Part 16 (1/2)
Madge stopped directly in front of the detective, and glared at him, while he returned her fierce look with a half smile--for he had entirely recovered from the effects of the dose she had administered.
She raised her arm and pointed toward the detective, but before she could utter a word, Patsy cried out:
”That's him! That's him! Sure, ma'am, I'd know him among a thousand!
He's got stain on his skin; I can see that; and he is disguised in other ways, ma'am, I can see that, too; but it's him. I'd take me oath to it, so I would.”
Madge smiled, and softly rubbed her hands together.
”Carter,” she said coldly, ”do you know this man who recognizes you?”
Nick shrugged his shoulders in disdain, for he understood perfectly well that Patsy had some well-defined plan in his head for doing as he did; and he replied:
”I suppose he is somebody whom I have arrested at some time. It is only the worst criminals, like yourself, Madge, that I take the trouble to remember.”
She turned away with a toss of her head.
”Come!” she ordered; and they followed her from the cellar room, and up the narrow stairs again, where she reclosed the trap.
”Go back, Pat, and take your place among the others,” she ordered him then. ”You will be watched for a long time, and at the first break you make you will be knifed, or shot. It is up to you whether you make good in this community or not. Go now.”
When he had gone, she turned to Handsome.
”Handsome,” she said slowly, ”you can go now, too. Keep an eye on that Pat. At midnight to-night, come here to the cottage, for I want you to help me to carry the body into the woods to the quicksand pit. We will throw him there--Nick Carter, I mean.”
”Of course. Shall you chuck him in alive?”
”No; for he would find some way to crawl out and escape. I will put him out of the way first. It will be only a dead body that we will have to carry, but I don't want the men to know that Nick Carter has been among us until after he is dead. Then it will not matter.”
”Right you are,” said Handsome; and he took his departure.
But down in the cellar beneath them something had happened, for as soon as the party of three left him, Nick calmly and easily pulled the iron staples from the wall and stood upon his feet. The fact was that he had already succeeded in loosening them when he heard the approach of Madge and the others, and he had been afforded barely time to resume his position of helpless captivity when the door was opened and they entered.
But now he was free, save for the short chains that were still fastened to his wrists, and the plank walls that rose between him and liberty.
But the chains on each wrist were short, and the walls were only plank; and in Madge's eagerness and haste in fastening him there she had neglected--or she had not thought it necessary--to search him for his weapons.
He knew now that there was very little time to spare, and that he and his three a.s.sistants were in a bad predicament.
CHAPTER IX.
THE ESCAPE FROM THE SWAMP.
In the meantime, Patsy had been in half a dozen different kinds of a brown study. He realized that now the entire situation depended solely upon him, and that the lives of his chief, and of Chick and Ten-Ichi, rested wholly in his hands.
He stood, be it said, all alone, in the midst of a huge swamp, from which escape could only be had by means of a boat, and into which he had been conducted blindfolded. Around him were men, all ready at any instant to take his life for the merest excuse; and already the lives of his three friends were sacrificed unless he could do something--and that very speedily--to save them.
In the cellar at the cottage he had not dared to look squarely at his chief, for fear that the inclination on his own part to make some sort of signal would be too strong for him to resist; and he had known that Madge was watching every act and motion, as a cat watches a mouse.