The Suicide by Nick Carter - HTML preview

CHAPTER IX.
 THE INNER WHEEL.

Chick Carter stepped back of the parlor door and peered between it and the casing, shifting a revolver to his side pocket.

Jim Dacey turned abruptly, however, and entered the sitting room.

Chick heard him shout to the deaf housekeeper and order her to go to bed. She came out with a lamp in a few moments, and Chick saw her disappear up a back stairway.

She scarce had vanished when Floyd, or Kate Crandall, still in male attire, came through the cellar doorway and was joined in the hall by Dacey, who asked abruptly, with a look of grim misgivings:

“Where is Sheldon? What’s turned him so sour and——”

“Cut it!” Kate sharply whispered, audible to Chick. “He must not hear us. I have something to say to you. I have ordered him to watch the laundry door till Moran returns.”

“Where has he gone?”

“To house the car. He’ll not show up for several minutes. That will give me time to explain.”

“Explain what?”

“Come into the sitting room. I’ll soon tell you.”

“You’ll tell me, also, you jade, and I’ll wager I will make the most of it,” thought Chick, watching the couple enter the room and noting that they only partly closed the door. “Unless I am much mistaken, by Jove, I shall now get the key to the whole mystery.”

Chick lingered only a moment, then stole into the hall and found concealment under the rise of the main stairway. That brought him within ten feet of the sitting-room door, and within easy view of that opening upon the landing at the head of the cellar stairs. He scarce had concealed himself in the dark corner he had selected, when he made another discovery.

The cellar door was slowly swinging open. A stealthy hand was cautiously moving it. Presently, not only the hand, but the spy himself could be seen. He was crouching on the landing, his head thrust forward, his ears strained, his eyes glowing like those of a cornered wolf.

“Sheldon!” thought Chick, startled by the terrible look on the man’s face. “By Jove, I’m not alone. He, too, wants to learn what this vixen has up her sleeve.”

Sheldon, having reached the vantage point desired, did not stir from his crouching posture on the landing.

Chick waited and listened.

Kate Crandall’s voice, though somewhat subdued, could be distinctly heard by both.

“I can tell you in a nutshell, Jim, just where we stand and what must be done,” she was saying earnestly. “Our easy mark has ceased to be an easy mark. He has become suspicious. He begins to feel sure that I am in love with you, instead of with him, and that I intend to throw him down. That’s why he has balked at making over half of his fortune to me, and at putting it in my hands before I marry him. That’s what has kept us hung up in the Ashburton Chambers for a whole week since the supposed suicide.”

“By thunder!” Chick mentally exclaimed. “Supposed suicide? Easy mark, eh? This man Sheldon must be Cyrus Darling, then, as sure as there is juice in a lemon.”

Chick needed only one glance at the face of the crouching man to convince him that he was right.

“I know all that, Kate,” Dacey responded, with a growl. “But what’s the answer? What’s to be done?”

“We must blind him still farther and contrive to get his coin. That done, we must get rid of him and bolt for Europe.”

“Get rid of him?”

“Exactly.”

“What do you mean?”

“Listen!” Kate Crandall’s voice took on more vicious accents. “He has turned all of his fortune into cash and has it in a deposit drawer downtown.”

“Well?”

“Providing I will marry him and go with him to live in Europe, he will get the bundle of money from the safety deposit in order to take it with us.”

“Well?” Dacey repeated grimly.

“Here, now, is the point,” Kate went on. “The Carters have us hard pressed, but they do not yet suspect that Sheldon and Cyrus Darling are one and the same.”

“Surely not.”

“They are the only persons on earth who really believe that Darling is alive. No one else suspects it, even.”

“Surely not,” Dacey again repeated.

“If we were to kill him, then, and get rid of his body, who the devil would ever suspect the crime? Only the Carters! But they could not prove anything. They could not even show that Darling did not kill himself. He’s as good as dead already, as far as that goes, and they can never learn where Moran got the body that was substituted for Darling at the time of the supposed suicide.”

“By Heaven, Kate, you’ve got all the makings of a devil in you,” said Dacey, with a growl.

“I’m only showing you the way,” Kate Crandall replied. “It can be done easily enough. It’s the only way by which we can make Darling produce the coin.”

“What’s your plan?”

“We’ll keep Carter and Garvan here till the trick is turned. We’ll fake a marriage ceremony with Darling. That done and his money on his person, we’ll end him forever and bolt with the coin.”

“I see,” Dacey nodded.

“When Carter and Garvan are liberated, they’ll have only a guess coming to them,” Kate added. “They cannot prove that Floyd and I were one. They cannot show that Sheldon and Darling were one. All they can do, Jim, will be to look wise and guess at the whole business. It can be done like breaking sticks. What do you say?”

“Kill Darling, eh?” queried Dacey.

“Why not? There is no risk. He’s dead already—in the eye of the law.”

“That’s true.”

“We surely can turn the trick and get away without serious suspicion.”

“It does look so, Kate, I’ll admit,” Dacey thoughtfully agreed.

How this enterprising colloquy would have ended, and at what final conclusion the plotters would have arrived, will never be known in this world.

Chick Carter, glancing at the crouching man, saw him withdraw from his position and cautiously descend the cellar stairs.

Chick suspected a genuine suicide, and he stole quickly from his concealment and noiselessly followed him. When part way down the stairs, he again discovered his man.

Sheldon was tearing the disguise from his face in frantic haste, and was casting it fiercely upon the floor.

Chick waited and watched him.

The disguise removed, revealing a weak-featured man of forty, Darling hastened to open the door of the laundry, into which he vanished.

Chick crept down the stairs and to the open door.

Darling was hurriedly cutting the bonds from Nick and Patsy, at the same time crying in nervous, frantic, agonized whispers:

“Enough of this—enough of it! I’m going to confess; going to tell the whole truth. I’ve been a blinded, cursed fool, an infernal madman, crazed with love for an unscrupulous woman. I am Cyrus Darling—Cyrus Darling himself. I’ll tell the whole truth and take my medicine. Come with me, Mr. Carter. Come with me, for God’s sake, and arrest that she-devil and her knavish confederate. Come with me and——”

“Hush!”

Nick calmly interrupted him. He then was free and on his feet, as was Patsy. He saw Chick entering the room, also, and he knew that the case was precisely what he had asserted, that of a man with a lost head, and that the finish was but the work of moments.

Nick waited only to hear Chick’s statement.

Half a minute later, still engaged in discussing their devilish plot, Dacey and Kate Crandall beheld the three detectives and the undisguised man enter the sitting room. Both instantly guessed the truth, and while Dacey weakened perceptibly, only a loud laugh came from the woman.

“Oh, it’s all off, then,” she cried, with mingled disgust and defiance. “You have called the turn on us, Carter, have you?”

“You’ll find that I have,” Nick replied.

“Oh, well, that don’t rattle me any,” Kate sharply asserted. “You have got nothing on us, Carter. I told you I never would lay myself liable. Any man may pretend to commit suicide, if he wants to, and turn all of his fortune into cash. The more fool he, in that case, and he’s the one who must pay the price. You’ve got nothing on us, Carter, and well you know it. Otherwise, you’d have had us in irons by this time.”

Nick Carter knew that there was some truth in this, yet he said sternly:

“Don’t you be so sure of it, Kate Crandall. I can send you up for a term of years for conspiracy, abduction, and opposing officers of the law. If I don’t do so—there will be but one reason,” he added pointedly.

“What reason is that?” Kate demanded, with color fading.

“You have made an infernal fool of this man, and he knows it, now. I think he will behave himself in the future, and I’m going to give him a chance. I shall do so for the sake of his wife, who is as fine a woman as you are the reverse. I shall invent a story to account for all that has occurred, and shall send Cyrus Darling home to his wife. Neither she nor the public must know the truth. Your only hope, Kate Crandall, and that of your confederates, lies in your permanent secrecy.”

“I agree to that, Carter,” cried Kate quickly. “The truth shall never be told.”

“Does that go with you, Dacey?” Nick sternly demanded.

“You bet!” Dacey eagerly cried.

“And you will silence Moran?”

“Silence him? You bet I’ll silence him—if I have to cut his tongue out.”

Nick turned to Cyrus Darling, who had sunk upon the nearest chair, with his head bowed in his hands.

What Nick said to the erring man is of minor importance. It is enough to add that he adjusted the matter in the manner suggested; that Cyrus Darling returned home a few days later with a story that Nick had invented for him, and that the real truth was, indeed, never disclosed.

THE END.