“At him!” snarled the ruffian, even while he kicked.  “At him, I say!  Quick—­the pear!”

It was plain that these men were not doing such desperate work together for the first time.  Both fell upon Nick like wolves upon a stricken elk, yet they found the detective waiting for them.

Nick hurled one aside, unable to use his revolver, and grappled with the second, both falling heavily to the pavement.

Then number one was at him again, and got him by the throat, with a grip from which Nick thrice wrenched himself free, at the same time fiercely banging the head of the other upon the stones upon which the terrific combat was being waged.

An oath of vicious rage broke from the latter, and then he fiercely cried again: 

“The pear!  D——­ you, be quick!  The pear!—­the pear!”

As if in response to this, Nick, who was panting under his violent efforts to overcome both powerful men, suddenly felt something thrust forcibly into his mouth.

Still manfully battling with his opponents, Nick tried to eject the object, opening his jaws wider in the effort.

The object, which was shaped like a solid pear, instantly expanded, and Nick could not close his jaws.

Again he tried, opening them still wider, and again the pear-shaped object expanded and held them rigid.

Then Nick guessed the truth.

While struggling with might and main to beat these ruffians, he had been made the victim of an infernal instrument but seldom seen in these days, and one of the most agonizing and diabolical devices of man’s perverted ingenuity.

The object in Nick’s mouth was a “choke pear!”

This vicious instrument of torture dates back to the time of Palioly, the notorious French robber and renegade, when it was very worthily called “the pear of anguish.”

It consists of a solid gag, so to speak, yet it is so constructed, with interior springs, that, once thrust into a person’s mouth, it expands as fast as the mouth is opened, and rigidly distends the victim’s jaws.

The more widely the victim gapes to eject the “choke pear,” or to cry out for aid, the larger the hideous object becomes, until torture, suffocation and death speedily ensue.

Had this infernal device been generally available to modern criminals, Nick would have been warned by the significant words he had heard, and would have guarded himself against it.

As it was, however, he had been caught; and in the mouth of any ordinary man the “choke pear” would have been irresistible.

But the muscles of Nick Carter’s jaws were like fibers of steel, and the instant he realized his situation he opened his mouth no wider.  Instead, while hands and arms were still engaged in the furious conflict with his assailants, he brought his jaws together as if with superhuman power, and with a force that crushed the infernal device between them, much as if it had been little more than an eggshell.