CHAPTER XII. DRIVEN TO THE WALL.

To strike while the iron is hot, to seize upon every clue while it was fresh, to be alert for the least sign, the slightest word, the fleetest glance, that might even remotely suggest the key to a mystery, and then to quickly follow every thread, however finely spun, and discover whither it led—all this was characteristic of Nick Carter, and to it he owed much of his success.

Few detectives, however, though of the shrewdest, would have discerned the spider-web clues which Nick had that morning detected, or have been able to turn them to the best advantage.

It required a man of Nick Carter’s superior art to execute the delicate and superlatively crafty move that took him to the Carleton Chambers.

The room occupied by Harry Royal was on the third floor front, and the occupant was alone when Nick, disguised as described, rapped sharply on the door.

For fully a minute there was no response from within.

“Fear!” said Nick to himself. “The terror born of conscious guilt is upon him. He dreads every sound, fears every visitor, yet dares not leave his chamber. Solitude and secret dread are preferable to the voice and eyes of an accuser.”

Nick rapped again, louder.

Then a step within echoed the sound, and the door was finally opened.

Harry Royal, sober enough now, and as white and haggard as if from a long illness, appeared on the threshold, his boyish figure clad in a long, loose house robe.

Nick fell as cleverly as an actor into the part he designed to play.

“Hush!” he instantly whispered, with startling intensity. “I see that you’re alone! Not a word till I am under cover! Let me come in.”

“Who the devil——”

“First let me come in,” persisted Nick, fairly forcing his way into the room. “I may be seen here, recognized, arrested on the spot. It’s for your sake I am here, Harry Royal, as well as my own. Now close the door and lock it. I am taking long chances for these few words with you.”

The terrible fear of arrest expressed and displayed by Nick, even more than his feigned voice of the gamester and the latter’s almost habitual attire, suddenly suggested to Royal the possible identity of his disguised visitor.

“Good heavens!” he exclaimed under his breath. “Is it you, Mose Flood?”

“You’d not ask that question were I to doff this disguise,” replied Nick, with bitter asperity. “Have you locked the door? Don’t open it, then, for man or devil, without first giving me time to hide. I am wanted for murder! Do you hear? I am wanted for murder!”

With a mighty effort Royal had pulled himself together, yet his hueless cheeks and dilated eyes, burning as if with fever, betrayed his consternation and dismay. He tottered to a chair near the table and sank into it as if his limbs refused longer to support him.

“Good God, Mose, what brings you here?” he hoarsely demanded.

“I’ll soon tell you, have no doubt of that,” rejoined Nick, with threatening significance.

While he spoke he drew a chair to the opposite side of the table, so placing it that the light from the window should not fall upon his face and possibly reveal his deception.

Then he sat down, fixed his frowning eyes upon the face of the cringing young man opposite, and said sternly, still cleverly imitating Flood’s resonant voice:

“Well, what have you done with it?”

Royal caught his breath, gripped hard at the arms of his chair for a moment, then answered, in tones of intense amazement:

“Done with what, Mose?”

“The money.”

“What money?”

“A fine question!” sneered Nick, with a terrible display of suppressed passion. “What money, indeed! The money of which you robbed Cecil Kendall, after beating out his brains under the windows of your own home.”

Royal was as white as a corpse, yet by a mighty effort of will he governed his agitation, and found voice with which to reply.

“You are mad, Mose—stark mad!” he cried hoarsely. “I did nothing of the kind.”

“You lie!” hissed Nick ferociously. “I saw you out there. I saw you do it—or just after you had done it. Don’t lie to me, Royal. You may blind others with a lie, perhaps, but you can’t blind me. I say I saw you do it, or at least saw you just after you did it.”

A look of utter despair had settled on Royal’s bloodless face, and he was trembling from head to foot. Yet in his staring eyes there was a look of misery and mute appeal that words could not describe.

“On my word you are wrong, Mose, utterly wrong!” he cried piteously. “I did not do it. I have not got the money.”

“You have! I say I saw you!”

“You did not see me do it. You did not see me kill him, for I did not do it.”

“I saw you out there,” reiterated Nick, with augmented vehemence. “If you deny the truth to me, that I saw you out there last night, I’ll throttle you where you sit.”

Royal breathed hard and heavy, as if he already felt a hand at his throat. His staring eyes appeared held by Nick’s intense gaze, and the latter’s stern and threatening face awed and terrified him. For thirty seconds he hesitated, then faltered brokenly, like a man whose abject fear drove him to admit the truth.

“Well—God help me, Mose, what shall I do? I—I confess that I was out there, Mose; but, on my oath, I did not kill Kendall. I swear to Heaven, Mose, I did not.”

Nick felt a thrill of satisfaction. He had scored one important point and verified one of his suspicions—that Royal had gone to Fordham after leaving the faro-bank, despite having denied it to Chick.

Nick now let up a little on his terror-filled victim. Yet, without betraying his secret satisfaction, he sternly replied:

“You say you did not kill him, but I have only your word for it.”

“My oath, Mose!”

“Silence! Silence, and hear me!”

“I am listening, Mose. For God’s sake, don’t be so harsh. I have trouble enough, Heaven knows. I am a wreck of myself and know not where to turn. I am listening, Mose.”

Nick rather pitied the misguided fellow, yet his pity did not deter him from playing his shrewd game to a finish. He leaned nearer over the table, saying with unabated severity:

“Hark you, then! You’ve not forgotten your threats made in my place last night. I heard them, and knew of what a drunken fool is capable. So I hastened out to Fordham to head you off from any crime. God forgive me, I arrived too late. I arrived only to see you——”

“You did not see me do it, Mose, so help me Heaven!” Royal hoarsely interrupted.

“I saw enough,” cried Nick, with terrible significance. “Miserable young man that you are, you have left me but one course. Don’t you see what I am doing? Don’t you see where I stand?”

“Where you stand?” echoed Royal, white and staring.

“Have you no brains?” continued Nick, with augmented feeling. “You know that I revere your father, that I love your sister. Don’t you see, misguided boy, that, for their sake, to spare them the awful shame and sorrow of beholding you a criminal, I have taken your guilt on my own shoulders? Don’t you see it, blind man, that for the sake of their peace and happiness, not for yours, I am inviting suspicion and taking even the hazard of the electric chair?”

Nick Carter, incomparably shrewd in his discernment and deductions, was indeed impersonating Moses Flood to the very letter. That the motives just expressed were the real motives actuating Moses Flood in his recent conduct, Nick had not a doubt.

For a moment Royal stared at him like one who could not speak. Then the meaning of what he had heard, and the overwhelming self-sacrifice so vividly pictured, seemed to dawn upon him with full force. It did even more, just as Nick had expected. It brought to the lips of the unhappy young man the words of gratitude and the much more important disclosure of the whole truth, which Nick Carter from the first had but aimed to evoke.

With countenance changing, with eyes lighting perceptibly, Royal presently said, more calmly:

“Can I believe my ears? Do you mean, Moses Flood, that you had no hand in that crime, and that your present conduct is inspired by the sentiments you have expressed?”

“I never speak idly, boy,” cried Nick impressively.

“Then, God hearing me, my father and sister owe you a debt of gratitude that words cannot repay,” declared Royal fervently. “I will not speak of my own feelings, save to repeat that you are wrong, absolutely wrong; for I am ignorant as you concerning who killed Cecil Kendall.”

Nick believed him, yet he grimly shook his head.

“You still doubt me,” cried Royal quickly, now eager to explain and set himself right. “Wait a moment, Mose. I don’t deny that you have grounds for suspicion, after the threats I made and what you may have seen at the rectory. But let me explain.”

“I am listening.”

“My threats were but foolish ravings, Mose, on my word, I had no intention of executing them, but I determined to have what I thought was my part of Kendall’s winnings.”

“Well, what did you do about it?”

“After leaving your place, Mose, I did go to Fordham,” said Royal, with nervous haste. “I knew that Kendall had an appointment with my sister, and I expected to find him at the rectory. The journey out there in the fresh night air, however, served to cool my blood and bring me to my senses. On entering the rectory grounds I realized that I was in no condition to meet my father, from whom I have concealed the wild and foolish habits into which I have lately fallen. As true as Heaven, Mose, I am done with them from this hour.”

“What did you do out there?” demanded Nick, with feigned incredulity. “Come to that.”

“Instead of entering the house,” Royal hastened to reply, with increased earnestness, “I went to look through the library windows, to see if Kendall was in the house.”

“And then?”

“Then,” echoed Royal, with a gasp and shudder, “then I stumbled on Kendall’s dead body, not ten feet away from the library window. My God, Mose, you cannot imagine my horror and my dreadful alarm. The desperate threats I had made in your place suddenly recurred to me. I saw myself under arrest for the crime. I was like a man in a hideous nightmare, and I did only what men do in such a frenzy of terror and dismay.”

“What was that?”

“I fled like a madman from the spot and returned to the city. Avoiding observation, Mose, and stealing into this house by one of the side doors, I came here to my room. I have not since been out of it. I have not dared to go out. I have been waiting here, in abject fear and trembling, for the worst that may come. I know I am a coward Mose—a cur and a coward; but, so help me God, I have told you the whole truth!”

“I believe you, Royal,” said Nick. “But you have overlooked one very important fact.”

Royal started at the change of tone, and again grew deathly pale.

“What fact, Mose?” he faintly gasped.

“You have confessed yourself, not to Moses Flood, but to Nick Carter, the detective.”

And Nick grimly removed his heavy beard while he spoke, and rose abruptly to his feet.

For the bare fraction of a second Harry Royal hung fire under his sudden stress of alarm and excitement. He sat like a man momentarily dazed, with his hueless features drawn and twitching convulsively, and his wild eyes half starting from his head.

Then with a half-smothered scream of dismay he ripped open the table drawer at which he sat and snatched out a revolver.

Before Nick fairly realized it, so rapid and quick was the move, he found himself with the weapon leveled pointblank at his head.