The House of Fear: Nick Carter's Counterstroke

I say, shir! Can you let me have a match? "I think so." The last speaker was Nick Carter, the famous detective. The first was an erect, well-built, fashionably clad man, apparently in the forties and somewhat the worse for liquor. His crush hat had a rakish cant. His Inverness hung awry over his shoulders. His cravat had a disorderly twist, and his brown, Vandyke beard had lost its carefully combed appearance. Nick Carter sized him up as a society man who had been on the bat, and who was returning home on foot to walk off the effects of it. His appearance and the hour seemed to warrant this conclusion, for it was two o'clock in the morning. Nick was rather roughly clad. His strong, clean-cut face was so artistically treated with grease paint as to effectively disguise him and give him a decidedly sinister aspect. He had spent most of the night in searching for a crook, on whom he very much wanted to lay his hands, but his efforts had been futile, and he was returning to his residence in Madison Avenue. He had turned a corner of Fifth Avenue only a few moments before, when he saw the stranger approaching, walking a bit unsteadily, and then the only person to be seen in the fashionable street. Nick saw him fishing out a cigar and vainly searching in his pockets for a match, and he was not surprised when the man stopped him with the above request, straightening up with a manifest effort and trying to speak distinctly. "Much obliged, sir," said he, when Nick reached into his pocket after his match box. "Will you smoke, I've got anozzer." "No, none for me, thank you," said Nick. "I" "Don't thank me. Do what I tell you, instead, and do it quick. Hands up!" The stranger had undergone a lightninglike change. He no longer appeared intoxicated. His every nerve and muscle seemed to have become as tense as a bowstring. His eyes were clear, aglow like balls of fire, and his voice had turned as hard as nails. His right hand, with which he had pretended to reach into his pocket for another cigar, whipped out an automatic revolver, into the deadly muzzle of which the detective suddenly found himself gazing. Nick Carter had been up against like situations before, and it did not disturb him. "What are you really going to do with that toy?" he asked coolly, sharply scrutinizing the holdup man to fix his face in his mind. "Hands up, or you'll never repeat that question," said the other, hissing the threatening words between his teeth. "Up with them, or you'll be a dead one." His eyes had a gleam and glitter that no sane man would have ignored. They spelled murder in capital letters, and Nick obeyed and raised his hands as high as his shoulders. "Now, back down those steps," commanded his assailant. "Keep going till I tell you to stop. Back under the steps. Hands up, mind you, or you'll be found dead there in the morning." The steps referred to were those of a handsome brownstone residence occupied by a wealthy Wall Street banker and broker, Mr. Gideon Buckley. They led up from the sidewalk to the vestibule of the front door, while under them was a door leading into the basement hall of the house. This was accessible by descending two low steps and turning into the area under the main rise of steps, the entrance to which area was protected with an iron-grille door, then wide open. Nick obeyed his assailanthe had no sane alternative. He backed down the two low steps and into the gloomy area under the main flight, and the holdup man quickly closed the grille door and the spring lock clicked audibly, confining the detective under the rise of front steps. The holdup man laughedbut not for an instant did his deadly weapon deviate from a direct line from the detective's breast. He still kept him constantly covered through the grille door, through which he gazed at him with gleaming eyes, as one might have viewed a lion in a steel cage.

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