He removed his Vandyke beard while speaking, thrusting it into his pocket, and Nick Carter was given an almost incredible surprise.
"Gaston Goulard!" he exclaimed involuntarily. "The dead alive!"
Nick recognized him now. There was no mistaking his hard-featured, white face, its sinister scowl, its expressive cruelty. To have seen a ghost, however, would not have been more amazing.
For Nick last had seen this man less than a month before, when cornered with the notorious Badger gang of crooks in an old lime loft leased by one of their num[Pg 5]ber, to which the detective’s assistants had traced Nick and the criminals—Nick last had seen him plunge bodily through one of the windows and disappear into the swirling waters of the East River.
Though a sharp watch had been kept by Patsy Garvan, moreover, who also had seen the rascal sink from view, Goulard did not reappear on the surface, and there had seemed to be no reasonable doubt that the knave had drowned.
Naturally, therefore, Nick was more than surprised upon seeing his sinister, malevolent face again; nor was it strange that, supposing him dead, he had not penetrated his exceedingly clever disguise, or recognized his evil voice.
It fell again upon the detective’s ears, echoing his last impulsive remark.
"The dead alive—yes!" Goulard hissed triumphantly. "I fooled you, balked you, eluded you, Carter, and I finally will send you to the devil, where you supposed you had sent me. But the devil serves his own at times, and that was one of them. He gave me a new lease of life—that I might finally take yours. But not to-night, Carter, not to-night!"
"That’s very considerate, Goulard, I’m sure," Nick coldly retorted. "Watch out that I don’t put the boot on the other leg and place you where you belong."
"Bah!" Goulard ejaculated, under his breath. "You have no chance of that, not even a look in. You know not where to find me, yet for the past month I have been under your very eyes. I can put my finger on you, too, any hour of the day, Carter—and I shall always have a bullet in reserve for you."