UNDER THE SURFACE.
As Nick Carter had rightly conjectured, when weighing the mystifying
knowledge displayed by Madame Victoria, there was something under the
surface.
What the something was, moreover, plainly appeared in what followed the
visit of Nick to the suburban house of Mr. Amos Badger.
The moment the detective departed, in company with Grady, there came
over both Badger and his wife a very decided change.
With an ugly gleam in his dark eyes, which were still following the
runabout as it sped down the long driveway, Badger ripped off the red
flannel bandages from around his neck, exclaiming vehemently:
“Whew! these infernal things have set me reeking at every pore! Thank
Heaven he remained no longer, or I should have run down into my boots.
There’s not a dry rag on me.”
His wife indulged in a laugh, a vicious little laugh, most unpleasant
to honest ears.
“Yet the ruse worked well, Amos,” she cried exultantly.
“Yes, apparently.”
“Apparently?”
“That’s what I said,” growled Badger, as the runabout passed out of
view.
“What do you mean?” demanded Claudia, with quickened apprehension.
“I mean that there never is any knowing what Nick Carter thinks and
suspects, however he may carry himself,” Badger petulantly replied.
“He is one thing on the surface, another under it. There is no telling
anything about him, and I’m infernally sorry that Weston has brought
him over here.”
“Bah!” cried his wife contemptuously. “He can accomplish no more than
the Boston detectives have done.”
“I’m not so sure of it.”
“We can fool him as we have fooled the others.”
“Yet he asked some deucedly ugly questions,” declared Badger, with a
doubtful shake of his head. “And I more than half-fear that he already
suspects our trick.”
“Suspects that you were only feigning illness?”
“Possibly.”
“Nonsense! He cannot have got wise to that, nor to anything else that
seriously affects us.”
Badger turned quickly away, and hailed the man in the driveway.
“Come in here, Jerry,” he commanded. “I want to speak to you.”
Conley dropped his work and hastened into the house, following Badger
and his wife into the library.
“What d’ye want, Amos?” he inquired, with a familiarity plainly
indicating that he was something more than a menial about the place.
“I want to I know just what Carter said to you,” replied Badger,
throwing himself into a chair.
“He only asked if I’d seen an auto go along the road below here.”
“Nothing more?”
“Not a thing.”
“I thought I heard him say something about me, Conley, and the cut of
my jib.”
“Oh, that was only because he couldn’t learn anything from me, and he
didn’t fancy the jolly I was giving him,” replied Conley, with a grin.
“Devil a thing did I tell him, Amos, and I was only keeping him on a
string till I was dead sure that you and Claudy were out of your auto
rigs and into the togs in which he found you.”
“Are you sure he didn’t get sight of the other machine?” demanded
Badger apprehensively.
“The one you used when you held him up?”
“Yes, certainly.”
“Oh, I’m dead sure that he didn’t see that,” cried Conley confidently.
“I had that in the secret cover a good five minutes before he showed up
in the runabout.”
“And you were at work on the other when he arrived?”
“Yes, long before he arrived.”
“Pshaw! he couldn’t have seen the Peerless when he got here, Amos,”
supplemented Claudia decidedly. “We left that runabout behind us as if
it had been tied to a stake.”
“I know all that,” growled Badger; “but I want to feel sure that the
infernal detective got no line on us after he reached here. I’ll tell
you both, he’s a man to be feared, and we cannot be too careful in case
he undertakes to round us up.”
“Faugh!” snarled Conley, with a scowl rising about his crafty eyes. “If
he gets wise, and presses us too hard, there’s one thing we can do.”
“Put him out of the way?”
“Sure.”
“It will have to be done,” said Badger, with a nod. “Yet I don’t fancy
running my neck into a noose if it can be avoided.”
“It can be done without that,” said Conley, with grim significance.
“It strikes me,” put in Claudia, “that we ought to give Vic a tip that
Carter is coming to call upon her, also that he has been out here.”
“That’s right, too.”
“If he is as clever as you say he is, Amos, he must be handled with
gloves,” added the woman. “Vic ought to be warned of his visit, and of
what his business consists, so that she may be ready for him, and head
him off from any suspicion.”
“I can inform her by telephone.”
“It must be done.”
“There’s no great rush,” replied Badger. “Carter will not arrive there
for an hour.”
“You must tell her just what we have done, and why we did it.”
“Tell her that we held him up this morning?”
“Yes, certainly; also that we got away with his watch and money.”
“Why tell her all that?”
“So she may know just how to handle him,” declared Claudia, with knit
brows. “Vic is clever, all right, but she may queer us in some way when
pitted against Nick Carter’s cleverness, unless she knows just what his
game is, and what has happened out here.”
“I’ll go and talk with her at once,” said Badger, now rising.
“A good idea,” said Conley approvingly. “Let Vic alone to queer any
game that he may have.”
“Stop a moment, Amos,” cried his wife, with an afterthought.
“Well?”
“If Carter has formed any suspicion of us, as you appear to fear, he
may start in at once with some of his underhand work.”
“What do you mean?”
“He may not tell Vic who he is.”
“Possibly not.”
“And he may lead her into some self-betrayal, in case he questions her
closely while she is ignorant of his identity.”
“What the deuce can we do to prevent that?” demanded Badger, with a
frown.
“I’ll tell you what,” said Claudia, who plainly possessed many of the
crafty qualities of her sister.
“Well, out with it.”
“First, Amos, describe him to her so she cannot mistake him, and then——”
“Hold on a bit,” interrupted Conley, who was an interested listener.
“He may take it into his head to go there in disguise, since that’s a
clever trick of his.”
“That’s just what I was coming to, Jerry, if you had let me finish,”
snapped Mrs. Badger. “We can easily head off any disguise he may adopt.”
“How so?”
“Merely by telling Vic that he wears a red carbuncle ring on the third
finger of his left hand,” said Claudia. “He’ll not think it necessary
to remove that, Amos, even if he does put on a disguise.”
“By Jove! that’s so.”
“Go, now, and tell her the whole business.”
Badger hastened into the hall, where he was presently heard imparting
in cautious terms, yet which he evidently knew would be readily
understood, the information concerning Nick which had so puzzled him.
It was because of what she now was told over the wire that Madame
Victoria glanced first at Nick’s left hand when he entered her rooms,
and at once recognized him in the disguise of Sibley.
At the time of his second visit, moreover, when he presented his own
card, the fortune-teller at once noticed that he had removed the ring,
and that alone was enough to convince her that he was beginning to play
a double game, and that he must have formed some suspicions regarding
herself and the Badgers.
After Nick’s first departure she telephoned Badger that he had been
there, and the latter then held a second consultation with his wife and
Conley.
Being ignorant of Nick’s primary object in visiting Madame Victoria
in disguise, which was merely to test her peculiar powers, Badger’s
apprehensions naturally were increased.
“He’s wise to something, and already up to some game against us, or
he wouldn’t have gone there in disguise,” he gravely reasoned. “I’m
ruined, utterly ruined, unless we can continue this road work a few
weeks longer. I shall be swamped completely unless I can thus raise the
funds to tide me along until there’s a rise in the stock-market.”
“We’ll keep up the road-work, Amos, never you fear,” his wife curtly
declared, with an evil brightness in her expressive eyes. “It was I who
suggested it to you, and I have done my part to help you along with it.”
“That’s true enough.”
“And we’ll not quit it now, Amos, Carter or no Carter.”
“That we’ll not,” growled Conley, with a headshake. “There’s too much
good stuff in it for us to have it queered at this stage by this man
Carter. If it comes to the worst, Amos, a knife between his ribs will
put him out of our way.”
“That is more easily said than done.”
“Not if it comes to that kind of a play.”
“I don’t fear Weston and his second-rate detectives,” added Badger
moodily; “but this man Carter is superior to that entire bunch.”
“Bah!” cried Claudia. “You are needlessly alarmed. To begin with, Amos,
he cannot possibly have learned anything definite about us as quickly
as this.”
“Possibly not.”
“He could not have identified us as the couple who held him up and
robbed him this morning, and he certainly must think that was only a
chance job, not one planned by us the moment we heard he was coming out
here in a runabout.”
“No, he could not have guessed that,” admitted Badger.
“Furthermore,” argued his wife, “my face was entirely covered with my
dust-glasses and the false beard, and in my big auto coat it certainly
could not have been suspected that I was a woman who suddenly showed up
in the Peerless in which you escaped after robbing him.”
“Sure it couldn’t,” put in Conley. “I’d have sworn you were a man
myself.”
“Oh, I don’t think he has any idea of the truth about that,” replied
Badger.
“There is still another thing in our favor,” continued Claudia.
“What is that?”
“The alleged robbery of Vic and myself, Amos, and the photograph which
Vic took by which to convince Weston of the truth of our story.”
“That was one of the shrewdest moves ever made,” declared Conley,
laughing.
“Certainly it was, Jerry, and you may let Vic alone to think of such
schemes as that,” said Mrs. Badger, with an evil display of sisterly
pride.
“She’s a keen one, all right,” grinned Conley.
“The picture is as good as a positive proof that we were robbed,” added
Claudia; “and Weston never for a moment has doubted our story. The very
fact, if it were a fact, that we were robbed, moreover, plainly shows
that we cannot have been both the thieves and the victims, also. That
would be absurd, you see, and as long as Carter credits the photograph,
just so long we may be sure that he does not suspect us of being
crooks.”
“That is an ugly word to apply to us, Claudia,” growled Badger
disapprovingly.
“One might as well call things by their right names,” laughed his wife.
“I told you I was an adventuress, and a woman of nerve, Amos, when you
wanted to marry me, and you knew just what you bargained for.”
“I’m finding no fault on that score.”
“You’d better not,” was the pointed rejoinder. “I fancy the life I now
lead, this moving in good society, for it lays away over the stage, or
riding bareback in the circus-ring, to which Vic and I were bred in old
England.”
“What need to refer to those days?” muttered Badger, frowning darkly.
“Only that you may keep in mind the stuff I am made of,” replied his
wife, with a shrug of her shoulders. “When you told me you were in
hot water financially, Amos, it was I who suggested this scheme of
road robbery to tide you along. In becoming your assistant, along with
Jerry, here, my old life of adventure has served me well. I can ride
the most vicious horse, and no auto can go too fast for me, Amos; so
you couldn’t have a better helper, whether I wear skirts or trousers,
in holding up an auto-party.”
“That’s true enough.”
“As for the wickedness of it—well, most of the world is wicked in
one way or another,” laughed the woman. “We must contrive to get our
living, Amos, in some way; and this life of danger and adventure just
suits me, to say nothing of the profits derived. Just think!—last month
we cleaned up close to twenty thousand, providing those Gaylord jewels
bring as much as we expect.”
“Oh, there’s money enough in it, I’ll admit that,” nodded Badger.
“And with Vic to help us, with the aid of the friend she has so
completely under her thumb, we are sure to be informed of any move
contemplated by Weston or by Nick Carter. So your fears are groundless,
Amos, as I said in the beginning.”
“It’s dead lucky, I’ll admit, that we have that anchor to the
windward,” said Badger, with features now relaxing.
“So it is, Amos, and with him to inform us of—— Hark! there goes the
telephone-bell again. I’ll wager that Vic has something more to report.”
Claudia Badger was right in the last.
Madame Victoria now reported the second visit of Nick Carter, and all
that had passed between them; also explained Nick’s simple object in
first calling upon her in disguise, and stated that he came last only
to ask about the woman in the photograph.
“I have him well muddled, Amos,” was Madame Victoria’s last declaration
over the wire. “There is nothing to be feared from him at present.”
Badger’s dark countenance lighted while he listened, and he hastened to
report the communication to his wife and Conley.
“There! what did I tell you?” cried Claudia triumphantly. “I knew that
Vic would prove more than a match even for Nick Carter. Now, there is
just one thing to be done in order to avert suspicion from us.”
“What is that?”
“These road robberies must continue to occur,” declared the woman. “If
they suddenly end at this time, after Carter’s visit here, he very
possibly may infer that we are alarmed, providing he has any suspicion
at all concerning us. Another robbery committed this very night would
clinch matters in our favor.”
“That’s right, too,” said Conley, quickly seeing the point.
It was done, moreover, and one of the boldest yet committed, and
the reports of it filled the morning papers, along with no end of
editorials decrying the inferior work of the police in being unable to
prevent such depredations.
But the end was not yet, for that very day Chief Weston removed his own
men from the case, and placed it entirely in charge of Nick Carter.