“That sent Gaston Todd to his death!” snapped Carter. “I knew it from the first and wanted only the man.”
“You know too much!” Devoll fiercely repeated. “Ho, Shannon, come out here! Bring a rope and bind him from behind. Lend him a hand, Tim, and be quick about it! I’ll end him as I ended——”
What more the frantic man would have said was cut short by the heavy tread of many hurrying feet.
Jim Shannon had thrown open the door of a closet, on the floor of which Patsy Garvan then was lying, gagged and securely bound, and the burly ruffian, who had hurried from the hospital after planning with Devoll this capture of the detective, rushed out with a rope in each hand, while Tim Hurst darted nearer and seized Nick from behind.
Mingled with all this, however, was the rush of other feet, those of Chick and the policemen, together with the threatening cries of the former, as they rushed with weapons drawn upon the startled crooks.
But the thunder of one weapon drowned all other sounds—again the last resort.
Doctor Devoll, with his glaring eyes half starting from his head, hesitated only for an instant. There leaped up in his frenzied brain a vision of the electric chair. With a quick turn of his wrist, he thrust the revolver into his mouth and pulled the trigger. Then he pitched forward, hands in the air—a corpse when he hit the floor.
There was little to it after that, and but little remains to be said. Shannon and Hurst were easily overcome, and soon were lodged with Toby Monk in the city prison, the first step toward the punishment they righteously deserved.
Patsy Garvan was speedily liberated, none the worse for his experience, and only his statements were needed, if at all, to make a complete and perfect case against the singular criminal who had ended his evil career with his own hand.
Mrs. Thurlow’s rope of pearls was found in a jar in the laboratory. Nick Carter returned it to her that afternoon, and told her how and why Dorson had figured in the theft. Because of his kinship, however, she refused to prosecute the scamp, and the detective did not insist upon it.