Читать книгу A Woman at Bay: or, A Fiend in Skirts - Carter Nicholas - Страница 5

When Nick Carter gazed upon the woman who stood before them, with her hands clasped behind her, he thought that he had never seen another like her. She could not by any stretch of the imagination have been called beautiful; she was too masculine in her appearance for that – that is, the expression of her face, her manner, and the position she assumed were masculine; but the suggestion of it ended there.

She was as tall or taller than the detective, and her complexion was as dark as the hue to which he had stained his own. Her eyes were large, and round, and full, and fierce, and she held her head, with its crown of dead-black hair, as if she were monarch of all she surveyed. And the strangest part of it all was that she did not appear to be more than twenty years old.

With a steady stare she took in every detail of Nick's appearance, from the top of his head to the shoes he wore on his feet; and then she turned slowly to Handsome.

"Whom have we here?" she demanded.

"Dago John, he calls himself," was the reply.

"The man you spoke of?"

"Yes."

"Who is so strong that he could throw you over the fire into the bushes, and who did not harm you when he might have done so, after you had struck at him with your fist?"

"The same."

She turned her attention to Nick then.

"Who are you?" she demanded.

"Just what you see, missus; no more and no less," replied Nick, speaking boldly, for he deemed that to be the surest way to her favor.

"I see very little; nothing whatever that betokens the strength you are said to possess."

"You can't always tell what's inside of a crib before you crack it," was the reply; and the woman smiled.

"Where do you come from?" she asked.

"I ain't giving out my past history, lady, if it's all the same to you," said Nick coolly; and she frowned. Evidently she did not like this answer.

"What errand brought you to this part of the country, and finally induced you to make your camp in the woods out there?" she asked, smiling again.

"I suppose you want the plain truth, lady?"

"Yes," she replied, in an easy tone; "that is, if you put any value on your life."

"Well, the truth is this: I have heard, here and there, a good deal about a certain person who is known as Hobo Harry, the Beggar King. I have heard that he has gathered around him a lot of my kind, and I reckoned that maybe he'd give me a show to be one of them. That's what I came here for, and that's why I camped out there in the woods."

"And who are the three men who came with you?"

"Nobody came with me. I came alone."

"There were three other men there when Handsome found you? No?"

"Yes."

"Who are they?"

"Handsome can tell you that as well, or better, than I. He did the questioning."

"Why do you want to join the forces of Hobo Harry?"

"Because I'm tired of going it alone, and because I have heard that he takes good care of his followers."

"What can you do?"

"I can do anything that I am told to, once I have acknowledged a chief."

"That is a good answer. It covers a good deal of ground. Now, who told you about Hobo Harry?"

"I have heard about him in a good many places."

"Who told you where to find him?"

"A gun friend of mine, who croaked down in Indianapolis, a month ago or more. Jimmy the Sly he was called." (It was true that there had been a Jimmy the Sly, who was one of the many of the band who had been arrested and imprisoned; and after his release he had gone to Indianapolis, and died there, in a hospital. Nick knew this from his interview with the railroad president, and therefore he was not afraid to make use of the name.)

"So you knew Jimmy the Sly, did you?"

"Yes."

"Describe him to me."

"He was tall and slender, with a pock-marked face, and the longest fingers I ever saw; and he had a wart on the side of his nose, and a – "

"That will do. That is sufficient. How comes it that Jimmy never mentioned you to me?"

"You'll have to ask Jimmy that, I reckon – and you might burn yourself if you undertook to do it. I reckon it's hot where Jimmy is, madam."

She smiled at this. Nick could see that he was making a good impression upon her. He was still wondering if she were indeed the chief, or if she were only his representative. It was certain that he had had no expectation of finding a woman in this place.

"And what do you wish me to do with you, now that you are here?"

"I reckon that I'll have to leave that to you. I didn't come with my eyes shut. I guessed pretty well what I was up against. But I came here to be made one of you, and I hope you will give me a chance."

"What do you know of Hobo Harry?"

"Nothing."

"What do you think he is?"

"The head gazabo of this bunch."

"What do you suppose he is like?"

"Just at present writing, madam, he looks to me very much like a beautiful woman who has the grace of a siren and the courage of a lion."

"You should be a Frenchman instead of an Italian."

"I am neither one nor the other. I'm just a – a yeggman."

"You were about to say something else."

"I was going to say – a crook."

"You have not been a yeggman always, have you?"

"I never knew anybody who had been, madam."

"You are not really a yeggman, or a hobo. Confess the truth now; aren't you under cover, and playing the rôle for the purpose of being out of sight for a time?"

"I'm willing to say yes, if it pleases you."

"What has been your line of work, Dago?"

"Well, I'm a fair penman; I'm a good mechanic; I could be a passable druggist if I tried, and I wouldn't shy at taking a hand at running a bank, if it was big enough for the risk."

"I begin to think that you are all right, Dago."

"You can betcher life that I'm all right, madam, if it comes to that. But I don't reckon that you'll take me on my say-so. You'll be wanting some sort of proof of me before you consent to take me into the fold."

"You are correct about that."

"I'm ready for anything."

"You have told me that you are a penman, which means that you could be a forger; you have said that you are a mechanic, which means that you could crack a crib if necessary; you called yourself a druggist, which means that you know how to use the chemicals, and the poisons, too, if necessary; and you would not refuse to tackle a bank job if one should come your way. Do you happen to have the mark of blood against you, too?"

"I don't suppose there is any mark that I haven't got."

"That doesn't answer my question."

"Well, I wouldn't stay in a house if I wanted to get out when a live man stood in my way, if that is what you mean."

The woman turned to Handsome quite suddenly.

"What time do you start?" she asked of him; and he replied, as if the question were a continuance of their conversation:

"I ought to start now – inside of ten minutes."

"Very good," she said. "Take Dago with you. Break him in. Let him have the worst of it. If he makes good, all right. If he doesn't – shoot him."

"All right," said Handsome cheerfully. "What about the others? There are two more out there near the tracks."

"I will attend to them. Go, now. Take this man with you. Give him all the rope he needs – but watch him. I'd sooner trust him with you than anybody else, anyhow – and I believe he is all right."

"Come!" said Handsome, seizing Nick by the arm; and he pulled him through the door after him. But all the way to the door, Nick kept his eyes upon the woman, who was looking at him strangely, and with a curious smile on her face.

Outside, when they had passed the sentinel, and were again in the part which led to the other glade, he stopped.

"Wait a minute, Handsome," he said. "I want to ask you a question."

"There isn't time now, Dago. Save it until later. We must get away from here at once. Do you remember where we left the boat?"

"Yes."

"Go there alone, and wait there for me. I won't be three minutes."

He did not await a reply, but darted off to one side as soon as they reached the glade, and Nick saw him disappear inside one of the cabins before referred to.

"I am in for it now, to the whole length of the tether," he told himself, as he stepped briskly forward toward the place where he knew the boat to be; and he was halfway across the glade when suddenly from one of the groups of men near a fire, one of them leaped up and confronted him, with his hands upon his hips, a cigar pointed at an angle in the corner of his mouth, and a leering grin upon his face.

"Where to now, my pal?" he demanded, standing in front of Nick, and thus stopping him.

Nick looked at the man, and smiled. He did not answer. He guessed instantly why Handsome had left him to find his way to the boat alone. This was doubtless one of their tricks – to see what a new recruit would do under these circumstances. Possibly, too, he thought, the woman wished to see an exhibition of his strength, and they had for that purpose pitted one of their best bullies against him.

He surveyed the fellow with a quick and comprehensive glance; and in that glance he saw that the man was a burly one, who evidently possessed great strength. But Nick did not care for that. He was only turning over in his mind in that instant what course it would be best for him to pursue. And the answer came to him when the bully repeated the question.

"Where to, pard?" he demanded again, still with the sarcastic leer on his dirty face.

"When you get back, I'll tell you!" exclaimed Nick; and at the same instant he darted a step forward and seized the man by the throat-and-hip hold of ju-jutsu, and the next instant had sent him whirling through the air as if he were a cartwheel.

He struck the ground ten feet away, and went rolling over and over among the bushes, where there happened to be a mass of cat brier, or creeping thorn; and the series of howls and curses he sent up was a wonder.

A roar of laughter from every side proved to Nick that all had been watching for the outcome of that episode; but he looked neither to the right nor the left, but strode onward toward the boat.

And then he heard a cry of warning from behind him, and he leaped aside just as the fellow he had thrown fired a bullet pointblank at him from close behind.

As it was, the missile pierced his coat sleeve inside his arm.

As Nick leaped aside he also turned.

The hobo who had fired the shot was already running toward him, and now he was endeavoring with every effort in his power to discharge the weapon again; but for some reason the mechanism of the lock refused to work, and in an instant more Nick had leaped upon him and grasped him a second time.

He was determined now that the fellow should have a lesson indeed; so while he held him at arm's length with one hand, he pummeled him with the other until his face was a mass of bruises; and then, when the yeggman was in a condition bordering upon insensibility, Nick raised him bodily from his feet, and holding him in his arms, ran with him down along the path toward the water.

And reaching the edge of the swamp, he threw him out into the muddy water, headfirst.

It was not deep, but it was filled with soft ooze, which filled the ears, and eyes, and nose, and mouth of the fellow, so that, when he rose to his feet, he was sputtering and spitting, and coughing and swearing when he could.

The detective left the man to make his way out of the water to dry land as best he could, and turned coolly away to rejoin Handsome, who approached at that moment, grinning.

"Well done, Dago," he said. "You served him just right. Come along."

They entered the scow without more words, and Handsome poled it away from the shore, and along the waterway through the almost impenetrable darkness – but there was never a word said about the use of the blindfold.

"How is this?" Nick asked, after a little. "Aren't you going to tie that handkerchief over my face again?"

"No. I ought to do it, I suppose, but it's too much trouble. Besides, you're all right. I can tell a man when I see one."

"All right," said Nick. "It's your funeral; not mine. Only if the lady should raise a kick – what then?"

"She would raise a kick, too, if she knew about it," replied Handsome dubiously. "But how is she going to know it? You are not likely to tell her, and I won't."

"No," said Nick, "I won't tell her."

"Well, then we'll dispense with the handkerchief."

They poled on in silence for a time after that; but presently Nick asked:

"What's the lay to-night, Handsome?"

"I can't tell you that, Dago. You'll have to wait, and find out; and you'll have to do your own part, too; for if you flunk by so much as a hair, it's my duty to kill you."

"Which I suppose you would do, eh?"

"Sure I'd do it – why not? If you ain't what you seem to be, I'd as soon put a hole in you as dip this pole into the water. You hear me!"

"Sure thing."

"And that notwithstanding I like you. I reckon you're all right, and I'm going a great way toward proving what I think about it by not binding that handkerchief over your eyes now."

"Are there any others in this thing with us, Handsome?"

"You'll find out soon enough. The best way for you is not to ask too many questions, but to be satisfied to do as you're told."

They lapsed into silence after that, and there was no more said until after they had arrived at the bank where the scow was to be left.

"I suppose I can ask about those other guns that we left in the woods to-night, without giving offense, can't I?" asked Nick then.

"That depends on what you want to ask about 'em," was the reply; they were now hurrying in the direction of the tracks.

"I want to know if Hobo Harry is going to send for them?"

"Didn't you hear her say so?" was the rejoinder; and then, when Nick laughed softly, Handsome turned on him with fury, and would have seized him had he not suddenly recalled the fact that his own strength was no match for that of the man beside him.

But his anger disappeared as quickly as it came, and he joined in the laugh.

"I gave it away that time, didn't I?" he said. "You were too cute for me, Dago. But it is dangerous knowledge, Dago. I'll tell you that."

"You didn't give it away," replied Nick. "Any fool would have known that the woman was Hobo Harry."

"Then there are a lot of fools in the outfit. You're wrong, Dago. Lots of 'em don't suspect it. They think only that she is Hobo Harry's wife, or sister, or sweetheart, or something like that. There isn't half a dozen of us who really know for certain that Black Madge is Hobo Harry. And there! I've let the cat out of the bag again. But you're all right. It won't do no harm to tell you."

"Not a mite," replied Nick; but he chuckled noiselessly all the same. That last admission made by Handsome was worth hearing.

"Black Madge, eh?" he was thinking to himself. "Now I know why it was that there was something so strikingly familiar about the woman. Black Madge, eh? Well, well, who would have supposed that?"

For Black Madge was a character well known in the criminal world, and to the police, although very little was known about her really. There was a picture in the Rogues' Gallery in New York that purported to be of her; but Nick knew now that it was not.

Nevertheless, he remembered that once upon a time he had seen Black Madge, who was the daughter of a Frenchwoman by an Italian father; Black Madge, who had already made an unenviable record for herself on both sides of the ocean.

It was a long time before that when Nick Carter saw her. She was only a grown-up child at that time, but she was already a hardened criminal, nevertheless; and he recalled now the circumstance of his meeting with her.

It was in Paris. He had gone to the prefecture of police to see the chief of the secret service, who was awaiting him, and had found the girl in the room with the chief, who was engaged in questioning her closely in reference to a crime that had been committed, and because it was thought that she knew the parties concerned. But she had given no information, and had been allowed to go; and after her departure the chief had said to Nick:

"Monsieur Carter, some day that young woman will appear on your side of the water. I hope you thought to take a good look at her face."

"I did," replied the detective.

"Remember it, for some day you will have cause to do so, I do not doubt. She is a terror, and she has brains. The worst kind of a criminal. She should have been a man, for she has a man's daring, a man's recklessness, and a man's way of doing things. Black Madge, we call her here."

Nick recalled all that conversation now, plunged into a reverie about it by Handsome's use of the name. All the time he had been in the room with her in that house in the swamp, he had felt that he ought to remember where he had seen those eyes before. Now, he counted the years that had passed since he saw her, and, to his astonishment, they were five.

"She was seventeen then, the chief told me," he thought, "that would make her twenty-two by now."

And then it came back to him how strangely she had looked at him while he was leaving her presence, and he wondered if her recollection for faces was as good or even better than his own.

"But," he argued, "it could not be possible that she would remember me from that one short glance she must have had of me at that time. And, besides, I was not disguised at all, and now I look no more like myself than – well, than she does."

"What the devil are you so silent about?" demanded Handsome. They had reached the fence at the railroad track, and Handsome was leaning against it.

"I was trying to figure out in my mind what sort of a lay we are on to-night," replied Nick. "I'm not used to starting out without knowing where I am going. I feel like a horse – with you for a driver."

"Well" – Handsome laughed – "I won't use the whip unless you get skittish."

"What are we waiting here for?"

"We are waiting for our chauffeur with the automobile," grinned Handsome. "Nice road for an auto, isn't it? – bumping over those ties."

"Hark!" said Nick.

"I'm harking, my gun."

"It does sound like an automobile, sure enough," said Nick.

"Didn't I tell you that we are waiting for one. Come on."

He leaped the fence, and Nick followed him over; then they climbed the grade, and paused beside the track.

And then, while they stood there, and the droning sound peculiar to automobiles came momentarily nearer and nearer, the detective began thoroughly to realize for the fist time that something really serious was afoot for the night.

But he was not long left in doubt as to the character of the approaching vehicle, for in a moment more it swept around a curve in the railroad, and came to a stop immediately in front of them.

And, strangely enough, it was an automobile arrangement, only that it was equipped with car wheels instead of with rubber tires; wheels that had flanges to fit the tracks. But it was provided with a gasoline engine, and Nick knew from the appearance of the apparatus that it was capable of great speed.

When it came to a stop Nick saw that it already contained two men, one of whom was driving; but he got down from the seat under the steering wheel, and climbed into the rear of the machine, while Handsome took his place.

"New man; Dago for a handle," said Handsome briefly, by way of introducing Nick to the others. What their names might be he evidently did not deem it important to mention.

"Try-out?" asked one of the men, while Nick was climbing into the box of the machine.

Handsome nodded curtly – and that was all that was said at the moment.

It was significant, however, to Nick, for it meant a lot. It meant that these other men entirely comprehended the situation, and that all three of them were prepared to shoot him in the back at any moment when his conduct of the business in hand did not entirely satisfy them.

But Nick was resolved not to be shot in the back that night. Whatever the business might prove to be upon which they were engaged, he was resolved to see it through to a finish, even to the extent of helping them burglarize a bank, if that was the lay.

"To do a great right, do a little wrong," he muttered to himself. Whatever might be stolen or whatever damage might be done that night, he would charge up in his expenses, and see to it that the railroad people made it good later on, when his work should be done.

In the meantime the railroad automobile had been gathering speed, and now it seemed to Nick to be little less than wonderful that it remained on the tracks at all, for if he was any judge of speed, he knew that they must be flying along at much more than a mile a minute – and he wondered what would happen if the headlight of a locomotive should loom suddenly before them – and then, just as the thought occurred to him, they rounded a short curve, and came to a sudden stop.