“Cut it, you fellows! Hands up, and——”
His voice was drowned by the crack of a revolver in the hand of the only man who ventured any resistance—that of Bart Bailey.
The rascal had crouched quickly back of Goulard, and had escaped Nick’s immediate notice.
The bullet tore a hole in the detective’s sleeve and inflicted a slight wound in Doyle’s left shoulder.
Goulard sprang aside instinctively.
Bart Bailey was raising his weapon to fire again.
Nick’s barked on the instant, and the bullet went true.
Bailey pitched forward on his face in the narrow entry, dead before he hit the floor.
There were curses and imprecations, but no further resistance, and the three remaining crooks were speedily handcuffed and started for the Tombs, the initiatory step in the retributive path. Meyers was arrested in Philadelphia half an hour later, and the round-up was complete.
The details of the crime, as they afterward appeared, were very nearly in line with which Nick Carter had been led to suspect. It was learned later that Goulard long had been hopelessly under water financially, having vast secret commitments in the stock market, and he confessed to having taken this method to rob his partner and repair his wasted fortune. He had gone far enough to nearly[{41}] wreck the business, as a matter of fact, and the firm went out of existence a little later.