Nick Carter Detective Library, No. 1 - Nicholas Carter (the best electronic book reader txt) 📗

had snakes afore now! but I’m blamed if I’d want ‘em always. I don’t like ‘em.”

“They were not of this kind.”

“No, most of mine were green, an’ some of ‘em had seven heads. Say, put that thing away, or I’ll have ‘em again; it makes me shake all over.”

“You’re a fool, John!”

“Why? ‘Cos I don’t like snakes? Mebby so, but that’s a matter of opinion. . Now that that pretty little pet o’ yourn is outer sight, tell me how you’d use it to ‘do up’ the fly cop if the string didn’t work.”

“I would not use this one, but others like it.”

“Ye’ve got more, hey?”

“I have many. What would be easier than to turn them loose in the detective’s house?”

“By thunder! that’s a great idea!”

“A bite from the cobra means certain death.”

“But, I say!”

“Well?”

“Others would be bitten too, wouldn’t they? The whole family, hey?”

“What matter?”

“Oh, nothin’; jest curious, that’s all.”

“So that the detective dies, I do not care how many go with him. And he shall die!”

“Shake, Tony.”

The two men sealed the compact of death by clasping hands.

“When are ye goin’ ter do it?” continued John.

“I shall try the string once more. If it fails me again, then the snakes.”

“Can ye git in the house?”

“Have you ever seen a house that I could not enter?”

“No.”

“I have but to open the front door, remove the cover from my basket and toss the whole thing inside. The jar and the sudden awakening will make the cobras angry. They will crawl out and scatter over the house. If they find a bed, they will enter it. If a person is there, so much the better, for it will be warmer. When the person moves, against whom they are coiled, the cobra will be angry again, for they have bad tempers. The person may turn over in his sleep and so roll upon the cobra; if so, he will be bitten. He may waken and attempt to leave the bed - if so, the cobra will do its work before he can got out of reach. He may wake suddenly and find a swaying head, a darting tongue, and two bright eyes within a foot of his face. He will scream with horror and attempt to escape. The scream and the attempt will be fatal. His only chance of safety would be in keeping perfectly still and closing his eyes, but what man would have strength enough to do it? Would you?”

“No, I’m cussed if I would.”

“Next time you have the snakes, try it, John.”

“I have, Tony, and then, instead of one, I would have four thousand, But say.”

“What?”

“There won’t be anything left alive in the house but snakes, when morning comes.”

“No-nothing.”

“B-i-r-r! I think I’d rather be hung.”

“You will probably have your wish, unless you get familiar with my cobras.”

“Which I’ll take care not to do. No offense, Tony, but it strikes me that you’re a snakey lot. Even the girl Eug-”

“Stop! How many times must I tell you never to mention that name!”

Tony’s voice was intense with anger. He paused a second and then continued : “John, I swear if you speak that name again, in my presence, or allude to the manner of her death, I will set my cobra upon you by throwing him in your face. Remember, for I mean what I say.”

“I’m sorry, Tony. I forgot.”

“See that you do not forget again. You may rest assured that Sindahr will not. Bah! pass that bottle unless you want it all.”

There were a few moments of silence, and then John’s voice asked:

“When are you going to the ‘nest’?

“Time enough for that when the detective, Nick Carter, is dead.”

“Sure!”

“We can do nothing with that fellow constantly about our heels.”

“He’s a baby terror, he is.”

“Ay, he has the strength of three men.”

“Of three? A dozen would be nearer the mark. He’s quicker’n a flash, an’ ain’t afraid of nothin’.”

“He is doomed.”

“Well, I’d rather be John Crispy than Nick Carter jest now. Where’d you meet him to-night?”

“At his house. He went in and came out again.”

“Spose he hadn’t come out again?”

“I should have gone in.”

“And strangled him in bed, eh?”

“Precisely.”

“That’s yer favorite way, ain’t it?”

“I like it best.”

“When are ye goin’ to try the trick on again, Tony?”

“The first time that I think he has gone to sleep in his own bed. Let him do that once, after to-night, and he will never waken. I will strangle him so quickly and so silently that a person in the same bed will not know what has happened until in his struggles he awakens somebody.”

There were short snatches of conversation after that, but in a few moments the two scoundrels threw themselves upon their beds and went soundly to sleep.

Then Nick turned away, well satisfied to go home.

But his heart was filled with dread for his Ethel.

Of himself he did not think, but the recollection of Tony’s threat, and the vivid description he had given of the consequences to be expected from the presence of cobras in the house, made Nick realize more than ever before, something of the danger to which he was constantly exposing himself.

“Ah, well; forewarned is forearmed,” he murmured, “and I do not believe that Fate meant me or my beloved wife for a victim of Tony, the strangler. Tony will be after me early to-morrow, and I must be ready for him.”

And he was.

CHAPTER X.

SOLVING PROBLEMS.

On the following day Nick went again to the house in Forty-seventh street in order to continue his researches, for he realized that a very necessary part of the evidence he had to furnish in the case, was an explanation of the murderer’s method of entering and leaving the house.

He found everything just as he had left it on the previous night.

Whoever had been in the room. when he crossed the threshold, had evidently deemed it unwise to return.

The detective went at once to the cellar, and began an exhaustive search for the secret passageway, but after an hour vainly spent, he again sought the stairway which had puzzled him.

The greater discoveries are made by accident, and so it happened in this case.

He had arranged a box on which to stand while examining the underside of the stairs, but in putting it in place, he had not fixed it securely, and accordingly, just as he was becoming interested in his task, the box toppled from its place.

Nick lost his balance and would have fallen had he not thrown up his hands to save himself ; as he did so, he grasped a two-by-four inch timber which looked as though it had been placed there for additional support to the stairs.

The timber was not stationary, however. It came loose in his hand, but with sufficient difficulty to save him from falling.

Leaping down, he rearranged the box and again mounted it.

The necessity for searching was, however, ended.

The removal of the stick of wood disclosed an ordinary staple and hook which fastened the movable stairs in place. He removed the hook, and the stairs worked Just as he had expected them to.

A person could go from the cellar to the parlorfloor without having to pass through a door.

The discovery was one which filled Nick with pleasure, and there only remained now to find an equally easy way into the street.

But hour after hour passed, and found him still searching

At last he turned away, noticing, as he did so, that one of the stays which supported the floor above, was out of place.

It did not occur to him that he could straighten it, and yet he put out his hand and gave it a sharp pull.

What was his surprise to find that it was loose at the top.

As he pulled there was resistance enough to satisfy him that the support acted as a lever, while behind him he heard a slight grating noise as of something moving on small iron wheels.

Turning, he flashed his light along the wall, but saw nothing.

Nevertheless he pulled the lever away -over, and then placed a weight upon it to hold it down while he searched for the aperture of which he felt certain it was the instrument.

“Ah!”

He paused with the glad exclamation on his lips.

Before him, close to the wall, was an opening in the cellarfloor.

One of the stones, with which the floor was paved, had settled down nearly five feet, leaving an opening quite large enough to admit him, and when he flashed his light along, the underground gallery that he saw, he discovered that it led toward the street, and was, without doubt, the secret entrance for which he had been searching.

Nick took the precaution to put more weight upon the lever before descending into the forbidding opening that it had revealed.

Then with his dark-lantern in hand, he entered.

The passage way was not high enough for him to stand upright, and was only sufficiently wide to accommodate his body.

It led him about twenty feet, diagonally in the direction of the street, and then abruptly ended.

He looked up.

Over his head were the stone steps which led to the front door of the house.

“More stairway doors,” he muttered. “This will not be so well concealed.”

Nor was it.

There was an ordinary bolt such as are used for fastening doors, which he easily moved, noticing, as he did so, that the bolt was so arranged that it could be worked from the outside.

That is, a portion of the next toe piece had been chipped off, leaving a space through which a small steel rod could be thrust, to move the fastening.

First, he tried to push the stone up, but in vain.

Then he endeavored to pull it down toward him, but it refused to move.

There was but one way left and that was to slide it away lengthwise.

The effort met with instant success.

The stone slid along easily, offering little or no resistance, and thus afforded an-opening sufficiently large for an ordinary-sized man to squeeze through.

A means by which a murderer could have entered and left the house when Eugenie La Verde was choked to death was now found.

That portion of the case was no longer a mystery.

It was still daylight in the street, and Nick hastily closed the aperture, having studied out how he could open it from the outside if necessary.

He returned to the cellar and removed the weights that he had placed upon the lever.

It remained down, as, indeed, he had expected it would.

Then once more to the secret passageway.

There, he raised the stone and put it in place.

On the underside was a handle.

He grasped that, pulled upon it, and the stone came down in his grasp.

The secret was now entirely his.

He could go either way through the hidden passage without any trouble.

The mystery was a mystery no longer.

“I have only to satisfy myself, now, that Tony is the murderer, and then the whole story is in my possession. But I must find a motive,” he thought. “Why did those men want Eugenie La Verde out of the way? There is another mystery still, to solve.”

The flat stone which covered the opening in the cellarfloor, was worked by the lever, by means of a long steel rod and two cog-wheels.

It was a clever mechanical device, and whoever planned it must have had a strong incentive.

“There is nothing more to do here now,” he thought. “I will