CHAPTER XXXI.

NICK CALLS A COUNCIL.

The trouble was not over yet, however. The emphatic manner in which Bonesy Billings had said he believed the detective made a great impression upon the majority of his followers.

But there were some who were not prepared to accept the dictum in the face of what they had been told. It was common report that Howard Milmarsh was living in the house he had inherited from his father, and that he was there now. For some reason it seemed that the detective was trying to shield him.

Few of those in the mob had not heard of the famous detective, and all knew his reputation for straightforwardness. They were fully aware that a falsehood would be simply impossible for him. Still, how could they reconcile what he had just said with what they believed to be their actual knowledge?

“Look here, Bonesy!” ventured Plang while discreetly remaining out of arm’s reach. “If Howard Milmarsh isn’t in the house, we can’t do any harm by going up to talk to those other two men. We know they are here.”

“That’s a good idea!” agreed three or four voices at the back.

“What about it, Bonesy?”

Billings looked inquiringly at Carter.

“It would do no good,” said the detective. “The men you refer to would not give you any satisfaction, and they would probably mislead you. If you will go away now, I will give you my personal pledge that you shall not lose anything over this Paradise City affair. You shall have back the money you have laid out, and with it enough to compensate for any loss or trouble you have suffered.”

“I don’t see how you can guarantee that,” grumbled Kid Plang.

“I promise it _in the name of Howard Milmarsh_!”

“You seem to think you have a right to speak for him,” persisted Plang. “How did you work that, if you haven’t seen him? You didn’t know we were coming here to-day. Nobody did for certain, because we kept it a secret. Bonesy can tell you that.”

“Shut up!” ordered Billings. “Leave me out while you’re takin’ it on yourself to conduct these here negotiations. I’ll ’tend to you later,” he added, with menacing significance.

“Well, I’m speakin’ for most of the crowd when I say we’re goin’ up them stairs,” rejoined Kid Plang. “We want to see Louden Powers an’ Andrew Lampton. This bunch hasn’t come all the way from New York without wantin’ a run for its money. An’ I’ll help ’em to get it.”

“Hey! Look there!” suddenly screamed the widow who had been prominent from the first. “There he is! See! Look at him!”

“Who?” roared half a dozen voices.

“Howard Milmarsh! There he is. I’ve seen his picters, an’ I know it’s him. He’s hidin’ behind them other two men! No, they’re shovin’ him back! I don’t care for nobody. I’m goin’ up!”

The woman tried to force herself to the front, but the mob was too solidly packed in, and she could not move.

Kid Plang tried to take advantage of the disturbance caused by the shrieking woman to edge his way past Bonesy Billings.

A straight left, delivered by Billings with splendid precision, sent Kid Plang back for the second time since he had been on the stairs. Only this time he was knocked senseless. The point of the chin had received the blow. He fell in a heap in a corner of the stairs.

This encounter was the signal for a general rush forward on the part of the men and women below.

The widow had caught a glimpse of the white face of the man who was known to them, from his pictures, as Howard Milmarsh, and, while most of the crowd did not believe she had seen the man she said she had, a few held that Carter had been mistaken when he said Howard Milmarsh was not in the house.

“Chick!” whispered the detective.

“Yes.”

“Tell Patsy!”

“All right.”

Patsy Garvan was on the other side of Chick, and Carter did not care to give orders that would be heard by the others.

But it was easily understood by his two assistants that they were to hold the stairs at all hazards, even before Nick called down to Bonesy that the crowd must not come up.

“I’m with you, Mr. Carter!” was Billings’ reply. “I wouldn’t care if Howard Milmarsh came and stood at the top of them stairs now; I would take your word, even agin’ my own eyesight.”

The detective smiled. The loyalty of this burly truckman—who had seen how he was willing to risk his life to save a girl and her father from a fire, and who therefore respected him from the bottom of his heart—touched him.

“I will explain to you later, Billings,” he said, as he thrust one man back by sheer strength, and then lifted another to throw him on top of the now frantic mob which was storming the staircase.

For five minutes Billings, Carter, Chick, and Patsy kept the crowd back. Some blows were struck, but not many, considering how many persons were in the fray. The truth was that Nick abstained from hitting anybody unless he were forced into it, while his assistants, taking their cue from him, also used their strength instead of fighting the frenzied invaders.

Bonesy Billings was as unwilling to strike as were the detectives. These men whom he was now striving to push out of the house were his friends. But a short time before he had been helping them to batter down the doors to the house. It would have been hard indeed if he had felt obliged to employ his tremendous fists against them now.

His faith in Nick Carter was so great that he had resolved to end the siege, but he did not feel any the better disposed toward Howard Milmarsh or the two men who had been with him at the back of the Paradise City enterprise.

When he had kept his tacit pledge to the great detective and cleared the house, then he would return to know what it all meant.

That was exactly what he did. In due time, by alternate threats and persuasions, plus considerable physical force, he put the last of the mob on the porch outside, and saw them headed for the railroad station, three miles away.

“Wait there for me,” were his parting words. “I’ll be your delegate, and you shall hear all that I find out here. Mr. Carter is on our side, and he is going to see that we have justice.”

“Three cheers for Carter!” shouted an enthusiastic man in the mob.

“Hurrah!” yelled Bonesy. “That’s the right thing! Give ’em with a will, boys—and girls, too!” he added, as a fortunate afterthought.

The women joined with the men, their shrill tones being plainly audible through the gruff voices of the men as they cheered the great detective again and again while marching down the road.

“There you are, Mr. Carter!” cried Bonesy, with a grin, as he returned to the house. “Now, what is the next thing to be done.”

“Louden, come down here!” called out Nick, as he looked up the stairs. “And bring with you Andrew Lampton and that man who looks like Howard Milmarsh.”

“He _is_ Howard Milmarsh!” grunted Louden. “How did you get into this house?”

“That ought not to matter much to you,” said Nick. “It is a good thing for you I got in somehow. Patsy, run around and tell Captain Brown he can come in by the front entrance now. He is still sitting in his car, I guess.”

Louden Powers raised his eyebrows as he heard Carter give these instructions. He began to wonder how many persons were to be brought into the house by this detective who had taken charge of matters so completely.

“Come down, Louden!” repeated Nick. “It will be better for you.”

There was a threat in these quiet words that Louden Powers well understood. Although he had not been caught in the raid in Jersey City a few nights before, he did not know how much evidence there was against him in connection with the counterfeiting proceedings. He came downstairs.

“Is Lampton and the other man with you?” asked Nick.

“We are coming,” replied Lampton for himself.

“And the other man?”

“He’s here.”

Nick Carter had appeared to trust to the rascals to bring down the man who had been called Howard Milmarsh. As a matter of fact, he did not depend entirely on them. He had given a private signal to Chick, and that exceedingly efficient assistant was ready to compel obedience by Louden and Lampton if there had been too much hesitation on their part.

“We’ll go into the dining room,” said Carter. “Get some of your servants to come and open the sun blinds. We may as well have light from the outside.”

The two men—Dobbs and Kelly—who had been keeping discreetly in the background while the row lasted, now stepped forward and let the sunshine into the great dining room.

“Now, chairs for everybody!” ordered Nick. “I will sit here, near the door. Is Captain Brown coming?”

“Here I am, Carter,” answered Captain Brown for himself, as he came in with Patsy. “I saw that mob going down the road. I hope they won’t stay at the Old Pike Inn and make a fuss.”

“You have plenty of employees and special police to deal with them, haven’t you?” asked Nick carelessly.

“Oh, yes. Only I shouldn’t like my guests to be disturbed. It would hurt the reputation of my house.”

“They have taken another road and gone straight down to the railroad station,” announced Patsy. “There’s another party wants to come in, chief. I told him I’d ask you.”

“Who is he?”

“Mr. Thomas Jarvis.”

“Jarvis?” cried Nick. “Let him come in, by all means! This is going to be a most interesting gathering. Mr. Billings, you will kindly move over to that other chair. I should like Mr. Jarvis to sit next to me.”

“Anything you say, Mr. Carter,” said Billings, with a grin. “I wasn’t never in sech a swell place as this before—not to set down with the people who belonged to it, anyhow.”