"I’d love to, Carter!" he cried, under his breath. "I’d love to press the trigger and perforate your cursed skin with a bullet. But the risk is too great. I might be heard, intercepted in my flight, and perhaps railroaded to the chair. There will be a safer time and place. I will wait for it, watch for it, and there then will be no hesitation. I will kill you, Carter, for what you have done to me. As sure as God hears me--I will kill you." "God may intervene and----” "Remember!" The fierce, malevolent face, pressed for a last moment to the grille door, vanished instantly, and the vengeful knave was gone. Nick Carter heard his swiftly receding steps on the pavements. It was the only sound that broke the night silence in that locality. It died away so quickly, too, that it had seemed hardly perceptible. Nick seized the grille door and tried to open it--tried vainly. It withstood his utmost efforts. CHAPTER II. PARTNERS IN CRIME. Nick Carter was not disturbed in the least degree by the threats of Gaston Goulard. He had been threatened too frequently by crooks to pay any attention to their sinister predictions. They had no weight with the detective, therefore, those of this whilom merchant who had wrecked the big department store in which he had been a partner, and who then had gone deeper into the criminal mire, mingling with crooks and gangsters, resulting in a murder for which he now was wanted by the police, whom he had eluded less than a month before in the manner described. Aside from his surprise at beholding Goulard alive, the entire incident would have had no great weight with Nick Carter, in fact, except for one reason--the extraordinary episodes that immediately followed. These alone, with their far-reaching results and because they exhibited from the first the remarkable discernment and versatility of the celebrated detective, made this night a noteworthy one in the record of his professional work. Finding that immediate escape from under the stone steps was impossible, and that he could not at once pursue Goulard, Nick proceeded more deliberately to seek means to liberate himself. He knew that he could not have been overheard by any person in the house, having spoken only in whispers, while hardly a sound had been made that would have been audible ten feet away. "The rascal must have been watching me, as he said, and contrived to intercept me in front of this house, probably having learned that this grille door was open, also that it could be quickly and securely locked. Securely locked, by Jove, is right!" Nick had taken out his electric searchlight and was inspecting the grille door. He found that it had a strong Yale lock, to pick which was out of the question. It looked, in fact, as if it would be utterly impossible to open the door without a key.