CHAPTER XIX.

NICK CARTER’S ESCAPE.

Silence and darkness.

It was in these that Nick Carter was left confined at an earlier hour that eventful evening, bound hand and foot, and with his back propped against the cold stone wall of the disused wine-vault.

It would be an injustice to him, however, to those inherent qualities and rare abilities which had made him what he was, to neglect depicting his movements during the time his captors were so pressingly engaged with Patsy.

Of Chick and Patsy’s discoveries and designs since he parted from them at the Adams House that morning, Nick, of course, was entirely ignorant.

That they had so quickly suspected something wrong because of his absence, or that he could depend upon them for any immediate assistance, he did not for a moment imagine. For it was then only a few hours after the time they had agreed to meet, and any ordinary incident might have detained him that long.

Yet Amos Badger had no sooner closed the door of the wine-vault than Nick Carter began to think about making his escape.

“Whatever I accomplish,” he said to himself, “I must accomplish alone. There is not much chance that Chick and Patsy have yet discovered any clue to my whereabouts, even if they now suspect that I have met with some beastly mishap, so I must figure upon playing a lone hand in getting out of this place. I’ll make the attempt, at least, and if——Hello! what’s the meaning of that, I wonder?”

From some quarter outside, borne faintly to his ears, had come the furious barking of a dog, mingled with the shouts of men and the screams of women.

For half a minute Nick listened intently, but the startling sounds were not prolonged, and presently only silence reigned in the wine-vault.

Stop a bit—not quite silence only!

From one corner came a faint noise which Nick’s ear was quick to detect.

It was the steady drip, drip, drip of water, from some point higher than the floor.

Nick recalled seeing a stagnant pool in the corner from which the dripping sounded, and he rightly inferred that there must be some water-supply above, possibly in the stable, and that a considerable leak existed.

“My first work must be that of getting my hands at liberty,” he soliloquized, after a few moments.

They were tied behind him, but that mattered little to Nick Carter.

While the lantern was in the vault, during his talk with Badger, Nick had visually examined the surrounding stone walls, and had discovered several places where the rough corners of the stones protruded a little, forming tolerably sharp edges.

Against one of these he backed, after rising to his feet with some difficulty, until he could bring the rope about his wrists to bear against the edge of the stone.

Then he began sawing it up and down, at an expense of some little skin from his knuckles, and at the end of five minutes he felt one of the strands give and break. Then, with a mighty effort, he succeeded in breaking the entire rope, and the liberation of his hands at once became easy.

“Now, if you come down here, Badger, you’ll meet with a warmer reception than before,” he determinedly muttered, while he set to work at the ropes around his ankles.

In three minutes his limbs also were free, and Nick coolly tossed the ropes aside.

“Next, to find a way out of here,” was his mental comment.

He had observed that no window existed, and he had but little hope of being able to force the heavy door, having been deprived of his knife and revolver.

After examining the door, to which he groped through the darkness, he decided that he could accomplish nothing there.

The constant dripping of the water could still be heard, however, and Nick now shrewdly reasoned:

“That water must have some avenue of escape, and it may run under the foundation wall in that corner. If it does, the soil should be soft and muddy, and I may be able to dig my way out, or, at least, to work under the wall and learn what lies beyond it. I’ll give it a try, at all events.”

As he groped toward the corner, he stumbled over one of the empty beer-kegs previously mentioned.

“Ha! here’s just the thing, providing I can smash it,” he said to himself. “One of these oak staves will serve admirably for a spade.”

Gripping the keg by the chimes, he hurled it with all of his strength against one of the walls.

There was a double effect.

First, the keg snapped and cracked loudly, as several of the staves yielded under the terrific blow.

Second, an instant later, a bit of rock from the wall fell with a splash into the pool of water.

Nick then examined the wall.

He found that the constant leakage from above had softened the old cement and mortar, and that the stones in this locality might be removed with almost any stout implement.

In half a minute he had the beer-keg demolished and one of the stout staves in his hand.

With this he next attacked the stonework near the pool, and for ten minutes he worked as vigorously and rapidly as the darkness permitted.

Then he had two of the lower stones hauled out of the wall, and a space made large enough to crawl through.

Listening at this opening, he could now detect another sound quite near-by. It was the occasional stamping of horses, evidently in their stalls.

“H’m!” grunted Nick. “I’m not sure that I’m out of the place, after all. This hole will evidently lead me into a basement under the stable, or the carriage-house. By Jove! it may be that Badger has a place of concealment down here for his horses, those occasionally used for a hold-up. I’ll speedily ascertain.”

Crawling with some little difficulty through the hole in the wall, Nick rose to his feet on the outer side, and groped carefully through the gloom.

Suddenly his extended hands came in contact with—an automobile!

He was in the interior garage, the secret hiding-place of Badger’s several cars.

It had taken Nick half an hour to accomplish all this, however, and before he could fix upon anything definite as to his present location, he heard voices outside, and a door hurriedly opened.

“H’m!” he mentally grunted. “Are my captors returning? They’ll find me ready for them this time!”

Then he crouched quickly back of the car with which he had come in contact.

The sliding door had suddenly opened, and the light from the wall lamp outside shot into the extension cellar.

The instant Nick’s eyes fell upon the row of automobiles, he guessed the whole truth concerning the place.

His interest, however, chiefly centered in two men who were hurriedly rushing a third into the place, closely followed by two women, while Badger was hastening to light a lantern.

“Good Heaven!” mentally exclaimed Nick. “Their captive is Patsy!”

He watched and waited, deducing more and more from the little he heard, and all the while his stern white features, still swathed with bandages, grew hard as flint.

Patsy felt the rope tighten about his neck.

Then sounded the revolver-shot from outside.

Next a dark form bounded out from back of the touring-car—bounded out with the leap of an angry lion.

Two clenched hands rose and fell, and two men dragging upon a rope cast over a beam were sent senseless to the earth, quivering in every muscle, as an ox quivers when felled in the shambles.

Then two hands closed around Amos Badger’s throat, and in the miscreant’s ears rang a voice and words that took all the strength and manhood, if any of the latter was there, completely out of him.

“It will be you, Badger, not I!”

“Whoop la!” shrieked Patsy. “It’s Nick himself!”

Two women, frightened for their miserable lives, turned and ran toward the open door—only to rush into the ready arms of Chick Carter.

Chick had arrived at the edge of the woods only a short time before, and had seen Patsy brought out of the house and into the basement of the garage. Hastening to cross the lawn and lend a hand, as he had promised, Chick had encountered the bloodhound, killing him with a single well-directed shot, and then had rushed on and into the garage, just in time to head off Vic Clayton and Claudia Badger when they turned to flee.

The rest may be briefly told, for a more complete and successful round-up could hardly be imagined. In less than ten minutes the entire gang were in irons, and thirty minutes later they were taking a ride in the local patrol-wagon, instead of a Packard car.

The exposure of their rascally scheme also was complete when the case came to trial, a little later, for Nick Carter found in and about the house and stable ample evidence to prove that his deductions had from the very first been entirely correct.

Fortunately, too, he found letters and clues enabling him to trace much of the stolen property upon which Badger had realized thousands of dollars, and which ultimately was restored to its rightful owners.

In Badger’s safe Nick found his own watch and chain, but the money of which he had been robbed was missing. He had in his success with the case, however, a reward that far more than offset his trivial loss.

Dumfounded when informed by what means the Boston detectives had been baffled in their efforts to discover these road robbers, Chief Weston’s gratitude to Nick was equaled only by his bitterness for Sandy Hyde, and he made sure that the treacherous scamp should receive a sentence as long as the others of the Badger gang—and that was one of years.

Long before the release of any of them, the Badger place near Brookline had passed into other hands, sold under a heavy mortgage, and from that time Tremont Street knew the notorious Madame Victoria no more.

One and all of them passed, as they deserved, out of the public mind and out of the hearts and lives of friendly acquaintances—from the moment that Nick Carter showed them in their true colors and closed upon them the door of a prison cell.

THE END.

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End of Project Gutenberg's The Man Without a Conscience, by Nicholas Carter