CHAPTER XIV. TWO BAD EGGS

Nearly a month passed before the scheme devised by Nick Carter, by which to run down Cecil Kendall’s murderer, was productive of any startling results.

Yet the month was not without incidents worthy of note.

The chief mystery was the disappearance of Moses Flood and Harry Royal. The wiseacres of the central office promptly declared them the murderers, also that they had fled to escape arrest, but neither detectives nor police were able to locate them.

Nick had, however, quietly relieved the minds of Royal’s father and sister, confiding to them his secret, and insuring their silence and discretion.

Flood’s gambling-house, when his prolonged absence seemed probable, was at once taken possession of by his former lookout, Nathan Godard, by whom it was run as usual for a fortnight.

During that time Nick quietly learned several facts. He discovered that Godard had long occupied the adjoining house, where he dwelt with his niece, Belle Braddon, and a housekeeper. He learned, moreover, that Godard was a greedy and unprincipled fellow, a ruffian when in liquor, and a man generally disliked and distrusted.

Added to this Nick learned one very pertinent fact—that Godard had left the faro-bank immediately after Kendall had made his big winnings, and that he did not return for more than an hour.

This was a very important point, for Nick had reasoned that the crime must have been committed by some person who knew that Kendall had won the money. As the crime was committed within an hour afterward, moreover, it obviously appeared to be the work of some person who had seen the money won.

Nick put two and two together, and decided that Nate Godard was the man he wanted. To fix the murder upon him, however, was not an easy task.

Keeping his suspicions and movements well concealed, however, Nick went at it by beginning secretly to persecute Godard, worrying him as a cat worries a mouse.

At the end of two weeks he had the gambling-house raided by the police, the furniture seized and removed, and the house closed up.

Five days later he learned that Godard was secretly dealing a faro-game in his own house, to which only a few of his intimate and trusty friends were admitted.

Nick gave the police a tip, and the place was successfully raided the next night, and all the paraphernalia seized and confiscated.

Godard’s feelings over these several episodes, as well as those of his niece, Belle Braddon, appeared in their talk at breakfast the following morning.

“I’m cursed if I can understand it,” snarled Godard, across the table. “Twice in two weeks I have been raided, involving the loss of several hundreds of dollars. Worse even than that, the devil take it, my game has been going behind at an alarming rate. Bad luck of the worst kind appears to have struck me.”

Godard’s face was flushed, grim, and ugly, and his voice by no means clear. That he had been drinking was obvious, as had been more than usually noticeable for nearly a month. He had the look of a man with a mental burden not easily carried, and secret apprehensions not pleasant to endure.

The girl across the table, far more attractive, yet not less evil than he, shrugged her shapely shoulders and indulged in a low ripple of laughter.

“You’re only getting what’s coming to you, Nate,” she glibly replied.

“What do you mean by that, Belle?”

“You’d no business to turn such a trick as you turned. It was too long a chance.”

“Silence! Silence, I say!” Godard quickly snarled, with an uglier frown. “What need to speak of that?”

“Bah! there’s none here to be feared.”

“Mebbe not, but I’ll not have it talked about,” declared Godard. “You’ve got your share of the blunt, all you deserve, and the least you can do is to keep your mouth closed.”

“It’s closed all right, Nate, when there’s any danger about,” retorted Belle pointedly. “Have no fear of me. I’ll never give you away. But such tricks as that always bring bad luck, Nate.”

“Not always,” growled Godard, less sullenly. “What I can’t understand is why the police have made such a mark of me.”

“That so?”

“To raid me twice within a week—that’s pressing things over the limit. It’s not usual with the infernal bluebottles, and I’m cursed if I can fathom it.”

“Can’t you guess who has tipped them to do it?” inquired Belle.

“Of course I can’t,” cried Godard. “If I could I would put an end to these persecutions, even if I had to turn him down to end them.”

“Put out his light, eh?”

“Yes, I would!”

“And you can’t guess who?”

“No! I wish I could.”

“Well, I can, Nate,” declared Belle, with an unpleasant smile.

“Who?” demanded Godard, with interest.

“The same man who had me fired out of my job.”

“Not Nick Carter?” cried Godard, with a start.

“That’s who, Nate.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“I do.”

“For what reason?”

“Because, Nate, he either has some personal grudge against you and me, or else he suspects——”

The girl stopped, yet stared significantly at her hearer.

Godard dropped his spoon and began to grow pale. Yet the frown of his beetling brows became darker, and the light uglier in his evil eyes. He muttered an oath after a moment, then added, through his teeth:

“If I thought that——”

“What would you do?” queried Belle, with sinister significance.

“What wouldn’t I do,” snarled Godard, with sullen ferocity. “I’d do anything that would insure wiping him out of my path.”

The girl laughed, a coldly, cruel laugh that contrasted vividly with the man’s harsh voice.

“Nick Carter is not an easy man to wipe out,” she replied.

“I know that as well as you, Belle.”

“You’d do anything to accomplish it, eh?”

“That’s what I would,” cried Godard decisively. “The play would be limited to two persons, Belle, if what you think is true. It would be him or me, and I’m cursed if I’d have it me if I could help it. Why do you think of him?”

The girl dried her lips and tossed aside her napkin.

“Because I don’t fancy the way things are going any better than you do, Nate,” she replied bitterly. “It was Carter who threw me out of my job at the bank, for which he could have had no earthly reason, barring that he suspected me of having worked Kendall for a fish and lured him where you could shove him into a corner. Carter doesn’t like me for a cent, and maybe he likes you none the less for being my uncle. Possibly he suspects you because of it.”

“But he can have no evidence——”

“Bah! No man ever knows what evidence Nick Carter possesses,” Belle curtly interrupted. “When he gets after a covey, about the first the poor devil knows of it, Nate, he is down and out for keeps, with bangles on his wrists or a hemp tie in place of a silk one. Don’t bank on what Nick Carter doesn’t know. If you are up against him, and any reason exists for his being after you, there’s but one safe course—and even that is a long chance against such a man as he is.”

“What course is that?”

“Take the bull by the horns, Nate, and either put the detective to sleep or go under yourself in the attempt. That’s the only way to deal with Nick Carter.”

Godard sat silent for several moments, weighing in his own mind the desperate possibility suggested. He could not believe that he was suspected of the crime for which the detectives and the police were searching the country after Moses Flood and Harry Royal, yet the words of his niece had alarmed him, and opened his eyes to the bare possibility of a frightful peril.

Presently he roused himself, and stared across at the girl.

“What would you do about it?” he sullenly asked.

“Just what I have said,” replied Belle bluntly.

“Try to turn him down?”

“Yes.”

“If I was sure that he had any designs against me——”

“Faugh!” interrupted the girl. “There are facts you shouldn’t lose sight of, Nate. In the beginning he was on this case in Gilsey’s employ. Do you imagine Gilsey has let him drop it? Not by a long chalk.”

“Well, what of that?”

“This is it,” cried Belle, who was rather a clever logician. “Is Carter making any attempt to round up Flood or that fool of a Royal? Not one, my word for it. He’s letting the central office screws scurry their legs off on that scent. None of that for Nick Carter, mind you. What’s the natural conclusion, eh? Merely this—Carter doesn’t suspect Flood, despite the evidence. Yet if he is still on the case, he must suspect somebody, and that somebody may be—the right man!”

Godard’s evil face grew darker with every word that had fallen from the girl’s lips.

“The devil!” he snarled, as she pointedly concluded. “I hadn’t thought of it in that way. By Heaven, it may be true, as you say.”

“I should proceed as if it was, Nate, if I were you.”

“Try to land him?”

“Precisely.”

“How can it be done?”

“That’s for you to determine.”

“I don’t fancy the job.”

“Not as well as knocking out a half drunken fellow with ninety thousand dollars in his kit, eh?” laughed Belle Braddon. “I say, Nate, what would there be in it for me if I could do the job for you?”

“Turn Carter down?”

“Yes.”

“You mean—put out his light?”

“Exactly.”

“Your own price,” cried Godard eagerly.

“Five thousand?”

“Yes.”

“In cold cash?”

“The very day it is done.”

“That’s good enough for me,” returned Belle, with a gleeful shrug of her shoulders. “I can use the dust all right, Nate, and I’ve thought of a way by which I can do the job.”

“Or get done yourself in attempting it.”

“Oh, you let me alone to look out for myself,” sneered Belle, with a series of significant nods. “I cut my eye-teeth a long time ago, and it’s a cold day when I cannot hoodwink a man.”

“That’s no pipe-dream,” growled Godard.

“And I’ll do the job for the price mentioned, Nate—cash on delivery,” added the unprincipled jade. “I must do it at my own time and in my own way.”

“I care not when or how, Belle, so long as it’s done.”

“Trust me to do it, then.”

“Do you require any help?”

“I should say not!” exclaimed the girl quickly. “When I tackle anything of this kind, I play a lone hand. I want no partner who some day may squeal. It’ll be all or nothing for me.”

Nothing could have suited Godard better, for he was essentially a coward, and the simple thought of meeting Nick Carter in a life or death encounter sent chills up and down his spine.

“I shall require one thing, however,” said Belle.

“What is that?”

“This house must be vacated and all the stuff removed. Then I must have the key of this house, also of the one next door.”

“Flood’s old place?”

“Yes.”

“What sort of a job are you cooking up?” growled Godard suspiciously.

“That’s my business, Nate,” returned the girl. “I shall do it in my own way, or not at all.”

Godard saw that she meant it, and he had no idea of letting her offer slip by.

“I’ll vacate the house this very day,” said he promptly. “I’ll move our stuff down to the shore house, and open a game there on the quiet. That will throw the cops off my track for a time.”

“Very good.”

“When will you do the job?”

“As soon as I can arrange to have it come right,” replied Belle thoughtfully. “Not this week, however. I have engagements for two evenings with that yellow-haired Dakota chap, whom I caught on to at the Waldorf last week. He has money to burn, barrels of it, and I must get my little bit.”

“Why the deuce haven’t you run him up against my game?” demanded Godard.

“He never plays, Nate,” said Belle quickly. “I tried it, on my word I did. But he doesn’t know one card from another. He says he has an uncle out West, however, a big cattle ranchman, who is a fiend at faro.”

“H’m! I wish he’d wire his uncle to come on here. I reckon we could trim him.”

“I don’t think he’d consent to do that, Nate,” laughed the girl, upon whose spirits the murderous project she had in mind seemed to cast no cloud. “You vacate here to-day and give me the keys to both houses. Then leave Nick Carter to me. Within a week I will turn him down, or my name is not Belle Braddon.”

“You shall have the keys not later than Friday, Belle.”

“That’s soon enough,” nodded the girl, rising. “Meantime, Nate, I must devote myself to bleeding that yellow-haired baby from Dakota. He’s as loose as ashes with his dust, Nate, and I’ll give him credit for that.”

“Then I guess you’ll bleed him all right.”

“If I don’t, Nate, there’ll be something wrong with the cards,” said Belle, with a ringing laugh. “So long, old chap! I have an appointment with him at noon. A hot bird and a cool bottle, you know, and then a ride in the park. But you go ahead, Nate, with the moving. I’ll have my little job on old Nick all framed up in time, never doubt that.”