BETWEEN THE WALLS OF DOOM.
Shrewd as the detective was, he was destined to meet one who was almost
his equal in dexterity and cunning before the hour set for closing in
on his quarry came around.
When he quitted Bristol Clara’s abode he proceeded to his own quarters,
where he desired, for the time, to be alone.
The secrets of the trail he kept to himself.
If he knew the hand which struck Mother Flintstone down he did not
reveal it by word or deed, and, like the experienced tracker, he was
silent.
Several hours later the detective left the rooms and reappeared on the
street.
He was within a block of his place when a boy approached him.
He extended a letter, which the detective at once took.
“Who sent this, boy?” he asked, as he glanced at the superscription.
“The leddy, sir.”
“But who was the lady?”
“Look inside. I guess that tells; ha, ha!” and the messenger whisked
around the nearest corner and disappeared.
Already the hands of Carter had broken the seal of the missive thus
strangely delivered, and in a moment he had read:
“Could you spare me five minutes of your valuable time, Mr. Carter?
I can make some dark places clear to you. I can enlighten you about
some important things. Come secretly, for it is ticklish business.
I will be there. Come to Number -- Hester Street. Don’t knock! just
open the door and come to the first room on the left of the hall.
“SARA P----”
Nick Carter read the letter twice before he looked up again.
He did not know Sara P----.
He had never heard of such a person, and he racked his brain in vain to
think who she might be.
He did not know what “dark places” she referred to.
She might mean some old trail which he had run down, or she might have
reference to Mother Flintstone’s taking off.
The detective was puzzled.
However, he decided to see if there was anything in the affair, to go
to the designated number and meet this woman-informer face to face.
As no time was set by the strange writer, he took it for granted that
she was to be found in the house at any hour, and in a few minutes he
was on his way.
The detective was always ready to investigate anything that promised to
assist him on a trail.
More than once he had picked up some startling clews from anonymous
letters, and he thought that perhaps “Sara P----” might know something
of importance.
Hester Street is not the finest street in Gotham. Neither is it a
high-toned thoroughfare. There is a mixture of poverty and wealth on
Hester Street, but society there in spots is not of the highest order.
Carter entered the street with some misgivings, but not afraid.
He walked leisurely up the street, looking for the number, and
wondering what sort of looking woman his correspondent was.
He found the house at last--a plain, two-story affair, with shutters in
front and signs of age about the structure.
No one appeared at the door to greet him, but he did not expect any one.
He walked up the steps and turned the knob.
The door opened easily, and he was in the hall.
“The first door to the left,” he mentally said, and then he advanced
toward it.
In another second he had pushed this portal open and stood in a
darkened room.
He saw no one.
Perhaps “Sara P----” was in another part of the house and had not heard
him enter.
Suddenly, however, he was undeceived, and in a flash he knew he had
entered another trap.
The floor gave way beneath his feet, as if his weight had suddenly
broken it in.
The entire floor seemed to fall.
The detective made an effort to recover his equilibrium, but the Fates
were against him.
He fell down--down--and struck on his feet to pitch forward in Stygian
darkness.
At the same time a strange noise overhead told him that the floor had
resumed its original position, and then for a few moments all was still.
The trapped detective had to smile to himself in spite of his
surroundings.
He could not help laughing at his situation, however dark and hopeless
it seemed to be; he had been cleverly caught, and the bait had secured
the prize.
It did not take him long to recover from the fall, which had not
injured him; only jarred him up a little.
He went forward and found a wall ahead.
He followed the wall around, and came back to the same spot, as he
could tell by a little stone under his feet.
The dungeon apparently had no outlet; it was like a sealed-up prison of
the olden time.
Carter put up his hands, but could not touch the floor overhead.
Of course he could not tell how far he had fallen, but he knew that the
trap was directly above him.
Had “Sara P----” sprung the trap?
Had she lured him to this place to destroy him, and thus get even for
some of his detective work?
He did not doubt it.
Nick Carter, in the underground prison, said nothing while he went
around the walls.
He heard no noises in the house overhead, and no one seemed to walk the
floors there.
At last the detective struck a match on the stone wall.
It revealed the dimensions of the dungeon, and he surveyed it with
eager curiosity. It was a dungeon sure enough. He saw the stone walls
and the manner in which the stones were put together. There was no
escape.
Holding the little light above his head Carter saw the underpinning of
the floor.
He also found the strong iron hinges upon which the great trap had
worked at crime’s bidding.
He was like a trapped fox.
Hemmed in by walls of stone, with an impregnable ceiling overhead,
where could there be an avenue of escape?
All at once, at the last flashing of the lucifer, the detective saw
some words on the wall.
It reminded him of the words on the wall of the room where Jack, his
spy, had been strangled.
Had the same hand written them there?
He threw the match to the ground, struck another and sprang eagerly
forward.
He held the little light against the wall and read as follows:
“I am doomed to perish here. There is no escape from this hole of
death. I was decoyed here like a rabbit, and I die for my folly. Let
the next unfortunate person know that I, Lewis Newell, was the victim
of Opal Lamont’s cunning. The woman is a tigress. Farewell.
“LEWIS NEWELL.”
For a full half minute the detective seemed to hold his breath.
He read the writing again and again, and at last threw the stump of the
match at his feet.
Doomed to die!
Another had been before him, and that person ascribed his end to Opal
Lamont.
Was this accusation true?
The old detective recalled his adventure in the house on Cedar Street
and how narrowly he had escaped death at the hands of this same girl.
Perhaps this house belonged to the millionaire, like that one.
Once more in darkness, Carter had time to study the situation.
His curiosity got the better of him, and again he looked at the writing
on the wall.
It looked plainer than ever now.
Who was Lewis Newell, the former victim?
He had never heard of such a person, but he did not doubt the truth of
the inscription.
Suddenly the detective heard a sound that seemed to come from above.
As he turned his face upward the floor seemed to lift, and his eyes
were blinded by an intense glare.
It was as if an electric globe had suddenly been uncovered in his face,
and the light was so strong that he fell back, blinking his eyes like
an owl.
The glare vanished as suddenly as it came into being, but when he
looked again he caught sight of a little ball burning in one corner of
the trap.
It sent out a singular odor, not unpleasant, but enervating, and the
detective’s system seemed to yield to its influence from the first.
“The accursed thing is the death agent which may have killed Newell!”
he cried, as he sprang forward and set his foot on the burning ball.
At that moment an explosion occurred, the interior of the dungeon
seemed to collapse and Carter became unconscious.
Perhaps the end had come.
When the detective came out of the darkness of doom, as it were, he was
lying on his face.
In a moment he staggered up and put out his hands.
They touched a wall as hard and cold as the one they had touched last.
Where was he and in what sort of trap?
Slowly the adventures of the last few hours came back to his excited
brain.
He recalled the note, the visit to the house on Hester Street, the fall
through the trapdoor and the burning ball.
These thoughts came fast and thick; they seemed to contend for
supremacy in his brain and he breathed hard.
“I must get out,” was his cry. “Woman or tigress, she shall not keep me
in this vile place!”
But getting out was the puzzle.
He circumnavigated his prison like a captive in the dungeons of Venice.
He sounded every foot of space, stood on his tiptoes in a vain effort
to reach the ceiling, felt the walls again and again and at last gave
up.
For once at least the famous detective seemed at the end of life.