CHAPTER XXIV. THE LAST RESORT.

Chick was not idle that morning while his chief was engaged as described. He was not without equally serious misgivings concerning Patsy Garvan and the wisdom of Carter’s going alone to interview Doctor Devoll.

Chick’s anxiety was materially increased, moreover, when the Wilton House clerk brought him a letter to the smoking room about an hour after the chief’s departure, saying inquiringly:

“This may be important, and perhaps you would care to open it, though it is addressed to Mr. Blaisdell. It just came in with the first batch of mail.”

Chick took it eagerly and instantly recognized the hand of Patsy Garvan. He tore it open and read--the hurried letter Patsy had dropped in a street box while trailing Jim Shannon and Toby Monk.

Hurried and brief though it was, it told Chick enough to instantly start him in search of Toby Monk, and fortune favored him ten minutes later. He found the crook jitney driver about to depart with his car, which he had just finished washing in the stable yard where Patsy had, indeed, picked up a trail worth following.

Chick sauntered toward him, hands in his pockets, and glanced at the number plate on the front of the car. It was wiped as clean as cotton waste and elbow grease could make it.

Toby Monk gazed at him inquiringly, wondering whether he was to have an unexpected passenger.

“This your car?” Chick questioned, as he came nearer.

“Yes, sir, sure,” Monk nodded.

“That the number of it?”

“Yes, of course. What d’ye think?”

“I think, then, that you are Toby Monk. Am I right?”

“That’s my name, but----”

“Shove your hands in these, then, and be quick about it,” Chick snapped sharply, jerking out a pair of open handcuffs. “Don’t get gay or try to bolt or I’ll bring you down with a bullet. In with them, or I’ll break your wrists when I lock them.”

Toby’s face had gone as gray as ashes, and he was trembling from head to foot.

“Oh, I say!” he gasped. “I say----”

“Stop!” Chick cut in sternly. “We’ve got Devoll, Shannon, you, and the rest of your thieving gang where we want you. If you have anything to say, out with it. What you say now may determine what you’ll get for last night’s job and a hundred others, including the murder of Gaston Todd. Come on with it, if you have anything to say.”

Toby Monk, cornered and thus sternly confronted, wilted like a drenched rag. The last vestige of color had left his cowardly face. He gazed wide-eyed at Chick and asked hoarsely:

“Are you a detective--one of the Nick Carter crowd?”

“That’s just who I am.”

“I’ll squeal, then! I’ll squeal,” Toby said hurriedly, taking the last resort of a treacherous coward. “I’ll blow the whole business, if that will save my skin. On the level, God hearing me, I did not kill Todd. I knew nothing about it. I was out with my jitney when it was done. I----”

“But you know who did it, and why,” snapped Chick, striking while the iron was hot.

“Yes, yes, I know that,” gasped Toby. “Graff did it--Devoll.”

“Both----”

“Both--there ain’t any both!” cried Toby. “They are one and the same, Graff and Devoll. He’s a nut, a loon, if ever there was one. He’s got the criminal bee in his bonnet, and----”

“Wait!” Chick sternly checked him, suppressing his surprise at the startling disclosure. “Devoll is back of the whole business, I know, but what started him into crime?”

“He’s a nut, gone dippy, I tell you,” Toby forcibly insisted. “Besides, he has doctored the hospital books, stolen some of the funds, and has turned to crime to get square.”

“Oh, that’s it, eh?”

“He began playing two parts a year ago, as a cover for his jobs, and he rang in three or four of us to aid him, whacking up part of the plunder with us. He’s infernally crafty and clever. He poses as Graff mornings and as Devoll the rest of the time. He lets only Shannon into his private room in the hospital. He comes and goes like an evil genius, and that’s just what he is. He has discovered a narcotic that instantly dulls the brain and causes sleep till something else is given. He has invented a noiseless revolver that shoots a globule of poisonous vapor so deadly that it instantly kills, and----”

“That’s what killed Todd?”

“Yes. He was short in his accounts with his brokers, but they haven’t discovered it yet. He joined our gang, hoping to get even, but kicked against robbing Mrs. Thurlow. He was hoping to marry her daughter. He threatened to expose Devoll unless he cut out that job.”

“And Devoll killed him to prevent it?”

“That’s what. He saw Frank Paulding going to visit a client, and he knew that he and Todd were rivals. So he thought he could incriminate Paulding and escape suspicion. He telephoned Todd to come there and wait in the corridor. Then he watched from his office till he saw a chance to kill him with his infernal weapon. He then----”

“Enough of that,” Chick interrupted. “How many are with you in this gang?”

“Devoll, Shannon, and Tim Hurst.”

“Who is Hurst?”

“He looks after Graff’s office and laboratory in the Waldmere Chambers.”

“Isn’t Dorson in it, Mrs. Thurlow’s nephew?”

“Yes, but only for last night’s job.”

“I thought so,” snapped Chick. “Where is that rope of pearls?”

“In Graff’s rooms. Hurst got away with it. He’s to keep it until----”

“Until I relieve him of it,” Chick cut in sternly, dropping the handcuffs into his pocket. “Get into your car and take me to the Waldmere Chambers. Pick up two policemen on the way. If you attempt any monkey business, mind you----”

“I’ll not, so help me!” Toby hurriedly protested. “I’ve thrown up my hands.”

“Get a move on, then. I want Hurst, to begin with, and that rope of pearls.”

It was not in Chick’s nature to let grass grow under his feet after having clinched the entire case in this way. Ten minutes later, leaving Toby Monk in his car in charge of a policeman, and with two others at his own heels, he entered Graff’s office in the Waldmere Chambers. He found it deserted, but upon quietly opening the side door, he heard voices from below.

This was about three minutes after Graff held up Nick Carter with a genuine revolver. Not in the least dismayed by the situation, though greatly surprised at detecting Devoll’s double identity, which at once suggested much that Chick had just learned, the detective temporarily threw up his hands, saying curtly:

“Well, well, I appear to have walked into a trap. Don’t be careless with that gun, Professor Graff, or it might go off. We can discuss this matter without bloodshed.”

“It will go off all right, Carter, and not miss its mark, if you venture to show fight,” Devoll retorted, with suppressed fury beginning to blaze in his evil eyes. “I warned you of this. I told you what to expect if you remained in Madison.”

“Oh, you’re the rat who sent me the anonymous letter?”

“Yes--and I meant what I said.”

“So, I see--among other things.”

“All, you recognize me, and----”

“Perfectly,” Nick sternly interrupted. “I know all about you now, and of what you are guilty. I know that----”

“You know too much!” Devoll cut in fiercely. “But it will do you no good. I have you trapped, as I have trapped others. I warned you, and you have ignored the warning. You now shall pay the price. I will end you with a gas that----”

“That sent Gaston Todd to his death!” snapped Carter. “I knew it from the first and wanted only the man.”

“You know too much!” Devoll fiercely repeated. “Ho, Shannon, come out here! Bring a rope and bind him from behind. Lend him a hand, Tim, and be quick about it! I’ll end him as I ended----”

What more the frantic man would have said was cut short by the heavy tread of many hurrying feet.

Jim Shannon had thrown open the door of a closet, on the floor of which Patsy Garvan then was lying, gagged and securely bound, and the burly ruffian, who had hurried from the hospital after planning with Devoll this capture of the detective, rushed out with a rope in each hand, while Tim Hurst darted nearer and seized Nick from behind.

Mingled with all this, however, was the rush of other feet, those of Chick and the policemen, together with the threatening cries of the former, as they rushed with weapons drawn upon the startled crooks.

But the thunder of one weapon drowned all other sounds--again the last resort.

Doctor Devoll, with his glaring eyes half starting from his head, hesitated only for an instant. There leaped up in his frenzied brain a vision of the electric chair. With a quick turn of his wrist, he thrust the revolver into his mouth and pulled the trigger. Then he pitched forward, hands in the air--a corpse when he hit the floor.

There was little to it after that, and but little remains to be said. Shannon and Hurst were easily overcome, and soon were lodged with Toby Monk in the city prison, the first step toward the punishment they righteously deserved.

Patsy Garvan was speedily liberated, none the worse for his experience, and only his statements were needed, if at all, to make a complete and perfect case against the singular criminal who had ended his evil career with his own hand.

Mrs. Thurlow’s rope of pearls was found in a jar in the laboratory. Nick Carter returned it to her that afternoon, and told her how and why Dorson had figured in the theft. Because of his kinship, however, she refused to prosecute the scamp, and the detective did not insist upon it.

Nor did Nick Carter go alone to the Thurlow mansion that afternoon. He took with him the suspected man who had at his request spent three days in prison, and by that humiliation aided him to solve the mystery and secure the guilty.

The gratitude of Edna Thurlow and her mother, as well as that of Frank Paulding, could not be verbally described; but it found expression in something much more substantial than words, and Nick Carter and his assistants returned to New York well repaid for their fine work in the Madison mystery.

THE END.

No. 1010 of the NEW MAGNET LIBRARY, entitled “The Gamblers’ Syndicate,” is another fine story in which the skill, foresight, daring, and dashing bravery of Nick Carter and his faithful assistants are employed in running down a gang of organized crooks.

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Transcriber’s Notes:

Punctuation has been made consistent.

Variations in spelling and hyphenation were retained as they appear in the original publication, except that obvious typographical errors have been corrected.