PAUL ROGERS’ LAST STRUGGLE.
Eleven o’clock had just tolled from the tower of the town hall in the
village, three miles away, when Nick Carter saw a shadow cross the path
near to the spot where he was sitting, and he started to his feet and
bounded forward with the suddenness of the leap of a panther.
He seized the man from behind and forced him to the earth, at the same
moment attempting to grasp his throat, thus to shut off all chance of
his calling out and thus summoning assistance; but in the darkness he
missed the man’s throat, and was amazed to hear the well-recognized
tones of Tom Morgan’s voice cursing in a low tone, while he struggled to
free himself from the grasp of his assailant.
Instantly the detective altered his tactics.
“Red Morgan! Tom! Tom Morgan!” he whispered in his ear. “Stop
struggling. Lie quiet. Listen to me. I am Nick Carter.”
“Praise God!” breathed Tom, in reply. And then in a whisper that was
still lower, he continued:
“Don’t make a sound, for Heaven’s sake. There are sixty-five crooks
around us somewhere. If they are not here now they are on the way and
not far distant. As many as a score of them must be hidden near here
now, although I do not think they will approach near to the house before
midnight.”
Then, as rapidly as possible, he revealed the awful condition of things
to the detective, covering only the main points of the plot, for there
was not time to go into detail; but he closed with this statement:
“The telephone wires were to be cut at eleven-thirty, and the electric
light wires at midnight. At a quarter past twelve, the descent is to be
made on the house.”
“Well, man alive, that gives us an hour and a quarter to work,” said
Nick. “We can do a lot in that time.”
“But there will not be a moment between now and then when the eyes of
the gang will not be fixed upon the house, and, if they should discover
us----”
“Come with me,” was the only reply which Nick Carter made, and he glided
away through the darkness.
The detective had provided himself with a key to the side door, and with
that he admitted himself and his companion to the Fells mansion.
The hall was brilliantly lighted, and Nick directed that Tom turn off
each light as he approached it.
“We must work swiftly and carefully,” he said. “And Tom, let us start
right. It will not be a waste of time to say this much to you. I know
you. You are Tom Danton, supposed by all your family, save your sister,
to be dead. Hush! I have talked with her about you. She loves her big
brother now with the same devotion she gave to him when she was a girl.
She only wants you to be good, that is all. To-night do your mightiest,
Tom, in working for her, and for your father, and mother, and brother.
Your mother was injured this afternoon. She is ill unto death. She may
not recover. She and Mercedes must be saved first. After them, your
father, who is an old man. You must take your sister to a place of
safety. I will take your mother. After that you rescue your father, and
after them we will get the others out as fast as we can. Now talk
quickly. You were born here. You lived here all through your boyhood.
There must be a place where we can take them--some place where, as a
boy, you played Indian scout, where these fiends will not find them
until we have rescued everybody from the house. Think it up while I
make use of this telephone before the fiends cut the wire.”
He seized the receiver and placed it to his ear. The instant he got a
reply, he said:
“Quick, Central. There may not be a moment to talk. This is Linden
Fells. The house is besieged--is to be burned to the ground. Tell
the police; summon assistance----”
He heard a sharp stroke against the wire as if it had been struck with a
hammer, and the connection was cut off. He had no means of knowing
whether Central had understood him or not, and he knew that he must work
on the supposition that no help would come.
“Well?” he demanded, turning to Tom. “Have you thought of a place?”
“Yes. I know the very place. If we only have time and are not seen, we
can save them all. Can you carry my mother, Mr. Carter? She is very
heavy.”
“I could carry a horse with her on its back,” replied Nick. “Get
Mercedes and meet me at this door.”
“No,” replied Tom. “We go out through the cellar. It is a secret way
which I built as a boy. My father had it walled up with masonry, but I
know where there is a crowbar, and I can tear the wall away in two
minutes.”
“Good,” said Nick. “Get Mercedes and meet me in the cellar, then.”
When the detective entered the room where the injured woman had been
taken, he saw at a glance that consciousness had returned to her while
her attendants were wrapped in the influence of the drug, and that,
although very weak and faint with fright because of her unavailing
efforts to rouse the nurses, she was still thoroughly conscious, and
instantly Nick determined that the best way to deal with her was to tell
her as much of the truth as he dared.
Rapidly he explained to her who he was; that the accident which resulted
in her injury was part and parcel with a plot to burn and rob Linden
Fells; that in carrying out the plot, every member of the household had
been drugged into unconsciousness save herself, and that she had been
spared only because she was not able to swallow the coffee; that the
house was at that minute surrounded by their enemies, and that the only
way of escape was to submit to being carried away from danger; and then,
without more ado, he took her in his arms and started for the cellarway.
At the bottom of the stairs he encountered Tom, who held Mercedes in his
arms. She was in a stupor, and so utterly unconscious of the events
that were taking place around her.
In the cellar it was the work of a moment for Tom to find the old and
now rust-eaten crowbar where he had hidden it years before, and with it
to knock a hole through the wall where his father had caused the lad’s
“secret passage” to be stopped up. But this was a time when the foolish
prank of a boy was destined to stand the man in good stead--to be, in
fact, the means of saving many lives.
Ah! the enthusiasm of youth! The labor of many weeks bestowed upon that
“secret passage” by the boy Tom Danton, was bearing fruit this moment.
The passage led straight underneath the rose-garden to the edge of the
bluff which overlooked a deep ravine, and at the end opened into a log
hut, which had now fallen into decay, but which, because it was almost
inaccessible because of the steep sides of the ravine around it, had
been forgotten by those who lived on the estate.
It was with relief that Nick discovered when they arrived at the hut
that Mrs. Danton had quietly fainted away, and, depositing her on the
ground beside her daughter, both men hurried back again through the
passage to the mansion.
“Your father next,” ordered Nick, “and, after that, whomever you please.
Only work fast. Leave me to work as I please. We can get them all out,
even to the last servant, if only our--or, rather, your strength holds
out.”
“I am as strong as a bull,” replied Tom, hastening away. But he paused
long enough to call back to the detective:
“We must not forget the stable when we have finished with the house.”
Nick nodded and proceeded with the work.
The drugged and unconscious men and women, whom they carried away, hung
like corpses upon their arms. Nothing roused them, and soon the small
log cabin in the ravine was filled with the slumbering throng. And still
all was silent without the house.
Once Nick took time to look at his watch, but not until he was carrying
out the last of the people he had saved, and he saw that the time then
lacked only two minutes of the time set for the attack.
Chick, in his character as butler, was the very last whom Nick carried
away, and Chick manifested some signs of reviving. But, although he
opened his eyes and glanced vacantly around him for an instant, he
closed them again and sank back into unconsciousness.
The house was clear of living occupants at last. Not so, however, with
the stable.
“Tom,” he said, “are you a good shot?”
“I can drive a nail at thirty paces,” replied Tom.
“Have you got a gun with you?”
“Two.”
“Good. It is up to us to defend the house now, and save it from fire
till assistance arrives if such a thing is possible. Those whom we have
carried out will be safe where they are for the present--at least, as
safe as we can make them. The electric lights have gone out, showing
that the enemy has cut the wires. There is a fairly good starlight
outside, and we ought to be able to pick off a few of the attackers
before they can get into the house, don’t you think so?”
“All I ask is to get a bead on Rogers himself,” replied Tom grimly.
“Good. Kill him if you can. You are justified. He and his men will
probably approach in a body. I have four revolvers here; two in my
sleeves and two in my pockets. You have two, and that gives us thirty
shots all told. We should give a fairly good account of ourselves, I
think. You take the front of the house and I will take the rear. I want
to be where I can cover the stable as well as the house.”
Nick had guessed the intentions of the man, Rogers, almost exactly. His
followers did not, however, attack in one body, but in three.
There were a score or more of the men in each bunch, and one of these
advanced toward the front of the house, another toward the rear, and the
third approached the stable. Nick thus had a perfect view of some forty
of the criminals.
He had opened wide the door where he was standing so that he could see
to shoot without obstruction, and he stood so that he could, if
necessary, kick the door shut at any moment.
The gang which attacked the stable reached their destination first, and
as the leader reached out one hand to raise the latch of the door, one
of the detective’s revolvers spoke, and the man dropped in his tracks as
if he had been hit with a club.
Then, with one hand, Nick played upon the men at the stable-door, and
with the other upon the men who were approaching the door where he was
standing, and the reports of his shots sounded with the regularity and
precision of the ticking of a watch as he fired.
There was a yell of rage at the first fire, and other yells at the
second, third, fourth, and others.
Men dropped to the ground with howls of rage and pain, and writhed in
agony, for the detective was aiming his shots at their legs and not at
their hearts. He had no desire to kill, save where it concerned one man,
and he could not see Rogers anywhere among those at his side of the
house.
Within the space of ten seconds from the instant he fired the first
shot, the attacking-party broke and fled; but, even as they did so,
there were loud shouts behind them.
Lights flashed upon every side. There came the sound of galloping
horses, the screech of a steam fire-engine, and the encouraging cries of
a throng of rescuers who had started out from the village upon the
summons of the girl at the central office of the telephone who had given
the alarm.
Not one of the sixty-five marauders succeeded in entering either the
house or the stable, and only five of them succeeded in escaping.
It seemed to Nick as if the entire village had turned out and hastened
to the rescue, as, indeed, it had, and as they had arrived on the scene
at the very moment when Nick and Tom began firing, the attention of the
attacking-party had been distracted from their enemies in the rear until
they were entirely surrounded, and there was left to them no chance of
escape.
Thirty of the marauders were wounded, although none of them was
seriously injured.
Only one was killed outright, and he laid upon his face in front of the
porch, with a bullet-hole squarely between his eyes.
And what of Tom Danton?
He was also wounded.
A bullet had somehow found its way to him and had entered his side, but
a quick examination satisfied Nick that the wound was not mortal.
“I got Rogers with my first bullet,” he whispered to Nick, as the
detective bent over him; “and he got me, too. But he won’t bother us any
more. Send me to a hospital, Carter, if you please, and don’t tell the
folks who I am. I’m going to live a new life from this day forth, and
try to be worthy of the sister who loves me.”
* * * * *
It was a remarkable fact of that raid upon Linden Fells that each and
every victim of the drug that was administered in the coffee awoke in
his or her bed or room, exactly where they had dropped asleep, and that
the only person among them all who was at all conscious of what had
happened was Chick, and he only in a vague way, which was utterly
uncertain until the detective explained it to him.
Nick sent the prisoners and the wounded men away with the
rescuing-party, and removed, as far as possible, all traces of the
fight.
Even the old man, Mr. Danton, was seated in his chair beside his table
when he awoke, in just the position in which he had fallen asleep from
the effects of the drug. Even the servants were restored to the
attitudes in which they had been discovered by Nick and Tom, and awoke
in the small hours of the morning to slink away to their beds in
chagrin.
Not one of them knew what had happened while they were sleeping--and not
one of them learned the facts until later, when, of course, it became
public property and was generally talked about--and even then, there
were those who regarded it as a hoax and refused to believe.
Nick Carter did not send Tom Danton to a hospital. He had him conveyed
to his own house, and, having left him there under the very best care
that could be provided, he returned to Linden Fells.
But before he departed, he said to Tom:
“We are rid of Rogers, Tom; but we have an implacable enemy left
still.”
“You mean Isabel?” asked Tom.
“Yes. Isabel Benton. Mark my words, she will yet be heard from.”
But during the days which followed, there came no sign of Isabel Benton,
nevertheless.
* * * * *
Not until the afternoon of the day following the fight did Nick Carter
take Mercedes into his confidence and tell her all that had happened. He
had imposed silence upon the mother, who was the only one in the house
who had not partaken of the drug. It remained only necessary for him to
tell all to Mercedes.
And he did.
I will leave the reader to imagine how he told it. How he dwelt on the
heroism of Tom Danton, whom he promised should see her and talk with her
as soon as he could be made to consent to do so.
THE END.
In the NEW MAGNET LIBRARY there will next appear an exciting story of
love and crime under the title of “Nabob and Knave,” No. 1171, by
Nicholas Carter.