CHAPTER III.
THE HOUSE OF FEAR.
"But what’s your game? What’s the big idea, Nick? What more do you expect to gain than you would have derived from arresting Sadie Badger and sending her up for a prison sentence?"
Nick Carter was at breakfast with his two chief assistants, Chick Carter and Patsy Garvan, on the morning following his encounter with Gaston Goulard and the whilom queen of the notorious Badger gang. He had related his experiences of the previous night, and informed them of his extraordinary compact with Sadie Badger.
"Much!" he tersely replied. "My bargain with her, Chick, was entirely warrantable. In dealing with crooks, one must fight them with their own weapons, craft, deception, and treachery, when necessary."
"I admit that, Nick, of course."
"What good to have arrested her alone, if more can be accomplished?" Nick added. "It would have amounted to comparatively little. I would merely have put one dangerous female crook out of the running. I felt my way carefully, mind you, and I very soon found that she could not steal much from the Buckley residence."
"That of Gideon Buckley, the banker, you say?"
"Yes. She had entered through a rear basement window. She is expert in that game. She had learned from one of his clerks, whom she has artfully insnared with her wiles, that the banker took home a quantity of bonds and securities yesterday afternoon, and that he has no safe in his residence. She reasoned that he would put them in his library desk for the night, and she went there to get them."
"But failed to find them?"
"Failed completely," said Nick. "Buckley may have taken them to his bedroom, or concealed them in some other part of the house. We could not find them, at all events, and we got away with only a quantity of solid silver from the dining-room table and sideboard. I would have protected his bonds and securities, all right, providing that we had stolen them, but I had other fish to fry in connection with doing so."
Patsy Garvan fell to laughing, and not for the first time during Nick’s recital.
"Gee! this certainly beats me, chief," he declared. "You in criminal partnership with Sadie Badger! That sure is going some. What came off after you left the house?"
"We got out by the way she had entered," Nick replied. "I then went with her to the door of a house in Lexington Avenue, where, she told me, she had occupied the ground-floor flat for nearly a month."
"Alone?"
"She said so, Patsy, and I take it for what I think it was worth," said Nick. "I declined an invitation to enter, but I promised to call within a day or two and plan another job with her. I will have learned more about her and her recent doings by that time."
"But what’s your game, Nick?" Chick repeated. "What do you expect to gain by it?"
"For one thing, Chick, I expect to get Gaston Goulard—before he can contrive to get me," Nick replied, more seriously. "That rat meant what he said last night. I could read it in his evil eyes and detect it in his voice. He would have shot me in cold blood through that grille door, if fear of detection and capture had not restrained him."
"He certainly is capable of it, Nick, as far as that goes," Chick readily allowed. "We want him badly enough for the murder of Batty Lang, but I don’t see just how your bargain with Sadie Badger will enable you to get him."
"It will help," Nick said confidently. "Crooks flock together as naturally as blackbirds. Both Goulard and Sadie Badger, despite that she said last night that she now has no pal on whom she would bank, are in touch with the worst elements of the New York underworld. Through her and the subterfuge I have adopted, I intend to locate some of them, at least, and discover the whereabouts of Gaston Goulard."
"Ah, I see."
"It is not easy for either of us to worm our way into the confidence of a crook, particularly if he is an old-timer," Nick added. "We and our tricks are too well known. They fight shy of us. This was too good an opportunity to lose, therefore, and I resolved to take advantage of it."
"That’s the stuff, chief," said Patsy. "It’s bound to cut ice of some thickness."
"I think so, Patsy, and that it will enable me to finally run down Goulard," said Nick, rising to go to his business office. "I will call on Sadie Badger either to-night or to-morrow, disguised as I was last night, and find out just how the land lies. I can take her in at will, you know, as far as that goes."
"Like breaking sticks," said Patsy. "You’re in right, chief, to pull off a big stunt of some kind. My money goes on that."
Nick Carter dropped the matter temporarily. Only emergency cases ever interfered with the regular routine of his business, and it was not in his nature to figure blindly on what could be accomplished through the relations he had established with Sadie Badger.
Later in the morning, nevertheless, Nick sent Patsy Garvan to learn what he could on the quiet concerning the woman during her residence in the flat she then occupied.
Nick lunched with a friend in the Waldorf that day. He departed alone about half past one, and had just turned the corner of Fifth Avenue when an approaching limousine swerved to the curbing and its occupant called him by name.
"Get in Nick, please, and go with me," he added, opening the door when the detective approached. "Don’t say you’re too busy. You’re the one man I most wanted to see."
Nick stepped into the costly car before the last was said.
"Home, Greeley. Let her go lively."
These directions were to his chauffeur, and the speaker was Frank Mantell, son of the senior partner of the late firm of Mantell & Goulard, whose big department store had been wrecked months before by the robberies of Goulard himself.
Nick at once recalled his encounter with him the previous night, and he instinctively felt that the matter on Mantell’s mind, for he obviously was carrying a heavy burden, might indirectly relate to it. It was for that reason that he immediately complied with the young man’s request.
"What’s the trouble, Frank?" he inquired, as the limousine sped up the avenue. "You look a bit white and drawn."
"Drawn through a knothole, Nick, is about how I feel," Mantell replied, placing his hand on that of the detective.
"Are you ill?"
"No. Only worried."
"About what?"
"My wife."
"Your wife?" Nick echoed inquiringly. "You don’t mean——”
"No, no; there’s nothing wrong on her part, Nick," put in Mantell quickly. "She is all that a man could wish. But we’re living in a house of fear, Nick, a house of fear. The dread that hangs over us is something appalling. I have had in mind to appeal to you for more than a week, but I know you to be so busy that——”
"One moment," Nick interposed, noting the exceeding nervousness with which his companion was speaking. "What is the cause of your terrible fear? What is it that you dread? Is your wife threatened in any way, or——”
"That’s it!" Mantell cut in quickly. "That hits the nail on the head. She is threatened in a way that is breaking her down mentally and bodily; both of us, in fact. Our lives are becoming a ceaseless shudder, a nightmare from which——”
"Stop right there, Frank," Nick commanded, with some austerity. "I’ll listen to no more talk of that kind. Come to the point at once and state the bare facts, or I’ll order your chauffeur to drop me on the next corner."
"You’re right, Nick," Mantell quickly admitted. "I think I have hypnotized myself with horrible dread. I cannot govern my own mind, or——”
"There you go again," Nick interrupted. "Now, Mantell, unless——”
"Wait! I’ll tell you."
"Do so, then."
"It began three weeks ago, Nick, with a placard pinned on the side door of our residence," Mantell said, more calmly. "It was a rudely scrawled threat on a scrap of brown paper. It bore no signature and contained only these words: Your money or your wife!"
"Wife, eh?" queried Nick. "Are you sure you did not misread it? Was not the word life, instead of wife?"
"No, indeed, as since has appeared," Mantell said quickly. "Naturally, of course, that first threatening placard did not alarm us. I thought it might be a joke, a very bad one, of course, or the work of some foolish or malicious persons bent only upon annoying us. Two days later, however, a second was tacked on the trunk of a tree directly opposite the windows of my wife’s sleeping room."
"A similar treat?"
"Yes. It read: ‘You’ve got my money. I’m going to get your wife.’"
"H’m, I see!" Nick remarked. "Was it on paper like the other?"
"Yes. It was a piece of ordinary manila paper, such as one might obtain in a grocery store."
"Inscribed with a lead pencil?"
"Yes. The letters were rudely printed, however, not written."
"That was done to avoid exposing his handwriting."
"I inferred so," said Mantell. "That second placard made us somewhat apprehensive. I feared that my wife was to be persecuted by some unknown scoundrel whose enmity one of us has incurred, or who is himself a lunatic. I know of no one whose money I have got, however, or who is justified in any antipathy for me, or my wife. Helen began to grow nervous and——”
"One moment," Nick interrupted. "I can appreciate your apprehensions and the nervousness and fear of your wife. What steps did you take in the matter?"
"None at that time, Nick, except to caution Helen to be on her guard, and not to venture out alone after dark," Mantell replied. "I hoped the matter would end there, with no repetition of the outrage."
"Well, what followed?"
"Nothing more for about three days," Mantell continued. "Helen ventured, just after dusk that evening, to go to our rear gate with a friend who was leaving for home, that being the nearest way. They parted at the gate, and Helen started to return to the house. As she was passing the garage, a man darted from behind it and pursued her. She uttered a scream and ran at the top of her speed toward the house."
"Did he overtake her?"
"No. Luckily, Nick, I entered the driveway gate with my touring car at that moment, and in the glare of the lamps I saw the couple. The man immediately turned and fled. He disappeared in the darkness of the back street, but I heard him shout that he would get her later, in spite of me. Helen had fainted dead away on the side veranda, and I ran to her assistance, of course, making no attempt to pursue the miscreant."
"He appears to really mean business," Nick observed. "Did your wife recognize him?"
"No. She had only a glimpse at his face. She is sure that he wore a beard, however, and was a dark man, of medium build. She was too frightened to note anything more."
"The beard may have been a disguise."
"Quite likely."
"What steps did you then take to protect her?"
"I employed two private watchmen to stealthily keep an eye on my estate, hoping to discover and arrest the miscreant. On the very next day, Nick, a threatening letter came in the mail, addressed to my wife. It was on cheap, plain paper, and printed with a lead pencil, as were the placards mentioned."
"Obviously, then, from the same person," said Nick. "What did the letter contain?"
"I have it in my pocket."
"Ah. Let me see it."
Mantell hastened to comply, and Nick read the following, rudely printed on a single sheet of paper:
"Those two watchmen will not protect you. I’m going to get you, in spite of them, in spite of your husband, in spite of all the forces with which you can oppose me. I want you—and I’m going to get you."
Nick Carter’s brows knit a little closer while he read this cowardly, threatening communication. Instead of returning it to his companion, he replaced the sheet in the typewritten envelope and slipped it into his pocket.
"I’ll keep it for the present, Mantell," he said simply. "Tell me, now, what more has occurred and what you have done about it."
"A few evenings later, Nick, or about a week ago, when Helen was partly disrobed for bed, she thought she heard a stealthy step outside of one of her windows. She stole into the next room and looked out."
"And discovered?"
"A man crouching on the veranda floor. He saw the lace draperies move when Helen parted them, and then heard the scream she tried in vain to suppress. He turned like a flash and leaped to the ground, then vanished in the gloom under the near trees. We found my wife in a faint on the floor. She was not mistaken, Nick, for the tracks of the miscreant were on the roof and in the driveway."
"Were the two watchmen then in your employ?"
"Yes."
"They did not see the intruder?"
"No. The cowardly cur is as elusive as a shadow. Helen is becoming a nervous wreck, while I——”
"I will talk with her." Nick interposed. "I also will look into the matter. I suppose, Mantell, that you have no suspicion as to the identity of the rascal."
"Not the slightest, Nick."
"Your wife is a very beautiful woman," added the detective. "There was one man who aspired to her love, as I remember, and who had a very deep hatred for you and your father after the wrecking of your big department store and——”
"You mean Gaston Goulard, of course," Mantell cut in.
"Yes."
"But he is dead. If he were alive—well, he is the miscreant whom I at once would suspect. But the East River does not give up its dead. We know that Goulard was drowned."
Nick did not say what he knew about him, nor of what his suspicions consisted. He saw that they already were entering the spacious grounds in which Mantell’s residence was situated, overlooking the Riverside Drive and the broad, glistening waters of the Hudson.
"I suppose your father is downtown at this hour," he remarked, as the car sped up the driveway.
"Yes. I dropped him at the surrogate court half an hour ago. Some of our business affairs are still unsettled. My wife and mother are here, however, though the latter is an invalid and confined to her room. To the side door, Greeley."
The chauffeur bowed, and the limousine presently came to a stop under the massive porte-cochère protecting a side entrance to the imposing residence.
Perkins, the butler, appeared almost immediately at the door.
"Come in, Nick," Mantell said cordially, while they mounted the broad, marble steps. "We may find Helen in the library, or——”
"Beg pardon, sir," said Perkins respectfully. "Mrs. Mantell has gone out."
Mantell turned quickly.
"Gone out!" he echoed. "Gone out with whom?"
"With your father, sir."
"With my father—nonsense!"
"But, sir, I am very sure of it."
"Impossible! When did she leave? How long ago?"
Perkins glanced at a tall old clock in the hall.
"Precisely half an hour, sir," said he. "I noticed the time."
Mantell turned as pale as if suddenly death-stricken.
"Half an hour!" he gasped, with affrighted gaze meeting that of the detective. "That is impossible, utterly impossible. Half an hour ago, Nick, I was with my father in the surrogate court.”