A Woman at Bay; Or, A Fiend in Skirts

by Nicholas Carter

"And as for Scar-faced Johnny, well, Johnny is a bad one, too. I ain't making any threats particularly, Madge, but I'm willing to join this organization, or I wouldn't be here, and I want to say now that when you're fixing up the business, and arrange for the signals so that we can summons each other when we want them, I'll do my part to the tune of compound interest; and I guess that'll be about all from me."

The sixth man of the party, who was the next to get upon his feet, had the stamp of prison life all over him. His face bespoke the pallor which is acquired in no other place in the world, and the vicious, shifty, sneaking gleam in his eyes spoke well of the craftiness which is the result of long confinement under the domination of brutal guards and turnkeys.

So recently had he escaped from prison, apparently, that his hair was still cropped short to his skull, and one almost expected when looking at him to see the stripes of prison garb upon him.

"I am Joe Cuthbert," he said slowly, in a tone so low that it could scarcely be heard. "I wouldn't have come here to-night at all if I hadn't been assured on the level that it would be perfectly safe to do so. I don't think there is any one of you in this room except Madge herself who knows me, but you will all hear from me later on as sure as I'm alive and can escape arrest.

"You may have been told since you came here that I have just escaped from prison, or if you haven't been told it, and know how to read, you have probably seen the rewards for my recapture. You will know, too, that I was sent up for croaking another chap, or, as they call it in the courts, for murder. I want you all to know that I served eight years. Eight years of hell, and that I've come out of there with the determination of getting square with the man that sent me up. That man was Nick Carter; and that's all I've got to say."

There was a moment of utter silence after this announcement, which had in it many of the elements of the dramatic.

There was not a person in that room who had not seen the inside of a prison, and many of them had served as many as four years, while others had been in prison many times for short terms.

But to have just escaped from prison after having been confined for eight long years seemed to them the climax of the possibilities of hatred.

But the moment passed, and Madge fixed her eyes upon the seventh of the group, who slowly rose to his feet and said:

"After what we've just heard, Madge, it doesn't seem that anything that I can say can add to the intensity of feeling that pervades this distinguished assembly. I regard it as quite an honor to be among those who know so well how to hate. As for me, I have also been inside a prison, to which this man Nick Carter sent me. I had been mixed up in a little diamond robbery from one of the big firms in this town. I don't know but maybe some of you heard about it; it was called the taking of the pear-shaped diamonds, and at the time that happened I was in love with a very beautiful girl, and was outwardly leading a very respectable life. It's enough for me to say now that when the exposure that followed Nick Carter's investigation of that case, and through it the exposure of all my previous criminal record, which before that time I had been able to conceal, the girl went back on me, and would have nothing more to do with me. Now she is married to another man, and while I don't blame her any, I do blame the man that exposed me, and if any of you people that are gathered here can help me in getting square with him I'll be eternally grateful. My name is Eugene Maxwell."