The hammer of his weapon fell as usual, but there was no report. In his recent fight at the Venner house he had emptied both of his revolvers, save the one bullet that had just missed Nick Carter.

Then Kilgore, failing to have found Nick at his mercy, thought only of making his own escape. He turned and ran toward the open door by which he had entered.

At that moment Chick's ringing voice sounded from outside.

"This way! this way, Patsy!" he cried, louder than the rolling thunder overhead. "I've found the rat hole!"

"I'm with you," yelled Patsy.

They were already at the door.

By the frequent flashes of lightning they had, after the fight at Venner's, succeeded in following Kilgore across the meadows, and they well knew that he was headed to get even with Nick.

Now Nick's voice rang through the cellar.

"Look out for him, Chick," he commanded. "He's coming that way. Look out for his gun."

"Hurrah!" roared Chick, the moment he heard Nick's voice. "Let him come, gun and all!"

Kilgore saw his flight cut off in that direction, but he knew every inch of the house. He turned like a rat in the darkness, and made for the stairs leading to the floor above. Up these he hurriedly scrambled.

Nick heard him through the gloom, and followed him, pitching headlong at the foot of the stairs just as Kilgore opened the door leading to the hall above.

There the dim rays from a hall lamp revealed the man for an instant, and showed Nick the way. He was up again and after Kilgore like a hound after a fox.

Kilgore dashed through the hall, but dared not take time to unlock and open the front door of the house. He had a profound respect for the revolver in the hand of his pursuer, who already had reached the hall.

It was a flight for life, and Kilgore knew it.

He turned like a flash and darted up the stairs, making for the second floor. Three at a stride he covered, and succeeded in reaching the corridor above before Nick could get a line on him.

Nick followed, gun in hand.

On the second floor Kilgore darted into a dark chamber, and then through that to one adjoining it, where he waited till he heard Nick plunging into the one first mentioned.

Then Kilgore slipped out into the hall again, hoping to retrace his steps downstairs and escape by the front door.

In the way of that, however, Chick and Patsy were now in the lower hall, the former shouting l.u.s.tily up the stairs:

"Run him down, Nick! Run him down! We'll cover this way of escape!"

An involuntary oath broke from Kilgore's lips, and at the same moment a vivid flash of lightning from the inky heavens illumined all the house.

From the chamber in which he stood, Nick again caught sight of his man, and was after him in an instant.

Kilgore heard him coming, and again fled through the hall and up another flight of stairs.

"You'd better throw up your hands," roared Nick, as he followed.

The answer came back with a yell of defiance:

"Not on your life!"

"You're a lost dog," cried Nick, hoping to keep him replying.

"You'll not get me alive!"

"Then I'll get you dead!" cried Nick, as he mounted the stairs.

"You haven't got me yet!"

"Next door to it, my man."

This brought no answer.

In a moment Nick reached the second hall, where he briefly paused to listen. Save the rain beating on the roof of the house, only one sound reached his strained ears. It was like that of some one hammering against the side of the house with some heavy object. For a moment the detective was puzzled. He could not fathom the meaning of such a sound.

Then a gust of damp night air rushed through the hall and swept Nick's cheek.

"Ah! an open window!" he muttered. "That's easily located."

He groped his way into one of the rear chambers. There the night air was sweeping in through an open window, to the sill of which Nick quickly sprang.

Now the noise he had heard was instantly explained.

Cornered like a rat, yet viciously resolute to the last, Kilgore had, in order to make his escape, resorted to a means from which a less cool and nervy scoundrel would have shrunk on such a night as that.

He had, by reaching far out of the window, been able to grasp an old-fashioned lightning rod with which the ancient wooden mansion was provided, and by which he proposed to descend to the ground. Under the swindler's weight, the beating of this swaying rod against the side of the house was the sound Nick had heard.

Kilgore, whose courage was worthy a far better cause, already was halfway to the ground.

Yet Nick had no idea of letting the knave escape thus, and he raised his weapon to fire.

There was no need for a bullet, however, for the hand of the Almighty did the work.

From the black vault of the heavens a bolt of liquid fire suddenly shot earthward, with a crash of thunder that seemed to rend the entire firmament.

The fiery bolt reached the earth--but it reached it through the rod to which Dave Kilgore was desperately clinging.

Not a sound came from the doomed man as he went down--or if there was a sound, it was drowned by the deafening crash and successive reverberations of thunder.

Before Nick had fairly recovered from the blinding light and terrific concussion, he heard the voice of Chick yelling loudly from below:

"Nick, Nick, come down here! The house is afire. The whole house is afire!"

Nick heard and darted for the stairs, at once realizing how well the lightning had done its terrific work. Before he could reach the lower hall, dense volumes of smoke were pouring through the house, and one entire side of the fated dwelling was in flames.

Nick thought of the woman in the cellar below, and, with Chick and Patsy at his heels, he led the way to the diamond plant. The electric light had been extinguished by the lightning stroke, but Nick soon located the body of Cervera, and together the detectives brought her out and laid her upon the ground some rods away from the burning dwelling.