“Do? Why, you must not return to your boarding-house. Your change of feeling toward Gay might arouse his suspicions.”
“Then where shall I go?”
“Suppose you stay here as the guest of Mrs. Carter till to-morrow morning?”
Mrs. Lock consented to Nick’s arrangements, and while Mrs. Carter and Ida were making her as comfortable as possible Nick and Chick went out on a little private business.
At exactly midnight the Tombs received another prisoner.
Oscar Gay, looking like a walking corpse, was led into the gloomy prison, and securely locked into a cell in murderer’s row.[{61}]
Next morning he was found dead on his cot.
No one will ever know where he had concealed the poison which ended his miserable life; for Nick and Chick had searched him carefully before they locked him up.
When Redway was released, he made a full explanation.
Nick’s deductions had been almost entirely correct.