A LAST RESORT.
“Search him!” sternly commanded Badger. “We’ll see what that will bring
forth. Search him, Conley, and see what you can find!”
The scene was the kitchen of the Badger dwelling.
Fifteen minutes had passed since Patsy was rounded up and brought
in there, and the quarter-hour had been devoted to plying him with
questions to break down the crafty story he had told, and to which he
clung with a tenacity born of conscious desperation.
He now stood with his back to one of the kitchen walls, in the full
glare of the lamplight.
His arms were still secured behind him, and his collar and cravat were
awry from the throttling he had received.
His face was composed, however, not even pale, and his eyes were keen
and bright with that inherent courage and invincible determination
which rendered him superior to any threatening situation, and eminently
worthy to have become Nick Carter’s trusted associate and assistant.
The gang by which he had been so curiously cornered were seated about
the room.
Both Badger and Conley appeared stern and ugly, evincing that state of
mind when dread and suspicion battle with uncertainty.
The two women, Mrs. Badger and Vic Clayton, appeared pale and anxious,
as if fearful that their adventurous career was likely to be seriously
interrupted.
Yet all four, including also a dark, middle-aged woman who worked in
the house, were regarding Patsy with eyes and aspects so threatening as
to have awed one less cool, collected, and defiant of personal peril.
Fifteen minutes had passed, as mentioned, and from this time matters
moved decisively and swiftly, with all the energies of these masterful
detectives instinctively strained for what each knew must be a final
move, and all operating to produce the one desirable culmination of
their joint endeavors.
In response to Badger’s command, Conley sprang up and began to search
Patsy, fiercely thrusting his hand into one pocket and then another.
“Leave the linings,” suggested Patsy, with a defiant grin.
He knew that he had on his person only one article that would point to
his vocation, which he was prepared to deny in the face even of that.
It came to light in a moment—his trusty revolver.
“Aha! what’s this?” cried Conley, as he yanked the weapon from Patsy’s
hip pocket. “So you carry a gun, do you?”
“Sure I do,” asserted Patsy coolly. “You’d carry a gun, too, if there
were as many rats in your cellar as there are in mine.”
“It’s you who are the rat,” Badger angrily growled, as his confederate
displayed the weapon.
“You’re wrong, mister,” insisted Patsy. “I’m a ratter, but no rat.”
“What d’ye mean by that?” snarled Conley fiercely.
“I mean that I’m a hunter of rats,” said Patsy, with dry significance.
“You’re a detective,” cried Badger.
“That’s what he is, Amos,” supplemented Vic Clayton, white with
increased apprehensions. “He must be one of the Boston force.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Not one of the force?”
“Nothing of the kind.”
“If you are lying, youngster, the lie will as surely cost you your
life——”
What more Badger would have uttered can only be conjectured, for, while
he was speaking, fiercely shaking his fist at Patsy’s helpless head,
there sounded from the gravel driveway outside and over the hollow
planking of the veranda the heavy fall of hurrying feet.
“Who’s this?” cried Claudia, starting affrightedly from her chair.
“The door, Conley!” hissed Badger. “Have the gun ready!”
Before Conley could reach the doorway, however, toward which he
hastened with Patsy’s revolver in his hand, it was hurriedly opened
and a sallow-featured, green-eyed rascal bounded breathlessly into the
kitchen.
“Oh, it’s Sandy Hyde!” exclaimed Vic, with a little scream of
satisfaction.
“Who the devil is he?” thought Patsy, sharply regarding the panting
scamp.
Though this advent of Hyde brought a look of relief to the face of
each, Badger kept a taut rein on the threatening business then on hand,
and he almost immediately demanded:
“What brings you out here, Sandy?”
“Wait till I get my breath, and I’ll tell you,” panted Hyde. “I’ve run
all the way from the trolley. The chief kept me at work till half an
hour ago.”
“Is there something wrong at headquarters?” snarled Badger quickly.
“What’s that?” muttered Patsy mentally. “A spy from the chief’s office,
or I’ll eat my boots! By thunder! it’s no wonder that this case has
baffled the efforts of the Boston force.”
Patsy was quick enough to see all it meant, in case he was correct in
his immediate conjecture.
Sandy Hyde, who had paused a moment to get a drink of water at the
kitchen sink, now hastened to reply to Badger’s question.
“Wrong at headquarters? I should say so!” he cried. “I have just got
wise to something, less than an hour ago. Who’s that chap?”
“Never mind him at present,” cried Badger, with terrific impatience.
“What have you learned?”
“Nick Carter has an assistant here on this case,” replied Hyde.
“Not Chick Carter!”
“Yes.”
“Have you seen him?”
“Sure! He was at headquarters about five o’clock.”
“For what?”
“He was trying to locate Nick.”
“We’ve got Nick, all right,” sneered Badger, with a chuckle of
derision. “But this other, this Chick Carter, of whom I have frequently
heard, I don’t know him by sight.”
“Nor do I,” put in Conley, frowning near-by.
“You’re sure this is not he?”
“Dead sure,” cried Hyde, with a glance at Patsy. “I don’t know this
chap.”
“Then he is not one of the Boston force,” declared Vic, more hopefully.
“He did not lie about that.”
Badger turned again to Patsy, lowering and dark, and Patsy gained a
point by saying quickly:
“Sure I didn’t lie about it. I wouldn’t lie to ladies and gents like
you.”
“No, this fellow is not a Boston detective, I’ll swear to that,” Hyde
now declared. “I know them all.”
“But Chick Carter——” began Badger.
“Oh, he doesn’t look like this chap,” interrupted Hyde.
“He doesn’t, eh?”
“Not a bit! Chick Carter is older, a sturdy, well-built young man, with
smooth, clean-cut features and——”
“Stop!” screamed Vic Clayton, suddenly leaping out of her chair.
“Well?”
“How was he dressed when you saw him at five o’clock?”
“Why, he said he was going to your office,” cried Hyde, now getting
back to the business that had brought him out there. “He had on a plaid
suit, a polka-dotted cravat——”
“Henderson!” screamed Vic, all of a quiver with excitement. “That man
Henderson, Amos, was Chick Carter!”
“Not a doubt of it!” gasped Claudia Badger, as white as the knot of
lace at her throat.
“And that’s why he inquired after Nick Carter,” declared Badger, now
beginning to see that a network might already be closing around him.
“That’s what, Amos.”
“Do you know where Chick Carter went after leaving your rooms, Vic?”
“Of course not. How should I?”
“He might have said.”
“He said he was going to Carter’s hotel.”
“Bosh!”
“I’ll tell you what I do know, however,” cried Vic, hit with an
afterthought.
“What’s that?”
“I know that this young devil must have got into that hamper while
Chick Carter was in my rooms, Amos, and it’s a hundred to one that the
two were at work on this case together.”
“Gee! she’s hit me good and hard this time,” thought Patsy, wishing
he might have throttled her to silence. “Now there will be something
doing, I’ll go the limit on that.”
He read aright the faces of those around him.
The significance of Vic Clayton’s declaration was utterly irresistible.
“What do you say to that?” thundered Badger, striding closer to Patsy,
with his features livid and convulsed with rage.
“I dunno what she’s talking about,” protested Patsy coolly.
“You lie!” roared Conley. “You are one of Nick Carter’s helpers, or——”
“Stop a bit!” interrupted Badger, with frightful austerity. “We’ll soon
know whether he is or not!”
“What d’ye mean?”
“I’ll get the truth out of him!” snorted Badger. “Bring him after me,
back to the garage. I’ll make him confess the truth and tell us where
we stand. We’ll string him up by the neck to one of the beams—and there
he shall hang unless he tells the whole truth! Bring him along, you
two, and look lively! I’ll go on ahead and open the doors.”
“Yes, there’s something doing!” thought Patsy, contemplating his
imminent peril. “They are going to try hanging me—but they’ll try in
vain! Yet I rather hope Chick may show up in time to save my precious
neck.”
These thoughts passed through Patsy’s mind while he was being rudely
hustled out of doors by Conley and Hyde, while Amos Badger hurried on
in advance.
Both women followed, too alarmed by the impending peril to endure the
suspense of remaining behind.
“They care nothing for me, or my neck,” thought Patsy. “Like the she
devils of ancient Rome, once having tasted blood, they thirst for more.”
As he was hurried into the basement by Conley, he saw that the sliding
door had been opened and that Badger was again lighting the lantern.
This no sooner was done than the dastardly knave, blind to all except
the impulses of his utter desperation, quickly threw a rope over a beam
near the ceiling, then knotted a slip-noose around Patsy’s neck.
Patsy stood directly under the beam, as cool as if he was only about to
be weighed.
“Get hold of that rope, you two!” cried Badger fiercely.
Conley and Hyde sprang to the lax strip of line.
The two women, bred though they were to evil, drew back with awed white
faces and dilated eyes.
“Now, youngster, what do you say?” thundered Badger, confronting Patsy
with face livid and eyes ablaze.
Patsy met him eye to eye.
“Only what I’ve said already,” he curtly replied.
“Nothing more?”
“Nothing more, mister!”
“Nor less?”
“Nor less!”
“Up with him!” roared Badger, turning fiercely to his confederates.
Patsy felt the rope draw taut around his neck.
Just then, however, from some quarter outside, there rang out upon the
still evening air the sharp, spiteful crack of a revolver.
It was mingled with a single agonized yelp—and a bloodhound lay
stretched upon the greensward, shot squarely between his eyes!