Kitabı oku: «A Woman at Bay: or, A Fiend in Skirts», sayfa 10
CHAPTER XVII.
A WHOLESALE ROUND-UP
"Patsy," said the detective, when they reëntered the cabin, after watching their punch consumed almost to the dregs, "this is about the biggest capture I was ever in."
"But we are not through yet, chief," replied the assistant, stroking the white beard he wore so naturally that Nick laughed aloud. "There are sixteen more men at liberty yet, and we have got the whole bunch to tie up. Don't forget that there are four men stationed at each of the outside entrances to – "
"Oh, I haven't forgotten it. We will serve them in the same way. All we have to do is to manufacture one more pail of punch. So here goes. And as for tying them up, that will hardly be necessary."
"Why?"
"They are good for twelve hours of solid sleep at the very least. Many of them will not waken in twenty-four hours."
"And maybe some of them will never wake up. How is that?"
"It is a chance that we had to take; but by restricting them to two drinks each, I figured that there would be no danger. No; I think we are all right. Now, help me make this extra pail of punch. After that we will carry it through the cavern to the different parties of four each."
"Suppose they get suspicious, and won't drink it?"
"No danger of that, my lad."
When the punch was made, they divided it into two lots, each carrying half, and, thus equipped, they again entered the cavern, this time just as daylight was beginning to appear.
The first party they selected to serve was the one farthest away, and the detective discovered that they were grumbling because they had not been relieved.
But when he appeared with the pail of punch, and told them what had happened – that every one had been served with the same thing – they forgot their sorrows and had their share as the others had taken theirs.
And here, in order to make doubly sure, Nick had given each of the drinks a larger dose of the sleeping draught than he had served in the valley. As soon as the men had drunk what was given them, and had been refused more, he left them, followed by Patsy, and returned through the cave to another entrance.
And here again the operation was repeated in the same manner, an idea of suspicion never once entering the head of any of the men; they were far too eager for the drink which the thoughtfulness of their mistress had provided for them.
"They'll be suspicious when they begin to feel drowsy all at once," suggested Patsy, as they moved away.
"Let them," replied Nick. "We won't be there, and not one of them will be able to go very far before he drops in a stupor. I have fixed it, all right."
They found the second party as eager as the first, and one of them already the worse for too many drinks from a bottle he had had in his pocket; but they took the medicine that Nick portioned out to them as the others had done, and they in turn were left alone to drop off to sleep as they would; for they had been awake all night, and now it was broad daylight. They figured that they deserved some sleep.
At the third entrance the four men were already asleep – all but one of them, and he was drowsing; and Nick, in his character of Handsome, pretended to be angry at first. He pretended to refuse to give them the punch that had been sent to them until they begged so hard that he finally relented.
"Why," said Patsy, when they left them, and took their way toward the fourth, and last, place – the hole under the Dog's Nose, near the place where Handsome and Madge were prisoners, "it's all as easy as living on a farm."
"And not half so interesting," laughed the detective.
They walked past the movable rock behind which the two prisoners were confined without so much as devoting a glance to it, for they were both intent upon accomplishing this last installment of capture through the medium of the laudanum; and here they found the four men who were on duty, just about ready to mutiny because they had not been relieved.
But the presence of Handsome – or the man they believed to be Handsome – quieted them at once, for they stood in wholesome dread of him and his anger; and when they understood what had been brought to them, they were ready for anything.
And so it was that in their turns they took their medicine as the others had done. When they had swallowed it, Nick said to them:
"Stretch out, now, you fellows, where you are. I'll let you sleep for a while, at least. I'm going to sit here and smoke. I am tired myself. Turner, sit down. We'll keep watch here for a spell."
The men did not require a second invitation, but speedily took advantage of the permission – and it was surprising how soon the laudanum took effect upon them.
Ten minutes had not elapsed before the four were sleeping soundly, and snoring as if they never expected to awake again.
"I think we can go now," said Nick, at last, rising.
"What is the next trick to be done?" asked Patsy.
"Let me see," replied Nick. "It's thirty miles from here to Calamont. How far is it to the railway track in a direct line? That is the way you came, isn't it?"
"Yes."
"How far is it?"
"About four miles, possibly. I can make it in an hour."
"Then skip. This is the nearest point to start from. Get to the track as soon as you can. Flag the first train that comes along, no matter what it is. Get aboard it, and go to the first station. Get off there, and use the telegraph operator. Have him wire to Mr. Cobalt, the president of the road, exactly what has happened. Ask Cobalt to send a special train to us from the nearest point. We will want about twenty officers to take charge of all these prisoners, and he had better send along some chains with padlocks on them. You can figure that out yourself. We will want to make chain gangs of these men, so that they can walk to the railway, but so that they are chained together and cannot escape. You've got the idea?"
"Yes."
"Go, then, and see how quickly you can get the officers here, and we can get this crew away from here."
"And you?"
"I'll stay here. Skip, now. Don't talk any more."
"Have I got to carry these whiskers with me?" grinned Patsy.
"You'd better not stop to remove them now. I put them on to stay. Go!"
And Patsy went.
Nick remained where he was for a while, thinking deeply, and altogether satisfied with what he had accomplished; but after a little he rose, and took his way back into the cave, intending to see what Handsome and Madge were doing, and if they were making any effort to free themselves.
But after he had reëntered the cave, and had covered the twenty rods that intervened between it and the movable rock, he stopped in astonishment and stared.
The rock was pushed wide open.
With a bound he darted forward and entered the place, but only to find that Madge and Handsome had both disappeared. Their bonds were lying upon the floor of the cavern, but they were no longer there themselves.
Nick did not wait to see more than that then.
He turned away on a run, and darted through the galleries with all the speed he could summon under the circumstances – and he came out into the valley, where the sun was shining, directly behind his two escaped prisoners, for they had not preceded him by more than a minute, evidently.
With one wild spring he was upon them, and as Handsome turned to defend himself, Nick hit him with his fist, so that he sent him reeling across the grass, where he fell senseless to the earth.
But in the meantime Madge had turned with a scream of rage, and when she saw the real Handsome fall helpless, she broke into a run toward her own cottage, for she had no weapon to use now, Nick having deprived them both of their guns.
But the detective ran after her, and, just as she was about to leap upon the porch, he succeeded in seizing her, and in pulling her back again toward him.
She turned upon him then like a fury; but with a laugh he sprang under her extended arms, and seized her around the waist; and then he lifted her from her feet, and, still laughing, he ran across the grass to the cabin in which Patsy had once been a prisoner, and in another moment he had tossed her inside, closed the door and fastened it.
For a long time he could hear her storming in there, but he had to hurry back to Handsome, who was still down and out when he got to him, but who presently revived.
But he had all the fight taken out of him, and he allowed himself to be bound again securely, after which Nick led him to Madge's cabin, and tied him to one of the rustic chairs on the porch.
Including Black Madge and her first lieutenant, Handsome, there were one hundred and two prisoners turned over to be dealt with by the law when Patsy returned to the place in the hills, having piloted the officers who were sent by special train to complete the capture.
Black Madge did not see the detective again to speak to him; but she sent him a note, in which she said:
"I haven't done with you yet, Nick Carter. I will never forgive you for fooling me as you did. I shall manage to get my liberty again, somehow, some time, and when I do, it will be for the purpose of wreaking vengeance on you. And I will get even some day, never fear."
CHAPTER XVIII.
BLACK MADGE'S THREAT
Nick Carter had entirely forgotten Black Madge's threat when he was forcibly reminded of it one morning by the following letter which he found on his breakfast table:
"Nick Carter: One month ago – how time flies – I wrote to you that I hadn't done with you yet; that I would never forgive you, and that I would get even some day.
"That was a month ago. I thought when I wrote that it might take a year – but they are easy marks in this State.
"It was my hope after you captured me and all my followers, that I would have a chance to see you again, and to talk to you before I was taken away to prison. You would say probably that I wanted to boast; for a threat, after all, is only another kind of boasting. But it wasn't so, Nick Carter; I wanted to tell you what you had succeeded in doing; and this is it:
"You have succeeded in creating in me a passion which supersedes all others in my nature – the passion of hatred. Twice now you have foiled me; twice you have been successful in arresting me, and the latter of these two times you not only destroyed the organization which I had created, and rendered it utterly impotent for my future uses, but you destroyed almost at one blow every ambition that I had through that organization and by reason of it.
"You didn't know that, and you couldn't appreciate it; and it wouldn't matter at all to you if you had; neither has it anything to do with the purport of this letter.
"I know you will say that I am a fool to take the trouble to warn you, but I would be less than a woman, and much less than the bad woman I am, if I did not take this opportunity of exulting over the chance that is now promised to me to get square with you.
"Heretofore my every effort has been centred upon playing on my fellow men; heretofore I have had only two thoughts in pursuing my career; one was to create an organization of which I was the supreme head, and the other was to secure by the operation of that organization all the money that it was possible to obtain.
"I have always been a thief with a system. My robberies have all been committed after careful planning; you know that because of the one you helped to commit yourself. But now I have only one ambition left – to get square with you. I haven't decided yet how I shall do it, or when, or where it shall be done. If I had so decided I would not tell you, so it makes no difference.
"But I have been a hard student, Nick Carter, of many things. I have had good instructors in the science of mixing and using poisons; there is no person living to-day, man or woman – yourself included – who is a better marksman than I am with firearms; there is no person, man or woman, who is more adept to-day in the use of all weapons than I am. This is not boasting; it is fact.
"Moreover, I have the power to appear in many guises – disguises you might call them. In one or more of them – perhaps in many of them – I shall appear to you, and when you are least expecting it I shall strike.
"Don't think by that that I mean to strike you dead. That would not be making you suffer enough; but I shall find other and better ways in which to strike – ways that will make you suffer and realize what you did when you made me your enemy, and made me hate you as I do.
"And another thing; I have already set to work to bring together, as rapidly as I can find them, people who have criminal records and who have reason to hate you as I do; people whom you have pursued as you have pursued me; those whom you have sent to prison; those whose careers you have interrupted; those you have threatened; and those who have cause for holding a grudge against you.
"I have sought many of those, and I have found many. I am still seeking others, and I shall find more; and when I have got together enough of them, and have selected from that number those whom I deem most available for my purpose and competent to carry out my directions as I shall give them, I shall organize them into a Band of Hatred, the sole object of which shall be your undoing and, ultimately, your death.
"You have preyed too long already upon that class of humanity to which I belong, and from our standpoint your position is much the same as is our position from yours.
"You know me well enough, Nick Carter, to know that from this moment forward you will never be safe from danger for one moment of your life; whether you are sleeping or waking; whether you are afloat or ashore; whether you are quartered in the seclusion of your own study at home, or are abroad upon the streets of the city.
"You know that I do not threaten idly. You know that I am a woman with a purpose. You know that I am intelligent, educated, and determined. You know that I am a woman to be feared.
"I have thought this matter all over, and decided upon it during those hours when I was locked in the cabin up there in the hills, after you had drugged the men of my company, and succeeded in capturing us all.
"When I was taken to prison I knew that it would be only a short time before I would be able to make good my escape. How I have succeeded in accomplishing it does not matter. I have found one key in my experience that never fails to open prison locks, if it is properly applied; the fact that it is made of gold is sufficient explanation, and gold I had in plenty, for I have always been successful, and even now I have hoards concealed in different places which will supply me with funds more than sufficient to carry out to the bitter end this campaign of vengeance upon which I have determined.
"I think that is all.
"I shall leave here for New York City an hour after this letter is put in the mail. When you will see me first I do not know.
Black Madge."
The detective read this remarkable letter twice from beginning to end, and then he passed it in silence across the table to Chick, who was seated opposite to him.
And Chick also read it twice in silence, and as silently returned it. Nick, realizing that Ten-Ichi and Patsy would also fall under the sweeping hatred of Black Madge, tossed it over to them with the direction that they read it also.
There was not one among them who felt like making any comment upon the letter, or its contents, at least until their chief had spoken; but presently, with a gesture to Chick, which meant that he was to follow him as soon as he had finished his breakfast, the detective left the table and went to his study.
It was only a few moments after that when Chick entered the room, smiling.
"I hope, Nick," he said, dropping into a chair near the window and lighting a cigar, "that you enjoyed the reading of that letter from Madge?"
The detective was silent a moment before he replied, and then quite slowly he said:
"So far as I am personally concerned, Chick, the letter or its contents has no more effect upon me than the snapping of your fingers, but I will confess that I am in some dread concerning what she might do to you, and to Ten-Ichi and Patsy."
Chick leaned back in his chair and laughed aloud.
"If you will excuse me for saying so," he remarked, "that is utter nonsense. Of course, the boys downstairs and I are quite capable of taking care of ourselves."
"I don't doubt that," said Nick, "but that is not exactly the point."
"What is, then?"
"You have forgotten one part of her letter," said Nick.
"What part?"
"That part wherein she speaks about making me suffer, rather than attempting to do me physical harm."
"Oh! I haven't forgotten it."
"Do you understand what she means by that, Chick?"
"Certainly."
"Let me hear if you do."
"Well, she probably means that it would be her first effort to make you suffer by injuring those whom you love – in other words, by doing something or other to one of us. But forewarned is forearmed, and, anyhow, I don't think it behooves any of us to be afraid of a woman."
"This is a case," said Nick, "where a woman is much more dangerous than a man. A man would fight out in the open; a woman will fight in the shadow; or, at least, such a woman as that will. She is a pretty bad one, Chick, and a grave foe."
Chick nodded.
"It is always best," continued the detective, "to give your enemy or your adversaries credit for every advantage they possess. Black Madge is a wonderfully smart woman, and is unprincipled and implacable as she is smart. She will halt at nothing to carry out her design of vengeance, and just as sure as you are sitting there, Chick, we will presently feel the surety of that threat."
Chick flicked the ashes from his cigar, and then strode across the room to the window, where he stood for a moment looking out.
"I don't see exactly what we are going to do to head her off before she begins," he said presently.
"There is nothing to do," replied Nick gloomily.
"Upon my word," said Chick, laughing, "one would think that you were more than usually affected by that letter from Madge. Do you really take it so seriously as all that?"
"I take it seriously," replied the detective, "because I so well understand what the woman means, and she means just what she says. Instead of going on evenly and living the life we have been living, we must not be for an instant off our guard from this day on, until she is again behind the bars, and I hope the next time I arrest her it will be within the limits of the State of New York, where I can place a watch over her so that she will not escape."
"And I hope so, too," said Chick.
"And now, in the meantime," continued Nick, smiling, "since we have this letter and know what she is about to do, I think we will meet her halfway, and not wait for her to open the ball. Since she is at liberty, we will set about capturing her at once."
CHAPTER XIX.
THE BAND OF HATRED
Down on the East Side of New York, in Rivington Street, and some distance east of the Bowery, on the second floor of one of the oldest buildings in the city, a remarkable meeting was being held during the night that followed the receipt of Madge's letter by Nick Carter.
In a room on this floor, which was brilliantly lighted by four gas jets blazing from the chandelier, nine people were seated. They were gathered along two sides of the room, in which was a centre table, and behind this table was Black Madge.
Before her on the table were various sheets of letter paper, which she had turned from a pad one after another as she made notes upon them, and in her hand she held a pencil which ever and anon flew rapidly over the paper while she recorded such information concerning those who were present with her as she cared to remember.
They had been present in that room for upward of an hour, and during that time Madge had questioned each one of the eight who faced her concerning the statements they had made, and which she had noted.
Now she leaned back in her chair, and, holding one of the sheets of paper in her hand, she said:
"Stand up, Scar-faced Johnny, and answer the questions I shall ask you."
One of them, a short, stocky, red-headed, brutalized being, who was almost as broad as he was long, leaped to his feet, thrust his hands deeply into his pockets, and with his chin stuck forward aggressively, waited.
"You hate Nick Carter, do you, Johnny?" Madge asked.
"I hate him like poison."
"And you would kill him if you could?"
"I'd cut his throat in half a minute if I was sure of not being caught."
"Tell me again why you hate him so."
"Ain't he sent me twice to prison? Once for four years and once for three. And the last time he done it didn't he hand me a welt alongside of the jaw that I'll never forget? A man can't hit me like that and have me love him afterward. You just show me the way to do it, Black Madge, and I'll lay him out cold – so cold that he'll never get over it again. All I want is a chance."
"All right," said Madge, "take your seat.
"Now, Slippery Al, you stand up. What's your line of graft, Slippery?"
Slippery, who was tall, and sallow, and lean, and unkempt, and who looked consumptive and otherwise unwholesome, grinned sheepishly, as he replied:
"I reckon my name ought to answer that question. I slips in and I slips out where I can and when I can, and picks up anything that's lying around."
Madge laughed scornfully.
"You don't look as if you had sense enough to hate anybody or anything," she said.
"Oh, I hate Nick Carter, right enough," was the unhesitating reply.
"Why do you hate him?"
"Because he sent my father and my mother and my two brothers to prison, and they're all there now, and they weren't doing a thing that interfered with him in any way."
"What were they doing?" asked Madge.
"Well, if you want to know it straight, Black Madge, they was running a little counterfeit plant of their own – making dimes and quarters and a few half dollars for some of us to blow in when we couldn't find the real rhino."
"Running a counterfeit plant, eh?"
"That's it, marm."
"And Nick Carter sent them all to prison, did he?"
"He did that."
"How does it happen that he didn't send you along with them?"
"Well, I managed to slip out just in time," said Slippery, with one of his sheepish grins; "but he sent a bullet after me when I was running away that singed the hair over my right ear, and taking it all in all I hate him about as much as anybody."
"Not enough to kill him if I should ask you to do it, do you?"
"Well, Madge, when it comes to killing, that ain't in my line; but if you want me to lead him on somehow where somebody else could do the job, I think I'd be about the covey that could do it."
"That'll do for you. Sit down, Slippery."
"What's your name?" she added to the man who was next him.
A dark, beetle-browed, heavy-jawed, coarse-featured man, who looked as if he was as powerful as a giant, rose slowly to his feet, and replied in a surly tone, and with an ugly glitter in his eyes:
"I have got about forty names; leastwise, the police say I have; but they as knows me best calls me Bob for short; sometimes they fixes it up a little by calling it Surly Bob. But I think that Bob will do for you."
"What have you got against Nick Carter, Surly Bob?" asked Madge, smiling. She liked the looks of this hard-featured individual. He was just brutal enough in his appearance to satisfy her ideas of what a man should be.
Bob deliberately took a huge chew of tobacco into his mouth before he replied, and then, with a slow and almost bovine indifference, he responded:
"I don't know as it makes much difference to you, Black Madge, what I hate him for as long as I do hate him, and I'm bound to get square with him some day, whether I do it in connection with this organization that you're getting together or on my own hook without the help of any of you," and he glanced defiantly around. "It's enough that I do hate him. He's done enough to me to make me hate him. It's enough that if I had him alone in this room to-night one of us would never leave it alive unless he got the best of me without killing me, for I would certainly do him if I got half a chance.
"But I'll tell you one thing about him that maybe it will do some of you good to hear, for I give you fair warning that you want to give Nick Carter a wide berth unless you can manage somehow to catch him foul. He's about as strong as three horses, and if he ever succeeds in getting his grip on you you're gone. I'm about as tough as they make them, but I'm a wee baby in Nick Carter's hands, and don't any of you forget it."
"Tell us the story," said Madge.
"Oh, it ain't no story; it's just a short account. We ran into each other once near the front door of a bank I had gone into after hours and without the permission of the president and board of directors. When I picked myself up from the middle of the street after he grabbed me there was a crack in the top of my skull which didn't get well for three months. That's all I've got to say about it, but I want to add this: If that fellow Slippery Al, who says killing ain't in his line, but leading astray is, wants to bring Nick Carter my way, and will fetch him along so as I can get him foul, I'll fix him for keeps, and no questions asked."
And Surly Bob sat down.
He had no sooner taken his seat than the individual next to him sprang up without waiting to be asked to do so. If you had encountered this individual along Broadway or on Fifth Avenue in New York City, you might not have devoted a second glance to him; but if you had, and still had not studied him closely, you would not have thought him other than a gentleman.
His features were handsome or would have been handsome were it not for the crafty and shifty expression of his eyes and the otherwise insincerity that was manifest in his face. Among his companions of the underworld he was known far and near as Gentleman Jim.
By profession he was what is known as a confidence man, although it was said of him that he had the courage to take any part that might be required of him in preying upon the world at large.
He had been known to assist, and to do it well, at a bank robbery. He had once lived for some time in Chicago as a highwayman. It was said of him that in his youth he had begun his career of crime by rustling cattle in the far West, and that he was as quick and as sure with a gun as any "bad man" of that region.
His attire was immaculate and in the height of fashion. He was clean shaven, and he wore eyeglasses which gave to him somewhat of a professional look, and which he had been heard to say were excellent things to hide the expression in a man's eyes.
In stature he was tall, rather broad, and extremely well built. In short, Madge looked upon him when he rose with undoubted admiration in her eyes, as if she believed that here was a man who could be anything he chose to be in the criminal world.
When he spoke it was in an evenly modulated tone of voice which might have done excellent service in a drawing-room; and, moreover, his voice was pleasant to listen to.
"I suppose you would like to hear from me, as well as from the others, Madge," he said slowly. "I haven't got very much to say, except that I don't take much stock in boasted hatreds. Where I was raised, and where I began my career – and I am not particularly proud of that career – when we hated anybody we rarely said much about it, but I will say this to you, and to the others who are here: I am very glad that this organization is being perfected. I am very glad that some concerted action is to be taken against this man, Nick Carter, who has come pretty near putting us all out of business. You all know who I am, and some of you have got a pretty good idea what I am. Nick Carter knows about as much about me as any of you, which, after all is said, is next to nothing at all. But I have been on a still hunt for Mr. Nick Carter for some time, and when I get him in a position which Surly Bob calls foul, I shan't wait to send to any of you for assistance. I'll do the rest myself."
"And now you," said Madge, fixing her eyes upon the individual who was seated next to Gentleman Jim "Rise in your place and tell us your name, and make us a little speech, as the others have done."
"My name is Cummings – Fly Cummings, I'm called. Some of the bunch here knows me and some don't. Those that do know me don't need to be told anything about me, and those that don't know me are just as well off. I'm in business for myself, and always have been. The world owes me a living, and it's been paying it pretty regular ever since I was sixteen years old, and I'm now coming sixty-two. I'm like the others here in one respect: I've got a grudge against the man we've been talking about. I've never been able to make him feel it, because I've always fought mighty shy of him rather than get within his reach; but when I heard that this here movement had been started going by you, Madge, and the word was passed around among the guns downtown that you wanted a few of us that hated Nick Carter to come to the captain's office and form a little organization, it struck me that it was just about the right thing to do. I've heard what Surly Bob had to say, and I know that Surly isn't the sort of chap that's in the habit of talking through his hat. If Surly Bob had it in for me I'd patronize the New York Central Railroad, and take a train out of town right away.
"I've heard what Gentleman Jim had to say, and if Jim was looking for my gore to-night, I'd take a steamer across the ocean or commit suicide, because I'd know I couldn't get away from him in any other way.
"I've heard what Slippery Al had to say, and while Slippery ain't of much account, he's about the nastiest toad that ever picked a pocket, and I wouldn't care to have him down on me.
"And as for Scar-faced Johnny, well, Johnny is a bad one, too. I ain't making any threats particularly, Madge, but I'm willing to join this organization, or I wouldn't be here, and I want to say now that when you're fixing up the business, and arrange for the signals so that we can summons each other when we want them, I'll do my part to the tune of compound interest; and I guess that'll be about all from me."
