Chick crept down the stairs and to the open door.
Darling was hurriedly cutting the bonds from Nick and Patsy, at the same time crying in nervous, frantic, agonized whispers:
“Enough of this—enough of it! I’m going to confess; going to tell the whole truth. I’ve been a blinded, cursed fool, an infernal madman, crazed with love for an unscrupulous woman. I am Cyrus Darling—Cyrus Darling himself. I’ll tell the whole truth and take my medicine. Come with me, Mr. Carter. Come with me, for God’s sake, and arrest that she-devil and her knavish confederate. Come with me and——”
“Hush!”
Nick calmly interrupted him. He then was free and on his feet, as was Patsy. He saw Chick entering the room, also, and he knew that the case was precisely what he had asserted, that of a man with a lost head, and that the finish was but the work of moments.
Nick waited only to hear Chick’s statement.
Half a minute later, still engaged in discussing their devilish plot, Dacey and Kate Crandall beheld the three detectives and the undisguised man enter the sitting room. Both instantly guessed the truth, and while Dacey weakened perceptibly, only a loud laugh came from the woman.
“Oh, it’s all off, then,” she cried, with mingled disgust and defiance. “You have called the turn on us, Carter, have you?”
“You’ll find that I have,” Nick replied.
“Oh, well, that don’t rattle me any,” Kate sharply asserted. “You have got nothing on us, Carter. I told you I never would lay myself liable. Any man may pretend to commit suicide, if he wants to, and turn all of his fortune into cash. The more fool he, in that case, and he’s the one who must pay the price. You’ve got nothing on us, Carter, and well you know it. Otherwise, you’d have had us in irons by this time.”