CHAPTER VII. THE WAGES OF SIN.

In the private room to which he had led him, Moses Flood paid Kendall his winnings. As he took a portion of the funds from a huge safe in one corner, he said coldly:

“I must give you part of the amount in government bonds, Mr. Kendall.”

“Anything—anything easily convertible,” faltered Kendall, half choked with emotion.

He could hardly realize what had befallen him, that he really had won all that he required to rectify his deficit at the bank, and that he then and there was to receive the money that would save him from flight, a defaulter’s last resort, or the shame of a convict’s cell.

He feared each moment that he would awake, that he would find it all a dream, and behold again the soul-sickening image of his dreadful crime leering at him with mocking eyes.

“The package will be quite bulky, and I will loan you a small portmanteau,” said Flood, placing the satchel mentioned and several bundles of bank-notes and bonds upon the table.

Kendall tottered nearer, then suddenly gave way to sobs and covered his face with his hands.

“Oh, God! God above!” he cried brokenly. “Flood, you do not know, you cannot know, what this means to me!”

Moses Flood drew himself up and laid his hand on the speaker’s shoulder.

“Kendall,” said he, with grave austerity, “you are not rightly tempered to be a gamester. Take the advice of a gamester, however, and for the sake of those who love you, if not for your own, never again face a faro layout or play a card for money.”

“Never, never, so help me God!” cried Kendall, with uplifted hands.

“If you adhere to that vow, I shall not feel to-night that I have suffered any loss,” said Flood, with a strange light upon his white, forceful face.

Then he tossed into the satchel the deck of cards with which he had dealt the game.

“I shall give you those cards also, Kendall,” said he oddly. “They are the ones I have been using. Keep them until I come and demand them of you. Some day you may know why I ask you to do this. Some day I may wish to recall to your mind what I to-night have—— Ah, but it does not matter.”

“I will keep them,” declared Kendall fervently. “God hearing me, I will keep them.”

Flood had already closed and tightly strapped the satchel, which he now hastened to place in Kendall’s hand.

“I pledge my word that the amount is right,” he said, with some feeling. “Now go as quickly as you can, and remember your promise! Go—go—and remember!”

Still profoundly agitated, Kendall hurried from the room, ignoring all observers, forgetful even of his sleeping friend upon the couch, and thus hastened alone from the house and sought the cool air of the early evening.

Nick Carter saw him emerge from the room, and Chick leaned nearer, saying softly:

“Shall I shadow him, Nick?”

The famous detective shook his head.

“No, Chick,” said he quietly. “There is no need of it.”

“Do you think so?”

“I feel assured. The man’s face tells the story. He is, indeed, short at the bank, but he will use this money to make good the deficit and conceal his crime. I am as sure of it as if I saw it done.”

Nick was entirely correct as to Kendall’s intentions, and, recalling Gilsey’s instructions, he saw no occasion to go beyond them. He was thinking, too, of Dora Royal, of the promise he had made her, and of what Flood that night had done, believing it to be for her sake. Now, feeling sure of his man, Nick would not for the world have perverted the design and desires of Moses Flood.

The latter again appeared upon the scene while Nick was speaking, and at the same moment the sound of a heavy fall started all hearers. It was almost immediately followed by a maudlin laugh, and the man who had been so long sleeping on the couch was seen rising unsteadily from the floor beside it.

“Ha, ha! I reckon I fell out of bed,” he cried, in half-drunken tones, as he gained his feet and stared with dazed eyes toward the group of players at the table.

Though nearly twenty-three Harry Royal looked to be little more than a youth. When sober, he was a handsome fellow, yet his features indicated a weak and yielding nature, and he was no sooner loosed from the restrictions of his home life to attend college than he proved an easy victim to the temptations which had brought him to his present condition.

“How are they coming, Kendall?” he continued, swaying unsteadily and failing to observe that his friend had departed. “Are you winning our expenses? Have you——”

Then he caught sight of Flood approaching, and he reeled toward him with extended hand, crying boisterously:

“Hello, Mose, old man! Glad to see you, on my word I am.”

“And I am sorry to see you, Royal, in this condition,” Flood gravely rejoined.

“Faugh! Cut that out, Mose,” cried Royal, flushing slightly and shaking his head to clear it of the cobwebs. “It’s only now and then, old man. We are just back from Beantown, Kendall and I, and winding up a devil’s own racket.”

“So it appears.”

“We painted Boston crimson, Mose, on my word. I say, Kendall, how are the cards winning? I’m in with this play, old chap, win or lose. Partners——”

“What!”

The words broke involuntarily from Flood, with a look of sudden dismay, but the humpback hastened to cry:

“No, no, Mr. Royal, you’re not! Kendall went broke on your mutual play, I give you my word. You were not in with the last—you were asleep when he——”

“You lie! I am in with him!” Royal angrily interrupted. “Where has he gone? The devil take him, he treats me like a schoolboy. I say I was in with his play. Did he win? Tell me, did he win?”

Before Flood could respond, one of the players cried a bit derisively:

“No, I guess not, Harry! Only a cool ninety thousand!”

The face of Harry Royal grew dark as a thunder-cloud. He at once suspected that Kendall had proven false, and was bent upon cheating him of a part of the winnings, an idea somewhat warranted by the latter’s apparently secret departure. The possibility of thus being wronged seemed to arouse the very worst passions of which the intoxicated young man was capable. With a scream of rage, he darted to the couch and seized his hat.

“Ninety thousand—and I’ve heard him say he meant to jump the country!” he cried wildly. “I’ll have my share of it, Mose. Do you hear me—I was in with his play! He means to do me—curse him; but I know where to find him! I’ll have my half, or I’ll have his life!”

“Peace!” thundered Flood, with terrible sternness. “Do you know where you are and what you are saying?”

“Let go—let go my arm!” frothed the frenzied youth, struggling furiously in the other’s grasp. “You don’t know him as I do. I know where to find him—he has an appointment to-night with my—— Let go, I say! If he is not at the rectory, he means to swindle me. Let go, Mose; or I’ll strike you! I will have what’s coming to me, or I’ll have his life!”

With the infuriated words ringing from his lips he wrenched himself free, and before he could be prevented he had thrown down the bar from across the door and fled like a madman down the hall stairs.

“Wayward fool!” exclaimed Flood, thoroughly disgusted, yet anticipating no serious results from the passionate threats. “He is a crazy ass when in liquor.”

“I should say so.”

“Bruce, I am going out for about an hour. If he returns before I come in, ask him to wait for me. I have a few words of advice for his foolish ears.”

“Very well, sir.”

A strange place is a faro-bank. The excitement had passed, and the game was again in progress. Not a man had moved from his seat at the table.

With features in no way betraying his feelings, Moses Flood put on his coat and hat, took a heavy, ironwood cane from a stand in one corner, and signed for Green to accompany him to the door. On the threshold he paused for a moment, fixing his piercing eyes upon those of the humpback, and said, barely above his breath, yet with indescribable intensity:

“Remember, John! Not one word!”

“Never, sir; so help me God!”

Then Flood was gone, and the door closed with a bang.

Five minutes later Nick Carter, who had not deemed it worth his while to interfere, which step might have suggested his identity, signed for Chick to accompany him, and they left the place together.

“There was nothing more for us there,” remarked Nick, as they headed for home. “If ever a man in a bad corner made a lucky play, Kendall has made one this night.”

“I’m blessed if I can see through it!” said Chick, perplexedly. “What has come over Flood that he should do such a thing as that?”

“The sentiment which quite often brings out the very best part of a man,” replied Nick gravely.

“Love?”

“Precisely.”

“But——”

“Wait till we get home, Chick, and I will then explain.”

“Good enough,” laughed Chick. “I reckon I can wait.”

Seated together in the library of Nick’s residence, half-an-hour later, the latter took up the subject where he had dropped it on the street.

“Love, that’s it,” said Nick, lighting a cigar. “And it’s just what I would have expected of Mose Flood. He’s as odd a man as stands in leather. As grand a man, too, barring his one deplorable vice.”

“He has a legion of friends, Nick, there’s no doubt of that,” observed Chick. “You say that he is in love with Doctor Royal’s daughter, eh? Was that what led to his move of to-night?”

“Exactly,” nodded Nick. “There’s a curious side to the affair, however. Flood has never told the girl of his love, and he has no idea that she cares for him. He took the rector’s word for it this afternoon that she loves Kendall and is engaged to marry him.”

“Well?”

“In some way, Chick, he must have learned that Kendall is short in his accounts to the tune of ninety thousand dollars.”

“So he forced Kendall to win that amount, knowing that he would use it to square himself? Was that it?”

“No doubt of it.”

“But why did he not give Kendall the money openly, without compelling him to make a play for it?”

“For several reasons, all characteristic of Moses Flood. First, he aimed to insure that Dora Royal should never learn of Kendall’s crime, or that he had saved him in this way for her sake. He does not want the girl to feel under obligations to him. Possibly he feared that she might object to her lover’s accepting money from a gambler, even to keep him out of jail. Second, he aimed to spare Kendall the shame of knowing that his crime had been discovered, or was at least suspected. So he forced him to win the money, instead of giving it to him openly.”

“By Jove! that was good of him.”

“It was just like him, Chick. He has saved this man for love of that girl, and it cost him ninety thousand dollars to do it, with never a possibility that his magnanimity would be discovered, or that a word of gratitude would ever be given him. Chick, such a man as that is worthy of any girl, whether she’s a clergyman’s daughter or not.”

“And I hope he gets her,” cried Chick bluntly.

“We shall see,” smiled Nick significantly. “I reckon I yet may have a finger in this pie.”

“I now see why you did not wish to arrest Kendall.”

“Surely not, Chick. I am convinced that Kendall will use that money to adjust his affairs at the bank. Feeling sure of that, I determined not to pervert Flood’s lofty design, on which he had plainly set his heart.”

“His cuekeeper must have known what came off?”

“The humpback?”

“Yes.”

“That is true,” admitted Nick, “but Flood evidently knows that he can trust him to say nothing about it. Furthermore, Chick, the cuekeeper is probably entirely ignorant of Flood’s motive.”

“No doubt of it.”

“There is one feature of the case,” added Nick, rather more grimly, “concerning which I am very much in the dark.”

“What is that, Nick?”

“How the dickens did Flood learn that Kendall was short at the bank?”

“By Jove! that’s strange.”

“I reckon we have not heard the last of the case, Chick, and that something serious may yet result from it. There is no evading one fact, however. Flood has a heart as big as that of an ox, since he would thus save a man for the sake of a girl he himself loves, instead of jealously knocking his pins from under him. In days to come I’ll not forget this in Moses Flood.”

The very next morning, which was sooner than Nick expected, his prediction concerning the outcome of the case was startlingly verified. He was seated with Chick in his office, about eight o’clock, when a district telegraph boy brought in a message. Nick tore it open and read it, then leaped involuntarily to his feet.

“What is it, Nick?” demanded Chick impulsively.

“The wages of sin is death!” cried Nick, with thrilling accents. “This message is from Dora Royal, asking me to come at once.”

“For what?”

“Cecil Kendall was found murdered in the rectory grounds this morning!”