TWO BAD EGGS.
Nearly a month passed before the scheme devised by Nick Carter, by which
to run down Cecil Kendall’s murderer, was productive of any startling
results.
Yet the month was not without incidents worthy of note.
The chief mystery was the disappearance of Moses Flood and Harry Royal.
The wiseacres of the central office promptly declared them the
murderers, also that they had fled to escape arrest, but neither
detectives nor police were able to locate them.
Nick had, however, quietly relieved the minds of Royal’s father and
sister, confiding to them his secret, and insuring their silence and
discretion.
Flood’s gambling-house, when his prolonged absence seemed probable, was
at once taken possession of by his former lookout, Nathan Godard, by
whom it was run as usual for a fortnight.
During that time Nick quietly learned several facts. He discovered that
Godard had long occupied the adjoining house, where he dwelt with his
niece, Belle Braddon, and a housekeeper. He learned, moreover, that
Godard was a greedy and unprincipled fellow, a ruffian when in liquor,
and a man generally disliked and distrusted.
Added to this Nick learned one very pertinent fact—that Godard had left
the faro-bank immediately after Kendall had made his big winnings, and
that he did not return for more than an hour.
This was a very important point, for Nick had reasoned that the crime
must have been committed by some person who knew that Kendall had won
the money. As the crime was committed within an hour afterward,
moreover, it obviously appeared to be the work of some person who had
seen the money won.
Nick put two and two together, and decided that Nate Godard was the man
he wanted. To fix the murder upon him, however, was not an easy task.
Keeping his suspicions and movements well concealed, however, Nick went
at it by beginning secretly to persecute Godard, worrying him as a cat
worries a mouse.
At the end of two weeks he had the gambling-house raided by the police,
the furniture seized and removed, and the house closed up.
Five days later he learned that Godard was secretly dealing a faro-game
in his own house, to which only a few of his intimate and trusty friends
were admitted.
Nick gave the police a tip, and the place was successfully raided the
next night, and all the paraphernalia seized and confiscated.
Godard’s feelings over these several episodes, as well as those of his
niece, Belle Braddon, appeared in their talk at breakfast the following
morning.
“I’m cursed if I can understand it,” snarled Godard, across the table.
“Twice in two weeks I have been raided, involving the loss of several
hundreds of dollars. Worse even than that, the devil take it, my game
has been going behind at an alarming rate. Bad luck of the worst kind
appears to have struck me.”
Godard’s face was flushed, grim, and ugly, and his voice by no means
clear. That he had been drinking was obvious, as had been more than
usually noticeable for nearly a month. He had the look of a man with a
mental burden not easily carried, and secret apprehensions not pleasant
to endure.
The girl across the table, far more attractive, yet not less evil than
he, shrugged her shapely shoulders and indulged in a low ripple of
laughter.
“You’re only getting what’s coming to you, Nate,” she glibly replied.
“What do you mean by that, Belle?”
“You’d no business to turn such a trick as you turned. It was too long a
chance.”
“Silence! Silence, I say!” Godard quickly snarled, with an uglier frown.
“What need to speak of that?”
“Bah! there’s none here to be feared.”
“Mebbe not, but I’ll not have it talked about,” declared Godard. “You’ve
got your share of the blunt, all you deserve, and the least you can do
is to keep your mouth closed.”
“It’s closed all right, Nate, when there’s any danger about,” retorted
Belle pointedly. “Have no fear of me. I’ll never give you away. But such
tricks as that always bring bad luck, Nate.”
“Not always,” growled Godard, less sullenly. “What I can’t understand is
why the police have made such a mark of me.”
“That so?”
“To raid me twice within a week—that’s pressing things over the limit.
It’s not usual with the infernal bluebottles, and I’m cursed if I can
fathom it.”
“Can’t you guess who has tipped them to do it?” inquired Belle.
“Of course I can’t,” cried Godard. “If I could I would put an end to
these persecutions, even if I had to turn him down to end them.”
“Put out his light, eh?”
“Yes, I would!”
“And you can’t guess who?”
“No! I wish I could.”
“Well, I can, Nate,” declared Belle, with an unpleasant smile.
“Who?” demanded Godard, with interest.
“The same man who had me fired out of my job.”
“Not Nick Carter?” cried Godard, with a start.
“That’s who, Nate.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“I do.”
“For what reason?”
“Because, Nate, he either has some personal grudge against you and me,
or else he suspects——”
The girl stopped, yet stared significantly at her hearer.
Godard dropped his spoon and began to grow pale. Yet the frown of his
beetling brows became darker, and the light uglier in his evil eyes. He
muttered an oath after a moment, then added, through his teeth:
“If I thought that——”
“What would you do?” queried Belle, with sinister significance.
“What wouldn’t I do,” snarled Godard, with sullen ferocity. “I’d do
anything that would insure wiping him out of my path.”
The girl laughed, a coldly, cruel laugh that contrasted vividly with the
man’s harsh voice.
“Nick Carter is not an easy man to wipe out,” she replied.
“I know that as well as you, Belle.”
“You’d do anything to accomplish it, eh?”
“That’s what I would,” cried Godard decisively. “The play would be
limited to two persons, Belle, if what you think is true. It would be
him or me, and I’m cursed if I’d have it me if I could help it. Why do
you think of him?”
The girl dried her lips and tossed aside her napkin.
“Because I don’t fancy the way things are going any better than you do,
Nate,” she replied bitterly. “It was Carter who threw me out of my job
at the bank, for which he could have had no earthly reason, barring that
he suspected me of having worked Kendall for a fish and lured him where
you could shove him into a corner. Carter doesn’t like me for a cent,
and maybe he likes you none the less for being my uncle. Possibly he
suspects you because of it.”
“But he can have no evidence——”
“Bah! No man ever knows what evidence Nick Carter possesses,” Belle
curtly interrupted. “When he gets after a covey, about the first the
poor devil knows of it, Nate, he is down and out for keeps, with bangles
on his wrists or a hemp tie in place of a silk one. Don’t bank on what
Nick Carter doesn’t know. If you are up against him, and any reason
exists for his being after you, there’s but one safe course—and even
that is a long chance against such a man as he is.”
“What course is that?”
“Take the bull by the horns, Nate, and either put the detective to sleep
or go under yourself in the attempt. That’s the only way to deal with
Nick Carter.”
Godard sat silent for several moments, weighing in his own mind the
desperate possibility suggested. He could not believe that he was
suspected of the crime for which the detectives and the police were
searching the country after Moses Flood and Harry Royal, yet the words
of his niece had alarmed him, and opened his eyes to the bare
possibility of a frightful peril.
Presently he roused himself, and stared across at the girl.
“What would you do about it?” he sullenly asked.
“Just what I have said,” replied Belle bluntly.
“Try to turn him down?”
“Yes.”
“If I was sure that he had any designs against me——”
“Faugh!” interrupted the girl. “There are facts you shouldn’t lose sight
of, Nate. In the beginning he was on this case in Gilsey’s employ. Do
you imagine Gilsey has let him drop it? Not by a long chalk.”
“Well, what of that?”
“This is it,” cried Belle, who was rather a clever logician. “Is Carter
making any attempt to round up Flood or that fool of a Royal? Not one,
my word for it. He’s letting the central office screws scurry their legs
off on that scent. None of that for Nick Carter, mind you. What’s the
natural conclusion, eh? Merely this—Carter doesn’t suspect Flood,
despite the evidence. Yet if he is still on the case, he must suspect
somebody, and that somebody may be—the right man!”
Godard’s evil face grew darker with every word that had fallen from the
girl’s lips.
“The devil!” he snarled, as she pointedly concluded. “I hadn’t thought
of it in that way. By Heaven, it may be true, as you say.”
“I should proceed as if it was, Nate, if I were you.”
“Try to land him?”
“Precisely.”
“How can it be done?”
“That’s for you to determine.”
“I don’t fancy the job.”
“Not as well as knocking out a half drunken fellow with ninety thousand
dollars in his kit, eh?” laughed Belle Braddon. “I say, Nate, what would
there be in it for me if I could do the job for you?”
“Turn Carter down?”
“Yes.”
“You mean—put out his light?”
“Exactly.”
“Your own price,” cried Godard eagerly.
“Five thousand?”
“Yes.”
“In cold cash?”
“The very day it is done.”
“That’s good enough for me,” returned Belle, with a gleeful shrug of her
shoulders. “I can use the dust all right, Nate, and I’ve thought of a
way by which I can do the job.”
“Or get done yourself in attempting it.”
“Oh, you let me alone to look out for myself,” sneered Belle, with a
series of significant nods. “I cut my eye-teeth a long time ago, and
it’s a cold day when I cannot hoodwink a man.”
“That’s no pipe-dream,” growled Godard.
“And I’ll do the job for the price mentioned, Nate—cash on delivery,”
added the unprincipled jade. “I must do it at my own time and in my own
way.”
“I care not when or how, Belle, so long as it’s done.”
“Trust me to do it, then.”
“Do you require any help?”
“I should say not!” exclaimed the girl quickly. “When I tackle anything
of this kind, I play a lone hand. I want no partner who some day may
squeal. It’ll be all or nothing for me.”
Nothing could have suited Godard better, for he was essentially a
coward, and the simple thought of meeting Nick Carter in a life or death
encounter sent chills up and down his spine.
“I shall require one thing, however,” said Belle.
“What is that?”
“This house must be vacated and all the stuff removed. Then I must have
the key of this house, also of the one next door.”
“Flood’s old place?”
“Yes.”
“What sort of a job are you cooking up?” growled Godard suspiciously.
“That’s my business, Nate,” returned the girl. “I shall do it in my own
way, or not at all.”
Godard saw that she meant it, and he had no idea of letting her offer
slip by.
“I’ll vacate the house this very day,” said he promptly. “I’ll move our
stuff down to the shore house, and open a game there on the quiet. That
will throw the cops off my track for a time.”
“Very good.”
“When will you do the job?”
“As soon as I can arrange to have it come right,” replied Belle
thoughtfully. “Not this week, however. I have engagements for two
evenings with that yellow-haired Dakota chap, whom I caught on to at the
Waldorf last week. He has money to burn, barrels of it, and I must get
my little bit.”
“Why the deuce haven’t you run him up against my game?” demanded Godard.
“He never plays, Nate,” said Belle quickly. “I tried it, on my word I
did. But he doesn’t know one card from another. He says he has an uncle
out West, however, a big cattle ranchman, who is a fiend at faro.”
“H’m! I wish he’d wire his uncle to come on here. I reckon we could trim
him.”
“I don’t think he’d consent to do that, Nate,” laughed the girl, upon
whose spirits the murderous project she had in mind seemed to cast no
cloud. “You vacate here to-day and give me the keys to both houses. Then
leave Nick Carter to me. Within a week I will turn him down, or my name
is not Belle Braddon.”
“You shall have the keys not later than Friday, Belle.”
“That’s soon enough,” nodded the girl, rising. “Meantime, Nate, I must
devote myself to bleeding that yellow-haired baby from Dakota. He’s as
loose as ashes with his dust, Nate, and I’ll give him credit for that.”
“Then I guess you’ll bleed him all right.”
“If I don’t, Nate, there’ll be something wrong with the cards,” said
Belle, with a ringing laugh. “So long, old chap! I have an appointment
with him at noon. A hot bird and a cool bottle, you know, and then a
ride in the park. But you go ahead, Nate, with the moving. I’ll have my
little job on old Nick all framed up in time, never doubt that.”