But it was easily understood by his two assistants that they were to hold the stairs at all hazards, even before Nick called down to Bonesy that the crowd must not come up.
“I’m with you, Mr. Carter!” was Billings’ reply. “I wouldn’t care if Howard Milmarsh came and stood at the top of them stairs now; I would take your word, even agin’ my own eyesight.”
The detective smiled. The loyalty of this burly truckman—who had seen how he was willing to risk his life to save a girl and her father from a fire, and who therefore respected him from the bottom of his heart—touched him.
“I will explain to you later, Billings,” he said, as he thrust one man back by sheer strength, and then lifted another to throw him on top of the now frantic mob which was storming the staircase.
For five minutes Billings, Carter, Chick, and Patsy kept the crowd back. Some blows were struck, but not many, considering how many persons were in the fray. The truth was that Nick abstained from hitting anybody unless he were forced into it, while his assistants, taking their cue from him, also used their strength instead of fighting the frenzied invaders.
Bonesy Billings was as unwilling to strike as were the detectives. These men whom he was now striving to push out of the house were his friends. But a short time before he had been helping them to batter down the doors to the house. It would have been hard indeed if he had felt obliged to employ his tremendous fists against them now.
His faith in Nick Carter was so great that he had resolved to end the siege, but he did not feel any the better disposed toward Howard Milmarsh or the two men who had been with him at the back of the Paradise City enterprise.
When he had kept his tacit pledge to the great detective and cleared the house, then he would return to know what it all meant.
That was exactly what he did. In due time, by alternate threats and persuasions, plus considerable physical force, he put the last of the mob on the porch outside, and saw them headed for the railroad station, three miles away.
“Wait there for me,” were his parting words. “I’ll be your delegate, and you shall hear all that I find out here. Mr. Carter is on our side, and he is going to see that we have justice.”