Then, with a lightning like move, made as if to catch the hat before it could fall to the ground, he threw himself across the detective’s body, confining his arms to his sides.
At that moment Vic Clayton had risen up in the car, standing directly behind Nick.
“Now!” yelled Badger, with terrible ferocity.
There was no need for the command.
Already the uplifted hand of the fortune-teller was descending; a hand fiercely gripping a clubbed revolver, and thrice the butt of the heavy weapon fell squarely upon Nick Carter’s unprotected head.
The tragic episode had been enacted in the fraction of a second, before Nick could realize the design, much less prevent it, and a single blow delivered as the three had been would well-nigh have felled an ox.
Without so much as a groan, with every muscle suddenly relaxing, Nick dropped inert and senseless upon the floor of the car, his hair and brow turned crimson by a swift gush of blood.
In an instant Badger was out upon the ground.
“Take my seat, Claudia,” he hurriedly cried to his wife. “Lend me a hand here, Vic, and we’ll throw him in behind. I’ll bind him hand and foot after we start again. There, there, that will do! Now around with the car, Claudia, and drive for home as if the devil followed us!”