BODY AND LIMBS.
“Chick, I’m hit with an idea!”
This exclamation came from Nick Carter about ten o’clock one morning,
two days after the highway robbery last reported, and the talk that
followed showed with what remarkable insight this great detective
arrived at the subtle deductions which contributed largely to his
success.
Chick and Patsy had arrived in Boston two days before, and both were
now present with Nick in his room at the Adams House.
Both had been fully informed of the facts thus far learned by him,
moreover, as well as of his interview with the Badgers, and his visits
to Madame Victoria.
When he uttered the above exclamation Nick was seated at one of the
windows of his room.
In one hand he held the photograph that figured so curiously in the
case, and which would have convinced any ordinary detective that Madame
Victoria and Mrs. Amos Badger had been robbed precisely as alleged, for
the camera, at least, would not have lied.
Yet this bit of convincing evidence was so out of the ordinary, as
well as the circumstances under which it had been obtained, that Nick
from the very first had been inclined to distrust the picture.
In his other hand he now held a large magnifying-glass, through which
he was carefully studying the photograph, holding it in the full glare
of the morning sunlight.
“What’s that, Nick?” inquired Chick, starting up from his chair and
dropping a morning paper reporting the last robbery. “Hit with an idea,
did you say?”
“Exactly.”
“What is it, Mr. Carter?” asked Patsy, at once displaying a lively
interest. “Have you discovered something lame in that picture?”
Nick laughed.
“That about hits the nail on the head, Patsy,” said he, with a glance
in the lad’s direction. “I think I begin to see a ray of light in the
darkness.”
“What have you discovered?” asked Chick.
And both he and Patsy came to lean over the back of Nick’s chair.
Nick held the large glass and the photograph so that all three could
plainly view the magnified picture.
“I’ll explain what I find, and I wonder that I have not noticed it
before,” said he quite earnestly. “It relates to this tall woman who
appears in the picture.”
“Gee! but she is a tall one,” remarked Patsy, with a laugh. “She’s tall
enough to fit in a dime museum.”
“That’s right, Patsy,” assented Nick, smiling.
“What’s peculiar about it, Nick?”
“As you probably know, Chick, there is a general uniformity in the
proportions of the human body—a regular length of arms and limbs when
compared with the trunk. In all normal subjects the proportions are
nearly the same.”
“Sure,” nodded Chick. “A man’s reach, from the tips of his extended
arms and fingers, is usually the same as his height.”
“Correct.”
“But what has that to do with the picture, Mr. Carter?” asked Patsy.
“It has to do with this woman,” Nick rejoined, drawing out his pencil
to be used for a pointer. “I want you to notice her extended arm and
hand, the one in which she held the leveled revolver.”
“That’s plain enough, sir.”
“It’s good fortune that it is, Patsy,” nodded Nick. “It also is plain,
now that I study it closely, that the arm is a little out of proportion
with her exceeding height.”
“By Jove! it does appear so!” exclaimed Chick, bending nearer to view
the pictured figure.
“Notice the distance from her shoulder to her hand, then the distance
from her shoulder to her hip, which is plainly outlined by this curve
of her long auto coat. Her hip is here, Chick, where I have the point
of my pencil.”
“Exactly.”
“Notice, now, that her extended hand, if it were to be dropped to her
side, would reach only to this point, measuring the same distance, a
point only a trifle below her hip.”
“That’s clear,” cried Chick. “Yet the camera may——”
“The camera never lies,” interposed Nick.
“Then the woman must be out of proportion,” declared Chick.
“Not necessarily.”
“But her arm should be longer than it appears there,” Chick insisted.
“I’m well-proportioned, I’ll swear to that, and my hand, when lowered,
reaches half-way down my thigh.”
“Which is about right, Chick.”
“Yet you say the woman is not out of proportion——”
“I said not necessarily,” interposed Nick. “If she was as tall as she
appears in the picture, however, I’ll admit that her arm would be too
short for her body.”
“Oho, I see!” exclaimed Patsy, starting up. “You think, Mr. Carter,
that she is not as tall as the picture indicates.”
“That’s exactly it, Patsy,” nodded Nick.
“How do you make it out?” asked Chick.
“Notice this fold of her skirt, where the skirt shows below the edge of
her auto coat?”
“Well, what of it?”
“Plainly enough, Chick, the fold does not hang quite naturally,” Nick
went on to explain, still pointing with his pencil. “It appears drawn
a little to one side and back of her, with the edge of the skirt
carefully arranged to touch the ground, precisely as if to conceal
something beneath it.”
“Something on which she was standing!” exclaimed Chick, quickly seeing
the point.
“That’s just it,” declared Nick impressively. “No skirt ever hung quite
like that, if it hung naturally.”
“Surely not.”
“Notice also the distance from her hip to the edge of the skirt, where
her feet should be,” added Nick. “Her limbs would be as much above the
regular proportions as her arm is below them.”
“I see what you mean.”
“In a nutshell, Chick, such an anomaly could not be,” continued Nick
decisively. “A person with abnormally long legs and disproportionately
short arms is out of the question.”
“And in your opinion——”
“In my opinion, Chick, the woman was standing on something, possibly a
rock, with her skirts lengthened to conceal it. Obviously the whole was
done to give her the appearance of being very tall.”
“And with what object?”
“With a design to thus blind the police to the real looks of the woman
operating with this gang of crooks.”
“You think they aimed to send the police searching after some very tall
woman?”
“Exactly.”
“I’ll wager you are right.”
“Furthermore,” added Nick, “these discoveries conclusively prove that
the picture was deliberately taken, with the several persons calmly
posing to make it effective, and that the two women said to have been
held up and robbed were not robbed at all.”
“And the design of the photograph?”
“It was taken purposely to be offered as evidence to corroborate the
story told to the police.”
“With a view to averting suspicion and throwing them off the right
track,” added Chick.
“Precisely.”
“By thunder, that was a crafty scheme!” declared Patsy, rather pleased
with the originality of it.
“Yes, it was crafty enough,” assented Nick. “But the rascals overleaped
their mount, Patsy, in not anticipating the deductions I have
mentioned. All this sheds a new and very bright light upon the case,”
the speaker added, as he tossed the photograph upon the table.
“I should say so,” nodded Chick, resuming his chair and lighting a
cigar. “It indicates that those two women, who claim to have been
robbed, may be in league with this gang of thieves.”
“Even more than that, Chick.”
“What more, Nick?”
“It suggests that Badger himself may be one of the gang, if not the
chief figure in it, and that their headquarters may be at that isolated
suburban place of his.”
“By Jove, that may be so!”
“Let’s look a little deeper, Chick, and see how far some of the
other facts sustain this theory. I was held up when on my way out
there Tuesday morning,” continued Nick. “That may have been merely a
coincidence, the scamps possibly having been laying in wait for some
victim, though there still remains a chance of something even more than
that under the surface.”
“Decidedly so,” replied Chick. “Such things don’t often happen by
chance.”
“We’ll investigate that a little later.”
“Sure.”
“After the hold-up, Chick, I hastened to Badger’s house, arriving there
within ten minutes after the robbery,” Nick went on.
“Then it must have occurred pretty near his place.”
“Within half a mile.”
“That, too, is significant.”
“In a measure,” assented Nick. “I found his chauffeur cleaning a
Stanley machine in the driveway, where I could not help observing him.
Ordinarily such a job would be done in the stable or garage, and I am
now inclined to think that it was done outside only intentionally to
make me believe, in case of any distrust, that Badger uses a Stanley
machine, and not such a car as that in which I saw the thieves escape.”
“Do you know how many machines he owns?”
“I do not, Chick. In fact, I know very little about him or his place.”
“We’ll make it a point to learn.”
“I did not fancy the looks nor air of his chauffeur,” continued Nick.
“He appeared to avoid my questions, and I now suspect that may have
been done to give Badger time to get out of his rig as a highwayman and
into the house suit and red flannel bandages in which he received me.”
“You think that whole business was designed only to blind you, in case
you had any suspicions?”
“That certainly would have been the design, Chick, providing that we
are justified in suspecting him at all.”
“There are too many of these significant little circumstances, Nick,
for us to doubt that we are hitting somewhere near the mark,” Chick
shrewdly reasoned.
“That’s the way I now regard them,” said Nick. “After my talk with
Badger, in which I stated I should call upon Madame Victoria, he may
have telephoned the fact to the fortune-teller. I noticed that he had a
telephone in the hall.”
“That would explain her knowledge of you, Nick,” said Chick. “But bear
in mind that you were in disguise when you first called upon her.”
“I remember that, Chick.”
“How can she have known you?”
“Badger may have been alarmed by my visit,” argued Nick, “and he
possibly suspected that I might adopt some disguise. Very likely he
mentioned some distinctive feature about my person, one which I would
not ordinarily remove, by which Madame Victoria may have identified me.”
“That may have been the case,” admitted Chick.
“The knowledge she displayed certainly points to some such move on
Badger’s part, and adds to our grounds for suspicion,” continued
Nick. “She had me well marked in some way, there is no denying that.
Furthermore, the fact that she warned me to drop the perilous business
I was about to undertake, predicting that I should meet only with
failure, points plainly to a possibility that they were taking that
method to influence me to drop the case.”
“Gee whiz!” exclaimed Patsy. “That now looks dead open and shut, Mr.
Carter.”
“It certainly is significant.”
“I’ll bet you landed right in the midst of this gang of road thieves.
In that case, Nick, the rest of our work should be easy,” Chick quickly
remarked. “It should be child’s play for us to round them up.”
Nick thoughtfully shook his head.
“I’m not so sure of that, Chick,” said he. “We as yet have no tangible
evidence against them, and nothing less will serve us in a court of
law,” replied Nick.
“That’s true.”
“Our theory is built chiefly upon trivial circumstances, all of
which are significant enough, I’ll admit, and sufficiently numerous
to warrant considerable suspicion. But we must secure more positive
evidence before we can take any decisive action against these suspects.”
“I guess that is right, Nick.”
“We ought to get the evidence easily enough, if we really have located
the crooks,” declared Patsy.
Nick Carter laughed again, with a glance at the eager eyes of the
youthful detective.
“That one word, really, is quite important, Patsy,” said he. “It is
barely possible that we are mistaken, at least in part, if not entirely
so. Circumstantial evidence is never wholly trustworthy.”
“I’ll bet you are right, sir, for all that,” insisted Patsy, with
abiding faith in Nick’s shrewdness.
“I shall first make sure that I am,” said Nick, “by taking some step to
confirm my theory. As for securing the evidence with which to convict
these rascals, Patsy, that may not be done as easily as you think. If
they become wary, fearing that we suspect them, they not only may drop
the business entirely for a time, but may also cover their past tracks
so cleverly as to conceal the evidence that we require.”
“I hadn’t thought of that, sir.”
“It’s too true for a joke, Nick, and we cannot be too careful and
crafty at the outset,” Chick gravely put in, now taking the measure of
the case quite as clearly as Nick himself. “What do you intend doing?”
“Personally, Chick, I am going down to State Street this morning,
and see what I can learn about Badger. Then I am going up to police
headquarters and return these documents to Chief Weston. He loaned
them to me that I might learn what lines of investigation his men have
followed.”
“Do they appear to have accomplished anything?”
“Nothing more than to note in detail the facts of the various
robberies,” smiled Nick. “Not one of them has hit upon a rational clue.”
“Is there anything you want us to do while you are thus engaged?”
“Yes. I want you and Patsy to go out to Brookline and see what you can
discover at Badger’s place,” replied Nick. “I don’t want you to be seen
about there, however.”
“H’m! Let us alone to be discreet.”
“His estate is backed by quite an extensive woodland, through which you
can easily approach after locating the place.”
“That will be an advantage.”
“Take what time you require,” added Nick, “and learn how many men
are employed in and about the house and stable. Also learn how many
automobiles and horses he keeps. Several of these hold-ups have been
committed by horsemen, and I wish to learn what Badger owns in both
lines.”
“Automobiles and horses?”
“Exactly.”
“We’ll ferret out the whole business, Mr. Carter, trust us for that,”
cried Patsy, impatient to be at work.
“Meantime,” said Nick, rising, “I’ll employ myself as stated. It is
now half-past ten. You may require three or four hours to learn what I
would like to know, so we will plan to meet here again about an hour or
two before dinner, say at four o’clock.”
“That will give us ample time,” declared Chick. “We’ll be here at four
sharp.”
“You’ll find me here,” said Nick, with no thought that anything would
occur to prevent him.
The three left the house together, parting at the Washington Street
door, both Chick and Patsy heading for the subway to take a Brookline
trolley car. Neither so much as dreamed, however, that many an anxious
hour would pass before they again saw Nick’s familiar face or heard his
genial voice.