“That is just the proof I have been looking for,” said Nick. “My friend, the chief, would have made way with me last night. It gives me great pleasure to send him to the Tombs on charge of murder.”
The chief of the diamond thieves, who had been so vain and so confident of his own ability only a short time before, now cringed with terror.
“They all had a hand in the affair of the boy,” he shouted. “We passed upon the matter at a full meeting of the local branch of the syndicate. If I go to the electric chair, they go with me.”
“I would go willingly,” said Bernice, “if I could take this devil of a detective with me. You thought yourselves able to outwit him! See what has come to you!”
“At any rate,” said Chick, “the Great Diamond Syndicate tried its best, and at one time I thought we were up against a stiff game. You see,” he added, “all the clues in this case have been supplied by members of the syndicate!”
“Bad management!” shouted Anton. “I knew it all along. I told you what Nick Carter could do, and yet you allowed him to live when you had him bound.”
“I don’t believe that is Nick Carter,” said another. “I waited under Stella’s window to-night and received from her a signal showing that he had been killed.”
“You’re a fool!” shouted Anton. “That signal was given by Nick Carter himself to get rid of you. Your Stella is in the Tombs! Why he wasn’t killed in that room is more than I know!”
“Because,” replied Nick, with a smile, “they waited for the arrival of a man who had the nerve to do the killing, and that man was in the Tombs.”
“This ends the Great Diamond Syndicate,” said Chick.