly uttered, Deland and the three gangsters were on their feet and reaching for their weapons.

“That door!” snapped Deland, pointing to the alcove. “Close and lock it, Daggett. Pull down that curtain, Tobey, down to the sill. Not settle, eh? We’ll settle the hash of both, then, before——”

“You’re already too late!” Nick shouted.

He would have added a word or two, but they would have been lost in the tumult that then began.

Both Flynn and Daggett had started into the alcove to obey Deland’s instructions, and each had been met with a crashing blow from Chick and Patsy, dealt with precision and violence that sent both of them headlong to the floor.

Before either could rise, both detectives were in the room and had them covered, while a third revolver caused Tobey to turn from the window and throw up his hands.

Deland had been the first to realize the actual situation, and like a flash he had darted toward the hall.

Chick saw him as the rascal passed through the door.

“After him, Patsy!” he yelled, with a directing glance. “I can handle these three.”

Patsy turned and darted into the hall.

As he came through the doorway, the crash of Deland’s revolver drowned all other sounds.

The bullet splintered the door casing over Patsy’s head.

Bang!

Another ball whizzed by Patsy’s head.

The hall was only dimly lighted by the rays that came from the lamp in the side hall, and for an instant Patsy could not see his quarry. The flash from his revolver on the second shot revealed him.

Deland was darting up the main stairway, not daring to wait to open a door, and evidently bent upon reaching the veranda roof and thence making his escape.

Patsy now saw him plainly, and that he again was about to fire, and he dropped like a flash to his knees. He was not quite quick enough, however.

Bang! went the weapon, and the bullet tore through the flesh on Patsy’s left shoulder.

He felt the sting and the gush of hot blood. He was up on the instant, revolver leveled, and was pumping lead up the stairway with the rapidity of a gatling gun.

The report of the weapon was mingled with another sound—the crash of a body at Patsy’s feet.

Deland had pitched sideways over the baluster rail—with four bullets in his breast. He was stone dead before he struck the hall floor.

Patsy Garvan had closed the eternal door on the most vicious crook then at large.

All that remains to be told of the strange and stirring case may be told with few and simple words. The three crooks, and subsequently Cora Cavendish, were arrested, and later received life sentences for complicity in the murder of Tilly Lancey. They made no fight against the evidence Nick Carter had obtained.

It also appeared that the crime had been framed up by Cora and Deland, as Nick had suspected, and that not only they, but also Flynn and Daggett were in the flat when Gordon visited the woman. Nick’s suspicions and deductions had, in fact, been correct from the start.

John Madison confessed his part in the affair to the court, and Nick’s intervention in his behalf resulted in his discharge from custody. He was ignominiously defeated in the election, however, and he moved West with his family the following month.

Arthur Gordon was elected with flying colors, and—well, it would be vain to attempt to describe his gratitude for Nick Carter and his assistants. There are sentiments that language cannot express.

Mortimer Deland was buried, his true name and history with him, save his criminal history, on the day after he was shot.

THE END.