*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 68094 ***

                              NICK CARTER
                                STORIES

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   =No. 149.=      NEW YORK, July 17, 1915.      =Price Five Cents.=




                          A NETWORK OF CRIME;

                  Or, NICK CARTER’S TANGLED SKEIN.

                     Edited by CHICKERING CARTER.




CHAPTER I.

A DOUBLE MURDER.


“Hello! hello! This is Frank Mantell talking. I want Mr. Carter--Nick
Carter. Is he there?”

Patsy Garvan, the detective’s junior assistant, then alone in the
library of Nick’s Madison Avenue residence, was the recipient of the
above telephone communication. It came over the wire in tones reflecting
the haste and excitement of the speaker.

Patsy remembered him, a son of the senior partner of the firm of Mantell
& Goulard, whose big department store in Sixth Avenue had recently been
wrecked by a long series of mysterious robberies committed by the junior
partner, Gaston Goulard, resulting in a round-up of the criminal and his
confederates by Nick and his assistants, all of which had transpired
several months before.

“No,” Patsy replied. “Nick Carter is not here. He is out on a case.”

“Is Chick Carter there?” Mantell then hurriedly asked, referring to the
detective’s chief assistant.

“He is not, Mr. Mantell. This is Garvan talking.”

“Ah, yes, Patsy--I remember,” was the reply. “When will Nick return?”

“I don’t know. He went with Chick about an hour ago to investigate a big
murder case in Manhattanville. He may not return until evening.”

“Dear me, I’m sorry to hear that. I am very anxious to see him.”

“On business?”

“Yes. Very important business. There is half a million dollars
involved.”

“Great Scott! Can I be of any help to you?”

“Not unless you can enable me to see Nick himself. Time is very
valuable.”

“I can do that, perhaps,” said Patsy. “I can learn from police
headquarters just where he has gone. You can go there and see him,
or--where are you phoning from, Mr. Mantell?”

“From the office of Gray’s wharf, East River. I cannot explain by
telephone. If----”

“One moment,” Patsy interrupted. “Have you a taxi?”

“I have my touring car.”

“Good enough! Join me here as quickly as possible. I’ll find out in the
meantime where Nick is engaged. We’ll go there and see him.”

“Thanks, Garvan, a thousand times. I’ll be with you in ten minutes.”

It then was about ten o’clock in the morning. One hour earlier,
complying with an urgent telephone request from the police headquarters,
Nick Carter and Chick arrived in the detective’s touring car at a
dwelling in one of the outskirts of Manhattanville, the scene of a
shocking crime evidently committed the previous night.

It was an attractive wooden house somewhat back from the street and
occupying a corner lot.

It was in a quiet and entirely reputable locality, though somewhat
thinly settled, and it was about the last neighborhood in which such a
crime would have been expected.

More than a score of people had collected on the opposite side of the
street, and were viewing the house with feelings of morbid curiosity.
They were prevented from coming nearer, however, or encroaching upon the
surrounding grounds, by policemen who had been stationed on both the
front and side gates.

A police sergeant who was standing with an elderly man on the front
veranda recognized the two detectives when the touring car stopped at
the house, and he beckoned for them to enter that way.

“We have been waiting for you, Mr. Carter,” he said respectfully, when
Nick came up the gravel walk with Chick. “This is Doctor Boyden, who
lives in the third house from here. I sent for him a few minutes ago,
thinking you might want his opinion as to the length of time the two men
have been dead, as well as any other information he can give you.”

“There certainly is a deep mystery here, aside from the shocking crime,
Mr. Carter, judging from the appearance of things in the house,” said
the physician, after shaking hands with both detectives. “It looks like
a veritable slaughter pen. There must have been an awful fight here.”

“Come in, Mr. Carter, and see for yourself,” added the sergeant.

“One moment, Kennedy,” said Nick, detaining him. “Who lives in the
house? I see that the name plate has been removed from the door.”

“I can answer that question for you better than Sergeant Kennedy,
perhaps,” put in Doctor Boyden.

“If you please, then.”

“The house is owned by Mr. George Roland, who occupied it with his wife
until about a month ago. She died quite suddenly at that time, and
Roland since has been living with a married sister in Harlem.”

“Leaving this house vacant?”

“Yes. He owns it and the furnishings, however, and it has been in the
market to rent. I noticed yesterday that the broker’s placard had been
removed from the front window, and I inferred that the house had been
rented.”

“Are you acquainted with Roland?” Nick inquired.

“Yes, indeed, very well acquainted.”

“Is he a man of good character?”

“Excellent. I consider him incapable of crime.”

“Do you know anything about the new tenants, or whether this furnished
house has really been rented?”

“I think it has, sir,” said Sergeant Kennedy. “I used the telephone in
the next house, Mr. Carter, and talked with the broker, Mr. Gibson.”

“What did you learn?”

“He stated that he showed the house day before yesterday to a couple who
claimed to be Mr. and Mrs. Charles Greenleaf, of Brooklyn. They did not
then decide to rent the house, but they called at his office again
yesterday afternoon and requested the privilege of taking the key until
this morning, stating that they wanted to show the dwelling to a
relative who lives with them, and whose business would prevent him from
visiting the house except in the evening. Gibson was favorably impressed
with the couple. He let the man have the key, with an understanding that
it would be returned to-day, and----”

“And the rascals got in their work,” Nick interrupted, with some
dryness. “This looks very much as if the furnished house was craftily
obtained only in order to pull off a knavish job of some kind.”

“Surely,” said Chick, with a nod. “That’s just about the size of it.”

“The job was pulled off, all right,” replied the sergeant. “Come in, Mr.
Carter, and see for yourself.”

“Presently.” Nick still detained him. “I first want to learn what is
known about the crime. Who discovered it?”

“A milkman who called at the house in the rear of this one about an hour
ago,” said Kennedy. “He saw an old slouch hat in the back yard, near the
fence that divides the two lots. He went and picked it up and found
fresh spots of blood on it.”

“And then?”

“Looking over the rear fence, he then saw that the back door of this
house was wide open,” Kennedy continued. “He could see no one, however,
and knew that the house had not been occupied for a month. He then
suspected there was something wrong, and he decided to look into the
matter.”

“What did he do?” questioned Nick.

“He vaulted the fence and entered the back door. That is as far as he
went. It’s as far as most men would have gone. When he saw the corpse on
the kitchen floor--well, he dropped the hat and bolted.”

“Bolted where?”

“Luckily, Mr. Carter, he ran nearly into the arms of Policeman Brady,
who is on this beat in the morning,” said Kennedy. “He told him what he
had seen, and Brady returned with him to the house. He saw at a glance
that a double murder had been committed, and he then notified the
precinct station.”

“That was about an hour ago.”

“Yes. I was sent here with other officers, but was told to let things
alone until you arrived, as headquarters had requested you to take on
the case. That’s all there is to it.”

“You mean, Kennedy, that that’s the beginning of it,” said Nick. “To
learn what there really is to it may tax the discernment of the best of
us.”

“That’s true, Mr. Carter, after all,” Kennedy readily allowed.

“Have you inquired at the neighboring houses?”

“Yes, sir. Only a woman living opposite can supply any information.”

“What is that?”

“She saw two men and a woman, presumably Gibson and the couple
mentioned, entering the house day before yesterday,” Kennedy proceeded
to report. “Something like an hour after dark yesterday, or about seven
o’clock in the evening, the same woman was seated at her front window
waiting for her husband to come home to supper. She saw two men entering
this house, and a moment later she saw the reflection of a light in the
dining room.”

“In any other rooms?”

“No, sir. Nor could she tell me anything more, for her husband came in
just then and she went to supper with him.”

Nick glanced toward the street.

“There is an arc light on the corner,” he observed. “I suppose, since it
was evening, that the electric light enabled her to see the two men.”

“Yes, sir. I asked her about that.”

“Did you ask her for a description of them?”

“I did, sir,” Kennedy nodded. “She said that one appeared to be a man of
middle age and was very well dressed. She also noticed that he wore a
full beard.”

“Possibly a disguise.”

“The other looked a bit rough, she said, and wore a gray slouch hat, the
same that the milkman found in the next yard this morning,” said
Kennedy. “I sent an officer over to show it to her, and she readily
identified it.”

“Anything more?” queried Nick.

“She told me he carried a suit case, also, and she judged that he had
come from a distance. She noticed that the suit case appeared to be old
and battered and that one of the straps was dangling, corresponding with
the general appearance of the man himself. That was all she could tell
me.”

“Was any disturbance heard last evening by people in the neighboring
houses?” Nick asked.

“No, sir,” said Kennedy. “I have inquired at every house.”

“Did the woman living opposite see from which direction the two men
came?”

“She did. They came around the corner and entered the front door of this
house.”

“I see that you have unlocked it,” Nick remarked, observing that the
door then was ajar. “Have you identified either of the two victims?”

“No, sir. I have not tried, Mr. Carter, as a matter of fact, knowing
that you were on your way here. By their looks----”

“I will size up their looks for myself, Kennedy,” Nick interposed. “Are
things about as you found them?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did Brady disturb anything?”

“No, sir. He has been on the force long enough to know where he is at.”

“Very good.” Nick turned and opened the door. “I’ll have a look at the
scene. Come with me, Chick.”

Chick Carter accompanied him into the house, followed a moment later by
Sergeant Kennedy and the physician.




CHAPTER II.

A PERPLEXING PROBLEM.


Nick Carter had only to enter the hall of the house to see the first
signs of the sanguinary conflict of the previous night.

On the wall opposite the dining-room door were spots and streaks of
blood, great, irregular streaks and smooches, as if drops and splotches
that had spurted upon the wall paper had been rubbed and spread by the
garments of persons engaged in a terrific struggle. A rug near by had
been kicked into a shapeless heap near the baseboard.

Nick merely glanced at these, then paused at the open door of the dining
room, in which the scene was doubly shocking.

The roller shades of both windows had been raised, admitting the morning
sunlight.

One lamp of an electric chandelier still was burning. It looked wan and
yellow in contrast with the bright light from outside.

“Great guns!” Chick Carter muttered, then at Nick’s elbow. “What a scene
of disorder.”

“It’s the limit,” Nick tersely agreed.

“Slaughter pen is right,” added Chick, recalling the remark of the
physician.

The scene was, indeed, a shocking one. The table was out of place.
Broken glasses from the sideboard strewed the floor. Chairs were
overturned and broken. Spots and splashes of blood were everywhere. It
stood in a great, partly dry and congealed pool on the floor between the
table and the hall door--a pool in which the corpse of a murdered man
was lying.

He had fallen upon his back and was lying with face upturned in the
sunlight shed through one of the windows. There was a great bruise under
one eye and a gash in his cheek.

He had been stabbed twice in the breast, and from the second wound
still protruded the weapon used by his assailant, a knife driven home to
the victim’s heart with all the merciless energy of bitter vengefulness,
or utter desperation.

He was a man in middle life and of powerful build, a smooth-shaven man
of dark complexion, close-cut hair, and a hard, somewhat sinister cast
of features.

“Do you know him?” asked Nick, after viewing the scene for several
moments.

“No,” said Chick. “Do you?”

Nick stepped into the room and bent above the corpse. With the tip of
his finger he lifted the dead man’s upper lip, revealing a quantity of
gold bridgework on three of the teeth. He turned the left hand, also,
and found that part of the third finger had been amputated.

“I thought I recognized him,” he remarked, rising and glancing again at
the battered face. “We have his photograph in our album.”

“Who is he?” Chick questioned.

“Cornelius Taggart,” said Nick. “Better known to the police as Connie
Taggart.”

“By Jove, you’re right,” Chick declared, gazing. “I recognize him, now.
Connie Taggart, the yegg and cracksman.”

“He’s the man,” Nick nodded. “He has cracked his last crib and paid the
price. He has been about as bad an egg, Chick, as one often finds in a
basket. Have you examined this body, Doctor Boyden?”

Sergeant Kennedy and the physician had approached as far as the open
door.

“Only superficially,” was the physician’s reply.

“How long would you say he has been dead?”

“Fully twelve hours, Mr. Carter; probably longer.”

“The crime must have been committed last evening, then.”

“Undoubtedly.”

“You raised these roller shades, Kennedy, I infer,” said Nick, glancing
at the sergeant.

“I did, sir.”

“You found the electric lamp burning, of course.”

“Yes, sir. I thought I had better leave it until you arrived. Aside from
the two curtains, Mr. Carter, the room is as Brady found it when he
entered.”

“Very good.”

“There is the hat found in the next yard by the milkman,” Kennedy added,
pointing.

Nick took it from a chair on which it had been tossed and began to
examine it.

It was of gray felt, much worn and defaced with grease and dirt. A
twisted cord encircled it, with two small silk tassels, or the frayed
remnants of them. There were two round holes through the crown, on
opposite sides of it.

Nick noted the size and examined the greasy interior. He found several
short black hairs sticking to the sweat leather. The hat bore no
trade-mark, however, nor any name or initial pointing to the identity of
the owner.

Nevertheless, after a brief inspection, Nick said confidently:

“The owner of this hat is a Mexican. It is like those worn by some of
the Mexican troopers. He has done military service, too, as appears in
these two holes through the crown. They are bullet holes.”

“Could they have been made last night?” asked Chick.

“No. The edge of the felt around them is much soiled, which would be
comparatively clean if they were so recently made.”

“I see.”

“A bullet passed through the man’s hat in a battle, or some sort of a
skirmish,” Nick added. “He is a man of middle size, I judge, with dark
complexion and black hair.”

“That answers the description the woman living opposite gave me,” put in
Kennedy. “She saw him quite plainly when the two men came around the
corner and entered the house.”

“She stated that his companion wore a beard, I think you said.”

“She did, Mr. Carter, and that he was well dressed.”

“It could not have been this man, then, unless he was in disguise,” said
Nick, glancing at Taggart’s beardless face. “The disguise should be
here, in that case, even though he removed it.”

“I have not seen it,” said Kennedy.

“Nor the suit case brought in by his companion?”

“No, sir. That is not to be found. I have looked through the house.”

“There must have been several men here, Nick, judging from the fight
that came off,” Chick remarked.

“Yes, undoubtedly,” Nick agreed. “I am seeking evidence that might
explain the fight.”

“It must have occurred quite soon after the two men entered.”

“True.”

“Others must have been here when they came in, then, or----”

“One moment,” Nick interposed. “I’ll see what more I can find.”

He crouched again above Taggart’s body and searched his pockets. Aside
from a fully loaded revolver, he found only a few articles of no special
significance, nor any letter or writing whatever, that might otherwise
have shed a ray of light on the mystery.

Nick then removed the weapon from the wound and examined it. It was a
double-edged sheath knife with a blade about six inches long, and with
an elkhorn handle. It bore no mark of any kind, though it evidently had
seen considerable service.

“This undoubtedly belongs to the Mexican,” said Nick, placing it on the
table after inspecting it. “Not one man in ten thousand in these parts
carries such a knife. They’re common in Mexico, however, which further
confirms my theory as to the man’s nationality.”

“I think you’re right,” said Chick. “It looks very much, too, as if he
killed this crook in self-defense.”

“That is my opinion, Chick, at present,” Nick replied, turning toward
the hall. “We will look farther.”

“This way to the kitchen,” said Kennedy. “The other body is there. You
can go that way, if you prefer.”

The sergeant pointed to a closed door between the dining room and the
kitchen, and Nick then turned in that direction.

“Did you find this door closed, Kennedy, or open?” he inquired.

“Closed, sir, just as you see it,” said Kennedy. “But I know it leads
into the kitchen.”

“I judged so.”

“The fight evidently continued from here to the kitchen, but it was
through the hall, not that way,” Kennedy added, as Nick opened the
door.

The scene in the kitchen was equally tragic, though the room was in less
disorder than the other.

A door leading into the rear yard was wide open.

Nearly on the threshold, so near that one foot touched it, though his
head was toward the middle of the room, lay another victim of the fray
of the previous night.

He then was lying on his back, though the body evidently had been turned
over since the fatality, for the pool of blood in which it had lain was
at one side.

The body was that of a man in the twenties, a well-built man in a dark
plaid suit. A woolen cap had fallen from his head. His right arm was
extended, the hand still holding with rigid death grip a loaded
revolver.

He had been shot through the heart.

Both detectives immediately recognized this man, and Chick said quickly:

“By Jove, it’s Batty Lang, Nick, the gangster. He finally has got what
was coming to him.”

Nick bowed without speaking, with his gaze still fixed intently upon the
man on the floor. He was noting his position, the direction in which he
had fallen, the weapon in his extended hand, and the outlook through the
open back door.

Doctor Boyden broke the brief silence.

“You appear to know this man, also, Mr. Carter,” he said gravely.

“Yes, I know him,” Nick now replied. “His name is Bartholomew Lang. He
is an East Side product, and at times has been identified with the
notorious Ben Badger gang. He is more commonly called Batty Lang.”

“Good heavens!” Doctor Boyden exclaimed. “It appears, then, that the
house was filled with crooks and desperadoes last evening.”

“And all here to nail that Mexican, Mr. Carter, if your theory as to his
nationality is correct,” added Kennedy. “He must have put up an awful
fight, if he got the best of them single-handed.”

“I thoroughly agree with you, Kennedy--if that is what he did,” Nick
said, a bit dryly.

“Well, he evidently stabbed Taggart and shot this fellow, Batty Lang, as
you call him,” Kennedy confidently vouchsafed. “He must have got away
with the suit case, too, though he lost his hat in his flight. How else
can you size it up?”

Nick Carter did not inform him. Instead, without replying, he began a
closer inspection of Lang’s body, carefully searching his several
pockets, in none of which he found anything that appeared to bear in any
way upon what had transpired the previous night, or what had led up to
it.

Nick noted the probable direction from which the fatal bullet had been
fired, however, and also that every chamber of the revolver in the
gangster’s rigid hand still contained a cartridge.

“Wait here, Kennedy, both you and Doctor Boyden,” he said, rising after
making these investigations. “I shall return in a few minutes. Come with
me, Chick.”

Nick led the way from the back door with the last, Chick following him.
He then began an inspection of the ground in the rear yard, tracing
numerous footprints to the back fence, over which he vaulted.

There the trail appeared to divide, tracks in the greensward showing
that one or more persons had fled to the left and through the grounds of
an adjoining estate, while others had gone directly through the yard in
the direction of the side street. The distance between the tracks,
which were too faint to be of additional value, showed that all of these
persons were running.

“Follow those leading to the side street, Chick, and see what more you
can learn,” Nick directed, after calling Chick’s attention to them.
“I’ll trace the others and rejoin you out there in a few minutes.”

Nick traced his part of the trail through the adjoining grounds, as far
as a gravel walk leading to the street on which the residence fronted.
There he lost it, though the fleeing men evidently had hurried to the
street, where no further traces of them could be found.

Nick then walked around the corner and rejoined Chick in the side
street.

“Nothing doing, Nick, except these tracks of an automobile which
evidently stood here for some little time last evening,” said Chick,
pointing to the ground near the curbing. “These drippings of oil show
that it remained here for some time. It would have been out of view by
the woman living opposite the vacant dwelling, and it may be that the
Mexican and his companion came here in it.”

“Very possible,” said Nick. “The tire marks indicate that it was a
touring car. It’s about ten to one that the gang which fled this way
departed in it.”

“You speak as if you thought that there was more than one gang,” said
Chick, with a look of surprise.

“That is precisely what I think.”

“For what reason?”

“Several,” said Nick. “Circumstances indicate, to begin with, that the
house was obtained from the broker, Gibson, only in order to turn a
knavish trick on some one. Naturally, if that is true, we must infer
that the Mexican was to be the victim of the job.”

“Surely, since he was brought there and evidently had come from a
distance, possibly all the way from Mexico,” said Chick.

“The evidence in the house shows plainly, however, that four or five men
were there, possibly more,” Nick continued. “A less number could not
have put up such a fight, nor have caused so much destruction, in the
brief time in which it must have occurred.”

“I agree with you.”

“It is obvious, too, that the Mexican could not have licked half a dozen
men single-handed, surely not such desperate men as Connie Taggart and
Batty Lang.”

“Certainly not,” replied Chick decidedly. “They would have downed him
right off the reel.”

“He must have had help, then,” Nick reasoned. “That is why I think there
were two factions in the fight. I mean, of course, two different gangs.”

“Both out to get the Mexican?” questioned Chick.

“I’m not sure about that, though it now appears so,” Nick replied. “What
they were going to gain by getting him is also an open question.”

“Decidedly.”

“Be that as it may, Chick, he evidently stabbed Taggart and undertook to
escape in great haste. Otherwise he would not have left his knife in the
yegg’s breast.”

“Surely not.”

“The stabbing may have precipitated the fight, or have occurred after
the fight began,” Nick proceeded. “There is no way by which that can be
immediately determined. It continued through the hall and into the
kitchen, where Batty Lang was shot. Here, now, is an important point.
It further indicates that there were two gangs in the house.”

“What point is that?” Chick inquired.

“You saw where Lang was lying, with his feet near the open door and his
head toward the middle of the room. He pitched forward on his face when
shot, as the blood on the floor plainly shows.”

“True. That was very evident.”

“The bullet entered his breast, and came from the direction of the hall
door,” Nick went on. “Obviously, then, he was facing the hall, with his
back to the rear door of the house. That position, together with the
fact that he had a revolver in his hand, convinces me that he was
attempting to prevent others, presumably including the person who shot
him, from following others who had fled through the back door, probably
including the Mexican.”

“By Jove, that does appear logical,” said Chick. “That may explain how
the Mexican got away with his suit case.”

“I think I am right, Chick, despite that the case opens up a wide held
for conjectures,” Nick replied. “I did not inform Kennedy and the
physician, however, for we may find it of advantage to keep his theory
to ourselves.”

“Quite likely,” Chick agreed.

“The matter must be sifted to the bottom.”

“I’m with you.”

“We will return to the house, now, and wait until Gibson arrives,” said
Nick. “He can supply us with a clew, perhaps, to the persons who
pretended they wanted to rent the house. He can give us a description of
them, at least.”

“Most likely,” said Chick, as they moved on. “It may be, Nick, that
Taggart and Lang were confederates in a job to get the Mexican, or----”

“I don’t think they were confederates,” Nick interposed.

“Why not?”

“Because I feel sure that Taggart was killed by the Mexican, and his
escape and the evidence that Lang was preventing others from pursuing
him, indicate that Lang was not a confederate of Taggart, but was
opposed to him. No other deduction would be consistent with all of the
circumstances.”

“That’s right, too,” Chick quickly nodded. “I see the point.”

“Lang has been identified at times with the Ben Badger gang,” Nick
added. “Badger is a tough ticket, also that notorious sister of his,
Sadie Badger. They’re the kingpins of about as bad a bunch as can be
found in the East Side.”

“Right again, Nick.”

“I never have heard, however, that Connie Taggart was friendly with
them. If any of them were with Lang last night, we may be able to find
positive evidence of it and to force a squeal from them.
Otherwise--hello!”

Nick broke off abruptly when they turned the corner, and Chick also saw
the occasion for it.

“Goodness!” he exclaimed. “There is Patsy, and--yes, by Jove, it’s Frank
Mantell. What the deuce has sent them here?”

The touring car containing Patsy Garvan and Mantell, driven by the
latter’s chauffeur, had just swerved to the sidewalk near the house in
which the two murders had been committed.




CHAPTER III.

THE MAN FROM MEXICO.


Nick Carter hastened to join Patsy and Frank Mantell, pausing at the
latter’s touring car to learn the occasion for his visit. He had not
long to wait, for Mantell hardly took time to greet him.

“You must throw up this murder case, Nick; you really must, and take on
a matter in which I am desperately interested,” he forcibly insisted.
“More than half a million dollars are at stake. They’re hopelessly lost,
in fact, unless you can trace and recover them. You must drop this case
and----”

“Wait!” Nick interposed, after intently regarding him. “Keep your head.
Who has lost so much money, and when?”

“It’s not money,” Mantell replied, in hurried undertones. “It’s a
collection of old jewels of vast value, which was obtained under most
extraordinary circumstances. I cannot inform you in detail out here,
Nick, where I might be overheard by others. Come with me to my
residence, where----”

“Presently, perhaps,” Nick again interrupted. “Come into this house,
instead, where we can occupy one of the chambers. I then will hear what
you have to say.”

Mantell did not wait for the invitation to be repeated. He sprang out of
the car before it was fairly uttered, then accompanied the detective to
the house, followed by Chick and Patsy.

Nick lingered only to inform Sergeant Kennedy that he had other business
for a few minutes, directing him to take charge of the house while he
was engaged, and he then led his three companions to a front chamber and
closed the door.

“Now, Mantell, out with it as briefly as possible,” said he, when they
were seated. “What is this matter in which you are so desperately
interested?”

He had read in Mantell’s pale face the depths of his anxiety and
distress, and knowing him to have a level head and excellent judgment
and discretion, he reasoned that it must be a matter of extraordinary
importance.

Mantell hastened to obey him.

“It began, Nick, with a letter I received about ten days ago from an old
college chum of mine, Calvin Vandyke, a man able in every way to judge
of what he wrote me,” he said earnestly. “Unfortunately, however, I
haven’t the letter in my pocket. It is in the desk in my library.”

“Well, well, what is it about?” Nick inquired. “Where is Mr. Vandyke?”

“He now is in Mexico City, under so important a contract that he cannot
possibly leave the country for several months.”

“Mexico City, eh?”

Nick shot a swift, furtive glance at Chick, so significant that the
latter suppressed a look of surprise and remained silent.

“Yes,” Mantell quickly nodded. “The letter he wrote me explained all
that, Nick, and why he made me his partner in this matter, giving me an
equal interest with him and the third party involved.”

“Who is the third party?”

“A Mexican named Juan Padillo, recently a soldier in Villa’s forces
during the campaign in northern Mexico. He has deserted, and now is in
this city. That is to say--if he still is in the land of the living. I’m
far from sure of it.”

“Explain,” said Nick. “Why did Juan Padillo become a deserter?”

“Because of a find he made during the sacking of an old monastery in
Chihuahua territory, after the subjection of that section in which it is
located and the flight of most of the inhabitants. Vandyke has quietly
looked up the legal side of the matter, and he finds that the retention
of these spoils of war is entirely legitimate. In other words, Juan
Padillo has a right to retain his prize and dispose of it to the best
advantage.”

“Admitting that, Mantell, what are the other circumstances?” Nick
inquired.

“They may be briefly stated. Padillo made this find in a secret vault,
which he discovered entirely by chance, under a wine cellar in the
monastery. He was the only person in Mexico who knew of his discovery
and that he got away with his plunder, with the single exception of
Calvin Vandyke, with whom Padillo long has had friendly relations, and
to whom he turned for aid and advice.”

“Of what do these spoils of war, as you call them, consist?” Nick
questioned.

“I can give you only an idea, Nick, without referring to Vandyke’s
letter, which describes the articles in detail and estimates their
value,” said Mantell. “They consist of clerical robes and jewels of
great antiquity, which, Vandyke has learned, must have been brought from
Spain as far back as the sixteenth century, and which probably have
since been kept in concealment in the monastery vault.”

“Give me an idea of them.”

“Well, one article is an archbishop’s robe of purple, wrought with a
design in diamonds, emeralds, rubies, and pearls. The gems are mounted
in gold, covering the entire breast of the robe, with a design
consisting of the ancient Spanish coat of arms, the double eagles back
to back, with wings raised and beaks open.”

“I recall it,” Nick nodded.

“There are two gold crowns, also, lavishly mounted with diamonds,
emeralds, and sapphires, the most of which are of unusual size and
corresponding value. In addition to these are other clerical robes of
purple and white silk, all worked with gems the worth of which could
only be roughly estimated. Vandyke places the value of the entire prize,
however, at about six hundred thousand dollars.”

“Gee whiz!” Patsy quietly exclaimed. “That sure was some find.”

“Juan Padillo was much dazzled by it, of course, and scarce knew what to
do,” Mantell earnestly continued. “He did not dare to confide in any of
his countrymen. He determined to take advantage of the prize, however,
and to get out of the country with it.”

“How long ago was that?” Nick inquired.

“Nearly two months. He obtained an old leather suit case, in which he
packed the spoils, and with which he succeeded in reaching Mexico City,
where he at once sought Vandyke and confided in him, offering to share
equally with him in return for his advice and assistance.”

“I see.”

“Vandyke looked into the matter, keeping Padillo concealed in his
residence,” Mantell went on. “He then realized the vast value of the
prize, but being utterly unable to leave the country himself, he
proposed including me in the matter on an equal footing, telling Padillo
that he could come to me and that I would dispose of the gems at their
market value. Padillo eagerly accepted the proposal, knowing that he
would be shot as a deserter, if caught, and that he must lose no time in
getting out of the country.”

“I follow you,” Nick put in.

“Vandyke then smuggled him to Vera Cruz, and finally got him on board a
schooner about to leave for New York, paying his passage and giving him
careful instructions.”

“Namely?”

“He directed him not to leave the vessel after his arrival here until I
called for him, also not to open the suit case until he was safe in my
residence, and to pretend all the while that he was a penniless Mexican
on his way to join relatives in this city.”

“All were wise precautions,” Nick remarked.

“Vandyke then sent me a letter, stating all of these facts and invited
me to coöperate with him,” Mantell continued. “Naturally, with two
hundred thousand dollars in view, I was more than glad to comply. I
wrote Vandyke to that effect, and since have been constantly on the
watch for the arrival of the vessel. She was docked at Gray’s wharf late
yesterday afternoon. But I did not learn of it until I read the shipping
news this morning. I then rushed down to the wharf with my touring car,
only to learn that----”

“That Juan Padillo left the vessel soon after her arrival yesterday and
in company with a man who used your name,” said Nick, interrupting.

“Good heavens!” Mantell exclaimed, with a gasp. “How did you know that?”

“Your anxiety, coupled with the fact that Padillo was to remain on the
vessel until you called for him, admits of no other deductions,” Nick
replied evasively.

“You are right, Carter, perfectly right,” Mantell said, with a groan.
“Padillo left the vessel about six o’clock last evening, taking with him
the suit case containing his plunder.”

“With a man who used your name?”

“Yes.”

“Who informed you?”

“The captain of the vessel.”

“What more could he tell you?”

“Only that Padillo had, as I then could judge, carefully followed the
directions Vandyke had given him. Captain Macy evidently knew nothing
about the contents of the suit case, and he said it was the only piece
of luggage the Mexican had, and that he had taken it ashore. He could
give me only a vague description of the man who called for him, and said
that Padillo appeared relieved and eager to accompany him. They left
from the head of the wharf in a touring car, and----”

“And that’s all you know about them,” Nick again interrupted.

“I admit that, Carter, and that’s why I want your aid,” Mantell said
earnestly. “This man and the suit case must be found. I never can look
Vandyke in the face. Think of it! If----”

“That’s what I am doing,” said Nick, smiling a bit oddly. “Now, Mantell,
answer my questions. I then may do something more than think. Whom have
you told about this matter?”

“Only three persons,” Mantell quickly asserted. “My wife and my parents,
with whom Helen and I have been living since our marriage. You knew, of
course, that I was married eight weeks ago to Helen Bailey, the pretty
telephone girl whom you served so kindly--and who, I may add, thinks so
well of you Carters.”

“Yes, indeed, I know all about that, Mantell, but it’s irrelevant just
now,” smiled Nick. “Did you caution your parents, however, to say
nothing about the matter?”

“I did so most impressively.”

“Do you think they have obeyed you?”

“Yes, positively.”

“Where did you talk with them about it?”

“At home, Nick, in the library.”

“You must have been overheard.”

“I don’t think so.”

“I know so,” Nick insisted. “Either that, Mantell, or the letter sent
you by Vandyke has been read by one of your servants, or by some
outsider. In no other way, if your wife and parents have been silent on
the subject, could the man who lured Juan Padillo from the vessel and
used your name have learned anything about the matter.”

“I confess that I am mystified, Carter, as well as filled with dismay,”
Mantell hopelessly admitted. “You are the only one to whom I can turn.
What can be done? How can----”

“Stop a moment,” Nick interposed, rising abruptly. “There is nothing in
further discussing the case. Return to your car, Mantell, and wait until
I rejoin you. Go with him, Patsy.”

“Which may mean that you will----”

“Look into the matter?” Nick cut in again. “Yes, I will do what I can
for you. Time is of value, moreover, so don’t delay to thank me. Go at
once.”

Patsy led the way, Mantell following, with an expression of great relief
on his refined, attractive face.

“Well, by Jove, that sheds limelight on this murder mystery,” said
Chick, lingering briefly with Nick in the chamber. “This certainly is a
remarkable coincidence.”

“I suspected something of the kind, Chick, when he mentioned the loss of
a vast quantity of jewels,” Nick replied. “That was one reason why I
consented to hear his story.”

“You have no doubt, of course, that the Mexican who was here last
evening was Juan Padillo.”

“Not the slightest.”

“Lured here by crooks who had learned of the circumstances and been
watching for the vessel.”

“Exactly. They were more alert than Mantell, and got in their work ahead
of him.”

“But how do you size up what occurred here?”

“I’m not quite ready to say,” said Nick. “I am going with Mantell to his
residence. You remain here and get what information Gibson can impart.
Have a look in the meantime at the doors and windows of the house. There
may be evidence indicating that it was broken into by some of the
rascals afterward engaged in the fight.”

“I’ll find it, Nick, if there is any,” Chick confidently predicted. “I
see at what you are driving.”

“Have Kennedy summon the coroner, also, and direct him to take the
customary legal steps here,” Nick added. “Say nothing about what we have
learned and suspect, but tell him we will continue our investigations,
and report later.”

“I’ve got you.”

“Having taken those steps, rejoin me at Mantell’s residence as quickly
as possible,” Nick directed. “He lives----”

“I know the house. It’s the mansion built by Mantell, the senior, in
Riverside Drive,” Chick put in. “I will lose no time in following you.”

“I will go with Mantell in his car, leaving Danny to bring you in ours,”
said Nick, as both turned from the chamber. “There must be quick work
done on this case, or, unless I am much mistaken, both Juan Padillo and
his war prize of ancient jewels will go by the board.”

“Quick work, then, is the proper caper,” Chick declared. “I’ll see you a
little later.”

Nick did not reply, but hastened out to the car in which Patsy and Frank
Mantell were waiting.

“To your residence,” he directed, addressing the latter. “Let her go at
top speed, chauffeur. Minutes count.”




CHAPTER IV.

A STARTLING DISCOVERY.


It was nearly noon when the touring car containing Nick Carter and his
companions sped up the broad driveway and stopped under the
porte-cochère of the magnificent Mantell mansion overlooking the Hudson.

“We shall not find my father at home, Nick,” Mantell remarked, while
alighting from the car. “He still is engaged in settling up the affairs
of our defunct department store, wrecked by the knavery of his junior
partner, that treacherous miscreant, Gaston Goulard. No need to tell you
of that rascal, Nick, whom you so quickly pulled up to the ringbolt
after taking on the case.”

“No need, indeed,” Nick replied, a bit grimly. “It was deucedly
unfortunate, though, that he slipped through the meshes of the legal net
and eluded the punishment he deserved.”

“Decidedly so.”

“His being a partner in the business was all that saved him,” Nick
added. “It enabled a clever criminal lawyer to pull him out of the fire,
on grounds that either of the partners had a legal right to dispose at
will of the property of the firm. It was a hard fight, and the rascal
got away without punishment, barring the penalty he had brought upon
himself, that of financial ruin and hopeless dishonor.”

“Right in both respects,” Mantell nodded. “Gaston Goulard is down and
out forever.”

“By the way, Mantell, do you ever see him?” Nick inquired.

“Yes, occasionally,” was the reply. “I never see him, however, that he
does not threaten to get even with me for the past.”

“Humph!” Nick ejaculated contemptuously.

“Get even, indeed!” Mantell bitterly added. “The boot should be on the
other leg. He hates me for having won and married Helen Bailey, Nick, to
whose hand he had aspirations even while engaged in his treacherous
robberies. I saw him about ten days ago, looking seedy enough, Nick, and
as if dissipation was making inroads upon his health.”

“Threatened you, Mantell, has he?” questioned Nick, with brows knitting
slightly.

“Repeatedly,” Mantell nodded, as they mounted the steps. “I somehow fear
the rascal, Nick, for he is capable of any degree of knavery, and is a
desperate dog when crossed. I expect trouble from him, in fact, and for
that reason am constantly alert.”

“I predicted after his exposure and arrest that he would go to the bad,”
said Nick. “Ah, this is a pleasure, indeed, Mrs. Mantell.”

Having entered the handsomely furnished house while speaking, where they
were met in the hall by Mantell’s charming young wife, the beautiful
girl whom Nick first had seen at a telephone switchboard, under
circumstances that revealed her lofty and heroic character, as well as
which enabled him to be of great service to her.

She hastened to shake hands with both him and Patsy, saying feelingly:

“Your pleasure could not be greater than mine, Mr. Carter. I am
delighted to see you. I ought to scold you roundly, however, for not
having called here occasionally, at least.”

“That’s right, too, Helen,” put in Mantell.

“You overlook one fact,” smiled Nick, replying to her.

“What is that, Mr. Carter?”

“That I have hardly an hour in the week, not to say in a day, that I can
really call my own,” Nick said gravely. “I am a very busy man, you
know.”

“Ah, I suppose so,” Helen rejoined. “And chiefly because other men are
so wicked.”

“True.”

“It is deplorable.”

“True again,” said Nick. “Nor am I less busy than usual this morning. I
think, Frank, we had better get right at this matter.”

“I think so, too.”

“I’m sure your wife will excuse us.”

She bowed and smiled agreeably, and Nick and Patsy followed Mantell into
the library, a superbly furnished room overlooking the side grounds.

“Now, Nick, what can I tell you?” he asked, placing chairs for them.
“Why have you come here?”

“To begin with, Mantell, I want to see the letter written to you by
Calvin Vandyke,” said Nick. “Where have you kept it?”

“Here, in my desk,” said Mantell, rising to unlock a large roll-top desk
in one corner of the spacious room.

“Is your desk usually locked?”

“Always, Nick, when I am absent.”

“Wait one moment,” said the detective. “Let me examine the lock.”

Mantell complied, handing him the key.

Nick unlocked the desk, and, rolling the top partly up, he began a
careful inspection of the brass socket which received the bolt of the
lock when the desk was securely closed. He found several tiny, faint
scratches on one side of it, which could not have been caused by the
action of the bolt, not being where it came in contact with the socket.
An examination with a powerful lens, moreover, showed that these slight
marks were quite bright, as if recently made and with an instrument as
sharp as the point of a pin.

Nick returned the ring of keys and resumed his seat.

“That lock has recently been picked, Mantell,” he said confidently.

“Picked!” Mantell exclaimed amazedly. “Are you sure of it?”

“Positively.”

“But----”

“There aren’t any buts,” Nick interrupted. “I know when evidence shows
that a lock has been picked. The crook who picked that one used a tool
with a sharp point, which at times touched one side of the bolt socket
and left faint marks in the brass. The brightness of them shows that it
was quite recently done.”

“But our servants are entirely trustworthy, Nick, and----”

“I don’t think it was done by one of your servants,” Nick again
interrupted. “Have you a burglar alarm in the house?”

“Yes, an electric alarm,” said Mantell. “All of the doors and windows on
the ground floor are protected. Perkins, the butler, sets it each night
before he retires.”

“This job may have been done during the day.”

“But there is always some one in the house.”

“I will look farther presently,” said Nick, not inclined to argue the
point. “Let me see the Vandyke letter, also the envelope, if you have
it.”

Mantell took them from a pigeonhole in the desk and placed them in the
detective’s hand.

Nick turned to the window and began to inspect them with his lens, which
he had not replaced in his pocket. He did not read the letter, which
covered several closely written sheets, and in which he apparently had
no interest aside from the paper on which it was written.

“A man handling a tool small enough to pick the lock of a desk is very
likely to soil the balls of his thumb and fingers with the metal,” he
remarked, after several moments. “There are faint marks and smooches
both on this envelope and the backs of several sheets of the paper.”

“I did not observe them,” said Mantell, noting the detective’s subtle
intonation. “What do you make of them, Carter?”

“They look very much like finger prints,” said Nick. “Patsy----”

“Yes, chief.”

Patsy had foreseen what was coming and was alert on the instant.

“Mantell’s car is waiting outside,” said Nick, folding the letter and
replacing it in the envelope. “His chauffeur will take you to our office
and bring you back here. Examine these smooches with a magnifying glass
and see what you make of them. If finger prints, compare them with our
collection. Report as quickly as possible.”

“Trust me for that, chief,” cried Patsy, hastening from the room.

“While we are waiting, Mantell, I will have a look around the outside of
the house,” said Nick, rising. “I may find evidence that it has been
recently entered, in spite of your burglar alarm. You had better wait
here. I can work more quickly alone.”

Nick walked out through the hall after the last remark, and ten minutes
had passed, when he returned.

“Well?” questioned Mantell anxiously. “What have you found?”

“Nothing positively showing that the house was entered by night,” Nick
replied, resuming his seat. “It may have been accomplished through a
second-story window, however, several of which can be quite easily
reached. I found, nevertheless, positive evidence of something else.”

“Of what?”

“That two men quite recently were playing the eavesdropper under your
library windows,” said Nick. “There are partly obliterated footprints in
the greensward and the flower beds flanking the foundation wall below
the windows.”

“By Jove, is it possible!”

“If they were under only one window, I would feel less confident,” Nick
added. “The fact that traces of the same impressions appear under all of
the windows convinces me that I am right. They were spying outside ten
evenings ago.”

“How do you fix the exact day?” Mantell questioned perplexedly.

“By the character of the imprints and the condition of the near
greensward, to which they frequently stepped,” Nick explained. “We had a
hard rain eleven days ago, and have had none since then.”

“I remember.”

“A hard rain would completely obliterate such imprints from the soil of
a flower bed,” Nick went on. “These, then, must have been formed since
the storm. The depth and irregular character of them, however, show that
the soil must have been very soft and muddy, as if very soon after the
rain. This appears, too, in that when they stepped to the greensward
they left many traces of the soil clinging to their soles. I feel
perfectly safe in saying that they were there the night after the
storm.”

Mantell’s face had taken on a more serious expression.

“By Jove, you have reminded me of something, Carter,” he said gravely.

“What is that?”

“It was on the day following that storm that I received Vandyke’s
letter, and I read it aloud that evening to my wife and parents. We were
here in the library. I begin to think your deductions are correct.”

“I am very sure of it,” Nick declared, smiling a bit oddly.

“But who could have been spying upon us, or playing the eavesdropper?”

“There were two men, Mantell, judging from the different imprints, or
what little is left of them,” said Nick. “They may have been here with
some other object in view, possibly the planning of a burglary. Their
hearing that letter, however, may have been only incidental, though it
evidently resulted in a change of their plans for an entirely different
job.”

“You mean that of getting and robbing Juan Padillo.”

“Precisely.”

“But why do you suspect that a burglary was contemplated?”

“Because a notorious burglar, one of the most dangerous yeggs in the
country, was killed last night in a house in Manhattanville,” Nick now
explained. “I refer to Cornelius Taggart, quite commonly known as Connie
Taggart, the cracksman.”

“Good heavens!” Mantell’s color had been steadily waning. “You imply,
Carter, that he may have been one of the eavesdroppers, that he may have
been the scoundrel who used my name to deceive Juan Padillo.”

“Either he, Mantell, or his confederate,” bowed Nick. “That is precisely
what I think.”

“But why? For any other reason?” Mantell asked anxiously.

“Yes, a very potent reason,” nodded the detective. “Listen, Mantell, and
I will tell why I think so.”

Nick then informed him of what had been discovered in the Manhattanville
house, the evidence he had found, and many of the conclusions at which
he had arrived.

Mantell listened without interrupting, but with steadily increasing
apprehensions, as appeared in the look of despair that finally settled
on his drawn, white face.

“There is nothing to it, Carter,” he said, with a groan, when Nick had
concluded. “They have got both the man and the jewels. They have killed
Padillo, and the jewels are gone forever.”

“Don’t be so sure of that,” said Nick. “I may find a way to save the man
and recover the gems. That’s what I am seeking--the way.”

“You mean----”

“I mean that I want to discover, if possible, the identity of Taggart’s
confederate,” Nick interrupted. “I then can shape up my work. That is
why I came here to see Vandyke’s letter. I suspect that a copy of it was
made. I suspected, also, if it was obtained by breaking into the house
and forcing your desk, that it might bear finger prints of the crooks.
Patsy will report a little later.”

“But why wouldn’t a crook have taken the letter itself?” questioned
Mantell. “Why would he have made a copy of it?”

“Because you would have missed the letter, and, of course, would have
become suspicious,” Nick pointed out. “You would immediately have taken
steps to thwart the knavery that has been successfully accomplished
through leaving the letter in its customary place.”

“Yes, yes, I see,” Mantell nodded. “I ought to have thought of that. You
suspect then, that----”

“Wait! There comes my touring car with Chick and Danny, my chauffeur,”
Nick interrupted, glancing from the window. “I must see what more he has
learned.”

“I will admit him,” cried Mantell, hastening to do so.

Chick entered the library with him a few moments later. He at once
proceeded to report to Nick that Gibson, the house broker, could add
nothing definite to the statements he had made by telephone, and that
his description of the couple who had called to rent the house were of
but little value, the woman having been veiled at the time, while the
man probably was in disguise.

On one of the basement windows, however, Chick had found convincing
evidence that the house had been forcibly entered, but he could discover
no clew to the identity or number of the burglars.

“Whether they were confederates of Taggart or----”

“They were not,” said Nick, interrupting Chick’s report. “Taggart was
killed by Padillo, and he either was the man who lured the Mexican to
the house, or a confederate of the man who did so. In either case,
Chick, the Taggart gang would have had access to the house without
breaking into it.”

“That’s logical,” Chick quickly admitted. “There is no denying it.”

“If we can discover the identity of Taggart’s confederate, therefore, we
shall have a definite clew to both gangs that evidently were in the
house,” Nick added. “Ah, Patsy is returning. Admit him, Mantell. His
haste indicates that he has made a discovery of some importance.”

Nick had caught sight of the returning automobile, from which Patsy was
hastening to alight before it came to a stop in the driveway. He
entered the library a moment later, and his first words confirmed Nick’s
prediction.

“They are finger prints, chief, all right,” he cried, returning the
Vandyke letter.

“Are there corresponding ones in our collection?” Nick inquired.

“That’s what, chief.”

“Whose are they, Patsy?”

“Those of the crook who gave the law the slip, but not before we got his
measurements and identification marks,” cried Patsy. “There is no
mistaking them, chief. They are the finger prints of--Gaston Goulard!”




CHAPTER V.

A CHANCE CLEW.


No jungle in the heart of the African desert, no wilds of the Far West,
no desert region of the ice-bound North, no corner of the whole wide
world, in fact, contains beasts more to be dreaded, more crafty, cruel,
and terrible, than those to be found within the precincts of a great
city, in the haunts of the underworld, in the lairs and labyrinths of
vice and crime.

Close upon four o’clock that afternoon, or about three hours after Nick
Carter and his assistants left the Mantell residence, two women met by
chance in a certain disreputable section of the East Side, and nearly in
front of an inferior hotel restaurant and barroom run by one Barney
Magrath.

There was no mistaking their type and character. Their flashy attire,
their painted cheeks, the swagger atmosphere with which they met and
entered into conversation, told the story in broad-faced type and
double-leaded lines.

One was a slender, thin-featured woman with red hair, crafty gray eyes,
and a sinister expression.

The other was a more striking woman. She had a fine figure, the better
clad of the two, a woman in the twenties, with regular features, dark
hair and complexion, a firm mouth and chin. Hers was a decidedly strong
and quite handsome face, lighted with eyes that had a habitual searching
and defiant expression.

The first words that passed between them, uttered by the woman with red
hair, fell upon the ears of a man who was about emerging from the near
barroom, and who instantly passed back of the swinging doors and
lingered to listen.

“Oh, I say!” exclaimed the woman. “You’re just the skirt I want to see.
I’ve been looking for you, Sadie.”

The brows of the listening man knit slightly. He appeared of a type that
frequented that locality, a rather sinister-looking fellow with a black
mustache.

No observer would have suspected him of being a detective--to say
nothing of being the most noted detective of his day.

“The woman herself--Sadie Badger,” was the thought that flashed through
his mind. “The other jade is Mollie Damon, a running mate of Slugger
Sloan, a holdup man.”

Nick had obtained a momentary glimpse of both women when they halted on
the sidewalk, and he had instantly recognized both notorious crooks.

“Looking for me, Moll?” Sadie Badger questioned, sharply eyeing her.

“That’s what, Sadie.”

“What do you want? Are you on the borrow?”

“Nix! Not much! I’ve got coin to burn.”

“What’s up, then?”

“There’s a gent who wants to meet you. He wanted me to find you.”

“Meet me, eh?” Sadie’s eyes took on a sinister squint. “Why does he want
to meet me?”

“He’ll tell you,” Moll Damon returned. “I’m not wise. That is, only wise
to--whisper!”

She leaned nearer to her companion and spoke with lowered voice, but her
sharp aspirates reached the ears of the listening detective.

“It’s about the trick that was turned last night.”

Sadie Badger gazed at her without a change of countenance.

“What trick is that?” she demanded. “Come across plainly. I don’t get
you.”

“You don’t, eh?” Moll frowned. “Tell that to the marines.”

“Tell it to whom you like,” Sadie retorted. “It’s all one to me.”

“Well, whether you get me, Sadie, or not, the gent wants to meet you,”
Moll insisted. “What do you say?”

Sadie Badger gazed at the curbing for several seconds, evidently sizing
up the significance of what she had heard, and the consequences involved
in whatever course she might shape.

“Who is the gent, Moll?” she then asked abruptly.

“You don’t know him.”

“What’s his name?”

“Goulard.”

“I never heard of him.”

“That cuts no ice,” Moll declared. “He’s all right. You’d better see
him. If you’ll go with me----”

“I guess not! Not if the court knows itself,” Sadie Badger interrupted,
with scornful significance. “Safety first, Moll. When I meet strange
gents, I meet them where I’m dead sure of having the best of it.”

“I’ll send him to you, then,” Moll Damon quickly suggested.

Sadie hesitated again for a moment, then said curtly:

“You may do that, Moll, if you like.”

“Where to?”

“I’m heading for home. You know where I hang out. Send him there and
I’ll see him.”

“I’ll do it,” Moll quickly nodded. “He’ll show up within an hour.”

“All right! I’ll be there.”

The women parted with as little ceremony as they had met.

“Goulard, eh?” thought Nick, having heard every word that passed between
the couple. “Goulard, eh? If he shows up before I do, Miss Sadie Badger,
he’ll go some. This is too good an opportunity to lose.”

The conversation between the two women had transpired in a very few
minutes. The significance of it, in view of what Nick had learned and
suspected, convinced him not only that he was on the right track, but
also that the work he had laid out for himself and his two assistants
before leaving the Mantell residence, the nature of which will appear,
was likely to prove successful.

No one had noticed him in the barroom doorway, and Nick presently
slipped out and started in pursuit of Sadie Badger.

“She is not acquainted with Goulard, and probably does not know him by
sight,” he rightly reasoned from what he had overheard. “If I have
sized up the evidence correctly, then, I probably can worm out of her
precisely what took place in the Manhattanville house, and possibly
learn what became of Padillo and his war prize. I’ll wager I have it
near enough to pull wool over the woman’s eyes and loosen her tongue.
I’ll take the chance, at all events, regardless of the consequences.”

Nick had no difficulty in overtaking Sadie Badger nor in trailing her to
her destination.

It proved to be the end dwelling of a long wooden block in the upper
East Side. The end house in which she dwelt was within fifty yards of
the swirling waters of East River. The intervening space was occupied
with a motley aggregation of old buildings devoted to divers uses. They
extended even to the walled bank of the restless river, a large sign on
the farthest one bearing the single word: “Lime.”

“Not a savory section, by Jove,” thought Nick, after watching the woman
enter the house. “I’ll allow reasonable time for Goulard to have been
seen and sent here, and then I’ll tackle the woman and--well, the proof
of a pudding is its eating.”

Nick waited less than ten minutes, however, apprehending that Goulard
might possibly arrive before he could hoodwink Sadie Badger, and he then
approached the house and rang the doorbell.

“I shall hear the rascal ring, of course, if he shows up before I have
got in my work,” he said to himself while waiting on the steps. “I’ll
arrest both of them in that case and land them where they belong.”

Nick had waited only about a minute when the door was opened by the
woman herself, divested of her street garments, and wearing a loose
woolen house jacket. She gazed sharply at him, and Nick at once said
inquiringly:

“Miss Badger?”

“Yes, I am Miss Badger,” said Sadie, nodding a bit coldly.

“I am the man Moll Damon told you about--Gaston Goulard.”

“You arrive here very soon after my talk with her,” said Sadie
suspiciously. “How did she see you so quickly?”

“She did not see me,” said Nick, ready with an explanation. “She
telephoned.”

“Ah! Come in, Mr. Goulard.”

Nick entered and followed her into a small rear parlor, divided from
that in front by a curtained doorway. Through the broad portière,
however, Nick could see that the front room was unoccupied. Listening
intently, moreover, he could hear not a sound indicating that other
persons were in the house.

Upon taking the chair to which the woman invited him, nevertheless, Nick
inquired:

“Do I find you alone here? As you may infer, Miss Badger, my business
with you is of a private nature.”

The woman sat down at the opposite side of a small center table, near
which Nick had seated himself. She did not reply for a moment. Resting
both elbows on the table and gazing across it at him, she then said,
with seeming indifference:

“Yes, I am alone here. Contrary to what you say, however, I have not the
slightest idea, Mr. Goulard, why you want to meet me.”

“Why, then, did you consent to see me?” asked Nick pointedly.

“Curiosity,” asserted Sadie tersely. “I wondered what you wanted and
what you were like.”

“You had no other reason?”

“None whatever. You are a total stranger to me, Mr. Goulard.”

“Very true,” Nick admitted, and he was glad to do so. “Let’s become
friends, then, instead of total strangers. It will be to your
advantage.”

“Why to my advantage?” questioned Sadie, with brows drooping.

“Because of what occurred last night.”

“Occurred where?”

“In a house in Manhattanville,” said Nick. “Don’t you know? Didn’t Moll
Damon give you a hint?”

Sadie scowled impatiently, banging her palms on the top of the table.

“See here, Mr. Goulard, I’m not dealing in hints,” she cried, with some
asperity. “If you’ve got anything of importance to say to me, hand it
out straight from the shoulder. I’m no riddle guesser. What do you
mean?”

Nick saw plainly that the woman was suspicious and inclined to evade
him. He was equally sure, on the other hand, that fear alone had
impelled her to yield to Moll Damon, which convinced him that she not
only knew all about the murders of the previous night, but also was more
or less involved in them.

Nick now took her at her word, therefore, and replied, a bit curtly:

“I mean the fight in the house mentioned, a fight in which one of your
friends was killed.”

“One of my friends? I guess not!” declared Sadie, still with affected
ignorance.

“You’ve got another guess, Miss Badger,” Nick said, more forcibly. “You
may as well guess right, too, and hand me straight goods. I’ve not come
here to be bluffed, and a bluff won’t get you anything. You know what I
mean and the man I mean. Batty Lang is his name.”

“Batty Lang killed, eh?”

“You know he was killed,” insisted Nick, with an affected display of
impatience. “I know, too, that he was a friend of yours and of your
brother, Ben Badger; also that he was one of the gang of which you two
are the big fingers.”

“Is that so?” questioned Sadie tentatively, frowning more darkly.

“Yes, that’s so,” Nick went on, with increasing vehemence. “And that’s
not all. I know that Lang and some of your gang got wise to a job I was
going to pull off in that house, and that some of you got in there to
queer it and get the best of me.”

“We did, eh?”

“Yes. You did it all right, too, as far as that goes, but you’re not
going to get fat from it,” Nick forcibly informed her. “I’ve got that
finely fixed, you can bet on it, or I wouldn’t be here. It’s safety
first for mine, always.”

As may be inferred from all this, Nick was banking on the correctness of
his suspicions and deductions, aiming to so impress Sadie Badger that
she would enter into a discussion with him and ultimately expose all she
knew about the crimes.

Only a detective of Nick Carter’s confidence, one having absolute faith
in his own discernment and deductions, would have ventured such a
subterfuge as this. It seemed likely, nevertheless, to prove as
profitable as he had anticipated.

For Sadie Badger now straightened up in her chair and replied, smiling a
bit scornfully:

“You seem to be a wise gazabo, Mr. Goulard.”

“I know what I’m talking about, all right,” Nick informed her.

“You sure are some wise gink,” nodded Sadie sarcastically. “If you know
all this and have got things as finely fixed as you say, why have you
come here to spiel with me about it? You really think that our gang put
up a job on you, do you?”

“I don’t think,” snapped Nick; “I know you did.”

“And we’re not going to get fat from it, eh?”

“No, you’re not--barring you come to terms with me.”

“What terms do you mean, Mr. Goulard?”

“I want a fair share of the plunder.”

“What plunder is that?” asked Sadie coldly.

“Oh, cut that out,” Nick again protested, plainly seeing that he was
gradually gaining his point. “You, or some of your gang, have got that
Mexican in your clutches, along with the stuff he had in his suit case.
Don’t hand me any denial. I know all about it. You got him out through
the back door of the house, and Batty Lang was shot while trying to
prevent me and my friends from following him, after he had stabbed my
pal, Connie Taggart. You got away with Padillo and the stuff he brought
from Mexico. I know all about it--and I’m going to have a fair share of
it.”

Sadie Badger’s darker frowns showed how deeply she was impressed. She no
longer responded angrily, however, but with the earnestness and covert
cunning of a woman bent upon learning just what her visitor had up his
sleeve. She drew nearer the table, bending over it and saying:

“You do seem to know, Goulard, what you are talking about. Admitting
that you do--what do you mean by having things finely fixed?”

“In case anything happens to me while here,” Nick informed her, with
unmistakable significance.

“Oh, that’s what you mean, eh?”

“That’s what I mean, all right.”

“But suppose you don’t get what you’re after?” questioned Sadie,
narrowly eying him.

“You’ll get yours, then, and the rest of your gang,” Nick declared.
“Take my word for that.”

“Explain. I don’t quite get you.”

“That’s done with few words,” Nick went on. “You’ve got this Mexican on
your hands. You’ve got to put him away in order to safely keep that
plunder. You can’t let him go. He’d have the guns after you within an
hour.”

“We might compromise with him,” said Sadie, further convincing Nick that
he was shooting straight at the mark.

“That’s not like you, nor any of your gang,” Nick returned.

“As well compromise with him, Goulard, as with you,” Sadie pointedly
asserted.

“Not by a long chalk.”

“Why not?”

“Because you know I’ll keep my trap closed,” said Nick. “You couldn’t
feel sure of him.”

“Yes, we could,” said Sadie, with an expressive nod. “He wouldn’t dare
to squeal. It was he who killed Connie Taggart, and we know it. You’ve
overlooked that, Goulard, haven’t you?”

The woman laughed derisively.

Nick silenced her laugh, however, by retorting pointedly:

“No, nothing of the kind. You’ve got nothing on Padillo for stabbing
Taggart. He did it in self-defense to protect his property. He had a
legal right to do that.”

“Hang it, that’s too true for a joke,” frowned Sadie, biting her lips.

“You see,” Nick added; “you’ll do much better to put the Mexican away
and compromise with me.”

“Mebbe so, Goulard, after all,” admitted the woman reluctantly.

“Besides, there is another reason why you should do so.”

“What is that?”

“I am the man who made the job possible,” Nick forcibly argued. “If it
hadn’t been for Taggart and me, your gang would never have laid hands on
the stuff.”

“That’s true, Goulard, I admit,” nodded Sadie.

“Do you think, then, now that Taggart’s lamp has been put out, that I’m
going to be buncoed out of my share of the stuff?” Nick demanded. “Not
much! Your gang has got to come across with part of it, or I’ll give the
dicks a tip that will make trouble for you. I can do it, Sadie, all
right. I can do it and make a safe get-away for my part of the job.
That’s what I’ll do, too, unless----”

“Something prevents! Get him, pals! Don’t give him a look in!”

Nick turned quickly.

The first face he beheld, of several, was that of--Gaston Goulard.




CHAPTER VI.

THE LAIR OF THE WOLF.


Nick Carter was not caught napping. Not for a moment since entering the
house had he ceased to be alert, with eyes watchful and ears bent upon
catching the slightest ominous sound.

Nick had reasoned, too, and very naturally, that Gaston Goulard would
visit the house in the ordinary way, by ringing the bell and presenting
himself at the front door. Not a word to the contrary had passed between
Sadie Badger and Moll Damon.

When Nick Carter turned, nevertheless, upon hearing the threatening
interruption, he beheld Gaston Goulard and three men rushing into the
room with weapons drawn.

Nick recognized all three, moreover--Ben Badger, one Henry Freeland,
known as Knocker Freeland, and a Jack Glidden--all members of the
notorious Badger gang.

Nick did not ask himself where they came from, nor how he had thus been
caught. Nor was it in his nature to yield submissively to such a
situation. As quick as a flash, starting up, he reached for his
revolver.

He was not more quick than Sadie Badger, however, who realized on the
instant that her earlier suspicions were correct, and that there was
something wrong.

She lurched forward before Nick was fairly out of his chair, throwing
all of her weight and strength against the edge of the table.

She upset it on the instant, forcing it with desperate energy against
the back and hips of the detective, just as he was drawing the revolver
from his pocket.

The weapon exploded.

A bullet tore a hole in the floor.

Nick lost his footing and pitched backward over the falling table,
nearly into the arms of Sadie Badger.

She was ready for him and threw him to one side, and Nick fell to the
floor with a crash that shook its timbers.

In another instant, though the entire sensational episode occupied
hardly more than that, Goulard and Ben Badger, with their two
confederates, were upon the prostrate form of the detective, crushing
his arms and legs to the floor and holding him powerless.

“You lie still, blast you, or I’ll fix you so there’ll be no need of
telling you to do so,” Goulard cried fiercely, pressing the muzzle of a
revolver to Nick’s head.

“If he don’t, I will,” supplemented Badger, with a knife at the
detective’s throat.

Nick gazed up at their threatening faces and permitted his vainly
strained muscles to relax. None yet had recognized him, despite that his
false mustache had been partly torn from his lips and was dangling over
one ear.

Yielding to the inevitable, therefore, for no mortal man could have
overcome such odds and such a disadvantage, Nick said coolly:

“Don’t hurry, gentlemen! There’ll be time enough to settle this matter
in a decent way. I’m not fool enough to oppose such a bunch of
blacklegs. Take your time. I’ll keep quiet.”

Nick had, in fact, more than one reason for doing so.

Goulard snarled an oath, adding quickly:

“By Heaven, this man is Nick Carter!”

“Right,” said Nick; “perfectly right, Gaston Goulard.”

Sadie Badger stared down at him as if dealt a blow. She seemed unable to
realize how completely she had been duped, how completely she had
exposed herself and her confederates.

“Get his bracelets,” growled Badger, who was the coolest of the gang.
“It’s the dick, all right. Run your duke under his coat, Knocker, and
get his irons. We’ll soon fix him so he can wag nothing more dangerous
than his tongue.”

Freeland hastened to obey, dragging Nick’s handcuffs from his pocket,
also the revolver he had partly drawn. He thrust the weapon into his own
pocket. Then, with the help of the others, he quickly snapped the
handcuffs on the detective’s wrists.

“Now, Glidden, bring a piece of rope,” Badger commanded. “No halfway
work for mine. I know this dick from way back. Having got him, I’ll make
dead sure to keep him.”

“That’s more wisdom, Badger, than you ordinarily display,” Nick dryly
declared, looking up at his swarthy, sinister face. “Make a good job of
it, by all means, while you’re about it.”

“I’ll do that, all right, Carter, and I have ample means at my command,”
Badger retorted.

“We shall see how ample they are.”

“Is that so?” Badger turned like a flash. “Watch out from the back
window, Freeland,” he commanded. “This dick may have more on us than we
know for. Make sure you are not seen.”

“That last ain’t necessary,” said Freeland, with a growl while he
hurried into one of the back rooms.

Glidden returned at that moment, bringing a piece of rope, and the
rascals then proceeded to bind Nick so securely that self-liberation was
next to impossible.

Sadie Badger coolly set up the table in the meantime and replaced the
articles that had fallen to the floor. She no longer appeared disturbed
over learning that this man by whom she had been duped was none other
than Nick Carter. She seemed to feel, like her notorious brother, that
he had invited his finish.

That none of the gang viewed the matter in any other way, appeared in
the freedom with which they began to discuss the situation, without the
slightest regard for the presence of the detective and what he might, by
some remote possibility, accomplish.

“Now, Sadie, give it to me straight,” said Badger, after Nick had been
securely bound. “How did the dick fool you?”

Sadie Badger told him, concealing nothing.

“I’ve exposed the whole layout, Ben, and the bumper that queers the
wheel,” she said, when concluding. “There’s nothing to it. We’re up
against it.”

“Up against it be hanged,” Badger declared, with a growl. “You’ve told
me nothing that cuts any ice. He’s got nothing on us for the job. We’ve
got no blood on our hands, nor likely to have any, barring we put the
greaser away to get his baubles. See here----”

Badger swung sharply around and confronted Gaston Goulard, who had been
grimly listening to the disclosures the woman had made.

“What do you want of us?” he demanded. “Why are you here? What have you
got up your sleeve?”

Nick laughed audibly, in spite of his threatening situation, causing
Badger to turn and glare at him.

“That’s a funny question,” said Nick. “Haven’t you any brains?”

“Brains?”

“Do you suppose I haven’t sized up this business correctly?” Nick went
on. “I can tell you what that rascal wants. He wants precisely what I
have pretended to want from the woman. He will tell you precisely what I
have told her. I deduced the truth and the probable move that that
rascal would make, and I got in my work ahead of him. That’s all there
is to it--barring that you caught me in the act. But there’ll be another
side to the story,” Nick pointedly added.

“What do you mean by another side?” Badger demanded, scowling.

“Wait and see!”

“You’ll never see the other side of it,” Badger returned, with a growl.
“We’ve got you for keeps.”

“Better men than you have threatened me,” Nick retorted.

“They would have made good, too, with as much at stake as we have,”
snapped Badger.

“That’s right,” Goulard now put in coolly. “There is only one way to
settle this business.”

“What way is that--wait!” Badger broke off abruptly. “You come with us,
Sadie. Look after the dick, Glidden, and see that he serves us no trick.
I’ll find out where we stand. I’ll darn soon find out where we stand.”

Nick could not hear the discussion that ensued in the back room. That it
was along lines already indicated, however, which had shaped his own
course and brought about his unexpected situation, he had not the
slightest doubt.

Ten minutes had passed when the crooks returned, and it at once was
obvious to Nick that they had come to an agreement with Goulard that
was satisfactory to all concerned.

The face of the whilom merchant, who had been steadily going to the bad
since his financial and social downfall, wore a look of mingled
malevolence and exultation that spoke louder than words.

“Now, Carter, my turn has come,” he declared, confronting the detective.
“You’ve had your inning, and I’m going to have mine. You did all in your
power to down me, but you have accomplished less than what I will hand
to you. May the devil get me, body and soul, if I don’t wipe you out of
existence.”

“As you did Batty Lang!” snapped Nick, so sharply that Goulard recoiled
as if dealt a blow. “Ah, that hits the nail on the head, I see!”

“Little good it will do you to see that,” snarled Goulard, pulling
himself together.

“As for the devil getting you,” Nick curtly added; “he’ll get you,
Goulard, whatever you do to me.”

“Not before I have balanced my account with you and sent you to----”

“Cut that!” Badger sharply interrupted, turning after a brief talk with
Sadie. “There’ll be time enough for that after a shift to safer
quarters. We must get the infernal dick out of this house. If his
running mates know as much as he has stated, they may come looking for
us.”

“That’s right, too, Ben,” put in Sadie. “Shift him from this crib, and
be quick about it.”

“Get a move on, Glidden,” Badger added, turning to the other. “Run over
to the shed and see Jimmy. Send him with the truck. We’ll have the dick
ready in five minutes.”

“And we’ll have the truck here in less time,” Glidden nodded, hastening
from the room.

“Fix him so he can’t yip, Knocker, while I open the way.”

Badger also hurried from the room with the last, and Nick heard his
receding steps on a back stairway.

With the help of Goulard, who appeared eager for a hand in any outrage
upon the detective, Freeland hastened to gag and blindfold Nick, a
proceeding viewed with malicious satisfaction by Sadie Badger.

Nick appeared entirely unconcerned, however, and offered no resistance.
He wondered where he was to be taken. He knew from the remarks he had
heard that it could be to no great distance, and he recalled the several
old wooden buildings he had noticed between the house and the river.

“It must be to one of them,” he said to himself. “Probably a more secret
retreat of the gang, used in case of need, or a raid by the police. By
Jove, I don’t yet fathom how Goulard showed up so suddenly and in
company with Badger. Nothing said by the two women denoted anything of
that kind. Something must have come off to which I did not get wise.
Possibly, Chick or Patsy will succeed in doing so.”

Nick had not long to wait for the contemplated move. He heard Badger
returning, and a moment later he was seized by the three men and carried
down the stairway mentioned.

The afternoon then was waning. The dusk of early evening was beginning
to gather. Another half hour would bring darkness--and what more Nick
could only conjecture.

Presently he heard the opening of a door and felt a breath of air from
outside. He scented the odor of burlap, a quantity of which was quickly
thrown over him, covering him completely, and he again was raised from
the floor on which he had been briefly placed.

Nick then was carried only a few steps, however, when he felt himself
deposited on a low truck. He could feel it sway slightly on its iron
wheels. Then he felt it moving, gliding quickly away, leaving behind him
the house into which he had ventured so confidently less than an hour
before.




CHAPTER VII.

PATSY’S TRAIL.


As now must be inferred, of course, after his interview with Sadie
Badger, in which appeared most of the conclusions at which he had
arrived, Nick Carter had started out to locate the suspected gang after
the discoveries made while in the Mantell residence. He also had
assigned Chick and Patsy the task of hunting up Gaston Goulard, in which
they were engaged while Nick was busy as described.

Nick had felt reasonably sure, in fact, that these several parties, whom
he knew must have been in the Manhattanville house the previous night,
and presumably under the circumstances which he shrewdly suspected--he
knew they would come together sooner or later. His first move was to
hunt them up, therefore, before they could learn how much he had
discovered and suspected, and guard themselves against the steps he
naturally would take.

The latter part of the afternoon found Chick and Patsy, both in a
disguise of a rather sinister character, completing a round through
several East Side stuss houses, known to be frequented at times by
Connie Taggart, the murdered cracksman.

They were not seeking him, of course, but were looking for the man now
known to have been one of the confederates the previous night--Gaston
Goulard.

They reasoned, also, that they might discover others, or hear some
remarks dropped that would supply a clew to the whereabouts of Goulard.
In each of the stuss houses visited, therefore, both detectives had
played briefly at one or more of the tables, while sizing up the other
players and listening to what was said.

They were thus engaged about half past four, in the stuss house then run
by Karl Ritchie, known to be a favorite haunt of ex-convicts and
denizens of the underworld.

“There’s one of them, now,” Chick whispered to Patsy, when entering the
place. “He has done time twice for holdup jobs.”

“You mean Slugger Sloan?” questioned Patsy, glancing toward the table at
which the gambler was seated.

“Yes, of course,” Chick muttered. “There’s a vacant chair next to him.”

“I see.”

“I’ll take it, Patsy, while you play at one of the other tables. We’ll
look the place over very thoroughly, and then get out.”

“I’m on,” nodded Patsy, sauntering to another part of the room.

Very little attention was paid to either of them by the other players,
and the man mentioned by Chick hardly noticed him when he took the next
chair and began his play.

He was a stocky, muscular chap in the twenties, with a countenance
evincing depravity and vice, also a taciturn and surly nature. The
latter had plunged him into numerous fights, which had earned for him
the nickname he was bearing, that of Slugger Sloan.

Chick had been playing less than ten minutes, however, and was
apprehending no profitable results, when something occurred that quickly
reversed his opinion.

He felt a hand touch the back of his chair, and then a woman who had
just hurried into the place, bent between him and Sloan, to whom she
whispered, yet not so low but that Chick heard her:

“Quit the game, Slugger. I’ve fixed it.”

Sloan turned his shifty gray eyes upon her, but did not stir from his
chair. The gambler’s passion was the strongest in his evil nature.

“Will she see him?” he asked, scarce above his breath.

“Yes.”

“When?”

“As soon as he can get there.”

“Her crib, Moll?”

“Yes. Get a move on,” Moll Damon whispered impatiently. “It’s more
important than this piking business. Go and send him up there. You know
where to find him.”

Sloan pushed his chips toward the dealer to be cashed.

“You hike home and stay there,” he muttered to the woman. “I’ll see him
and set him going. Leave it to me.”

Chick caught Patsy’s eye and signaled for him to shadow the woman. Half
a minute later he followed Slugger Sloan from the house. Moll Damon was
waiting outside, on a corner, for the crook. They met again and talked
for several moments.

Chick and Patsy watched them from the stuss-house doorway, the former
stating what he had overheard.

“Why are you banking so strong on it?” Patsy questioned.

“Because I happen to know that Sloan and Taggart were good friends,”
said Chick.

“Gee! it may be then that Sloan was in the job last night.”

“That’s the very point.”

“But whom is he going to see, and why----”

“Wait! We’ll find out.”

The couple had moved on and were crossing the street.

The detectives shadowed them to a house in the next block, which both
entered.

Five minutes later both emerged, in company with--Gaston Goulard.

“Eureka!” Chick quietly exclaimed. “I was right, Patsy. They’re our
men.”

“It’s Goulard, all right, as sure as blazes,” chuckled Patsy. “The game
certainly is breaking cover.”

“They’re going to separate. Goulard is going to leave them.”

The three crooks were lingering briefly at the foot of the steps.

“Shall we shadow him?” questioned Patsy.

“You do so,” Chick directed. “I’ll follow Sloan and the woman. They may
have more up their sleeves. They’re a bad pair.”

“Have you any suspicion where Goulard is going?” Patsy asked.

“A suspicion only,” Chick nodded. “He is going to the home of some
woman, judging from what that jade said to Sloan. It may be to the home
of Sadie Badger.”

“In that case----”

“He’s off,” Chick interrupted. “Don’t lose sight of him.”

Gaston Goulard had abruptly left the couple and was hurrying away.

“So long!” nodded Patsy. “If I lose sight of him, Chick, I’ll chuck my
job.”

Goulard was hastening toward Third Avenue, where he boarded a
north-bound elevated train.

Patsy Garvan occupied the same car.

Twenty minutes later, without the slightest idea that he was the subject
of an espionage, Goulard left the train and walked rapidly east. He
brought up in the low section on the water front in which Nick Carter
had arrived not more than half an hour before.

There were comparatively few people in the street, which made it
necessary for Patsy to proceed quite cautiously. He crossed to the
opposite side from Goulard, remaining some thirty yards behind him, and
noted, with some surprise, that he began to appear suspicious when
approaching the lower end of the street. He was on the same side as the
long wooden block, of which Sadie Badger occupied the last dwelling.

Goulard was glancing sharply at the house, and once back over his
shoulder. Upon arriving at the last door, moreover, he merely glanced at
it and walked on, not stopping until he came to the river wall, and
opposite a two-story building, on which was the lime sign previously
mentioned.

“Gee! I wonder what that signifies,” thought Patsy. “He’s got something
on his mind. He seems to fear that the house may be watched.”

That, as a matter of fact, was precisely what Goulard feared, and he
resolved not to enter the front door--which was the one and only reason
why Nick Carter was discovered and caught by the gang a little later.




CHAPTER VIII.

THE TURNING TIDE.


Patsy Garvan was right, as stated, in his interpretation of Gaston
Goulard’s movements, and he remained concealed in the doorway to watch
him.

Goulard turned back after viewing the river and the near-by lime shed
for several moments. He retraced his steps with the air of a man having
no special business in that locality. But upon approaching the entrance
to a narrow alley making in between the end of the block and an old
wooden building, and seeing no sign of any person observing him, he
darted quickly into the alley and disappeared.

“Gee! that does settle it,” thought Patsy, at first impelled to follow
him. “He thinks the Badger house is being watched. It must be that end
house in the block, for he looked at that door when passing, but at no
other. He must have decided to go in the back way. In that case--no, by
gracious, I’ll not follow him. I’ll try to get that woman to help me.”

The woman had just appeared at the basement dining-room windows of the
next house. She had opened one of them and was setting a bucket of water
on the ground outside, evidently intending to wash the window. She
turned almost immediately and seated herself on the sill, with her feet
in the room, and fished out two pieces of cloth from within.

Patsy made a short detour and crossed the street, then sauntered toward
her. He judged from her looks that she was not a servant, also that she
was possessed of no great means, which he thought would be to his
advantage. He stepped to the window on the sill of which she was seated,
touching his hat and saying politely:

“Pardon me, madam! Will you tell me who lives in this last house?”

The woman, thin-featured and careworn, turned and regarded him
curiously.

“Certainly, sir,” she replied. “A man and woman named Badger.”

“Are you acquainted with them?”

The woman shook her head and smiled significantly.

“No, sir,” she said. “I don’t think I would care to be. Their reputation
is not very good.”

Patsy now saw plainly that the woman could be safely trusted. He drew a
little nearer to her, displaying his detective badge and saying quietly:

“I am aware of it. In fact, madam, I know all about them. I am a
detective, as you may see, and I am anxious to watch the doings of a man
who, I think, is going into the back door of that house. Would you like
to earn five dollars without lifting your finger?”

The woman laughed softly, with eyes lighting.

“I could use five dollars very nicely,” she replied. “I don’t often get
an opportunity to earn as much so easily. I infer that you want
something of me.”

“I merely wish to use your second-floor back windows for the purpose of
watching the man and that side of the house,” Patsy informed her.

“Ah, I see.”

“I give you my word that I will disturb nothing, and that no one will
ever be the wiser,” he added. “I will pay you in advance. Here is the
money.” He tendered it with the last, and the woman accepted it.

“I’m glad to get it so easily,” she said, after thanking him. “As a
matter of fact, sir, I would like to see those people cleaned out of the
house. High jinks take place in there some nights.”

“I think they soon will occupy other quarters,” smiled Patsy
significantly. “May I go in at once?”

“Certainly, sir.”

“You need not come to the door. Just move a little to one side, and I
will step by you and get in the window. Keep on with your work, please,
so that nothing may be suspected.”

“I will, sir.”

Patsy easily passed the woman, stepping through the low window, and he
then hastened up to a back room on the next floor, from a window of
which he cautiously peered.

This crafty move was a wise one on his part, in that Glidden failed to
discover the spy a little later.

Supposing, of course, that Goulard had gone into the house by that time,
Patsy took a swift look at the surroundings outside.

There was a yard back of the Badger house, partly occupied by a wooden
porch, the door of which was accessible from the alley mentioned. Beyond
the alley was a narrow passageway between the rear walls of the near
buildings, a passage running in the direction of the river, and through
which he could see a bit of the faded side wall of the lime dealer’s
building.

“Gee whiz! there’s the rat, now,” flashed suddenly through Patsy’s mind.
“He has not gone in, after all. He still is watching the house.”

Patsy had caught sight of Goulard’s head, thrust cautiously around the
corner of a shed in the near distance. He was gazing at the windows of
the Badger house.

Presently, after glancing sharply around, Goulard emerged from his
concealment and approached the entrance to the porch mentioned.

At the same moment, giving Patsy a second surprise, he caught sight of a
man coming rapidly through the passageway from the lime shed.

“Great guns! that’s Ben Badger himself, the king-pin of his knavish
gang,” he said to himself, instantly recognizing the notorious gangster.
“He’s bound to meet Goulard in the alley. I wonder if that’s been
fixed.”

That it had not been fixed was speedily apparent.

The two men nearly collided a moment later, plainly seen by Patsy, and
the manner and looks with which both recoiled convinced him that the
meeting was purely accidental.

Their surprise and consternation was of brief duration, however, for
they quickly began to converse in low tones, though Patsy could only
conjecture what they were discussing.

They talked in the alley for about five minutes, and Badger then led the
way to the porch, where Patsy no longer could see them.

As a matter of fact, however, quietly entering the basement door of the
house, Badger caught the sound of Nick Carter’s voice, in discussion
with Sadie, and the nature of the detective’s remarks, coupled with the
arrival of Goulard and what he had just stated, speedily exposed Nick’s
subterfuge and designs.

Patsy, waiting and watching, then saw Badger emerge from the porch and
run at top speed through the passageway, and then disappear into the
lime shed.

Half a minute later he returned posthaste, and followed by two men, whom
he evidently had gone to get--Knocker Freeland and Jack Glidden.

All vanished hurriedly into the house.

“Gee! there’s something doing, all right,” thought Patsy, not for a
moment supposing that Nick was in the house. “Badger got the gang
together for some reason. It now is a hundred to one that all of them
were in the Manhattanville house last night, and that some sort of a
deal is to be made with Goulard. I’ll wait here a while longer, at all
events, and see what follows.”

Patsy waited, constantly watching, but he did not hear the report of
Nick’s revolver, nor any sounds of the brief struggle that ensued.

He saw nothing more, in fact, until Glidden issued from the porch about
twenty minutes later and rushed away to the lime shed.

“There goes one of them again,” Patsy muttered. “There must be something
doing over in that building, also, if the haste of that rat counts for
anything. I’ll wait and see whether he returns.”

Patsy had not long to wait.

Glidden reappeared in about a minute, in company with a slender man in a
blouse and overalls, both pushing a low truck.

“Gee! that’s Jimmy Dakin, known as Quicklime Jimmy,” thought Patsy, who
knew most of the gangsters by sight. “He must be the rascal who runs
that lime business. But what in thunder are they going to do with that
truck? Have they killed Goulard? Are they going to truck him to the shed
and then dump him into the river?”

Patsy remained to find out, if possible. He saw them bring the truck to
the porch door, after which he could see neither them nor the truck, the
porch cutting off his view.

Five minutes passed.

Patsy then saw them troop back to the lime shed--Badger, Goulard, Dakin,
Freeland, and Glidden, hurrying like evil shadows through the narrow
passageway.

Patsy saw, too, that they were dragging the low truck--with a long
object on it, covered with burlap. He watched it--but did not see it
move.

Within a minute all had disappeared into the lime dealer’s building.

“Holy smoke!” thought Patsy, lingering only briefly. “Was that a corpse?
If so--whose corpse? By Jove, I’ve got to make a bid to find out.”

Hurrying downstairs, Patsy found that the woman had just finished
washing her windows. He thanked her again for her kindness, cautioned
her to say nothing about his visit, and then he hurried from the house.

As he emerged from under the front steps, where the basement-hall door
was located, he walked almost into the arms of--Chick Carter.

“Great Scott! here’s a stroke of luck,” Patsy said impulsively. “What
sent you here?”

Chick was nearly as much surprised as Patsy, seeing him come from the
second house.

“I shadowed Slugger Sloan up here,” he replied. “He left Moll Damon and
came up here alone.”

“Do you know for what, Chick?” Patsy asked eagerly.

“Not yet. He took a long look at this house and then went down and sized
up that building with a lime sign on it.”

“Gee! we must be in right. Where is he, now?”

“In a barroom around the corner. What did you learn in that house? You
seem to have something on your mind.”

Patsy hurriedly told his story, and Chick’s countenance took on a more
serious expression.

“By Jove, it may be that Nick was in that house,” said he. “He may have
got wise to something that sent him there.”

“That’s just what I think,” Patsy declared. “I can see no other way of
looking at it.”

“There is only one course for us to shape, I reckon,” said Chick, after
a moment’s thought.

“What’s that?”

“We’ll begin with arresting Slugger Sloan. He may throw up a squeal that
will clinch our suspicions.”

“My idea exactly,” Patsy agreed.

“Come on. We’ll lose no time in discussing it. We’ll nail him at once.”

They hastened around the corner mentioned, then sauntered into the
barroom, as if with no more aggressive intent than to buy a couple of
drinks.

Slugger Sloan was leaning against the bar with a glass of whisky in
front of him.

Chick and Patsy pretended to be about to pass him, then the former
turned quickly and seized the crook’s arms, confining them to either
side.

Patsy whipped out his revolver at the same moment and thrust it under
the gunman’s nose.

“Don’t get gay, Slugger,” he advised coolly. “We want you!”

Sloan scowled defiantly at both, but made no resistance.

“What’s it all about?” he asked, with affected indifference, while Chick
handcuffed him and removed a revolver from his pocket.

“What are you doing out here?” he asked, confronting him.

“Nothing special. Do I have to have a ticket to come here?”

“There is nothing in that kind of a bluff. This is Chick Carter talking
to you, Sloan, and you’d better make a clean breast of it. What do you
know about that Manhattanville murder?”

“Nothing at all about it,” Sloan declared, but every vestige of color
left his sinister face.

“Your looks give your words the lie, Slugger,” Chick said sternly. “You
were out there last night, and you had a hand in the job.”

“You’ve got another guess, Carter,” Sloan coldly asserted.

“Why were you sizing up Badger’s house, then, and Dakin’s lime
building?”

“Was I doing that?”

“I saw you doing it. We know, too, that they were in the job.”

“You’re a couple of wise ginks,” Sloan observed, with a sneer.

“You’re not going to open up, eh?” Chick questioned.

“Not so you’ll notice it.”

“That’s final, Slugger, is it?”

“What I say always goes,” scowled the gunman.

Chick turned abruptly and pointed to a telephone on one of the walls.

“Get next, Patsy,” he commanded shortly. “Call up the precinct station.
Get a wagon and a dozen men here as quickly as possible. We’ll raid that
house and building on the jump.”




CHAPTER IX.

THE LAST RESORT.


Nick Carter was not long in learning whither he was bound. The jostling
of the truck over the uneven ground in the narrow passage between the
buildings ceased in a very few moments.

Nick then felt himself rudely lifted from the truck and carried under
cover. Through the burlap in which he had been wrapped he could detect
the pungent scent of lime, which confirmed his earlier suspicions.

“They’ve brought me to that building close to the river,” he said to
himself. “The outlook isn’t very promising, unless Chick or Patsy had
picked up the trail of Goulard before he started for the Badger house.
There is a reasonably fair chance of that, in which case----”

Nick’s train of thought was abruptly broken.

Four of the ruffians had raised him again and were taking him up a
flight of steps leading to the loft of the building. There they dropped
him on the floor and removed the burlap with which he was half
smothered.

Nick sat up and turned his shoulders to the near wall. Gazing around, he
saw a large, unfinished room, partly filled with unopened barrels of
lime. Cobwebs hung in festoons from the roof and beams. The only light
came through two windows overlooking the river, the swash and swirl of
which could be plainly heard.

Gaston Goulard came up the stairs at that moment and at once flashed a
sharp glance around the dismal place. He then strode quickly across to
one of the windows and looked out.

Nick and Ben Badger, also, guessed what the rascal had in mind, and the
latter said, with a grim laugh:

“That would be out of the frying pan into the fire, Goulard. Better take
chances with the police, than with the East River.”

“I’m not looking to take either chance,” Goulard replied, with a frown
settling on his white face.

“There’s no danger here,” Badger said confidently. “This place is not
suspected.”

“Are the doors below securely locked?”

“The front one is locked and barred,” said Dakin. “No guns know anything
about the other, or the way of getting to it. You’re safe enough here.”

“Let Quicklime Jimmy alone to know what he’s talking about,” declared
Badger, with another laugh. “Take that gag from the dick’s mouth,
Glidden,” he added. “I want to talk with him.”

The bandage already had fallen from Nick’s eyes, and Glidden now removed
the gag, enabling Nick to speak and breathe more freely.

Badger seated himself on the top of a barrel a few feet from the
detective, regarding him with sinister scrutiny for a moment. He then
said curtly:

“You see that we’ve got you, Carter.”

“I have eyes,” Nick replied.

“There is no loophole for you to slip through.”

“I’m not looking for one,” said Nick, with outward indifference. “When I
decide to look, Badger, I may find one.”

“Not on your life,” snapped Goulard, approaching. “If I thought that,
I’d put a bullet into you on the spot.”

“You are quite capable of it, Goulard.”

“You bet I am, Carter, in your case. If there is one man on earth whom I
hate, you’re the man.”

“Better your hatred, Goulard, than your friendship,” Nick said sternly.
“Mr. Henry Mantell, your late partner in business, will vouch for that.”

“Curse you, I----”

“Cut that!” snapped Badger, thrusting Goulard aside when he reached for
a weapon. “You’ll be given a chance to have your say a little later.
Just now, Goulard, I’ll do the talking with the dick.”

Goulard drew back, white and frowning, and glanced again toward one of
the windows.

“No, Carter, you’d find no loophole,” said Badger, reverting to him.
“The best we can offer you is a choice between the East River, a toss in
the darkness through one of those windows, or a bed in a couple of feet
of quicklime.”

“I’ll let you make the selection,” said Nick coldly.

“No great choice, eh?” sneered Badger, grinning.

“None as far as I am concerned.”

“Carter, you’re a cool dick, all right. I suppose, if we were really
pressed to do so, we would offer you something better,” Badger slowly
added, after a moment.

Nick eyed him narrowly, noting his altered tone.

“What is that?” he inquired.

“A chance to compromise.”

“Not on your life!” cried Goulard hotly. “I’ll not stand for----”

“You close your trap till I’m through,” snapped Badger fiercely. “You
then can have your say, but not till then! I run this gang, Mr. Goulard,
and what I say goes. Now, Carter, what do you say?”

“To what?”

“To a compromise.”

“What sort of a compromise?”

“That’s easily stated,” said Badger. “You agree to step out of this case
with your assistants, keep your hands off of us and your mouth closed,
and do nothing to expose us. In return, you get your liberty and----”

“Stop a moment,” Nick interrupted.

“Well?”

“Suppose I consent to such a compromise, will you accept it?”

“Certainly,” nodded Badger. “Why not?”

“Wouldn’t you be taking a chance?”

“That you might betray us?”

“Exactly.”

Badger quickly shook his head.

“Not the ghost of a chance, Carter,” he said roundly. “I know you from
’way back. I’d take your word against the national house of congress.
It’s up to you, Carter, to----”

“Enough said, Badger,” Nick interrupted. “I never in my life compromised
with a crook for my own safety, and I shall not begin with you.”

“But----”

“There aren’t any buts, Badger,” Nick thundered--not without a reason.

His quick ear, close to the wall against which he was leaning, had
caught a faint sound, unheard by any of the others--the slight creak of
a hinge on the passageway door at the foot of the stairs.

It told him on the instant that help was at hand. Bent upon covering the
approach of whomever it might be, though he suspected the truth, Nick
went on with augmented vehemence, his sonorous voice fairly drowning all
other sounds:

“No, no, Badger, I never would consent to that. I am a servant of the
law, a protector of society. My duty to both, my own integrity, the
dictates of my conscience, every spark of manhood in my nature, all
would forbid----”

“Oh, hang your conscience!” roared Badger, interrupting. “You’ll get all
that’s coming to you, then! You’ll get----”

He broke off as if suddenly tongue-tied.

He saw the heads and helmets of a crowd of men rushing up the stairs,
men with revolvers in their hands and stern determination in their eyes,
a great posse of police led by Chick Carter and Patsy Garvan.

Before he could find his voice, that of Chick Carter rang through the
dismal loft:

“Hands up! We’ve got you, boys! Don’t show fight if you want to live!
There’ll be nothing to it!”

“Nothing but the shouting!” yelled Patsy, as the detectives and the
police bounded up and into the loft.

Their increasing numbers and display of weapons awed every crook save
one--Gaston Goulard.

He vented a snarl like that of a cornered wolf. Turning like a flash, he
darted to the window at which he had repeatedly glanced. He did not
stop upon reaching it.

He dived straight through it, carrying away panes and sashes, and
vanished on the instant in the gathering dusk outside.

Patsy bounded to the window and looked out.

He saw the splash of falling spray where the man had gone down in the
black, swirling waters of the river. He waited and watched--but watched
vainly.

No head rose to the surface--no form to tell that Gaston Goulard had not
paid the price for his crimes.

The arrest and incarceration of the other crooks were easily and quickly
accomplished. Sadie Badger already had been arrested, and was on her way
with Slugger Sloan to the precinct station. All were in custody before
six o’clock that evening.

In a room back of some lime barrels in a corner of the loft, was found
not only Juan Padillo, gagged and bound hand and foot, but also the suit
case and its contents--both held there by the Badger gang until they
learned what course the police investigations were likely to take.

Nick Carter and his assistants had showed them much sooner than they had
anticipated.

The story told by Padillo, whose relief and gratitude were utterly
beyond expression, confirmed all of Nick’s deductions from the evidence
he had gathered.

It appeared that Goulard and Taggart, contemplating a burglary in the
Mantell mansion, had come there to look over the ground on the very
night Frank read the Vandyke letter to his wife and parents. The crooks
overheard him, as Nick had suspected, and at once framed up the job to
get Padillo and his war prize. Not sure that they remembered the letter
perfectly, Goulard had stolen into the house one day, picking the lock
of the desk and making a copy of the letter during the night, and
successfully stealing out of the house the following morning.

While discussing their scheme with Sloan in a barroom a few days later,
they were overheard by Ben Badger, who was in an adjoining booth. He at
once framed up a job with his gang, or the men included in it, to get
into the Manhattanville house before Goulard arrived from the vessel
with his victim, and to get away with him and his suit case.

They broke into the house through the basement immediately after dark
that evening, and before Taggart and Slugger Sloan arrived, who had come
to aid Goulard in disposing of the Mexican. When they undertook this and
Padillo realized his situation, he at once stabbed Taggart and started
in to finish the others and escape from the house.

He would have failed but for the interference of the Badger gang, whom
Padillo took to be friends because of their aid, and the fight ended
precisely as Nick had deduced, Padillo going willingly with the Badger
gang, only to later find himself helplessly in their clutches.

He stated that Goulard was the man who had shot Batty Lang, which
confirmed an earlier prediction of the famous detective--that Goulard
would sooner or later kill some one.

Nick referred to this prediction when discussing the case with his two
assistants that evening, then added:

“Well, we got in our quick work, all right, and saved Padillo and his
baubles. He will never be held for killing Taggart. Whether Mantell and
his partners in the jewel scheme will be able to hold the prize, or have
a moral right to do so, is not for us to consider. It’s enough for us
that we shall be well paid for our work. As for Gaston Goulard--well, we
shall see no more of him till the East River gives up its dead.”

“That will be never, chief,” declared Patsy. “Never in this world.”


THE END.

     In the next issue, No. 150, of the NICK CARTER WEEKLY, you will
     find a mighty interesting account of one of the famous detective’s
     most baffling cases, namely, “The House of Fear; or, Nick Carter’s
     Counterstroke.” You will also find several short articles, together
     with an installment of the serial now running.




Sheridan of the U. S. Mail.

By RALPH BOSTON.

(This interesting story was commenced in No. 148 of NICK CARTER STORIES.
Back numbers can always be obtained from your news dealer or the
publishers.)




CHAPTER IX.

JACK O’ DIAMONDS.


With a wide grin upon his beefy countenance, Mr. Jake Hines stepped into
the real-estate office of Walter K. Sammis. “Hello, little one!” he said
cheerily to the girl who sat at a typewriter in the outer office. “We’re
lookin’ very charming to-day.”

Dallas Worthington looked up from her work, and stared at him coldly. “I
haven’t time to listen to compliments,” she said. “I’m very busy. And,
besides, I told you the other day that I want you to keep out of here.
You must be very thick-skinned, Mr. Hines, to persist in coming where
you know you’re not wanted.”

The young man smiled affably.

“If I wasn’t thick-skinned, my dear young lady, I wouldn’t be a
politician,” he remarked. “The way I figure it, love and politics are
pretty much the same sort of game. In both cases a feller has got to
keep pluggin’ ahead, refusin’ to take ‘no’ for an answer, in order to
succeed.

“When I want a thing very bad,” he went on, “I always manage to get it.
I keep right on tryin’ until I do, and if anybody is foolish enough to
get in my way they get crushed as flat as if a steam roller had gone
over ’em. That’s the kind of a live wire Jake Hines is, my dear.”

The girl laughed scornfully. “What a terrible fellow you must be!” she
mocked. “If I thought you could be as unscrupulous in love as I
understand you are in politics, Mr. Hines, I should feel very much
afraid of you. But let me tell you that there is one great difference
between love and politics: In love the best man generally wins; in
politics, from what I have heard, the reverse is usually the case.”

As she spoke, she glanced at a solitaire diamond ring which flashed from
the third finger of her left hand.

The young man looked at her admiringly. “Say, that’s pretty clever of
you. It sounds like a couple of lines out of a book. You can take it
from me, though, Miss Dallas, that the best man is goin’ to win in this
case--and his name is Jake Hines.”

His gaze suddenly fell upon the diamond ring. “Hello!” he exclaimed.
“That’s something new, ain’t it? You wasn’t wearin’ that the last time I
was here.”

“Perhaps not,” replied the girl coldly; “but really I can’t see that it
is----”

“I don’t have to guess twice as to where you got it,” broke in Hines
eagerly. “It was that crook, Sheridan, of course. So that’s where the
money went to!”

Dallas flushed angrily. “What do you mean by that?” she demanded, in
astonishment. “What money? And how dare you refer to Owen Sheridan as a
crook?”

Hines grinned broadly. “Because it’s the truth. I’m only callin’ him
what everybody else will be callin’ him after the next edition of the
evening papers comes out. That reminds me that I came here to tell you a
piece of news which ought to interest you. I guess that you ain’t heard
yet that your letter-carrier friend Owen Sheridan was arrested two hours
ago at post office X Y.”

The girl turned pale. “Arrested!” she gasped. “For what?”

“Robbing the mails,” Hines replied cheerfully. “He swiped a gold watch
from a registered package yesterday, and pawned it for forty dollars.
They found the pawn ticket in his trunk up at the boarding house.”

Dallas stared at him incredulously.

“You don’t have to take my word for it, little one,” he said. “The
evening papers will be on the streets soon, and you can read for
yourself.”

“Or, if you can’t wait that long,” he added, with a malicious smile,
“why don’t you put on that pretty picture hat of yours and take a run
around to Branch X Y? The boys there will tell you all about Sheridan’s
arrest. The inspectors nabbed him right in the post office when he
returned from the noon delivery.”

Dallas leaned weakly against the tall back of her typewriter chair. She
looked as if she were about to faint. “But, anyway, he isn’t--guilty,”
she faltered. “He can’t be guilty!”

Hines smiled sardonically. “Oh, can’t he, eh? You won’t say that, my
dear girl, when you’ve read all the particulars. The post-office
inspectors say they’ve got a mighty strong case against him. They’re
tickled to death to have nabbed him. There’s been lots of mail stolen
from Branch X Y of late, and they think they’ll be able to put it all up
to Sheridan.”

His glance fell again upon the diamond ring which glistened upon the
third finger of her left hand. “Say, if I was you I’d take that off,” he
said. “A nice girl like you don’t want to wear jewelry that was bought
with the proceeds of a larceny. It ain’t decent. Take it off, and I’ll
get you a better one. I’ll give you a diamond twice as big--if you’ll
promise to wear it on the same finger.”

The girl’s eyes flashed scornfully. “Thank you, but I much prefer to
keep this one,” she said. “It wasn’t bought with stolen money. That’s a
falsehood. Owen bought it with money he’d been saving for a year. He
told me so himself.”

“Oh, indeed!” sneered Hines. “And you mean to say you’re willin’ to
believe a fairy story like that? If I’m a judge of diamonds--and I
rather guess I am--that there ring must be worth a hundred dollars if
it’s worth a penny. Do you suppose for a minute that a first-grade
carrier could save that much out of a six-hundred-a-year salary?

“And, besides,” he continued, “I’ll tell you somethin’ that ought to
convince you. There’s several men employed at Station X Y who can
testify that yesterday morning Sheridan was going among ’em tryin’ to
borrow thirty dollars. Would he have done that if he had a hundred
dollars saved up?”

Dallas gazed at him in horror, unable to find words to refute this
argument.

“Now, when did Sheridan give you that ring?” Hines inquired.

“Only last night,” she answered simply.

The politician smiled triumphantly. “Well, there you are! It’s as clear
as daylight. We can prove that he was tryin’ to borrow money from his
comrades yesterday at the post office; yesterday evenin’ he was so flush
he could afford to buy a hundred-dollar ring. Where did he get the
money? By pawnin’ the watch he stole, of course. What more proof could
you want?”

“But forty dollars wouldn’t buy a ring like this,” declared Dallas
hopefully. “If the watch was pawned for only that much, where did he get
the rest of the money?”

“That’s easy,” retorted Hines promptly. “He may have had seventy when he
tried to borrow the thirty. Perhaps he’d managed to save that much,
or--what’s more likely--perhaps he stole the balance from other letters.
Or it may be that he bought the ring on the installment plan--paid forty
down with the money he got on that watch, and agreed to pay the rest
later on. If that’s the case, the post-office inspectors will soon find
it out when they interview the jeweler who sold him the ring.”

“But the post-office inspectors mustn’t know about this ring,” gasped
Dallas apprehensively. “You’re not going to tell them, Mr. Hines?” Her
tone was pleading.

“Well,” said Hines hesitatingly. “I really ought to, you know. It’s my
duty as a citizen to give the authorities all the help I can. It would
be wrong of me to keep it dark. The fact that Sheridan bought that ring
only last night will probably be one of the strongest links in the chain
of evidence they’ve got against him. It would be enough to convince any
jury.”

He paused and looked at her eagerly. “But I ain’t got any wish to make
things any harder for the young feller than they are already. He’s a
crook, and I ain’t got any use for crooks; but I’d like to see him get
off, for I know it would make you feel bad to see him in stripes. I’d do
almost anything to prevent you from feelin’ bad, Dallas. I’ll tell you
what I’ll do, little girl. You promise me to take off that engagement
ring, and wear one that I’ll give you, instead, and I’ll promise to keep
mum.

“And not only that,” he went on, “but if Sheridan’s convicted, as he
probably will be, even without this bit of evidence, I’ll do my best to
save him from goin’ to jail. Us politicians has a lot of influence with
judges, you know. I think I can manage to get him off with a suspended
sentence. Is it a bargain, Dallas?”

“It is not!” she replied indignantly. “I’ll keep the ring I have. I am
still confident that it was bought with honest money. Go ahead and tell
the post-office inspectors what you please, Mr. Hines. The chances are
that Owen Sheridan has already told them about the ring himself. I feel
quite sure that he has no wish to conceal the fact that he gave it to
me. He’s not a thief, and he’ll be able to explain how he got the
money.”

Hines shrugged his shoulders. “You’re very foolish,” he said, as he
backed toward the door. “Take it from me, you’re doin’ your carrier
friend a bad turn. However, the other part of my offer still stands.
When Sheridan’s convicted, I’ll use my political pull to get him off
with a suspended sentence, provided you’ll agree to shake him and marry
me. Think it over, little one. It’s a mighty generous offer. You ought
to be glad to marry an honest man instead of a crook.”

He walked up the avenue, whistling gayly, and ten minutes later entered
the headquarters of the Samuel J. Coggswell Association, and climbed the
stairs to the room marked “Director’s Office--Private.”

He was the only member of the club who was privileged to enter that room
without first going through the formality of knocking on the door.

As he now closed the door behind him, turned the key in the lock, and
stepped across the soft, thick Persian rug to the mahogany roll-top desk
at which sat Samuel J. Coggswell, the latter swung around in his desk
chair, and confronted him eagerly.

“Well, Jake?” he said.

“Everything’s went fine, boss,” replied Hines, with a grin, seating
himself beside the desk. “Your scheme worked like a clock from start to
finish. Sheridan was pinched at half past twelve, and is in the jug at
this minute.”

Boss Coggswell’s face lighted up. “Good!” he said. “That is, I mean to
say: What a pity that one so young should turn out to be such a bad egg!
To think of a nice-looking, clean-cut young fellow like that having to
go to jail almost makes me weep, Jake--almost makes me weep.”

There wasn’t a ghost of a smile upon the district leader’s face as he
uttered these words. On the contrary, his expression was so sad, so
virtuous, that Hines might have believed that his master actually meant
what he said if he hadn’t known what he did, and if he hadn’t noticed
that all the time the boss was talking his ears were wiggling rapidly--a
sure sign that Old Nick was at work inside that cunning brain.

“Let this be a lesson to you, Jake,” Coggswell went on. “Let this be a
warning to you, my boy--for you, too, are very young--never to do
anything dishonest.”

“Or never get gay with Boss Coggswell,” chuckled Hines, looking at his
chief admiringly. “You’re a wonder!”

“And how does the young man take it?” inquired Coggswell, after a long
pause.

“Very calmly so far,” replied Hines. “He can’t believe that he’s in any
danger of being sent away. Says it’s a frame-up, and that he won’t have
any trouble in proving his innocence.”

“Poor, misguided youth!” murmured the boss.

“He’s got ex-Judge Lawrence to defend him,” Hines went on. “As soon as
the judge heard that he was under arrest, he went to police headquarters
and offered to take the case for nothing.”

“And what does the judge think?” inquired Coggswell, somewhat anxiously,
for he knew that Mr. Sugden Lawrence, ex-justice of the supreme court,
was one of the most able lawyers in the country.

Hines chuckled. “I got it from a friend at headquarters that the judge,
havin’ heard all the evidence, seems to think that he’s goin’ to have a
pretty hard time provin’ his client’s innocence.”

A relieved smile came to Samuel J. Coggswell’s face. “The judge is a
smart man,” he said. “I agree with him.”




CHAPTER X.

A TANGLED SKEIN.


Ex-Judge Lawrence glanced at the card which the office boy handed to
him. “Miss Dallas Worthington,” he read aloud; “I don’t know her, and I
am very busy. Did she state the object of her call?”

“Yes, sir; she said it was about the case of Owen Sheridan.”

The lawyer nodded. “Oh, yes, I recall the name now. Ask her to step
right in, Robert.

“You are Mr. Sheridan’s fiancée, I believe, Miss Worthington?” he said,
as the girl entered the room. “Please be seated. You have come, I
presume, to ask me what I think about this unfortunate case?”

“Yes,” said the girl. “Do you think that there is any chance of his
being guilty?”

“Well,” said the lawyer, with a smile, “that’s hardly a proper question
to ask an attorney concerning his client. What do _you_ think?”

“I feel sure that he is not,” the girl declared stoutly. “No matter what
evidence they bring against him, I cannot believe that Owen could be a
thief.”

“Humph!” grunted the judge, looking at her quizzically. “May I ask, Miss
Worthington, how long you have known the young man?”

“About six months.”

“And previous to that time you never even heard of him--didn’t know that
any such person as Owen Sheridan existed?”

“No, sir.”

“Then what makes you so sure that he couldn’t be a thief?” the lawyer
demanded sternly. “Surely you cannot form a positive estimate of a
person’s character in such a short period as six months?”

“If I had never met him before yesterday, I should be just as confident
of his innocence,” declared the girl simply. “You only have to meet Owen
once to realize that he is honest--that he isn’t the kind of fellow who
could do anything mean or dishonorable.”

The lawyer’s face softened. “My dear young lady, I agree with you
heartily,” he said. “I, too, took a great liking to the young man the
very first time I saw him. I am not a man of quick impressions. Long
experience has taught me that appearances are sadly deceiving, but there
are some men whose personalities compel confidence and respect the
minute you meet them. Owen Sheridan is one of these. I, too, am
absolutely confident that he is innocent of this charge of robbing the
mails. If I were not, I should not have undertaken his defense. I don’t
take criminal cases as a rule, and never when I believe the accused to
be guilty.”

“Then you believe that he is in no danger of--of being sent to prison?”
asked Dallas, quickly.

The lawyer’s face grew very grave. “I am in hopes that young Sheridan’s
personality will impress the jury as favorably as it has impressed us;
and, of course, I am going to do all I can to combat the sinister
influences which I have reason to believe are back of his arrest; but,
to be frank with you, Miss Worthington, I must admit that they have
built up a startlingly strong case against him.”

The girl winced. “A strong case!” she repeated, in a tone of dismay.

“Yes. You see, they found the pawn ticket for the watch in his
possession. The post-office inspectors who went to search his room are
ready to swear that when they opened his trunk, which was locked, they
found the pawn ticket inside.”

“But Owen didn’t pawn the watch,” declared the girl confidently. “Surely
the pawnbroker----”

“The pawnbroker’s clerk has identified Sheridan as the letter carrier
who came into the pawnshop in full uniform at three-thirty yesterday and
pledged a gold watch for forty dollars,” said the lawyer, with a wry
smile. “The watch has been identified by its owner as the one which was
in the registered package.”

A cry of startled surprise escaped from Dallas. “The pawnbroker’s clerk
must be mistaken,” she gasped.

“I agree with you,” said Judge Lawrence, “but at the same time he picked
Sheridan out of a group of twenty other letter carriers without a
second’s hesitation. That is bound to have great weight with a jury.”

The girl nodded in mournful assent, “Yes, I can see that. And what does
Owen say, Mr. Lawrence? What explanation does he offer?”

“He denied that he was in a pawnshop at all yesterday.”

Dallas looked relieved. “Then I believe him. I am sure that pawnbroker’s
clerk is lying, and so are those post-office inspectors. They are not
telling the truth when they say they found the pawn ticket in Owen’s
trunk. They must have put it there themselves in order to make a case
against him.”

The lawyer shook his head. “I am sorry to say that I cannot entirely
agree with you there, Miss Worthington. I think it quite likely that the
pawnshop clerk is lying, as you say. I have already discovered that he
is a friend of Jake Hines, a young man identified with Samuel J.
Coggswell, who, I have reason to suspect, is behind this prosecution, or
rather persecution, of your young friend.

“But as for the post-office inspectors,” he went on, “I believe they are
telling the truth. I have known both of them personally for several
years. They are square, honest, fearless men. Not even a politician as
influential as Boss Coggswell could persuade them to do anything
crooked. I am thoroughly convinced as to that. If they say they found
the pawn ticket in Sheridan’s trunk, I am quite sure that such was the
case.”

“Then how did it get there?” demanded Dallas. “You say you believe in
Owen’s innocence.”

“Somebody else put it there before the inspectors visited the
house--somebody who is in this shameful conspiracy to railroad our
unfortunate young friend to jail,” declared the lawyer grimly. “And I
believe I know already who that somebody was.”

“You do!” exclaimed the girl eagerly.

“Yes. As I presume you are aware, Miss Worthington, Sheridan is not the
only letter carrier who occupies a room at Mrs. O’Brien’s boarding
house. A young man named Smithers, also employed at Branch X Y, lives at
the same address. He has the bedroom next to Owen’s. He is a member of
the Samuel J. Coggswell Association, and a close friend of Jake Hines,
Coggswell’s confidential man.”

“Ah!” exclaimed Dallas breathlessly. “Then, of course, it was he who put
the ticket in Owen’s trunk. He could easily have entered the room when
Owen wasn’t there, and slipped the piece of pasteboard through a crack
without opening the trunk at all.”

“Yes,” agreed the lawyer; “doubtless that is how the thing was done.”

He leaned back in his chair, and gazed up at the ceiling meditatively.
“The whole wretched plot is perfectly clear to me,” he said. “I can see
every step those rascals took. First they got a man to send that
registered package from a downtown post office--a liquor dealer named
Warren. I met him this afternoon, and one look at the fellow served to
convince me that he is crooked. The box was empty, of course, when he
sent it; there was no watch inside. The package was addressed to a
saloon keeper on Sheridan’s route, and they timed the mailing of it so
to make sure that it would arrive at Branch X Y during our friend’s
tour.

“Then, at half past three,” he continued, “while Sheridan was on his way
to deliver the package, one of Coggswell’s emissaries--probably Jake
Hines--went to pawnshop on the letter carrier’s route, and pledged a
watch--the watch which the perjurer, Warren, swears was in the
registered package when he mailed it. The pawn ticket is next handed to
Carrier Smithers, who is instructed to put it into Sheridan’s trunk, so
that it will be there when the post-office inspectors come to search the
room.”

“But why, if the inspectors are as honest as you say,” demanded Dallas,
“should they so quickly have suspected Owen? Why should they have gone
straight to his room and opened his trunk? Doesn’t that look
significant?”

“A very sensible question, Miss Worthington. At first blush it does look
significant, I must admit. But I have interrogated my friends, the
inspectors, on that very point, and their explanation is satisfactory.
They tell me that the reason they were so quick to suspect my client was
because they learned that on that same day he had been trying
unsuccessfully to borrow money from his friends at Branch X Y. Naturally
that caused them to give him immediate attention.”

“And what does Owen say about this story that he was trying to borrow
money?” inquired the girl anxiously. “Does he deny it?”

“No; on the contrary, he admits it,” replied Judge Lawrence, with a
frown. “He was quite frank about the matter with the inspectors. He told
them that he had a chance to buy a diamond ring at a great bargain
yesterday. The ring was worth a hundred and twenty dollars, and its
owner was willing to sell it for ninety. Owen had sixty dollars saved
up, and tried to borrow the needed thirty from his fellow carriers. That
was yesterday morning.”

“And he bought the ring last night,” sighed Dallas. “Where did he get
the money? Hasn’t he explained?”

“Yes. He says that yesterday afternoon, when he had given up all hope of
being able to raise the cash for the ring, he unexpectedly encountered a
prosperous friend, a Boston man named Cowan, whom he had not seen for
several years. Owen declares that Cowan loaned him the thirty dollars.”

“And he’s telling the truth, of course,” said Dallas. “Surely it ought
to be easy to prove that, Judge Lawrence. All we have to do is to get
this Mr. Cowan to corroborate Owen’s statement.”

The lawyer smiled sadly. “That is where fate has dealt our young friend
a nasty blow. Sheridan is a most unlucky fellow. It ought to be easy, as
you say, to get this man Cowan to corroborate his statement--but it
isn’t.”

“Why not?” demanded the girl. “You don’t mean to say that he denies it?”

“Not quite as bad as that,” replied the judge, “but almost. Fifteen
minutes ago, Miss Worthington, I telephoned to this man’s hotel--Owen
told me where he was stopping. The clerk informed me over the wire that
Mr. Cowan died this morning of heart disease. My client’s statement
cannot be corroborated. Fate seems to be on the side of Samuel J.
Coggswell and his rascally crew.”




CHAPTER XI.

AN OFFER DECLINED.


As the day set for Owen Sheridan’s trial approached, ex-Judge Lawrence
grew more and more pessimistic as to the outcome. Although he was quite
certain that his client was the victim of a dastardly plot, he realized
that simply to make such an assertion in a court of law could do no good
unless he was able to prove it to a jury’s complete satisfaction.

He had obtained a bondsman for Owen, and the latter had been freed from
a cell at police headquarters, and was able to take an active part in
the preparing of his own defense.

Every day the carrier and his lawyer held long conferences, and went
over every detail of the case, seeking in vain to find some weak spot in
the chain of circumstantial evidence which his enemies had forged--some
point in the “frame-up” which was open to attack.

In this endeavor, however, they did not meet with much success until one
day Owen burst into the lawyer’s presence with a joyous smile upon his
face, and exclaimed excitedly:

“I’ve got an idea, judge, and I think it’s a winner.”

The lawyer listened attentively to what his client had to say, and when
the latter had finished, jumped up from his chair and impulsively
grasped the young man’s hand.

“I congratulate you, my boy,” he said warmly. “You are right; your idea
is a winner. Your cleverness may save you from a term in jail. I am more
confident now as to the outcome of this case.

“Be sure not to mention a word about this to a living soul,” he went on,
with a chuckle. “I want to spring it as a surprise. Whenever you meet
any of Coggswell’s bunch, pretend to be overwhelmed with despair. Make
those fellows think that you are on the verge of a breakdown as a result
of brooding over your impending fate. That will make the shock all the
greater when we spring our little surprise on them in court.”

Thus it happened that when, the following day, Jake Hines, on his way to
the headquarters of the Samuel J. Coggswell Association, encountered
Owen on the street, the latter looked so worried and cast down that Jake
almost felt sorry for him.

Hines stepped into Boss Coggswell’s private office at the clubhouse a
few minutes later, and told his chief about the meeting.

“That fellow looks like a ghost, governor,” he declared. “He’s scared
stiff. I almost think that if he had the price of a steamship ticket
he’d skip his bail and beat it.”

Boss Coggswell waxed thoughtful at this remark. “Do you know, Jake, that
isn’t at all a bad idea,” he said. “I refer to the suggestion you just
made about the young man skipping his bail. If I thought that he could
really be persuaded to do that I almost think I’d prefer to have things
turn out that way. I have no desire to see the fellow sent to prison. If
he became a fugitive from justice, it would suit our purpose just as
well, it seems to me. All we want is to have him so utterly discredited
that he’ll be unable to do us any injury.”

Coggswell had already used his political influence to have the trials of
Carriers Greene and Tom Hovey for tampering with Judge Lawrence’s mail
put down at the bottom of the court calendar. His object in doing this,
of course, was to have Owen Sheridan’s case disposed of before these
other cases came up for trial, so that the young man would be unable to
implicate him--Coggswell--by telling what he knew about the conspiracy
to pry into the ex-judge’s private correspondence.

“Yes,” the boss went on, his ears wiggling rapidly as he spoke, “I
almost think I’d prefer to have young Sheridan run away. It almost
breaks my heart to think of a nice young man like him having to go to
jail. He has tried to injure me, ’tis true, but I hope I am not
vindictive, Jake--I certainly hope I am not vindictive. If I thought
that it was only the lack of the price of a steamship ticket which
prevented him from leaving the United States, I think I’d loan him the
money, Jake--yes, indeed!”

Hines pondered over this. He had heard of fugitives from justice sending
for their sweethearts to join them in some remote portion of the globe
where there was no extradition treaty with the United States government.
But Dallas Worthington did not impress him as being the kind of girl who
would respond to such an invitation. On the contrary, she probably would
accept the fact of the letter carrier’s flight as conclusive proof of
his guilt.

If Sheridan stood trial, was convicted, and sentenced to jail, the girl,
believing that he had fallen an innocent victim to circumstantial
evidence, might still remain loyal to him; but if Sheridan ran away, he
would no doubt by such a craven act lose the love of Dallas forever.
Thus thought Jake Hines, and consequently he decided that Boss
Coggswell’s plan was a good one.

“I think you’re right, boss,” he said. “It would be a mighty good idea
for us to finance a little trip abroad for that feller.”

“But it must be done very carefully, Jake,” said Coggswell. “Remember,
we have Judge Lawrence to deal with--a mighty shrewd lawyer. If he
managed to implicate me in this young man’s flight, it would place me in
a very painful position. It is essential that I remain an anonymous
philanthropist, Jake.”

“I’ll look out for that, boss,” Hines assured him. “I’ll work it so that
it can’t possibly be brought home to you. I know a way.”

Half an hour later Hines stepped into the real-estate office of Walter
K. Sammis. Dallas Worthington looked up from her typewriter, and
frowned her disapproval of her visitor.

“If you don’t leave here immediately,” she began indignantly, “I’ll call
Mr. Sammis----”

“Hold on there, little one!” he interrupted blandly. “I know I ain’t
welcome here, but don’t go up in the air before you hear what I got to
say. If you don’t let me get it off my chest, you’ll be sorry. I’ve come
to tell you something about that letter-carrier friend of
yours--something that’ll help him.”

The girl hesitated. “Well, hurry up and say it,” she said coldly. “I’ll
listen.”

“I met Sheridan on the street a little while ago,” said Hines, “and he
looked so bad that, honest, I couldn’t help feelin’ sorry for him.”

“He doesn’t need your pity,” declared Dallas scornfully.

“Maybe not,” said Hines; “but at the same time he’s got it. It almost
made my heart bleed to see him lookin’ like that, and I made up my mind
that I’d like to do something for him.”

The girl received this declaration with an incredulous laugh; but,
unheeding this, her visitor went on: “I’ve got a little money saved,
girlie--a couple of thousand dollars that I don’t need just now. If you
think your carrier friend could use it, he’s very welcome to it.”

Dallas looked at him in great astonishment. This generous offer quite
took her breath away. Her tone was a little less hostile as she said:

“Why, that’s very kind of you, Mr. Hines; but I don’t think Owen--Mr.
Sheridan is in need of money.”

“I reckon he is,” replied Jake, with a grin. “I know very well that he
ain’t got a dollar to his name. I don’t like the feller--he’s a crook,
and I ain’t got any use for crooks--but at the same time, as I say, I
feel sorry for him. And, besides, he’s a friend of yours, and any friend
of yours, little one, can command Jake Hines’ bank roll. So you tell him
the next time you see him that if he can use a couple of thousand he’s
welcome to it.”

With these words he hurried out of the office, satisfied that he had
succeeded in his mission.

“It’s sure to work,” he said to himself as he walked back to the club.
“From the look on that guy’s face, I’m sure that it’s only the lack of
funds which prevents him from beatin’ it. As soon as he learns that
there’s a chance for him to get hold of enough dough to make a safe
get-away he’ll grab at it quick.”

When Dallas saw Owen a little later she repeated to him what Hines had
said, and the young man, greatly mystified, went to report the incident
to his friend and counselor, Judge Lawrence.

“What on earth does it mean, judge?” he inquired. “What is their game in
offering me money?”

The lawyer laughed. “It is very clear what their game is, my boy. They
are in hopes that you are in such terror of the coming trial that you
can be tempted to seek safety in flight. The two thousand dollars is
intended to pay your expenses.”

Owen frowned; then his face suddenly lighted up. “Say, judge, I’ve got
another idea. Couldn’t we make great capital out of this offer? What’s
the matter with my accepting this money from Hines, in the presence of
concealed witnesses, then exposing the whole game? The very fact that
they are trying to induce me to jump my bail ought to be enough to
prove that they are behind this conspiracy.”

Judge Lawrence smiled. “I was thinking of that, but it wouldn’t work.
Those rascals are too smart to lay themselves open to a trap of that
sort. That is why Hines went to Miss Worthington instead of making that
offer direct to you.

“You see,” he went on, “while we can readily guess their motive, they
haven’t said anything that would incriminate them. Hines simply offered
to lend you some money, which might be taken as a philanthropic and
disinterested act on his part. He did not suggest that the money be used
to defray the expenses of your flight. He would claim that he thought
you might be able to use it to defray the expense of your defense.

“And, besides, you can rest assured that if you agreed to accept the
money, Hines wouldn’t be so careless as to make out the check to you. He
would make it out to Miss Worthington. There’s nothing criminal in a man
lending or giving a couple of thousand dollars to a young lady whose
friendship he ardently seeks. That’s the answer which they would make to
an attempt on our part to make capital out of the incident.”

Sheridan realized the logic of this, and Hines’ offer was turned down
flat.

Boss Coggswell was greatly disappointed when his lieutenant reported to
him that the letter carrier had refused to avail himself of this
opportunity to seek safety in flight.

“It is too bad,” he sighed. “I would have preferred to let this
unfortunate young man down easy. He has chosen unwisely. A sojourn
abroad is much more pleasant than several years behind bars. But since
he refuses to accept my aid,” he went on, those expressive ears of his
wagging rapidly, “I’m afraid he’ll have to go to jail. Yes, Jake, as
much as it pains me to have to say it, I am quite certain now that he’ll
have to go to jail.”




CHAPTER XII.

ON THE STAND.


Boss Coggswell was not present in the courtroom when Owen Sheridan’s
came up for trial. Not that he was not interested, nor was it a feeling
of delicacy which kept him away; but he realized that his presence might
excite comment and lend color to the accused man’s assertion that he was
the victim of a conspiracy.

“You’ll be there, of course, Jake,” he said to his subordinate, “and
I’ll rely on you to bring me the news just as soon as a verdict is
reached.”

Hines grinned. “Yes, you can bet your boots, boss, that I won’t lose any
time gettin’ here with the glad tidings. I guess you’re right in
decidin’ not to be present. It’d look pretty raw for you to go to court.
No use takin’ any unnecessary chances.”

“It isn’t that, Jake,” replied Coggswell deprecatingly. “It isn’t that,
my boy. I have no reason to be afraid. When one’s conscience is clear,
one doesn’t have to worry about what people might think. But the fact
is, Jake, I have a tender heart--you ought to know that by this
time--and I could not bear to be present to witness that poor man’s
sufferings.”

Hines grinned again, and looked at his chief admiringly. “All right,
boss,” he said. “You wait here, and I’ll bring you the news as soon as
the jury brings in a verdict.”

Hines had not the slightest doubt as to what that verdict was going to
be. He felt confident that the evidence against Sheridan was so
crushingly conclusive that the jury wouldn’t hesitate more than three
minutes before deciding that he was guilty.

If he had any apprehensions on the subject they would have been
dispelled by what he had seen that morning. He had encountered Owen on
the street, walking arm in arm with Judge Lawrence, and if ever two men
looked worried, the accused carrier and his counsel did.

“Poor gink!” said Mr. Hines to himself. “I guess he’s sorry by this time
that he didn’t take that money and beat it while he had the chance.
Wonder how he’ll look in a suit of stripes and with his hair close
cropped.”

There was a broad grin upon his face as he entered the courtroom and
seated himself on one of the rear benches. Catching the presiding
judge’s eye leveled sternly upon him, and suddenly realizing that his
levity was hardly decorous, he hurriedly assumed a serious mien.

He found it difficult to refrain from chuckling as the case progressed,
however, for as witness after witness took the stand to testify against
Sheridan, and the strong chain of circumstantial evidence was presented
link by link to the jury, the prisoner’s counsel, eminent lawyer though
he was, seemed to become more and more baffled and depressed.

Ex-Judge Lawrence was famed for his skill as a cross-examiner. This was
the only point on which Coggswell and Hines had been apprehensive. They
feared that there was a possibility of some of the witnesses going to
pieces under the vigorous, searching questioning of counsel for the
defense.

But, to Hines’ great relief, the ex-judge, in this case, gave no
evidence of being an expert at the art of cross-examination. He did not
succeed in “rattling” a single witness; in fact, he handled them all so
mildly and apparently with so little spirit that Hines muttered to
himself contemptuously:

“Huh! Him a great lawyer! Guess he’s been very much overrated. Why, I
know a whole lot of ordinary police-court counselors that could give him
cards and spades.”

William Warren, wholesale liquor dealer, was the first witness to take
the stand. He testified that he had sent his good friend Michael
Harrington, a saloon keeper, a gold watch by registered mail. He had
placed the watch in the package in the presence of two witnesses, who
had also been with him when he handed in the package at the registry
window of a downtown post office.

Judge Lawrence asked this witness but four questions in
cross-examination:

“Are you acquainted with Samuel J. Coggswell, Mr. Warren?”

“I never had the pleasure of meeting the gentleman.”

“Are you acquainted with a young man named Jake Hines--a prominent
member of the Samuel J. Coggswell Association? Before answering this
question, Mr. Warren, let me remind you that you are under oath.”

“It ain’t necessary to remind me of no such thing,” retorted the witness
indignantly. “Yes, I know Mr. Hines. I am proud to say that he is a good
friend of mine.” He glanced across at the spectators’ benches, and Jake
smiled at him an acknowledgment of this compliment.

They had expected this question, knowing that it was the accused
carrier’s hope to be able to make the jury believe that he was the
victim of a conspiracy. They had decided that Warren should tell the
truth, and admit that he knew Hines. To have denied the fact would have
been dangerous. There was no telling that the defense did not have
witnesses at hand ready to take the stand and swear that they knew of
the friendship.

“Yes, I know Jake Hines,” the witness repeated, almost belligerently;
“but that don’t----”

“Did you meet him, or in any way have communication with him, on the day
you sent the registered package?” interrupted counsel for the defense.

“Yes,” replied the witness unhesitatingly. “Mr. Hines came to my office
that day. He was in the neighborhood, and he dropped in to make a social
call.”

This question, too, had been expected. Warren had made up his mind to
answer it truthfully, for it was quite possible that Hines had been seen
entering his office.

“And at that meeting between Hines and yourself, Mr. Warren,” counsel
for the defense went on, “did either of you say anything about this
watch which you were going to send to Harrington?”

“Not a word,” emphatically replied the witness, who was prepared for
this question also. “Not a single word, sir. We never spoke about the
watch at all. Hines didn’t know that I was going to send it.”

As the conversation which had taken place that day between Hines and
himself had been behind a closed door, with no chance of anybody having
overheard them, Warren felt that he was quite safe in making this
denial.

“That’s all,” said the cross-examiner, with an audible sigh, and the
witness, as he stepped down, exchanged a triumphant glance with Jake
Hines.

The next witnesses were the men who had been in Warren’s office when he
placed the watch in the package, and who had accompanied him to the post
office and seen the package handed in at the registry window. Both of
them were reputable business men, and Owen’s lawyer made no attempt to
impeach their testimony. In cross-examination he let each of them off
with but a single question, which was the same in each case:

“On the way to the post office, where did Mr. Warren carry the package
in which you had seen him place the watch?”

“In the left-hand pocket of his coat,” the two witnesses both answered.

Michael Harrington, the saloon keeper, testified that the package
contained no watch when he opened it; which statement was corroborated
by several witnesses who had been present in the saloon when the accused
postman brought in the registered package.

Harrington made a good impression on the stand. He denied that he knew
Jake Hines, except by reputation, and volunteered the information that
he had “no use for Sam Coggswell, or any of his bunch,” being himself of
the opposite political party. Hines could not help grinning at Judge
Lawrence’s evident discomfiture.

The pawnbroker’s clerk, an exceedingly nervous young man, who took the
stand and swore that Owen had pledged the watch for forty dollars, was
cross-examined at greater length than any of the previous witnesses.

Counsel for the defense, however, could not shake his testimony. He
admitted that he was acquainted with Jake Hines, but denied that the
latter had been in the pawnshop that day, or had held any conversation
with him regarding the watch. Another audible sigh came from Judge
Lawrence as this witness left the stand.

The two post-office inspectors testified to having found the pawn ticket
in Owen’s trunk, and a half dozen of the employees of the Branch X Y
took the stand and reluctantly stated that Carrier Sheridan had tried to
borrow thirty dollars from them that day.

Owen’s counsel did not attempt to cross-examine any of these witnesses.
As the last of them left the stand and the prosecutor announced that
this closed the government’s case, Jake Hines leaned back in his seat
and smiled expansively.

“Let ’em beat that if they can,” he muttered confidently. “I can see
from the looks of the jury that they’ve made up their minds already.”


TO BE CONTINUED.




HE WANTED TO KNOW.


It was customary with the French marshal, Bassompierre, when any one of
his soldiers were brought before him for heinous offenses, to say to
him: “By heavens, brother, you or I will certainly be hanged!” which was
a sufficient indication of their fate.

A spy, being discovered in his camp, was addressed in these terms; and
next day, as the provost was carrying the culprit to the gallows, he
pressed earnestly for leave to speak with the marshal, alleging that he
had something of importance to communicate.

The marshal, being made acquainted with his request, exclaimed, in his
customary rough and hasty manner:

“It is the way of these rascals; when ordered for execution, they
pretend some frivolous story, merely to reprieve themselves for a few
moments. However, bring the dog hither.”

When the culprit made his appearance, the marshal asked him what he had
to say.

“Why, my lord,” replied he, “when I first had the honor of your
conversation, you were obliging enough to say that either you or I
should be hanged; now I come to know whether it is your pleasure to be
so; because, if you won’t I must, that’s all!”

Needless to say that the rascal was pardoned.


HE COULDN’T UNDERSTAND IT ALL.


An Irishman, who was terribly afraid of ghosts, got a berth on board an
American vessel.

As the ship was leaving the port, he asked one of the sailors if there
were any ghosts on board.

One of them, for a joke, said it was as full of ghosts as a churchyard.

This frightened Pat so much that when he turned into his hammock he drew
his blanket so far over his head that his feet were left naked and cold.

He endured the suffering for a few nights, and then he went to the
captain and complained about his blanket.

“Please, sor,” said Pat, “my blanket is too long at the top and too
short at the bottom, and sure, I even cut a bit off the top and sewed it
onto the bottom, but, faith it’s just the same as iver it was. I can’t
undershtand it at all--at all.”

                   *       *       *       *       *




                       THE NEWS OF ALL NATIONS.


A Kangaroo Cat.

Mrs. Pussy Cat, who lives at the home of Thomas Evans, in Newport, Ky.,
is greatly worried over one of her offspring. No other member of Mrs.
Cat’s numerous family is like the newcomer. This kitten has only two
feet and walks or hops about like a kangaroo. There are only tufts of
fur where the front legs ought to be. In hopping about, the kitten
balances itself with its tail, which it uses as a sort of rudder.


Gets Fifty-dollar Tip for a Shave.

Jack O’Reilly, barber in West Third Street, Los Angeles, Cal., had the
surprise of his life a few days ago. A prosperous-looking man walked
into the shop. When the job was done, the patron unlimbered a wad of
bills, stripped off a fifty-dollar yellowback, and said: “Things have
come my way handsomely. Here’s a bit of a tip.”

Leaving O’Reilly stupefied with astonishment, the man walked out. He was
a prosperous Los Angeles stock broker, O’Reilly said.


Asks $500 for Loss of Faded Army Uniform.

On the loss of a faded blue army uniform, a relic of the Civil War, Mrs.
Mary Heintzelman, seventy-three years old, of Minneapolis, Minn., bases
a claim for five hundred dollars against Hennepin County, which she has
already filed.

Five years ago Mrs. Heintzelman went to the Hennepin County poor farm.
Her only possessions were packed in an old-fashioned trunk. In the top
tray lay the old uniform and a packet of soldier’s letters, written on
the heavy blue stationery used in war times. They were the only links
that bound the old woman’s life to the highest happiness her life had
known.

The uniform, more than half a century ago, had been worn to the war by
George Heintzelman of the Forty-seventh Pennsylvania infantry. They had
been betrothed, she and the young soldier, when he marched away to war.
The memories of those days when he and she were young have been the only
comforts in the old woman’s life.

Three years later Heintzelman came back, badly wounded. He recovered,
but a bullet through his lung had impaired his health. They were
married, and moved West. The husband’s health did not improve. A few
years later he died.

Mrs. Heintzelman stored the old uniform and the letters in the trunk and
set about to make her own way in the world. The years that followed were
lonely and full of hard work and trouble. The treasures in the trunk
were the only solaces in the woman’s life.

Finally, too old to work longer, she went to the home. Every spring, on
the anniversary of the day that her lover had marched away, Mrs.
Heintzelman would take out the old uniform and hang it on the line to
air. Softly she would caress the faded garment and read over the old
letters, and her sadness and loneliness would be lost in the flood of
pleasant memories that floated back from her youth.

A week ago, as the old uniform hung upon the line, a cinder descended
from a smokestack. It smoldered for a moment in the garment, flared up,
and Mrs. Heintzelman’s last treasure was gone forever.


Blasted Romance of Poor Aunt Emily.

When board of health inspectors of Indianapolis, Ind., went to the home
of Emily Smith, a recluse, to remove piles of dust-covered books and
papers which literally filled her little house, they uncovered a hidden
fortune and unearthed a story of a blasted romance.

Fifty years ago the woman was a belle in the English settlement in New
York City and was preparing to be married, when the man who had won her
was stricken with fever and died.

She moved to Indianapolis twenty-five years ago, and, residing in a slum
district, has been an object of charity for many years. About eight
thousand dollars was found secreted in the house, which was cleaned only
after the indignant woman had shrieked in protest.

The following is the supposed pauper’s riches: Currency, $846.97;
certified check, $200; bank deposits, $1,800; mortgages, $5,000, and
insurance papers of undetermined value.

“There is nothin’ there you’d want to see, and, besides, it would kill
Aunt Emily if you disturbed her papers,” a negress told the officers.

“This is my home; it’s none of your business what I have beneath these
papers!” Miss Smith shouted, as the officers started to move the
newspapers and pamphlets.


Fighting Man’s Square Meal.

Charles Weber, a pugilist from New York, while in a cell in
Philadelphia, Pa., on a charge of forgery, having been brought here from
Moyamensing Prison, told Turnkey Gordon, of the Thompson Street police
station, that he hadn’t eaten for a week; that he was as hungry as a
polar bear, and wouldn’t Gordon please get one dollar from his money in
the sergeant’s desk and take his order for a square meal? Gordon did.

Ten minutes later Gordon faced the house sergeant with a wry face. “What
do you think of that fightin’ guy?” he asked. “‘E said ez ’ow ’e wanted
a square meal, and sent me out fer a dollar’s worth of cream puffs, and
blow me if ’e didn’t eat every bloomin’ one of ’em.”


Answers the Call of Cupid.

After having answered nearly four million calls, Miss Theresa Cox, chief
telephone operator at the Minnesota State House, has fallen victim of
Cupid, and given up her job. For ten years, ever since the capitol was
completed, Miss Cox has guarded the switchboard day in and day out, the
personification of efficiency and amiability, and long years ago gained
the reputation of being a model telephone girl.

On ordinary days she made between one thousand and twelve hundred wire
connections. When the legislature was in session, or in other times of
stress, the demands on her switchboard were greatly increased, and she
would be called over the lines sixteen hundred times or more.

No one ever applied for her job, and she probably was the only one in
the capitol whose job was not in danger. The uncertainties of political
positions had no fear for her, for no governor ever could have thought
of removing Miss Cox. There would have been a storm of protest akin to a
riot.

But what governors could not do, Henry Jopling accomplished. He invited
Miss Cox to marry him, and Dan Cupid advised her to surrender.

“I’m awfully sorry to leave here,” she said to a gathering of State
House officials and employees who gave her a wedding “shower,” and her
voice shook a little. “You have all been so kind to me.”


Old-time Circus Man’s Will.

William Washington Cole, an old-time circus owner, at one time of Cole
Brothers and later a part owner in the Barnum & Bailey show, left an
estate valued at five million dollars, according to his will filed with
Surrogate Daniel Nobel in Queens County.

Mr. Cole died in Whitestone, L. I., March 10th. He left a widow, but no
children, brothers, or sisters. Distant relatives live in England and in
Scotland.

He left to his widow, Mrs. Margaret Cole, two hundred thousand dollars
and two-eighths of the residue after the bequests are paid. Mrs. Cole is
also to receive certain specific bequests. Sixty-five persons receive
bequests and annuities aggregating about five hundred thousand dollars.
The will also makes bequests to churches and institutions to the extent
of one hundred thousand dollars.


Transcontinental Pedestrians.

In competition with Edward Payson Weston, the veteran walker, and to win
a fifteen-hundred-dollar prize offered by the Panama-Pacific Exposition,
Mr. and Mrs. Tom Jackley are walking across the country, with the
requirement that they “make” the capital of each of the forty-eight
States within three years. They left San Francisco September 12, 1912,
and seem sure of winning, as they are now in the East, and have four
months to reach Augusta, Maine. They are forbidden to ride in any way,
and may obtain money only by selling pictures of themselves.


Gets $7,000,000 from Uncle.

Using the name of Albert Brown nearly cost Albert James Bourne, a
transient farm hand, a fortune of seven million dollars, left him by an
uncle who died several months ago in Melbourne, Australia.

After a search through seven States, Bourne was located on a farm near
Lincoln, Neb., by private detectives who had been hired to search for
him. It was discovered he had been in a hospital in St. Joseph, Mo.

The property left him consists of 339,000 acres of free land, 25,000
sheep, 400 horses, hundreds of cattle, and 50,000 pounds sterling.
Bourne is Irish, and fifty years old.


Sues Farmers, but Vanishes.

Two years after filing suit against wealthy Howell County farmers of the
South Fork, Mo., neighborhood, whom he accused of slanderous statements
concerning himself, the whereabouts of Wiley C. Goldsby, the plaintiff,
are unknown, and caused the dismissal of the suit, which had been taken
to Ozark County on a change of venue. Goldsby was last seen when he left
for the Kansas wheat fields.

After Goldsby had been in charge of the ranch house of Doctor R. A.
Sparks for some time, stories were circulated in the neighborhood that
he was a woman masquerading in male attire. It was said he often wore a
kimono when preparing breakfast for the ranch hands, and devoted his
spare time to crocheting and other fancywork. It was these statements
that Goldsby made the basis of a suit for heavy damages.


University Student at Ten.

Helen Bradford, of Ottumwa, Iowa, ten years old, has made arrangements
to enter the University of Iowa in September.

She was graduated from high school, and is heralded as one of the best
mathematicians among grade students of the State. She will be the
youngest girl to attend Iowa in more than ten years.


Cupid Tricks Truant “Cops.”

Cupid has had Minneapolis, Minn., school-attendance officers dodging
around corners in pursuit of children under sixteen who were not
attending school, only to have them flash a marriage license. This has
happened several times during the present school year, and
school-attendance officers are getting vexed at Cupid.

The law is that children must attend school until they are sixteen,
unless they have completed the elementary-school course. However,
attendance officers have given up the chase after the truants when it
has been proved they have been married.

Teressa Amundson, Alida Sandeen, Ruth Rosendahl, Lillian Jordan, Agnes
Gratz, and Alice Hanson are the girls who have abruptly ended their
education by the marriage route and had attendance officers guessing.


Fight Lake of Burning Oil.

Recently, citizens of Oilton, Okla., and neighboring towns witnessed the
most extensive oil fire that has ever occurred on the river since the
field opened. It was one mile northeast of the town, on the Cimarron
River, where the oil had formed a lake in the bend of the stream. It
burned for hours, sending up a column of smoke and flame that was
noticeable from towns twenty miles away.

William Murdoch, traffic manager of the Oil Belt Terminal Railroad,
headed a squad of men who prevented a spread of flames, which would have
been disastrous to the big railroad bridge.


He Helped to Found Republic of Texas.

J. W. Darlington, ninety-four years old, of Austin, Tex., is the only
person now living who heard the sounds of the guns at the battle of San
Jacinto, seventy-nine years ago.

Mr. Darlington was one of the band of Texans who met and defeated the
Mexicans under Santa Anna, but was prevented from fighting in the battle
itself by being detailed to look after the supply train.

Mr. Darlington came from Virginia to Austin in 1839, the year that
Austin was laid off as a town, and the first capitol was built. He
married Miss Eleanor J. Love in 1843, and has four daughters and one son
living. He is an honorary member of the Daughters of the Republic, and
still takes an interest in affairs of the State. His chief delight seems
to be recalling his life in Texas in the early forties.

In the battle of Plum Creek, in 1840, Mr. Darlington, at the head of
about two hundred citizens, whipped the Comanche Indians so that they
gave the early settlers no more trouble. He was also engaged in a battle
at Plum Creek in 1842.

Mr. Darlington helped to plane the logs for the first capitol during
Lamar’s administration, and also to build the fort around the capitol,
to protect it from the Indians on one side and the Mexicans on the
other. The capitol was then used not only for the sessions of Congress,
but as a church, school, opera house, dance hall--in fact, for all
public gatherings.


Rounded “The Horn.”

Vanburen Crompton, of Allen Dale, Ill., is one of the few men living who
went to the California gold fields by way of “the Horn.” Most of the
emigrants went overland by wagon, enduring many hardships. Mr. Crompton,
then a young man, with two companions chose the water route. Taking a
boat at New Orleans, they followed along the Mexican and South American
coast, rounding Cape Horn, and then up the western coast, to San
Francisco. The ships in that day were slow, and it required many weeks
to make the journey. Thousands of men were called westward by the lure
of gold, but only a comparatively small number found riches. Mr.
Crompton was among the unlucky ones, and returned home after six years.
He now lives on the farm on which he was born, and in one of the first
frame houses erected in southern Illinois. In the early days there was a
fort near the farm, a refuge from the Indians.


Still Another “Pick” to Feed.

Former President Roosevelt’s fear of race suicide would have received a
rude shock had the colonel been in the front office at the Young Men’s
Christian Association in Nashville, Tenn., when “Bee,” a crippled
porter, and quite a fixture at the building, asked for a day off.

“What in the world do you want with a day off, Bee?” asked one of the
secretaries to whom this request, coming from Bee, was something
unusual.

“Well, suh,” said the old negro exultantly, “Ah have a visitor at mah
house dis mawnin’. It’s de nineteenth, suh. Ah shore has a hard time to
sport ’em, suh. Eatin’s am high and money am mighty procrastinatin’.”

Bee’s request was granted.


“Up, You Dead!” Cry Saves the Trench.

A French lieutenant, now lying wounded in a Paris hospital, has given
this account of the thrilling action in which he received his injury:

“We were fortifying a trench which we had taken. Behind a barrier of
sacks which blocked one end of it, two sentinels kept careful watch. We
could work in all security.

“Suddenly an avalanche of bombs tumbled down on our heads. Before we
could recover, ten of our men were stretched on the ground, dead or
wounded, pell-mell.

“I opened my mouth to urge them on again, when a stone from the parapet,
torn out by a projectile, hit me on the head. I fell unconscious. My
stupor lasted a second only. A splinter of shell tore my left hand, and
the pain brought me to.

“As I opened my eyes, weakened, my mind benumbed, I saw the ‘boches’
jump over the barrier of sacks and invade the trench. There were about
twenty. They had no guns, but they carried in front of them a sort of
wicker basket filled with bombs.

“I looked to the left. Our men had gone, the trench was empty. The
boches advanced; a few more steps and they were on me.

“Just then one of my men, lying on the ground, a wound on his forehead,
a wound on his chin, blood streaming from his face, dragged himself to a
sitting position, seized a sack of grenades near him, and cried out:
‘Up, you dead!’

“He pulled himself to his knees, dived into the sack, and flung the
grenades at the group of assailants.

“In answer to his cry, three more wounded men dragged themselves up. Two
of them, who had broken legs, took guns, and, opening the magazines,
started a rapid fire, each shot of which hit home. The third, whose left
arm was inert, seized a bayonet with his right.

“When I picked myself up, having quite recovered my senses, about half
the hostile group had been felled, the rest having retreated in
disorder.

“All that remained was a huge, perspiring subofficer, congested with
rage, who, leaning against the barrier, protected by the iron shield,
continued most courageously, I must say, to fire his revolver in our
direction.

“The man who was first to organize the defense, who had cried, ‘Up, you
dead!’ received a bullet straight in the jaw. He collapsed.

“Suddenly the soldier with the bayonet, who for some minutes had been
crawling from corpse to corpse, stopped about four feet from the
barrier, drew himself up, dodged two bullets fired at him, and plunged
his bayonet into the German’s throat.

“The position was saved. The wounded soldier’s sublime appeal had
resuscitated the ‘dead.’”


Alleged Dead Man Denies the Report.

Once upon a time the city editor of a newspaper printed a story about a
man being dead who wasn’t dead.

Much to his consternation, the man arose the next morning and read a
lurid account of his death. He pinched himself to see if he were dead or
alive, and, coming to the conclusion that he was very much alive, after
looking at a black-and-blue mark where his fingers had closed together
upon his tender flesh, he sought the city editor.

“I read in the morning paper that I was dead,” he remarked to the
newspaper man at the desk.

“Well,” laconically responded the city editor, “what about it?”

“I am here as a living witness to testify that I am not dead,” responded
the man who was printed dead, “and that the reports of my death are very
much exaggerated.”

“I want you to understand here and now that if this newspaper says you
are dead, you are dead,” retorted the city editor.

“But don’t you see that I’m very much alive?” queried the astonished
dead man.

“All right,” replied the city editor, “we’ll put you in the birth column
to-morrow morning.”

Well, there is a parallel case to this in Montana, as is shown in an
opinion by the State supreme court, written by Associate Justice Sanner.

Frank Lemmer, a taxidermist, was the object of an obituary notice in the
Great Falls _Tribune_, W. M. Bole’s newspaper. The notice had him dead,
and dead to rights, because of an overdose of morphine, administered
upon a prescription by a physician, but evidently the _Tribune_ made the
mistake of not putting Mr. Lemmer in the birth column the next morning,
although it explained later that Lemmer had arisen from the dead, with
due apologies to the supposed dead man.

Now, Lemmer objected to being called a “dead one,” and promptly
instituted suit against the _Tribune_, claiming that he was not dead,
and that his business as a taxidermist had been injured by the alleged
malicious publication that he was dead.

Naturally, the defendants demurred both generally and specifically,
which demurrer was sustained by the Cascade District Court. The
plaintiff thereupon declined to plead further, and suffered judgment of
dismissal with costs. Naturally an appeal was taken.

Justice Sanner, Chief Justice Brantly, and Associate Justice Holloway
concurring, calls attention to the inference contained in the
publication of the alleged death of Lemmer.

“The necessary inferences are,” says the opinion, “that Frank Lemmer
died; that he died from an overdose of morphine; that the morphine was
procured on a doctor’s prescription, which prescription was obtained at
Lemmer’s instance by a stranger. None of these circumstances, nor all of
them, suggest anything disgraceful or criminal.”

The opinion then proceeds to say that it is no disgrace to die, and that
one may die without moral turpitude from an overdose of morphine
procured by a doctor’s prescription, even though a stranger acted as
messenger in the transition.

“Speaking generally,” continues the opinion, “there is no doubt that one
may suffer such damages from almost any publication whatever,
particularly a publication to the effect that he is dead; but whenever
such damages are sought, it is not enough to aver generally that in
consequence to the publication the plaintiff has been damaged in his
business; the facts showing such damages must be alleged or no cause of
action is stated.”

The opinion then proceeds to show that the demurrer to the complaint was
properly sustained, and the judgment is affirmed.


“Movie” Mysteries Are Here Explained.

Rumbling bass notes from the unbridled, unleashed piano. Thunderous
roars from the big bass drum. Frequent crashes of brassy cymbals. You
instinctively clap your hands to your ears and breathlessly await the
bursting of the awful tornado that is scurrying over your head.

Then comes a pause in the deafening and ominous roar--the house is so
still you can hear the clicking of the projecting machine as the film is
reeled off.

Yes; we are in the midst of a fearsome forest, and the heroine is just
about to merge from the inky blackness with all her troubles--there she
is, now!

What was that? A flash of lightning! The drummer redoubles his sonorous
roll, ending with a wild, spine-stiffening thump. Some storm. The
heroine’s hair is blown so violently you fear it may be torn out by the
very roots.

She falls to the moss-grown forest floor. Livid flash and another
thunderous roll. Then the deluge. The heavens open, and while the
fanfare is loudest and the lightning is lividest, our fair lady is
soaked to the skin with real water and falls to earth, beaten down by
the very force of the torrent from on high.

Great scene, that!

Come with us now and see how the game is played. Ah, the movie studio!

Here’s a patch of nice green grass on the studio floor, and back of it a
few shrubs and some sizable trees. Up on a scaffold high enough to be
out of the camera’s ken are a dozen men, each armed with a huge watering
pot.

The heroine stands on the side lines, waiting for the storm to begin.
Storm in broad noon of a sunny day? Sure thing. Just watch.

An excited-looking individual holding a bunch of manuscript stands
beside the heroine--yes, you’ve guessed it, he’s the movie director.

She gets behind the trees, and the man at the camera crank starts
turning. She pushes her way through the tangled wildwood and stubs her
toe, looking unutterable anguish the while.

“Down stage!” yells the excited director.

She staggers on as directed, the camera man cranking nonchalantly with
one hand while he takes puffs at a cigarette with the other. The poor
girl tries to rise, and wabbles feebly.

“Fall in front of the camera!” bawls the director.

She falls at the proper focal distance.

“Stretch out your arms--look wild!” yells the boss of the works.

“Let her go!” this time to the men with the watering cans.

And poor heroine, struggling and staggering, is drenched to the skin
with the downpour, not from the heavens above, but quite as wet.

But, we ask, where is the lightning for this wild outburst of the
aforesaid Nature.

“Oh, that’s easy!” laughs the director. “We put that in afterward with
the scratch of a pin.”

“But how are you going to make it look like night?”

“Easier still--we’ll tint the film blue. Got to have sunlight to take
any kind of pictures, anyway.”

So, when you see this thrill, remember that the lightning is a pin
scratch, and the night effect is blue aniline dye and not by the gloom
of night. As for Jupiter Pluvius, the men with the cans of water can wet
down the place with equal skill.

Have you ever witnessed an exciting scene about a big building--a home
or a factory--and then, in the next reel, watched it go up in smoke and
flame? Yes? Some expense? Not so very much, for you haven’t seen the
real building burn down at all, but only a little model of it after the
scene has been acted out in front of the real building.

“The best fire effects are made in the studios, anyway,” the movie
expert will tell you.

It was in a studio that the eruption of Mount Etna was manufactured. The
promoters had tried taking real moving pictures of the volcano in
eruption, but they were not nearly as good as the studio-made variety.
These had the verisimilitude of real life, with fleeing thousands, men,
women, children, and animals, pouring down its red-hot sides. The films
of the fleeing people were merely super-imposed on the film of the fake
volcano, studio made.

You have seen your favorite heroine jump unhesitatingly off a tall
cliff? Or swim an ice-choked river? You never knew she could swim. Nor
does she. Another movie trick is what you have seen. Movie stars seldom
do such things. Professionals, dressed exactly as they are, and made up
to resemble them, do this part of the stunt for the real actors. Jumping
from a burning building is another movie feat which is only a trick. The
real people get only as far as the windows. Dummies do the jumping and
the falling.

So! But how do they make inanimate objects move about as if they were
endowed with life? How does a catsup bottle jump up from the table and
climb down to the floor on the rungs of a chair? Or how can grandpa’s
clock walk up the stairs, turning around solemnly the while to look you
straight in the eye and give you warning of the flight of the hours?

Perhaps you have seen horses running full tilt at you and never seemed
to catch up. So simple! Right in front of the horses is a high-powered
automobile, in which the movie camera is set up. The horses follow the
car, and the camera man grinds out his film, always keeping a few feet
ahead of his charging subjects.


Prehistoric Man Now Seen in Wax.

The three great links in the chain of human ancestry in America,
beginning nearly twenty thousand years back, have just been represented
for the first time in scientifically reconstructed wax faces at the
College of Medicine, University of Nebraska, in Omaha. This is the first
reconstruction work of the kind that has been done on prehistoric skulls
of America.

Scientists are enthusiastic over the three great types it has brought
out on the skulls of modern Indian, the cave-dwelling cannibal of three
thousand years ago, and the Nebraska “Loess man,” fragments of whose
skull were deposited with the glacial drift when the Missouri River
bluffs were made, between ten thousand and twenty thousand years ago.

For eight years the skulls of the low-browed Loess man, found by the
archeologist, Robert F. Gilder, of Omaha, have remained in the museums
in Omaha, Lincoln, and at Harvard University, while science has
hopelessly longed to know what a face this preglacial man must have
worn.

Finally German scientists worked out an accurate system of facial
measurements compiled into an elaborate table, by the use of which faces
can be faithfully reconstructed over skulls. To date little has been
done along this line in Europe. In America the first work in building up
faces of prehistoric man has just been completed by Miss Myra Warner,
clay-model artist, who has made a specialized study of this German
system in the art schools of the East.

Miss Warner was handed the three skulls by Doctor Charles W. M. Poynter,
professor of anatomy of the University of Nebraska. She was told nothing
about the origin of the skulls. She worked faithfully for months, and,
with the aid of the table of measurements, built up the three wonderful
faces. It was not until she had nearly finished that she discovered one
of the three to be a modern Indian type. Yet, without knowing she was
working on a modern Indian skull, by applying only her table of
measurements faithfully to the skull as she built the clay upon it, she
produced so characteristic an American Indian type that Doctor Poynter
declared the accuracy of her work on the other two skulls, equally
unknown to her, could by no means be called into question.

The cannibal cave-dweller type is that of which Mr. Gilder found remains
in sunken cave homes along the Missouri River. He has uncovered some
forty of these caves, and has established the fact that the inhabitants
belong to what is known as the “round-headed” branch of the human race.
Geologists believe the inhabitants of these caves thrived some three
thousand years ago.

But the chief interest in the reconstruction work at the University of
Nebraska attaches to the face that has been built over the skull of the
Loess man. In all, the fragments of but six skulls belonging to this
type are in existence to-day.

This extreme primitive type of man is believed to have stalked over the
wastes of North America before the glaciers plowed their great gorges
and before they deposited the Kansan drift and the Loess clay to build
the bluffs at the Missouri River. This man, low-browed and of little
brain capacity, lived contemporaneously with the mammoth or mastodon,
which he probably slew for food, if indeed he could wield a stone weapon
sharp enough and strong enough to pierce the thick hide.

And yet, now that the faces have been reconstructed, we find no close
resemblance to the ape type, as many of the most excitable scientists
have expected. “The truth is,” says Doctor Poynter, “if man sprang from
the same original stem as the ape, the ape branch sprang off so far back
in antiquity that none of the skulls of the missing links could possibly
be expected to withstand the weathering to the present day. No one will
ever find a skull that will carry man back even anywhere near the ape
days, and the remotest skull we can find is already very much a man’s.”

This Loess man then belongs to an age perhaps hundreds of thousands of
years later than the time man and ape parted company and began to
develop along different lines.

Yet this Loess skull has, by competent geologists and ethnologists been
placed next in age to the famous Neanderthal skull found in 1856 in a
cave in the valley of Neander near Dusseldorf, Germany. The Neanderthal
skull is known the world over as representing the great antiquity and
low order of the human race. In brain capacity the Loess skull boasts
little, if any, advantage over the Neanderthal.

The prominence of the supraorbital ridges or bony brows is, next to the
receding character of the forehead, the most notable feature of this
primitive type.

“Neither the projections of the supraorbital ridges, nor the receding
forehead, is an Indian characteristic,” says Henry F. Osborn, professor
of zoölogy in Columbia University and curator in the American Museum of
Natural History. Doctor Osborn was one of the first to go to Omaha and
study this remarkable skull when it was found eight years ago.

The age of this skull is established by its association with the layer
of clay drift in which it was found. Doctor E. H. Barbour, head
professor of geology of the University of Nebraska, went over the ground
thoroughly and helped to excavate many of the fragments of the Loess man
some ten miles north of Omaha.

“From the geologist’s standpoint,” says Doctor Barbour, “these bone
fragments were not buried. Instead, the bones were doubtless deposited
with the Loess, the age of which may be safely reckoned at ten to twenty
thousand years or more, and the bones are at least as ancient as this
formation.”

Somewhere in its mighty course the glacier picked up these fragments of
skulls and a few arm and leg bones and rolled them along with the rest
of the drift, to be deposited solidly in the Loess clay when the bluff
was built.


Old Paymaster Says Farewell.

Amos Hershey has just retired as postmaster of Gordonville, Pa., ending
a period of fifty-five years of service for the United States postal
department.

In 1860, before the Civil War, Mr. Hershey, then sixteen years of age,
entered the employ of John K. Smoker, in a general merchandise store. At
the same time he became one of the clerks in the post office. Five years
later Hershey purchased the store business from Smoker and was himself
appointed postmaster. He received his commission from William Dennison,
postmaster general under President Lincoln.

The efficiency of the post-office department in that day was very crude
toward what it has become in later years. When Mr. Hershey first entered
the service, there were no railway mail cars. In fact, it was only in
1860 that an arrangement was made with the railroads to run a mail train
between New York and Washington, the only advantage of which was the
quick transfer of mail matter from one large place to another. The
traveling post office, where mails are assorted when going at fifty
miles an hour, had not yet come.

It was several years later that a Mr. Davis, of the St. Joseph, Mo.,
post-office force, broached the thought that considerable valuable time
would be saved if the overland mail could be sorted on the cars, and
made up for offices at the end of and along the routes. The department
allowed him to carry out this idea, which, starting in such a humble
way, is now one of the most important branches of the department.

Before the “catcher” on the mail cars and the “crane” at small stations
came into use, twenty years later, the process of catching and
delivering the pouches was indeed strenuous, both for the mail clerk and
the local postmaster. Shortly before train time, Mr. Hershey mounted a
platform immediately alongside the track, and, propping his feet
securely, would suspend the mail pouch in front of him at arms’ length,
the right hand at the top and the left hand at the bottom. When the
train neared this human crane, the mail clerk appeared at the door of
his car, and, securing himself firmly, would extend his right arm in the
form of a crook or an acute angle, and catch the pouch as the train
rushed by. The mail clerk had his arm well padded to prevent serious
injury; but, notwithstanding, the risk was exceedingly great--in more
ways than one. Mr. Hershey states that the mail trains were running at
the rate of fifty miles an hour, and it is hard for the uninitiated to
comprehend the alertness and strenuosity connected with the delivering
and catching of the pouch, aside from the constant danger.

They had a very complex system in making up letter packages in those
days. Mr. Hershey had to sort the letters for each office separately, no
matter whether there would be only one letter for an individual office.
The letters for each office had to be placed in a paper jacket of Mr.
Hershey’s own making, completely inclosing the letters, and the name of
the office address written plainly on the wrapper, with a waybill
attached to each package.

In the early sixties the postmasters enjoyed the franking privilege,
being allowed to send all their private mail without the use of postage
stamps. This privilege was rescinded in 1864.

Mr. Hershey recalls a story of one of the railway mail clerks, who were
known in the early days as the “paper jerkers,” and how he increased his
salary: “On a side lot near the Forepaugh circus grounds in
Philadelphia, there was a faker, whose outfit consisted of the
stake-and-ring game. The simple and enticing amusement was played as
follows: The stake was placed in the ground at a certain angle, which
led the uninitiated to believe that it was easy to throw the five-inch
rings over it. The feat was almost impossible. The faker had a crowd
around him, and was raking in the dimes--three ‘tries’ for ten
cents--when a black-mustached, middle-sized man walked up and said he’d
bet a dollar he could put three rings out of five over the stake.

“The faker winked at the crowd, and took the man up. The black-mustached
stranger threw five rings rapidly, one after another, and, as three of
them went over the stake, the thrower was in eighty cents. Then they bet
ten dollars even that nine out of the first ten thrown could not be put
over the stake. The whole ten settled safely, and the faker, as he
handed over ten dollars in silver, said:

“I’m broke; what’s your business?”

“I’m a paper jerker on a postal car. I don’t do anything but fling
papers all day long into the mouths of fifty sacks.”

The village of Gordonville in those early days of Mr. Hershey’s
postmastership had two names. The section lying north of the railroad
was called Concord, and that section lying south of the railroad was
named Gordonville. The railroad station was Concord, but the post office
has always gone by the name of Gordonville. The village was named after
Daniel Gordon, who was the first citizen and who built the first houses
in the town.


Child Labor Bill is Signed.

Governor Brumbaugh, of Harrisburg, Pa., signed the Cox child-labor bill.
The new act will become effective on January 1, 1916. Under its
provisions, children under fourteen years of age, with the exception of
newsboys, will be barred from working at any occupation.

Messengers employed between eight p.m. and six a.m. must be at least
twenty-one years old, and children under sixteen will be prohibited from
working unless they attend schools at least eight hours a week. Domestic
servants and farm laborers are exempt.


Sheds Her Artificial Legs.

Removing both of her artificial legs and pulling herself up to the
railings of the Ohio River bridge, Anna Wartenbaker, thirty-five years
old, of Parkersburg, W. Va., plunged ninety feet into the river here.

People on both sides of the river saw her plunge, and hastened to her in
boats. Her right arm was broken in the fall. The woman was despondent
over her crippled condition, and came here with the express purpose of
leaping to death from the bridge.




The Nick Carter Stories

ISSUED EVERY SATURDAY           BEAUTIFUL COLORED COVERS


When it comes to detective stories worth while, the =Nick Carter Stories=
contain the only ones that should be considered. They are not overdrawn
tales of bloodshed. They rather show the working of one of the finest
minds ever conceived by a writer. The name of Nick Carter is familiar
all over the world, for the stories of his adventures may be read in
twenty languages. No other stories have withstood the severe test of
time so well as those contained in the =Nick Carter Stories=. It proves
conclusively that they are the best. We give herewith a list of some of
the back numbers in print. You can have your news dealer order them, or
they will be sent direct by the publishers to any address upon receipt
of the price in money or postage stamps.

714--The Taxicab Riddle.
717--The Master Rogue’s Alibi.
719--The Dead Letter.
720--The Allerton Millions.
728--The Mummy’s Head.
729--The Statue Clue.
730--The Torn Card.
731--Under Desperation’s Spur.
732--The Connecting Link.
733--The Abduction Syndicate.
736--The Toils of a Siren.
738--A Plot Within a Plot.
739--The Dead Accomplice.
741--The Green Scarab.
746--The Secret Entrance.
747--The Cavern Mystery.
748--The Disappearing Fortune.
749--A Voice from the Past.
752--The Spider’s Web.
753--The Man With a Crutch.
754--The Rajah’s Regalia.
755--Saved from Death.
756--The Man Inside.
757--Out for Vengeance.
758--The Poisons of Exili.
759--The Antique Vial.
760--The House of Slumber.
761--A Double Identity.
762--“The Mocker’s” Stratagem.
763--The Man that Came Back.
764--The Tracks in the Snow.
765--The Babbington Case.
766--The Masters of Millions.
767--The Blue Stain.
768--The Lost Clew.
770--The Turn of a Card.
771--A Message in the Dust.
772--A Royal Flush.
774--The Great Buddha Beryl.
775--The Vanishing Heiress.
776--The Unfinished Letter.
777--A Difficult Trail.
782--A Woman’s Stratagem.
783--The Cliff Castle Affair.
784--A Prisoner of the Tomb.
785--A Resourceful Foe.
789--The Great Hotel Tragedies.
795--Zanoni, the Transfigured.
796--The Lure of Gold.
797--The Man With a Chest.
798--A Shadowed Life.
799--The Secret Agent.
800--A Plot for a Crown.
801--The Red Button.
802--Up Against It.
803--The Gold Certificate.
804--Jack Wise’s Hurry Call.
805--Nick Carter’s Ocean Chase.
807--Nick Carter’s Advertisement.
808--The Kregoff Necklace.
811--Nick Carter and the Nihilists.
812--Nick Carter and the Convict Gang.
813--Nick Carter and the Guilty Governor.
814--The Triangled Coin.
815--Ninety-nine--and One.
816--Coin Number 77.


NEW SERIES

NICK CARTER STORIES

1--The Man from Nowhere.
2--The Face at the Window.
3--A Fight for a Million.
4--Nick Carter’s Land Office.
5--Nick Carter and the Professor.
6--Nick Carter as a Mill Hand.
7--A Single Clew.
8--The Emerald Snake.
9--The Currie Outfit.
10--Nick Carter and the Kidnapped Heiress.
11--Nick Carter Strikes Oil.
12--Nick Carter’s Hunt for a Treasure.
13--A Mystery of the Highway.
14--The Silent Passenger.
15--Jack Dreen’s Secret.
16--Nick Carter’s Pipe Line Case.
17--Nick Carter and the Gold Thieves.
18--Nick Carter’s Auto Chase.
19--The Corrigan Inheritance.
20--The Keen Eye of Denton.
21--The Spider’s Parlor.
22--Nick Carter’s Quick Guess.
23--Nick Carter and the Murderess.
24--Nick Carter and the Pay Car.
25--The Stolen Antique.
26--The Crook League.
27--An English Cracksman.
28--Nick Carter’s Still Hunt.
29--Nick Carter’s Electric Shock.
30--Nick Carter and the Stolen Duchess.
31--The Purple Spot.
32--The Stolen Groom.
33--The Inverted Cross.
34--Nick Carter and Keno McCall.
35--Nick Carter’s Death Trap.
36--Nick Carter’s Siamese Puzzle.
37--The Man Outside.
38--The Death Chamber.
39--The Wind and the Wire.
40--Nick Carter’s Three Cornered Chase.
41--Dazaar, the Arch-Fiend.
42--The Queen of the Seven.
43--Crossed Wires.
44--A Crimson Clew.
45--The Third Man.
46--The Sign of the Dagger.
47--The Devil Worshipers.
48--The Cross of Daggers.
49--At Risk of Life.
50--The Deeper Game.
51--The Code Message.
52--The Last of the Seven.
53--Ten-Ichi, the Wonderful.
54--The Secret Order of Associated Crooks.
55--The Golden Hair Clew.
56--Back From the Dead.
57--Through Dark Ways.
58--When Aces Were Trumps.
59--The Gambler’s Last Hand.
60--The Murder at Linden Fells.
61--A Game for Millions.
62--Under Cover.
63--The Last Call.
64--Mercedes Danton’s Double.
65--The Millionaire’s Nemesis.
66--A Princess of the Underworld.
67--The Crook’s Blind.
68--The Fatal Hour.
69--Blood Money.
70--A Queen of Her Kind.
71--Isabel Benton’s Trump Card.
72--A Princess of Hades.
73--A Prince of Plotters.
74--The Crook’s Double.
75--For Life and Honor.
76--A Compact With Dazaar.
77--In the Shadow of Dazaar.
78--The Crime of a Money King.
79--Birds of Prey.
80--The Unknown Dead.
81--The Severed Hand.
82--The Terrible Game of Millions.
83--A Dead Man’s Power.
84--The Secrets of an Old House.
85--The Wolf Within.
86--The Yellow Coupon.
87--In the Toils.
88--The Stolen Radium.
89--A Crime in Paradise.
90--Behind Prison Bars.
91--The Blind Man’s Daughter.
92--On the Brink of Ruin.
93--Letter of Fire.
94--The $100,000 Kiss.
95--Outlaws of the Militia.
96--The Opium-Runners.
97--In Record Time.
98--The Wag-Nuk Clew.
99--The Middle Link.
100--The Crystal Maze.
101--A New Serpent in Eden.
102--The Auburn Sensation.
103--A Dying Chance.
104--The Gargoni Girdle.
105--Twice in Jeopardy.
106--The Ghost Launch.
107--Up in the Air.
108--The Girl Prisoner.
109--The Red Plague.
110--The Arson Trust.
111--The King of the Firebugs.
112--“Lifter’s” of the Lofts.
113--French Jimmie and His Forty Thieves.
114--The Death Plot.
115--The Evil Formula.
116--The Blue Button.
117--The Deadly Parallel.
118--The Vivisectionists.
119--The Stolen Brain.
120--An Uncanny Revenge.
121--The Call of Death.
122--The Suicide.
123--Half a Million Ransom.
124--The Girl Kidnapper.
125--The Pirate Yacht.
126--The Crime of the White Hand.
127--Found in the Jungle.
128--Six Men in a Loop.
129--The Jewels of Wat Chang.
130--The Crime in the Tower.
131--The Fatal Message.
132--Broken Bars.
133--Won by Magic.
134--The Secret of Shangore.
135--Straight to the Goal.
136--The Man They Held Back.
137--The Seal of Gijon.
138--The Traitors of the Tropics.
139--The Pressing Peril.
140--The Melting-Pot.
141--The Duplicate Night.
142--The Edge of a Crime.
143--The Sultan’s Pearls.
144--The Clew of the White Collar.


Dated June 19th, 1915.

145--An Unsolved Mystery.


Dated June 26th, 1915.

146--Paying the Price.


Dated July 3d, 1915.

147--On Death’s Trail.


Dated July 10th, 1915.

148--The Mark of Cain.


=Price, Five Cents Per Copy.= If you want any back numbers of our
weeklies and cannot procure them from your news dealer, they can be
obtained direct from this office. Postage stamps taken the same as
money.


STREET & SMITH, Publishers, 79-89 Seventh Ave., NEW YORK CITY

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 68094 ***