But they were no sooner inside the house with the door closed than Nick wheeled in his tracks, and grasped Mike by the throat, and then struck him with his fist over the temple. The result was that Cremation Mike sank to the floor without a sound, and was speedily bound and gagged.
"That's one," said the detective grimly. "There are a good many more, Patsy."
"Do you expect to get them all, one by one, in that way?" asked Patsy. "It will take a week to do that."
"No; I have a better plan than that. Wait."
Nick knew of Madge's fondness for trapdoors, and also that she always kept a large supply of liquors on hand with which sometimes she treated her men, or some of them. He had no doubt that somewhere in that cabin he would not only find the liquors he wanted, but also drugs.
There was a trapdoor in the floor of the largest room in the cabin, and under it was a shallow cellar wherein were several cases of liquors. The robbery of freight cars had always kept the hoboes well supplied with such articles.
"Now, I'm going to make the hoboes a punch," he said to Patsy. He was searching through a cupboard while he spoke, and from there he produced a large bottle of laudanum. "I will have to use this," he continued. "It is the only thing here which will do at all, and as it has an excessively bitter taste, I will have to make a punch in order to conceal it. But it will do the work I want done better and more safely than anything else."
"You'll have to use a washtub for the punch, to make enough for all of them," said Patsy. "And is there enough laudanum?"
"Plenty; and there is a couple of pails. They will do as well as a tub. Now help me. We have lemons, and sugar, and everything that we require, here in this cupboard. But first, let's drop Cremation Mike into the cellar with the cases."
They did that, and replaced the trapdoor; then they sliced lemons—all that they could find; they found a pot of cold tea, and this they dumped into the mess with the laudanum; and upon all this, bottle after bottle of the whisky was poured into the pails until they were filled to the brim.