CHAPTER XII.ROUNDED UP.
“Chick!” shouted Nick Carter, in agony. “Where are you?”
Again there was no answer. Nick Carter would have been surprised if there had been. Well he knew that if Chick was to be rescued, it must be without any help from the imperiled one himself.
Fragments of blazing timbers were beginning to fall, and Nick saw that if certain joists already on fire should burn through, down would come the tons of flooring and roof upon his head. Nothing could save him.
If he meant to get Chick out of this, he must do it quickly.
“There he is—on the other side of that heap of burning wood,” he muttered. “Merciful heavens! Some of it is resting on him. He may be slowly roasting to death! I must get to him!”
It was a perilous trip the detective had now.
Mounds of rubbish had been built up by the explosions, and had caught fire afterward. Nick had to climb over them.
That the fire was incendiary there could be no doubt. Indeed, Nick Carter had heard enough of the plots of the two rascals from Joyalita, as well as of the Dugan gang, to know that the whole affair had been planned.
The only place where the plot had fallen down from the original intention was in the escape of Marcos.
He was to have been burned to death in this warehouse, and the explosions, arranged so that they should end in a general conflagration, were prepared for his destruction.
The fact that Chick was in the building, too, was merely an incident. It is not likely that the explosions would have been caused just for him alone. Still, as he chanced to be in the way of them, why, so much the better, in the opinion of the conspirators.
Dugan and his gang had been seeking to get Nick Carter and his principal assistant out of the way for years.
Nick was not bothering about that now. He had just climbed to the top of a blazing pile, and found Chick lying in a hollow on the other side.
Suddenly the heated mass gave way beneath him!
“I don’t care!” gasped Nick Carter, as he drew one foot out of a hole, where it seemed as if the leather of his shoe must be burned through. “I’ve got to get him out of this! I’d do it or—go with him!”
This was no idle talk. He meant it.
It will be remembered that Nick wore a pair of high wading boots, which were of leather below and up to his knees, with rubber above, covering his thighs.
There is little doubt that these stout, high boots did a large part in enabling him to reach Chick. They protected him to some extent, where low shoes and trousers would surely have meant painful, if not fatal, burns.
He plowed through the awful smoking mass till he found himself standing right over his unconscious assistant.
“Now, Chick! If only you were a little like yourself, how easy it would be!” muttered Nick. “But thereis no use in wishing. I’ve got to take him the best way I can.”
Stooping over and getting a firm hold, he lifted the young man and swung him over one shoulder. Then, without stopping to look one way or the other, he began his journey back to the window.
It took him five minutes to accomplish this feat, and more than once, when a quantity of burning rubbish came tumbling about his ears, he believed it was all up with him and his helpless burden.
But in some almost miraculous way he got through, and resting Chick on the stone coping at the window opening, looked around for a means of escape.
“Chief!” shouted Patsy, from his boat among the rushes. “Wait a moment! I’ll be there!”
“That’s what you won’t!” roared Larry Dugan, in impotent wrath. “You ain’t going to run me into no such risks as that. If you want to put me in jail, all right. But——”
A large, open hand came rattling across the side of Dugan’s face and shut off his eloquence. The owner of the hand—none other than Prince Marcos—called out to Patsy to drive the boat close to the window.
“We shan’t be burned,” he added. “Anyhow, we have to take that risk. We can’t leave those two men there. Mr. Carter can swim, I know. But Chick is done for, unless somebody helps him.”
“Hello! Here’s luck!” suddenly exclaimed Patsy. “Gee! This is my good night!”
The skiff in which he and Nick Carter had come to the ice house was floating about near him. A few quick pulls on the oars, and he was able to reach the empty boat.
“Here is my gun,” he said simply, to Marcos, as he handed him his revolver. “If Larry Dugan or either of the others gets at all gay, just put a lead pill into his coco. All you have to do is to get the end of the barrel against the patient’s ear. Then pull this little dingus underneath, and it will cure the nervousness right away.”
Marcos laughed at Patsy’s prescription for the prisoners as he took the revolver.
“You hear what the doctor says, gentlemen!” he remarked, bringing the muzzle of the pistol to bear on Larry Dugan’s sinister countenance. “Don’t jump about too much, or I might pull the—er—dingus by accident.”
Patsy was up to the window where Nick Carter supported Chick in a very few seconds.
“Gee, chief! This joint looks as if it was going to fold in on itself any minute. Listen to the fire spitting. And talk about a smell! They must have forgot to clean off the kindling wood before they started this one. In with him! All right, Chick! Don’t worry! It’s your Uncle Patsy has you now! Say! This is a hot one, all right!”
Chatting in this way to keep up his own spirits, as well as to make Chick feel safe in case he should be coming to his senses, Patsy Garvan helped Nick Carter lift Chick into the boat.
“Pull, Patsy! Pull for your life!” shouted Nick, as Patsy got the pair of oars well in hand.
“Sure I’ll pull!” was the hearty response. “I can tumble without a house falling on me!”
Nick Carter could not aid his willing assistant at that instant. There was only one pair of oars in the skiff, and Patsy had them.
“Hello! Those walls are going to fall out!”
Instinctively, Nick tried to shield Chick, lying in the bottom of the boat, by bending over him, as part of the blazing ruins broke down again.
A flying board, all blue flames and scattering sparks, came charging full tilt at the boat.
It struck Nick Carter’s arm, and fell, seething, into the water. If it had come straight in its original course, it must have plunged into the unprotected, upturned face of Chick.
“That was a close call,” observed Patsy, as he ran the skiff up against the other one, where Marcos was keeping close watch on the prisoners. “What shall I do now?”
“Get in and row the gang to shore. I’ll take Chick in this skiff. He is beginning to come around,” returned Nick.
“Sure!” almost screamed Patsy, in an excess of delight.
“Hello, Patsy!” said Chick feebly.
“Gee! That’s a good sound!” ejaculated Patsy. “All right, chief! I’ll be responsible for these three beauties. Now that I know Chick is all to the good, I could handle two gangs of this size. Trust me!”
Nick hurriedly rowed to the place where he had hired the boat, and, in the comfortable home of the man who owned the place, soon had Chick on his feet again—shaky, but otherwise all right.
“I’ll leave you here to-night, if you like, Chick,” said Nick, after a short conference with the boat owner. “He says he can take care of you until morning. We have to ride on the street car, you know. There won’t be one along for an hour, anyhow.”
“By that time I’ll be fit as a fiddle,” declared Chick. “Let me go with you.”
“Say, chief!” asked Patsy, who was standing guard over the three disgruntled gangsters, in company with Marcos. “What became of those two other guys from Joyalita?”
“I can tell you that,” put in Marcos gravely. “They have got away. They had a motor car here, and when we were occupied in looking after Dugan and his men, and trying to help Mr. Carter find Chick in that warehouse, they took advantage of nobody watching them. That is all. So long as they cannot prevent my reaching Joyalita, I am not particular about going after them. The man Jason must have died in the fire.”
“You shall start for Joyalita in the morning, if you like,” smiled Nick Carter. “It looks as if we have beaten the whole plot against you.”
“Thanks to you, Mr. Carter!”
Prince Marcos held out his hand to the detective, while Dugan, still handcuffed to Foxey Irwin, snorted in angry disgust.
“By the way, I have your watch, the Seal of Gijon,” said Nick. “I have never had an opportunity to give it to you till now.”
He brought out the precious diamond-incrusted watch and jeweled fob which had been the subject of his close inspection, and about whose secret spring he was still puzzled, and handed it to Marcos.
As the prince took the watch, he pressed it to his lips. Then he put it to his forehead, with a gesture of reverence. At the same time he murmured a few wordsin a strange tongue, that Nick Carter did not understand.
Even when Marcos had hidden the watch in an inner pocket of his waistcoat, he did not speak for a minute, at least.
It seemed as if there were a sacred significance attached to the Seal of Gijon which made it sacrilege to talk on outside matters for a short period after handling the precious emblem.
It was more than an hour before a street car came bowling along the lonely road which ran through the meadows, and which might have been a thousand miles from a city, judging by its desolate appearance, instead of only a few miles from the metropolis itself.
The conductor was a stolid individual, and when he saw that there were three handcuffed men pushed into the car ahead of four other men—for Chick had recovered sufficiently to go along with his friends—he only wondered what the trio had been pinched for, and let it go at that.
There were three heavy sacks lifted upon the back platform, and Patsy stood out there with them, his hand close to the butt of a revolver in his coat pocket.
All the notice the conductor took of this was to grumble, sotto voce, as conductors often do, in similar cases:
“Why don’t youse guys hire an express wagon?”
If the conductor had known that in those sacks was stolen property aggregating in value not less than two hundred thousand dollars, he might have shown a little more interest.
It was early in the morning when Nick Carter turned over to the officers at police headquarters his three prisoners, Larry Dugan, Foxey Irwin, and Pet Carlin. He also handed in, and got a receipt for, the three bags of loot that he had captured with the Dugan gang.
Then he went home, with Chick and Patsy, to enjoy a good breakfast, while Marcos, in a taxicab, hurried back to Crownledge, to relieve the mind of his pretty cousin, Claudia Solado, and complete his preparations to return at once to Joyalita.
“And you owe it all to Mr. Carter,” remarked Claudia, as she presided at the breakfast table, with Phillips in attendance.
“Indeed I do,” declared Marcos enthusiastically. “If he would come to Joyalita, I would make him prime minister.”
The young girl laughed. She shook her head and said:
“I am afraid there is no office in Joyalita important enough to lure Nick Carter away from New York.”
“No, I suppose not,” returned Marcos slowly. “But what a fine head of the government he’d make. I’d like to see him dealing with a bunch of conspirators like these of my Cousin Miguel’s.”
“I believe he’d take them up in his two strong hands and bang their heads together,” opined Claudia, with another merry laugh.
THE END.
In “The Traitors of the Tropics; or, Nick Carter’s Royal Flush,” which will appear in the next issue, No. 138, of theNick Carter Stories, you will find that the famous detective and his assistants have still further and even more interesting adventures before Prince Marcos defeats the conspirators and regains control of Joyalita. The forthcoming issue will be out on May 1st.