“Quick, Central. There may not be a moment to talk. This is Linden Fells. The house is besieged—is to be burned to the ground. Tell the police; summon assistance——”
“Quick, Central. There may not be a moment to talk. This is Linden Fells. The house is besieged—is to be burned to the ground. Tell the police; summon assistance——”
He heard a sharp stroke against the wire as if it had been struck with a hammer, and the connection was cut off. He had no means of knowing whether Central had understood him or not, and he knew that he must work on the supposition that no help would come.
“Well?” he demanded, turning to Tom. “Have you thought of a place?”
“Yes. I know the very place. If we only have time and are not seen, we can save them all. Can you carry my mother, Mr. Carter? She is very heavy.”
“I could carry a horse with her on its back,” replied Nick. “Get Mercedes and meet me at this door.”
“No,” replied Tom. “We go out through the cellar. It is a secret way which I built as a boy. My father had it walled up with masonry, but I know where there is a crowbar, and I can tear the wall away in two minutes.”
“Good,” said Nick. “Get Mercedes and meet me in the cellar, then.”
When the detective entered the room where the injured woman had been taken, he saw at a glance that consciousness had returned to her while her attendants were wrapped in the influence of the drug, and that, although very weak and faint with fright because of her unavailing efforts to rouse the nurses, she was still thoroughly conscious, and instantly Nick determined that the best way to deal with her was to tell her as much of the truth as he dared.
Rapidly he explained to her who he was; that the accident which resulted in her injury was part and parcel with a plot to burn and rob Linden Fells; that in carrying out the plot, every member of the household had been drugged into unconsciousness save herself, and that she had been spared only because she was not able to swallow the coffee; that the house was at that minute surrounded by their enemies, and that the only way of escape was to submit to being carried away from danger; and then, without more ado, he took her in his arms and started for the cellarway.
At the bottom of the stairs he encountered Tom, who held Mercedes in his arms. She was in a stupor,and so utterly unconscious of the events that were taking place around her.
In the cellar it was the work of a moment for Tom to find the old and now rust-eaten crowbar where he had hidden it years before, and with it to knock a hole through the wall where his father had caused the lad’s “secret passage” to be stopped up. But this was a time when the foolish prank of a boy was destined to stand the man in good stead—to be, in fact, the means of saving many lives.
Ah! the enthusiasm of youth! The labor of many weeks bestowed upon that “secret passage” by the boy Tom Danton, was bearing fruit this moment.
The passage led straight underneath the rose-garden to the edge of the bluff which overlooked a deep ravine, and at the end opened into a log hut, which had now fallen into decay, but which, because it was almost inaccessible because of the steep sides of the ravine around it, had been forgotten by those who lived on the estate.
It was with relief that Nick discovered when they arrived at the hut that Mrs. Danton had quietly fainted away, and, depositing her on the ground beside her daughter, both men hurried back again through the passage to the mansion.
“Your father next,” ordered Nick, “and, after that, whomever you please. Only work fast. Leave me to work as I please. We can get them all out, even to the last servant, if only our—or, rather, your strength holds out.”
“I am as strong as a bull,” replied Tom, hastening away. But he paused long enough to call back to the detective:
“We must not forget the stable when we have finished with the house.”
Nick nodded and proceeded with the work.
The drugged and unconscious men and women, whom they carried away, hung like corpses upon their arms. Nothing roused them, and soon the small log cabin in the ravine was filled with the slumbering throng. And still all was silent without the house.
Once Nick took time to look at his watch, but not until he was carrying out the last of the people he had saved, and he saw that the time then lacked only two minutes of the time set for the attack.
Chick, in his character as butler, was the very last whom Nick carried away, and Chick manifested some signs of reviving. But, although he opened his eyes and glanced vacantly around him for an instant, he closed them again and sank back into unconsciousness.
The house was clear of living occupants at last. Not so, however, with the stable.
“Tom,” he said, “are you a good shot?”
“I can drive a nail at thirty paces,” replied Tom.
“Have you got a gun with you?”
“Two.”
“Good. It is up to us to defend the house now, and save it from fire till assistance arrives if such a thing is possible. Those whom we have carried out will be safe where they are for the present—at least, as safe as we can make them. The electric lights have gone out, showing that the enemy has cut the wires. There is a fairly good starlight outside, and we ought to be able to pick off a few of the attackers before they can get into the house, don’t you think so?”
“All I ask is to get a bead on Rogers himself,” replied Tom grimly.
“Good. Kill him if you can. You are justified. He and his men will probably approach in a body. I have four revolvers here; two in my sleeves and two in my pockets. You have two, and that gives us thirty shots all told. We should give a fairly good account of ourselves, I think. You take the front of the house and I will take the rear. I want to be where I can cover the stable as well as the house.”
Nick had guessed the intentions of the man, Rogers, almost exactly. His followers did not, however, attack in one body, but in three.
There were a score or more of the men in each bunch, and one of these advanced toward the front of the house, another toward the rear, and the third approached the stable. Nick thus had a perfect view of some forty of the criminals.
He had opened wide the door where he was standing so that he could see to shoot without obstruction, and he stood so that he could, if necessary, kick the door shut at any moment.
The gang which attacked the stable reached their destination first, and as the leader reached out one hand to raise the latch of the door, one of the detective’s revolvers spoke, and the man dropped in his tracks as if he had been hit with a club.
Then, with one hand, Nick played upon the men at the stable-door, and with the other upon the men who were approaching the door where he was standing, and the reports of his shots sounded with the regularity and precision of the ticking of a watch as he fired.
There was a yell of rage at the first fire, and other yells at the second, third, fourth, and others.
Men dropped to the ground with howls of rage andpain, and writhed in agony, for the detective was aiming his shots at their legs and not at their hearts. He had no desire to kill, save where it concerned one man, and he could not see Rogers anywhere among those at his side of the house.
Within the space of ten seconds from the instant he fired the first shot, the attacking-party broke and fled; but, even as they did so, there were loud shouts behind them.
Lights flashed upon every side. There came the sound of galloping horses, the screech of a steam fire-engine, and the encouraging cries of a throng of rescuers who had started out from the village upon the summons of the girl at the central office of the telephone who had given the alarm.
Not one of the sixty-five marauders succeeded in entering either the house or the stable, and only five of them succeeded in escaping.
It seemed to Nick as if the entire village had turned out and hastened to the rescue, as, indeed, it had, and as they had arrived on the scene at the very moment when Nick and Tom began firing, the attention of the attacking-party had been distracted from their enemies in the rear until they were entirely surrounded, and there was left to them no chance of escape.
Thirty of the marauders were wounded, although none of them was seriously injured.
Only one was killed outright, and he laid upon his face in front of the porch, with a bullet-hole squarely between his eyes.
And what of Tom Danton?
He was also wounded.
A bullet had somehow found its way to him and had entered his side, but a quick examination satisfied Nick that the wound was not mortal.
“I got Rogers with my first bullet,” he whispered to Nick, as the detective bent over him; “and he got me, too. But he won’t bother us any more. Send me to a hospital, Carter, if you please, and don’t tell the folks who I am. I’m going to live a new life from this day forth, and try to be worthy of the sister who loves me.”
* * * * * * *
It was a remarkable fact of that raid upon Linden Fells that each and every victim of the drug that was administered in the coffee awoke in his or her bed or room, exactly where they had dropped asleep, and that the only person among them all who was at all conscious of what had happened was Chick, and he onlyin a vague way, which was utterly uncertain until the detective explained it to him.
Nick sent the prisoners and the wounded men away with the rescuing-party, and removed, as far as possible, all traces of the fight.
Even the old man, Mr. Danton, was seated in his chair beside his table when he awoke, in just the position in which he had fallen asleep from the effects of the drug. Even the servants were restored to the attitudes in which they had been discovered by Nick and Tom, and awoke in the small hours of the morning to slink away to their beds in chagrin.
Not one of them knew what had happened while they were sleeping—and not one of them learned the facts until later, when, of course, it became public property and was generally talked about—and even then, there were those who regarded it as a hoax and refused to believe.
Nick Carter did not send Tom Danton to a hospital. He had him conveyed to his own house, and, having left him there under the very best care that could be provided, he returned to Linden Fells.
But before he departed, he said to Tom:
“We are rid of Rogers, Tom; but we have an implacable enemy left still.”
“You mean Isabel?” asked Tom.
“Yes. Isabel Benton. Mark my words, she will yet be heard from.”
But during the days which followed, there came no sign of Isabel Benton, nevertheless.
* * * * * * *
Not until the afternoon of the day following the fight did Nick Carter take Mercedes into his confidence and tell her all that had happened. He had imposed silence upon the mother, who was the only one in the house who had not partaken of the drug. It remained only necessary for him to tell all to Mercedes.
And he did.
I will leave the reader to imagine how he told it. How he dwelt on the heroism of Tom Danton, whom he promised should see her and talk with her as soon as he could be made to consent to do so.
THE END.
In theNew Magnet Librarythere will next appear an exciting story of love and crime under the title of “Nabob and Knave,” No. 1171, by Nicholas Carter.