THE SLIPPERY APACHE.
The words were hardly out of the detective’s mouth, when the Cuban, with a snarl of rage, tore the cigar from Nick’s teeth and pressed the burning end upon the bare hand of his captor.
There were few things that would have made Nick Carter loosen his hold. The exquisite pain of the burning cigar was one of them, however.
Anybody who ever has been hurt in this way can testify that the red-hot ash sticks to the flesh in a cruel fashion, causing excruciating agony.
As Nick took away one hand, John Garrison Rayne pulled the other loose. Then, hissing defiance between his set teeth, he dragged a long knife from inside his coat and aimed a blow at the detective’s heart.
Nick Carter was unable to ward off the blow entirely, but it only cut a long slit in his sleeve. The next moment he had seized the rascal around the waist and slammed him down upon the table by his side.
The table never was meant to stand such a shock. Down it went, in a muddle of broken legs and splintered top, with the Cuban and Nick in the ruins, for the Cuban had pulled his assailant down with him.
“Thieves!” roared the Cuban. “Look out! Grab him before he can get away!”
Four big men piled on top of Nick behind, and, under their combined weight, down he went, flat upon the floor, while the cunning rascal, who had incited the attack, slipped away in the darkness.
“Let me get up!” shouted Nick. “The thief has got away.”
“Oh, I guess not!” came from one of the men holding him down. “I saw the whole thing. This man asked for a light, and when he had it, he tried to go through the other man’s pockets for his roll. Where are the police? This is the worst holdup I ever saw.”
“You idiot!” exploded Nick.
He was enraged at seeing Rayne get away when so nearly caught. So exerting all his enormous strength, he threw the four men off, and, picking up a chair, swung it around his head to hold them back.
By this time there was a full-sized riot on the porch and in the café. But the detective’s blood was up, and he cared nothing for that.
It was seldom he allowed his anger to make him lose sight of the main purpose in view. But he was so disgusted with the interference of these men, at such a critical moment, that he was determined to make them pay.
He dropped the chair and shot out his two fists, sending the talkative individual, who had called for the police, one way, and another busy person another.
He was setting himself for an onslaught on three others who were coming toward him, when suddenly two men he had not seen before ranged themselves on his side. They disposed of four of the foes with well-directed blows.
Before Nick could look around to see who his unexpected reënforcements were, Patsy Garvan whispered in his ear:
“Break away, chief! The fellow you knocked down is hustling along the avenue. Let’s get after him.”
A hand was laid on each of his arms, and, as he was drawn away into the shadows, where the people on the porch could not see him, he found Chick on one side of him and Patsy on the other.
“Do you know who he was?” asked Nick.
“I didn’t see,” replied Patsy. “I only made out that he was dark, and that he had on light clothes. I’ll know him again, though. Come on!”
“Who was he, chief?” asked Chick.
“John Garrison Rayne,” replied Nick Carter shortly.
“Wha-at?”
His two assistants delivered themselves of this interrogative monosyllable together, and with enough astonishment to make it seem ten times as strong a word as it was.
“Get after him!” replied Nick, as he hustled along the dark thoroughfare. “He can’t have got far.”
But if Rayne had not got far, at least he had managed to elude his pursuers on this occasion.
He laughed silently, as, standing in the shadow of a tree, he saw Nick Carter and his two men go past. He watched them till they were out of sight.
“That settles it,” he muttered. “I’ve got to get this coat of chocolate off my face and hands, and tackle something else. It will be a bold thing, but I guess I can put it over. It seems to be about my only chance, for that cursed Carter has every part of the wharf and all the roads guarded. He thinks I don’t know, perhaps—but I do.”
He walked slowly on until he stood in front of the handsome “palace,” which was at one time the residence of the Spanish captain general, but is now the home of the governor.
This building is one of the finest in a city of imposing edifices, and as John Garrison Rayne gazed at it, his busy brain worked with a scheme that, as he had confessed to himself, was decidedly bold, to say the least.
“It is the one best bet for me,” he muttered. “It is something that Carter never would suspect, and for that reason I feel sure I can carry it out as smoothly as anything of that kind could be done.”
He grinned as he moved away, and the grin was still on his dark face when he reached the obscure house in which he had engaged a room—a house where the people never asked questions so long as the rent was paid promptly.
Once in his bedchamber, he locked the door and made sure the window shade was adjusted so that no glimmer of light could show outside. Then he took from his pockets two bags and emptied their contents upon the bed.
The bags had contained some of the jewelry stolen from Stephen Reed, including a string of magnificent pearls which he prized more than anything else he had. The pearls had been the property of Abdul Hamid, Sultan of Turkey, and were regarded by experts as unique in their beauty.
“If I could only sell those sultan pearls,” thought Rayne, “I should have enough cash to do anything. But I daren’t try to work them off in San Juan. I’ll have to get along the best way I can on the balance of Captain Lawton’s six hundred dollars.”
He lighted a cigar—one of the long, slim rolls of tobacco that are so common in Porto Rico—and sat down on the bed to meditate.
“I may as well see that the others are all right,” he said, half aloud. “Though, so long as I can feel the package under my clothes, there is no likelihood of anything having happened to them.”
He opened the front of his soft shirt and revealed a flat bag, hanging to a string around his neck, and which showed no bulkiness from the outside.
He opened the top of this bag and pulled from it a flat package in tissue paper. This he emptied out on the bed, apart from the other jewels. The paper had contained several unset diamonds.
He sifted these through his fingers for a few moments, his eyes glittering with avaricious triumph. Then he put them back and fastened the bag. As he buttoned the front of the shirt over it, he muttered:
“Eighty thousand dollars, eh? I’m sure I can raise at least a hundred on all these. There are stones worth a great deal more than the price the old man put on them. All I want is to get to some place where I can market them. And that market is New York. Even if I could not turn them into cash there, it is so easy to slip across to Europe. Yes, I must get to New York as quickly as I can. I must.”
He restored the Abdul Hamid pearls and the other glittering gewgaws to their two bags and placed them both under the pillow on the bed.
“I’ll have a busy, hard day to-morrow,” he told himself, with a grin, as he began to undress. “I must get a good sleep to-night. I wonder whether Carter is still looking for me.”
He repeated this last sentence as he turned out the lights and got into bed. His thoughts were very much on the detective and his doings.
Nick Carter had got the better of him on more than one occasion, and, in spite of his boastful promise to himself that this was the time when he would win, John Garrison Rayne did not feel any too sure.