CHAPTER XVIII.

A LAST RESORT.

“Search him!” sternly commanded Badger. “We’ll see what that will bring forth. Search him, Conley, and see what you can find!”

The scene was the kitchen of the Badger dwelling.

Fifteen minutes had passed since Patsy was rounded up and brought in there, and the quarter-hour had been devoted to plying him with questions to break down the crafty story he had told, and to which he clung with a tenacity born of conscious desperation.

He now stood with his back to one of the kitchen walls, in the full glare of the lamplight.

His arms were still secured behind him, and his collar and cravat were awry from the throttling he had received.

His face was composed, however, not even pale, and his eyes were keen and bright with that inherent courage and invincible determination which rendered him superior to any threatening situation, and eminently worthy to have become Nick Carter’s trusted associate and assistant.

The gang by which he had been so curiously cornered were seated about the room.

Both Badger and Conley appeared stern and ugly, evincing that state of mind when dread and suspicion battle with uncertainty.

The two women, Mrs. Badger and Vic Clayton, appeared pale and anxious, as if fearful that their adventurous career was likely to be seriously interrupted.

Yet all four, including also a dark, middle-aged woman who worked in the house, were regarding Patsy with eyes and aspects so threatening as to have awed one less cool, collected, and defiant of personal peril.

Fifteen minutes had passed, as mentioned, and from this time matters moved decisively and swiftly, with all the energies of these masterful detectives instinctively strained for what each knew must be a final move, and all operating to produce the one desirable culmination of their joint endeavors.

In response to Badger’s command, Conley sprang up and began to search Patsy, fiercely thrusting his hand into one pocket and then another.

“Leave the linings,” suggested Patsy, with a defiant grin.

He knew that he had on his person only one article that would point to his vocation, which he was prepared to deny in the face even of that.

It came to light in a moment—his trusty revolver.

“Aha! what’s this?” cried Conley, as he yanked the weapon from Patsy’s hip pocket. “So you carry a gun, do you?”

“Sure I do,” asserted Patsy coolly. “You’d carry a gun, too, if there were as many rats in your cellar as there are in mine.”

“It’s you who are the rat,” Badger angrily growled, as his confederate displayed the weapon.

“You’re wrong, mister,” insisted Patsy. “I’m a ratter, but no rat.”

“What d’ye mean by that?” snarled Conley fiercely.

“I mean that I’m a hunter of rats,” said Patsy, with dry significance.

“You’re a detective,” cried Badger.

“That’s what he is, Amos,” supplemented Vic Clayton, white with increased apprehensions. “He must be one of the Boston force.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Not one of the force?”

“Nothing of the kind.”

“If you are lying, youngster, the lie will as surely cost you your life——”

What more Badger would have uttered can only be conjectured, for, while he was speaking, fiercely shaking his fist at Patsy’s helpless head, there sounded from the gravel driveway outside and over the hollow planking of the veranda the heavy fall of hurrying feet.

“Who’s this?” cried Claudia, starting affrightedly from her chair.

“The door, Conley!” hissed Badger. “Have the gun ready!”

Before Conley could reach the doorway, however, toward which he hastened with Patsy’s revolver in his hand, it was hurriedly opened and a sallow-featured, green-eyed rascal bounded breathlessly into the kitchen.

“Oh, it’s Sandy Hyde!” exclaimed Vic, with a little scream of satisfaction.

“Who the devil is he?” thought Patsy, sharply regarding the panting scamp.

Though this advent of Hyde brought a look of relief to the face of each, Badger kept a taut rein on the threatening business then on hand, and he almost immediately demanded:

“What brings you out here, Sandy?”

“Wait till I get my breath, and I’ll tell you,” panted Hyde. “I’ve run all the way from the trolley. The chief kept me at work till half an hour ago.”

“Is there something wrong at headquarters?” snarled Badger quickly.

“What’s that?” muttered Patsy mentally. “A spy from the chief’s office, or I’ll eat my boots! By thunder! it’s no wonder that this case has baffled the efforts of the Boston force.”

Patsy was quick enough to see all it meant, in case he was correct in his immediate conjecture.

Sandy Hyde, who had paused a moment to get a drink of water at the kitchen sink, now hastened to reply to Badger’s question.

“Wrong at headquarters? I should say so!” he cried. “I have just got wise to something, less than an hour ago. Who’s that chap?”

“Never mind him at present,” cried Badger, with terrific impatience. “What have you learned?”

“Nick Carter has an assistant here on this case,” replied Hyde.

“Not Chick Carter!”

“Yes.”

“Have you seen him?”

“Sure! He was at headquarters about five o’clock.”

“For what?”

“He was trying to locate Nick.”

“We’ve got Nick, all right,” sneered Badger, with a chuckle of derision. “But this other, this Chick Carter, of whom I have frequently heard, I don’t know him by sight.”

“Nor do I,” put in Conley, frowning near-by.

“You’re sure this is not he?”

“Dead sure,” cried Hyde, with a glance at Patsy. “I don’t know this chap.”

“Then he is not one of the Boston force,” declared Vic, more hopefully. “He did not lie about that.”

Badger turned again to Patsy, lowering and dark, and Patsy gained a point by saying quickly:

“Sure I didn’t lie about it. I wouldn’t lie to ladies and gents like you.”

“No, this fellow is not a Boston detective, I’ll swear to that,” Hyde now declared. “I know them all.”

“But Chick Carter——” began Badger.

“Oh, he doesn’t look like this chap,” interrupted Hyde.

“He doesn’t, eh?”

“Not a bit! Chick Carter is older, a sturdy, well-built young man, with smooth, clean-cut features and——”

“Stop!” screamed Vic Clayton, suddenly leaping out of her chair.

“Well?”

“How was he dressed when you saw him at five o’clock?”

“Why, he said he was going to your office,” cried Hyde, now getting back to the business that had brought him out there. “He had on a plaid suit, a polka-dotted cravat——”

“Henderson!” screamed Vic, all of a quiver with excitement. “That man Henderson, Amos, was Chick Carter!”

“Not a doubt of it!” gasped Claudia Badger, as white as the knot of lace at her throat.

“And that’s why he inquired after Nick Carter,” declared Badger, now beginning to see that a network might already be closing around him.

“That’s what, Amos.”

“Do you know where Chick Carter went after leaving your rooms, Vic?”

“Of course not. How should I?”

“He might have said.”

“He said he was going to Carter’s hotel.”

“Bosh!”

“I’ll tell you what I do know, however,” cried Vic, hit with an afterthought.

“What’s that?”

“I know that this young devil must have got into that hamper while Chick Carter was in my rooms, Amos, and it’s a hundred to one that the two were at work on this case together.”

“Gee! she’s hit me good and hard this time,” thought Patsy, wishing he might have throttled her to silence. “Now there will be something doing, I’ll go the limit on that.”

He read aright the faces of those around him.

The significance of Vic Clayton’s declaration was utterly irresistible.

“What do you say to that?” thundered Badger, striding closer to Patsy, with his features livid and convulsed with rage.

“I dunno what she’s talking about,” protested Patsy coolly.

“You lie!” roared Conley. “You are one of Nick Carter’s helpers, or——”

“Stop a bit!” interrupted Badger, with frightful austerity. “We’ll soon know whether he is or not!”

“What d’ye mean?”

“I’ll get the truth out of him!” snorted Badger. “Bring him after me, back to the garage. I’ll make him confess the truth and tell us where we stand. We’ll string him up by the neck to one of the beams—and there he shall hang unless he tells the whole truth! Bring him along, you two, and look lively! I’ll go on ahead and open the doors.”

“Yes, there’s something doing!” thought Patsy, contemplating his imminent peril. “They are going to try hanging me—but they’ll try in vain! Yet I rather hope Chick may show up in time to save my precious neck.”

These thoughts passed through Patsy’s mind while he was being rudely hustled out of doors by Conley and Hyde, while Amos Badger hurried on in advance.

Both women followed, too alarmed by the impending peril to endure the suspense of remaining behind.

“They care nothing for me, or my neck,” thought Patsy. “Like the she devils of ancient Rome, once having tasted blood, they thirst for more.”

As he was hurried into the basement by Conley, he saw that the sliding door had been opened and that Badger was again lighting the lantern.

This no sooner was done than the dastardly knave, blind to all except the impulses of his utter desperation, quickly threw a rope over a beam near the ceiling, then knotted a slip-noose around Patsy’s neck.

Patsy stood directly under the beam, as cool as if he was only about to be weighed.

“Get hold of that rope, you two!” cried Badger fiercely.

Conley and Hyde sprang to the lax strip of line.

The two women, bred though they were to evil, drew back with awed white faces and dilated eyes.

“Now, youngster, what do you say?” thundered Badger, confronting Patsy with face livid and eyes ablaze.

Patsy met him eye to eye.

“Only what I’ve said already,” he curtly replied.

“Nothing more?”

“Nothing more, mister!”

“Nor less?”

“Nor less!”

“Up with him!” roared Badger, turning fiercely to his confederates.

Patsy felt the rope draw taut around his neck.

Just then, however, from some quarter outside, there rang out upon the still evening air the sharp, spiteful crack of a revolver.

It was mingled with a single agonized yelp—and a bloodhound lay stretched upon the greensward, shot squarely between his eyes!