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.

“She’s done for, poor wretch!” muttered Nick, as he looked at her bloodless face.

He was right.

Senora Cervera had danced her last dance—­a terrible one it was!  She had lapsed into a merciful unconsciousness, from which she never emerged.

Next came Kilgore, and they easily found him.  He lay stretched upon the ground, dead and scorched almost beyond recognition, at the base of the metallic rod through which he had met his fate.

“Lend a hand here,” said Nick.  “We’ll place him with his confederate until we can have them properly removed.”

“So be it,” said Chick, gravely.  “It’s about the last we can do for them, and this nearly ends our work on this job.”

“You’ve got the others?”

“Every man of them.”

“Well done!” nodded Nick, as they raised the lifeless form between them.  “Behold the way of the transgressor.”

“Hark!” exclaimed Patsy.  “There goes the fire alarm.  In three minutes there’ll be a mob about here.”

“Much good the firemen will do,” rejoined Nick.  “That house is doomed, and all that’s in it.”

He was right.  With the passing of the tempest, and the first sign of a star in the eastern sky, all that remained of the house above the diamond plant was a heap of red, smoldering embers, filling the cellar and the secret chamber—­and blotting out, though perhaps not forever, the secret art of that misguided genius, Jean Pylotte, dead with a bullet in his brain, on the floor of Rufus Venner’s hall.

There remains but little to complete the record of this strange and stirring case.

Before morning Nick had lodged Venner and Spotty Dalton in the Tombs, and had Garside arrested at his residence.  The lifeless bodies of their three confederates,—­Cervera having died at dawn—­were taken to the Morgue.

Early the following day, Harry Boyden, the young man arrested for the murder of Mary Barton, was discharged from custody, and hastened to the home of Violet Page, to make her happy with the news of his release and his story of Nick Carter’s extraordinary work.  Both called upon Nick a day or two later, and expressed their gratitude and affection in terms which here need no recital.  Incidentally it may be added that they were married, as planned, the following summer.