“Stop—stop! You have said enough,” Madison interrupted, with a groan. “I will tell you, Carter, I will confess the whole truth. I am in wrong, horribly wrong, but I will tell you all. I will——”
An oath interrupted him—an oath and a blow.
Both came from a man who had stealthily approached the house, peered in through the window, stolen in through the open conservatory, all so noiselessly that he had reached the alcove unheard—and from which he leaped, and, with a single bound, reached the unsuspecting detective.
A blackjack in his uplifted hand fell like a flash, fell squarely on the detective’s head, meeting it with a single sickening thud.
And Nick Carter pitched forward and rolled out of his chair, crashing to the floor, as dead to the world as if he had been felled by a thunderbolt.
His assailant was Mortimer Deland.
CHAPTER VIII.
DRIVEN TO THE WALL.
John Madison had sprung to his feet, uttering a cry, vainly attempting to prevent the lightninglike assault. But it had been made so quickly and with such vicious determination that Nick himself had received not the slightest warning of the terrible blow.
“Good heavens! What have you done? You have killed him!” gasped Madison, when the detective fell insensible to the floor.
Deland turned on him like a flash, with features dis[Pg 32]torted and murder in his eyes. He whipped out a revolver and thrust its muzzle against the lawyer’s burly form.