A BLOW FROM BEHIND.
Nick Carter did not hurry to arrive at the suburban residence of Mr.
John Madison. He hardly expected, in fact, to find him at home before
early evening; but he wanted to see him when he did arrive.
It was close upon six o’clock when Nick entered a gate leading into the
extensive side grounds, and dusk then had deepened into darkness.
Only a single light was to be seen in the imposing wooden dwelling, and
that shone out faintly through the glass walls of a large conservatory
attached to the house. It came from a window beyond the projecting
hothouse.
“That don’t look as if many of the family are at home,” thought Nick,
stepping lightly over the gravel walk that wound between the trees of a
park and led to a side door of the house.
“It may be that only his wife and children are here, though servants are
essential to--humph!” Nick abruptly digressed. “It is barely possible
that he has sent them away, servants and all, if he really is engaged in
the knavery I suspect. Discretion certainly would impel some such step.”
Nick turned the corner of the conservatory, then saw a brighter beam of
light from under the lowered shade of a library window. He crept near
enough to peer into the room.
There was only one occupant--the man the detective was seeking.
Mr. John Madison was seated at a flat, cloth-topped desk in the middle
of the spacious room. It was covered with pamphlets, documents, and
writing materials. A tall library lamp with a pale-green silk shade
stood near by. Its rays lent an unnatural hue to the man’s face, a sort
of ghastly, greenish pallor seen neither in life nor death.
He was a powerful, imposing man, with broad shoulders and a large head.
He was smoothly shaved, with strong, aggressive features, a square jaw,
and thin lips, heavy brows, and a mop of black hair.
He sat gazing intently at the top of his desk, but Nick saw at a glance
that his mind was elsewhere. His thin lips were drawn. His heavy brows
hung like frowning battlements over his vacant eyes. His large hands
were gripping the arms of his chair.
Nick moved on quietly to the side door and touched the electric bell.
It was not answered for several moments. Then a heavy tread could be
heard in the side hall.
“No servant ever treads like that,” thought Nick. “He could not hold his
job.”
The door was opened by Mr. Madison himself. He turned a switch key in
the near casing, and a flood of light filled the side hall and fell on
the figure and face of his visitor.
Madison recoiled slightly, then instantly caught himself.
“Why, good evening, Mr. Carter,” said he, with his sonorous voice only a
bit unsteady on the first two words.
“Good evening, Mr. Madison.”
“This is a surprise. Walk in,” said the lawyer. “I am glad to see you.”
Nick entered, smiling and shaking the other’s extended hand. It felt
cold and clammy in that of the detective.
“I came out this way on business, Mr. Madison, so I dropped in only for
a short call,” Nick observed. “I want to discuss the approaching
election with you, or one feature of it.”
“Ah! Is that so?”
“I hardly expected, nevertheless, to find you at this hour,” Nick added.
“I have not been in town to-day,” Madison replied deliberately.
“No?”
“I have not been feeling well. My wife and children are visiting in
Boston for a few days, and I have given the servants a like holiday.
Come into the library. Sit down and help yourself. There are matches in
the tray.”
Madison placed a box of cigars on the desk while speaking, then resumed
the swivel chair, from which he had arisen to admit his visitor.
Nick had removed his hat and overcoat and left them in the side hall. He
took a chair directly opposite the burly politician. He had, apparently,
no aggressive intentions.
The aroma of pinks and heliotrope was wafted from an alcove near by,
from which a door led into the conservatory. The door was open a few
inches, admitting the scent of the flowers.
“You are not seriously ill, I hope,” Nick remarked, while he accepted a
cigar and lit it.
“Oh, no!” Madison shook his head and ran his fingers through his hair.
“It’s a touch of bronchitis, brought on by too much speaking in
political rallies. That raises the deuce with one’s throat. A day or two
of rest will restore me.”
“I hope so,” said Nick.
“You said, I think, that you wish to discuss some feature of the present
campaign. To what did you refer?”
Nick dropped his burned match into a cuspidor.
“To the hard fight you and Gordon are making to carry your congressional
district,” he remarked, hooking his thumbs through the armholes of his
vest and blowing a wreath of smoke toward the ceiling.
“It is a hard fight, Carter, no mistake.”
“Do you expect to win out?”
“I hope to, of course.”
“You will leave no stone unturned, I suppose?”
“No stone that can be legitimately turned. I shall disturb no other.”
“That goes without saying.”
“But why your interest in the fight?” Madison asked deliberately, in
subdued yet sonorous tones. “I was not aware that you ever dipped into
politics beyond casting your vote.”
“Well, not often,” Nick admitted. “Occasionally, however, I make a play
in politics. This happens to be one of the occasions.”
There was an indescribably ominous intensity in the steady gaze with
which the eyes of these two men were fixed upon each other. Not for an
instant did either deviate or waver.
Not for a moment, moreover, was the surrounding silence broken by any
sound save their voices. Yet not once had either been raised above an
ordinary pitch, or tinctured any betrayal of their true feelings.
Invariable suavity and politeness, rather, seemed to imbue them.
“Why this occasion, Mr. Carter?” Madison questioned. “Why your interest
in this particular fight?”
“Because of what befell your opponent this morning,” said Nick.
“Befell Mr. Gordon?”
“Yes.”
“What was that?”
“He was arrested on suspicion of having murdered a woman last night in a
Columbus Avenue flat,” said Nick.
Madison heard him without a change of countenance.
“Gordon arrested on such a charge as that? Is it possible?” he replied.
“It is more than possible. It is a fact.”
“I have not seen to-day’s papers,” Madison said indifferently.
“There is no report of it in the papers.”
“No?”
“None whatever.”
“Why is that?”
“Because I prevented it, Madison, and had Gordon liberated,” said Nick.
“I knew publicity might ruin his chances of election.”
“You are a Gordon man, then.”
Madison now spoke with a covert sneer.
“Well, yes, to be perfectly frank with you,” bowed Nick. “So I
suppressed the newspaper stories, and had Gordon liberated and the
accusation killed. That is the little political play I have made. Aside
from that, however, I had other reasons for making it.”
“What reasons, Carter?”
“I do not believe Gordon committed the crime,” said Nick. “I have, in
fact, found positive proof that he did not.”
“Indeed? Someone, then, must have blundered.”
The last vestige of color now had left Madison’s face. His strong
features were taking on the haggard look of a long illness. Not once did
his intense eyes leave those of the detective, however, or his powerful
figure relax from its rigid attitude of strained attention.
“Yes, some one blundered,” Nick agreed, bowing again. “The blunder is
going to prove costly, too, to the persons involved. The victim of the
murder, Madison, was a woman named Matilda Lancey.”
“Indeed?” Madison’s face hardened perceptibly. “I was acquainted with
her. We used to be friendly in a way.”
“Used to?”
“That is what I said. I have not had her to lunch, or in any other way
associated with her, for months.”
“Your friendship with her ended, I infer.”
“Yes. That’s about the size of it.”
“Has she approached you in any designing way since the termination of
your friendliness?”
“How designing?” Madison demanded, brows drooping. “What do you mean,
Carter?”
“I mean with threats of blackmail, or anything of that kind.”
“I don’t recall that she has.”
“You would be likely to remember it, wouldn’t you?”
“Certainly,” Madison bluntly admitted. “But there is nothing in that.
How could she blackmail me?”
“By threatening to publish your compromising letters, Mr. Madison,
which you employed crooks to steal from her, and which last night was
accomplished, resulting in her death at their hands,” Nick now said more
sternly.
Madison’s teeth met with a snap. He lurched forward in his chair, eyes
blazing, and banged his fist upon the desk.
“See here, Carter!” he cried, with a volcanic outbreak of rage. “If you
have come here to insult me, or----”
“Oh, don’t get excited,” Nick interrupted, checking him with a quick,
commanding gesture. “There is nothing in that, Madison, and you ought to
know it. I will tell you with very few words why I have come here. Hear
them like a man, not turn bull in a china shop. You know that neither
bluster nor bluff have any effect upon me.”
Madison straightened up again and governed his resentment, though it
still glowed in his eyes and caused a vicious twitching of his thin
lips.
“Out with it, then,” he said harshly. “Why are you here, Carter? What do
you want?”
“The truth,” said Nick shortly.
“About what?”
“The murder of Tilly Lancey.”
“I know nothing about it.”
“And I know, Madison, that that is a falsehood,” Nick said sternly. “I
know that she was killed by persons employed by you to commit that
crime, or to recover the letters you have written to her. I know who the
culprits are, some of them, and within six hours I will have them behind
prison bars. One is Cora Cavendish, a disreputable friend of the
murdered woman. Another is Mortimer Deland, a notorious English crook. I
know so much, Madison, in fact, that unless you confess the whole truth
here and now, I will railroad you to the Tombs for safe-keeping
until----”
“Stop--stop! You have said enough,” Madison interrupted, with a groan.
“I will tell you, Carter, I will confess the whole truth. I am in wrong,
horribly wrong, but I will tell you all. I will----”
An oath interrupted him--an oath and a blow.
Both came from a man who had stealthily approached the house, peered in
through the window, stolen in through the open conservatory, all so
noiselessly that he had reached the alcove unheard--and from which he
leaped, and, with a single bound, reached the unsuspecting detective.
A blackjack in his uplifted hand fell like a flash, fell squarely on the
detective’s head, meeting it with a single sickening thud.
And Nick Carter pitched forward and rolled out of his chair, crashing to
the floor, as dead to the world as if he had been felled by a
thunderbolt.
His assailant was Mortimer Deland.