"I say, shir! Can you let me have a match?"
"I think so."
The last speaker was Nick Carter, the famous detective.
The first was an erect, well-built, fashionably clad man, apparently in the forties and somewhat the worse for liquor. His crush hat had a rakish cant. His Inverness hung awry over his shoulders. His cravat had a disorderly twist, and his brown, Vandyke beard had lost its carefully combed appearance.
Nick Carter sized him up as a society man who had been on the bat, and who was returning home on foot to walk off the effects of it. His appearance and the hour seemed to warrant this conclusion, for it was two o’clock in the morning.
Nick was rather roughly clad. His strong, clean-cut face was so artistically treated with grease paint as to effectively disguise him and give him a decidedly sinister aspect. He had spent most of the night in searching for a crook, on whom he very much wanted to lay his hands, but his efforts had been futile, and he was returning to his residence in Madison Avenue.
He had turned a corner of Fifth Avenue only a few moments before, when he saw the stranger approaching, walking a bit unsteadily, and then the only person to be seen in the fashionable street.
Nick saw him fishing out a cigar and vainly searching in his pockets for a match, and he was not surprised when the man stopped him with the above request, straightening up with a manifest effort and trying to speak distinctly.
"Much obliged, sir," said he, when Nick reached into his pocket after his match box. "Will you smoke, I’ve got anozzer."
"No, none for me, thank you," said Nick. "I——”
"Don’t thank me. Do what I tell you, instead, and do it quick. Hands up!"
The stranger had undergone a lightninglike change. He no longer appeared intoxicated. His every nerve and muscle seemed to have become as tense as a bowstring. His eyes were clear, aglow like balls of fire, and his voice had turned as hard as nails.
His right hand, with which he had pretended to reach into his pocket for another cigar, whipped out an automatic revolver, into the deadly muzzle of which the detective suddenly found himself gazing.
Nick Carter had been up against like situations before, and it did not disturb him.
"What are you really going to do with that toy?" he asked coolly, sharply scrutinizing the holdup man to fix his face in his mind.
"Hands up, or you’ll never repeat that question," said the other, hissing the threatening words between his teeth. "Up with them, or you’ll be a dead one."
His eyes had a gleam and glitter that no sane man would have ignored. They spelled murder in capital letters, and Nick obeyed and raised his hands as high as his shoulders.
"Now, back down those steps," commanded his assailant. "Keep going till I tell you to stop. Back under the steps. Hands up, mind you, or you’ll be found dead there in the morning."
The steps referred to were those of a handsome brownstone residence occupied by a wealthy Wall Street banker and broker, Mr. Gideon Buckley. They led up from the sidewalk to the vestibule of the front door, while under them was a door leading into the basement hall of the house. This was accessible by descending two low steps and turning into the area under the main rise of steps, the entrance to which area was protected with an iron-grille door, then wide open.
Nick obeyed his assailant—he had no sane alternative.
He backed down the two low steps and into the gloomy area under the main flight, and the holdup man quickly closed the grille door and the spring lock clicked audibly, confining the detective under the rise of front steps.
The holdup man laughed—but not for an instant did his deadly weapon deviate from a direct line from the detective’s breast. He still kept him constantly covered through the grille door, through which he gazed at him with gleaming eyes, as one might have viewed a lion in a steel cage.
The miscreant’s laugh was utterly void of anything like mirth. It was as cold, exultant, and merciless as ever had fallen on the detective’s ears. In a way, moreover, it struck him as being familiar, but he did not recall when and where he had heard it. He was not, however, left long in doubt of the outlaw’s identity.
For the rascal’s vicious laugh ended with a sharp, hissing whisper.
"You keep your voice down, now, or there’ll be something drop," he threatened. "Speak above a whisper and I’ll plug you on the instant."
"I’ll take your word for it," Nick said quietly. "But you are not going to get fat from this job. If you lift all I have in my jeans, you’ll not carry away much."
"Oh, I’m not after your coin," the holdup man retorted, with bitter asperity. "I’ve not run you in here to lift anything. I’ve got you where I want you, at last, and you’re going to hear my little verse. I’ll finish you later."
"Why finish me?" Nick coolly inquired. "What have I done that you want to finish me?"
"You’ve done me, blast you," was the reply, with suppressed ferocity. "You twice have crossed my path and turned me down. You have sent me from bad to worse and made me what I am. I know you, Carter, hang you, in spite of your disguise. I have been watching for you, lying in wait for you, and I’ve got you where I want you."
"Which seems to please you mightily," Nick said dryly, trying vainly to recall the rascal’s identity. "When did I——”
"Oh, I’ll tell you when," interrupted the other, with unabated bitterness. "You’ll know when, Carter, when you see my face. I’ll reveal it to you. I want you to see it, that I may laugh at you, mock you, and tell you face to face how deeply I hate you. Sooner or later, too, I’ll hand you yours and send you to the devil.
"But not to-night—no, not to-night!" he went on, when Nick viewed him in silence. "I want you to anticipate it, to live in fear of it, to be racked mind and nerves until my bullet finds you. I’ll send it into you sooner or later, Carter, as sure as my name is—Gaston Goulard."
He removed his Vandyke beard while speaking, thrusting it into his pocket, and Nick Carter was given an almost incredible surprise.
"Gaston Goulard!" he exclaimed involuntarily. "The dead alive!"
Nick recognized him now. There was no mistaking his hard-featured, white face, its sinister scowl, its expressive cruelty. To have seen a ghost, however, would not have been more amazing.
For Nick last had seen this man less than a month before, when cornered with the notorious Badger gang of crooks in an old lime loft leased by one of their number, to which the detective’s assistants had traced Nick and the criminals—Nick last had seen him plunge bodily through one of the windows and disappear into the swirling waters of the East River.
Though a sharp watch had been kept by Patsy Garvan, moreover, who also had seen the rascal sink from view, Goulard did not reappear on the surface, and there had seemed to be no reasonable doubt that the knave had drowned.
Naturally, therefore, Nick was more than surprised upon seeing his sinister, malevolent face again; nor was it strange that, supposing him dead, he had not penetrated his exceedingly clever disguise, or recognized his evil voice.
It fell again upon the detective’s ears, echoing his last impulsive remark.
"The dead alive—yes!" Goulard hissed triumphantly. "I fooled you, balked you, eluded you, Carter, and I finally will send you to the devil, where you supposed you had sent me. But the devil serves his own at times, and that was one of them. He gave me a new lease of life—that I might finally take yours. But not to-night, Carter, not to-night!"
"That’s very considerate, Goulard, I’m sure," Nick coldly retorted. "Watch out that I don’t put the boot on the other leg and place you where you belong."
"Bah!" Goulard ejaculated, under his breath. "You have no chance of that, not even a look in. You know not where to find me, yet for the past month I have been under your very eyes. I can put my finger on you, too, any hour of the day, Carter—and I shall always have a bullet in reserve for you."
Nick Carter ignored the miscreant’s repeated threats, though he knew him to be capable of executing even the worst of them. Watching vainly, too, for a chance to turn the tables on the scamp, for Goulard was not to be caught napping, Nick coldly inquired:
"How did you accomplish it, Goulard? How did you escape from the East River?"
"I told you the devil serves his own at times," Goulard proceeded to explain, though Nick had hardly expected him to do so. "I rose to the surface, but not in view of your lynx eyes, Carter, nor those of your assistants."
"I already know that," said Nick.
"The swirl of the stream sucked me down—down—down!" Goulard went on fiercely. "I thought I would never rise. I thought of you, too, and even with death staring me in the face I regretted only that I had not lingered to kill you. I was carried down near the river wall. I was beaten on rocks and battered against bowlders. It was awful! I thought I would never rise—but I did! I came to the surface under a boatman’s float thirty yards from the lime shed."
"Ah, I see," said Nick, unruffled by the other’s bitterness. "That’s how the devil served you, is it? You remained under the float till dark, I take it."
"Until after dark," corrected Goulard. "I clung to its timbers, cursing you all the while, and I then contrived to climb the river wall and steal away unseen. But you see me now, Carter, and soon shall feel the sting of my revenge. I wanted you to know it—that I am alive and out for vengeance. That alone impelled me to hold you up to-night."
"Cease your threats," Nick commanded. "They have no weight with me. Having held me up and locked me in this place, Goulard, what do you intend doing?"
"I will leave you here," Goulard replied, with an uglier scowl on his white face. "I’ll not take the risk of a shot at this time. It’s too long a chance. I will leave you here with my threats ringing in your ears. You shall have time to think of them, to anticipate the end, to dread the day when I will make good. You shall live in a house of fear from this hour, Carter, in constant fear."
"The future will determine that, Goulard, and whether you were really lucky in not meeting your fate in the East River," Nick coolly answered. "If you have no more to say and do, you cannot depart too quickly. Get out, you rat, the sooner the better."
Goulard laughed again and pushed his revolver farther through the grille door.
"I’d love to, Carter!" he cried, under his breath. "I’d love to press the trigger and perforate your cursed skin with a bullet. But the risk is too great. I might be heard, intercepted in my flight, and perhaps railroaded to the chair. There will be a safer time and place. I will wait for it, watch for it, and there then will be no hesitation. I will kill you, Carter, for what you have done to me. As sure as God hears me—I will kill you."
"God may intervene and——”
"Remember!"
The fierce, malevolent face, pressed for a last moment to the grille door, vanished instantly, and the vengeful knave was gone.
Nick Carter heard his swiftly receding steps on the pavements. It was the only sound that broke the night silence in that locality. It died away so quickly, too, that it had seemed hardly perceptible.
Nick seized the grille door and tried to open it—tried vainly.
It withstood his utmost efforts.