NICK CARTER STORIES
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=No. 150.= NEW YORK, July 24, 1915. =Price Five Cents.=
THE HOUSE OF FEAR;
Or, NICK CARTER’S COUNTERSTROKE.
Edited by CHICKERING CARTER.
CHAPTER I.
THE DEAD ALIVE.
"I say, shir! Can you let me have a match?"
"I think so."
The last speaker was Nick Carter, the famous detective.
The first was an erect, well-built, fashionably clad man, apparently in
the forties and somewhat the worse for liquor. His crush hat had a
rakish cant. His Inverness hung awry over his shoulders. His cravat had
a disorderly twist, and his brown, Vandyke beard had lost its carefully
combed appearance.
Nick Carter sized him up as a society man who had been on the bat, and
who was returning home on foot to walk off the effects of it. His
appearance and the hour seemed to warrant this conclusion, for it was
two o’clock in the morning.
Nick was rather roughly clad. His strong, clean-cut face was so
artistically treated with grease paint as to effectively disguise him
and give him a decidedly sinister aspect. He had spent most of the night
in searching for a crook, on whom he very much wanted to lay his hands,
but his efforts had been futile, and he was returning to his residence
in Madison Avenue.
He had turned a corner of Fifth Avenue only a few moments before, when
he saw the stranger approaching, walking a bit unsteadily, and then the
only person to be seen in the fashionable street.
Nick saw him fishing out a cigar and vainly searching in his pockets for
a match, and he was not surprised when the man stopped him with the
above request, straightening up with a manifest effort and trying to
speak distinctly.
"Much obliged, sir," said he, when Nick reached into his pocket after
his match box. "Will you smoke, I’ve got anozzer."
"No, none for me, thank you," said Nick. "I----”
"Don’t thank me. Do what I tell you, instead, and do it quick. Hands
up!"
The stranger had undergone a lightninglike change. He no longer appeared
intoxicated. His every nerve and muscle seemed to have become as tense
as a bowstring. His eyes were clear, aglow like balls of fire, and his
voice had turned as hard as nails.
His right hand, with which he had pretended to reach into his pocket for
another cigar, whipped out an automatic revolver, into the deadly muzzle
of which the detective suddenly found himself gazing.
Nick Carter had been up against like situations before, and it did not
disturb him.
"What are you really going to do with that toy?" he asked coolly,
sharply scrutinizing the holdup man to fix his face in his mind.
"Hands up, or you’ll never repeat that question," said the other,
hissing the threatening words between his teeth. "Up with them, or
you’ll be a dead one."
His eyes had a gleam and glitter that no sane man would have ignored.
They spelled murder in capital letters, and Nick obeyed and raised his
hands as high as his shoulders.
"Now, back down those steps," commanded his assailant. "Keep going till
I tell you to stop. Back under the steps. Hands up, mind you, or you’ll
be found dead there in the morning."
The steps referred to were those of a handsome brownstone residence
occupied by a wealthy Wall Street banker and broker, Mr. Gideon Buckley.
They led up from the sidewalk to the vestibule of the front door, while
under them was a door leading into the basement hall of the house. This
was accessible by descending two low steps and turning into the area
under the main rise of steps, the entrance to which area was protected
with an iron-grille door, then wide open.
Nick obeyed his assailant--he had no sane alternative.
He backed down the two low steps and into the gloomy area under the main
flight, and the holdup man quickly closed the grille door and the spring
lock clicked audibly, confining the detective under the rise of front
steps.
The holdup man laughed--but not for an instant did his deadly weapon
deviate from a direct line from the detective’s breast. He still kept
him constantly covered through the grille door, through which he gazed
at him with gleaming eyes, as one might have viewed a lion in a steel
cage.
The miscreant’s laugh was utterly void of anything like mirth. It was as
cold, exultant, and merciless as ever had fallen on the detective’s
ears. In a way, moreover, it struck him as being familiar, but he did
not recall when and where he had heard it. He was not, however, left
long in doubt of the outlaw’s identity.
For the rascal’s vicious laugh ended with a sharp, hissing whisper.
"You keep your voice down, now, or there’ll be something drop," he
threatened. "Speak above a whisper and I’ll plug you on the instant."
"I’ll take your word for it," Nick said quietly. "But you are not going
to get fat from this job. If you lift all I have in my jeans, you’ll not
carry away much."
"Oh, I’m not after your coin," the holdup man retorted, with bitter
asperity. "I’ve not run you in here to lift anything. I’ve got you where
I want you, at last, and you’re going to hear my little verse. I’ll
finish you later."
"Why finish me?" Nick coolly inquired. "What have I done that you want
to finish me?"
"You’ve done me, blast you," was the reply, with suppressed ferocity.
"You twice have crossed my path and turned me down. You have sent me
from bad to worse and made me what I am. I know you, Carter, hang you,
in spite of your disguise. I have been watching for you, lying in wait
for you, and I’ve got you where I want you."
"Which seems to please you mightily," Nick said dryly, trying vainly to
recall the rascal’s identity. "When did I----”
"Oh, I’ll tell you when," interrupted the other, with unabated
bitterness. "You’ll know when, Carter, when you see my face. I’ll reveal
it to you. I want you to see it, that I may laugh at you, mock you, and
tell you face to face how deeply I hate you. Sooner or later, too, I’ll
hand you yours and send you to the devil.
"But not to-night--no, not to-night!" he went on, when Nick viewed him
in silence. "I want you to anticipate it, to live in fear of it, to be
racked mind and nerves until my bullet finds you. I’ll send it into you
sooner or later, Carter, as sure as my name is--Gaston Goulard."
He removed his Vandyke beard while speaking, thrusting it into his
pocket, and Nick Carter was given an almost incredible surprise.
"Gaston Goulard!" he exclaimed involuntarily. "The dead alive!"
Nick recognized him now. There was no mistaking his hard-featured, white
face, its sinister scowl, its expressive cruelty. To have seen a ghost,
however, would not have been more amazing.
For Nick last had seen this man less than a month before, when cornered
with the notorious Badger gang of crooks in an old lime loft leased by
one of their number, to which the detective’s assistants had traced
Nick and the criminals--Nick last had seen him plunge bodily through one
of the windows and disappear into the swirling waters of the East River.
Though a sharp watch had been kept by Patsy Garvan, moreover, who also
had seen the rascal sink from view, Goulard did not reappear on the
surface, and there had seemed to be no reasonable doubt that the knave
had drowned.
Naturally, therefore, Nick was more than surprised upon seeing his
sinister, malevolent face again; nor was it strange that, supposing him
dead, he had not penetrated his exceedingly clever disguise, or
recognized his evil voice.
It fell again upon the detective’s ears, echoing his last impulsive
remark.
"The dead alive--yes!" Goulard hissed triumphantly. "I fooled you,
balked you, eluded you, Carter, and I finally will send you to the
devil, where you supposed you had sent me. But the devil serves his own
at times, and that was one of them. He gave me a new lease of life--that
I might finally take yours. But not to-night, Carter, not to-night!"
"That’s very considerate, Goulard, I’m sure," Nick coldly retorted.
"Watch out that I don’t put the boot on the other leg and place you
where you belong."
"Bah!" Goulard ejaculated, under his breath. "You have no chance of
that, not even a look in. You know not where to find me, yet for the
past month I have been under your very eyes. I can put my finger on you,
too, any hour of the day, Carter--and I shall always have a bullet in
reserve for you."
Nick Carter ignored the miscreant’s repeated threats, though he knew him
to be capable of executing even the worst of them. Watching vainly, too,
for a chance to turn the tables on the scamp, for Goulard was not to be
caught napping, Nick coldly inquired:
"How did you accomplish it, Goulard? How did you escape from the East
River?"
"I told you the devil serves his own at times," Goulard proceeded to
explain, though Nick had hardly expected him to do so. "I rose to the
surface, but not in view of your lynx eyes, Carter, nor those of your
assistants."
"I already know that," said Nick.
"The swirl of the stream sucked me down--down--down!" Goulard went on
fiercely. "I thought I would never rise. I thought of you, too, and even
with death staring me in the face I regretted only that I had not
lingered to kill you. I was carried down near the river wall. I was
beaten on rocks and battered against bowlders. It was awful! I thought I
would never rise--but I did! I came to the surface under a boatman’s
float thirty yards from the lime shed."
"Ah, I see," said Nick, unruffled by the other’s bitterness. "That’s how
the devil served you, is it? You remained under the float till dark, I
take it."
"Until after dark," corrected Goulard. "I clung to its timbers, cursing
you all the while, and I then contrived to climb the river wall and
steal away unseen. But you see me now, Carter, and soon shall feel the
sting of my revenge. I wanted you to know it--that I am alive and out
for vengeance. That alone impelled me to hold you up to-night."
"Cease your threats," Nick commanded. "They have no weight with me.
Having held me up and locked me in this place, Goulard, what do you
intend doing?"
"I will leave you here," Goulard replied, with an uglier scowl on his
white face. "I’ll not take the risk of a shot at this time. It’s too
long a chance. I will leave you here with my threats ringing in your
ears. You shall have time to think of them, to anticipate the end, to
dread the day when I will make good. You shall live in a house of fear
from this hour, Carter, in constant fear."
"The future will determine that, Goulard, and whether you were really
lucky in not meeting your fate in the East River," Nick coolly answered.
"If you have no more to say and do, you cannot depart too quickly. Get
out, you rat, the sooner the better."
Goulard laughed again and pushed his revolver farther through the grille
door.
"I’d love to, Carter!" he cried, under his breath. "I’d love to press
the trigger and perforate your cursed skin with a bullet. But the risk
is too great. I might be heard, intercepted in my flight, and perhaps
railroaded to the chair. There will be a safer time and place. I will
wait for it, watch for it, and there then will be no hesitation. I will
kill you, Carter, for what you have done to me. As sure as God hears
me--I will kill you."
"God may intervene and----”
"Remember!"
The fierce, malevolent face, pressed for a last moment to the grille
door, vanished instantly, and the vengeful knave was gone.
Nick Carter heard his swiftly receding steps on the pavements. It was
the only sound that broke the night silence in that locality. It died
away so quickly, too, that it had seemed hardly perceptible.
Nick seized the grille door and tried to open it--tried vainly.
It withstood his utmost efforts.