WHERE THE FOOTPRINTS LED.
Pleasantglades, although located directly within a large community which
has lately taken upon itself the dignity of a city, and situated almost
at the center of it, is as isolated, in more senses than one, as if it
were in the midst of a forest. There are many who will read what is
written here who know the place perfectly well, and have often admired
it--and who would recognize it at once if the right name of it were
given.
But there are reasons, which will develop later in the story, why the
exact name and locality cannot be given here. Suffice it to say that it
is within an hour of New York City by motor car.
The high wall that has already been described incloses six acres of
beautiful grounds, which the owner always referred to as “The Park.”
From the great gate, which strangely enough is the only entrance to the
grounds, or park, the roadway winds in two directions, to the right and
to the left, among splendid trees, and in the summertime there is no
more beautiful and spacious home to be found anywhere near the
metropolis.
The owner, J. Cephas Lynne, was justly proud of it--almost as proud of
this possession, as of one greater one that was his, his daughter.
We have to mention her here and now, because it was Edythe Lynne, or,
rather, all that remained of her--her dead body--that Nick Carter
speedily found when at last he forced his way into the house just as a
burglar would have done it, only more expertly even than that, and
penetrated to the beautiful room which he judged to have been one of her
own private suite.
She was in the parlor or boudoir of her suite; she was lying peacefully
upon a large couch among a myriad of pillows, which had been tastefully
and comfortably arranged to support her body in a comfortable and
graceful position.
She was reclining entirely at ease, as if she had arranged herself there
to rest, having first fixed the pillows so that she could do so in
comfort, fully dressed as for a party or a wedding, as she was.
One hand, the left one, rested upon a pillow that was partly behind her,
the arm being stretched out to its full length; the other one hung
partly over the edge of the divan couch, as if it had fallen there in
that position of its own weight.
And just beneath that right hand, upon the rug, was a tiny glass vial
capable of holding thirty to forty drops of liquid--and the room was
pungent with the odor of almonds.
It was not difficult to guess, because of that odor, what the vial had
contained: Prussic acid. Nor was it difficult to understand that the man
who had taken her there and murdered her had carefully arranged
everything so that it should appear to be an undoubted suicide.
To understand and appreciate everything just as Nick Carter found them,
and as he discovered them, it must be remembered that it was still
pitchy dark outside, and that there were no light connections in the
great mansion at that time. As a consequence, the detective’s only means
of searching the place was by the aid of his electric flash light, which
he always carried with him when engaged upon business--and he had been
on business of quite another nature, when he discovered those tracks in
the snow.
When he forced his way into the house by picking the lock of the same
door to which the tracks had led him, traces of the snow that those
other two had brought into the house with them led him speedily enough
to the scene we have already partly described.
And when he opened the door to that room, and threw his light from point
to point about it, the shaft of illumination at last rested directly
upon the beautiful face of the dead girl on the couch.
Such was the picture he saw before he made further investigation.
Then came the other details that we have told about, and some others
that are yet to be told.
A long coat of sable, that might have reached to the young woman’s
ankles, had been carefully laid across the back of a chair, and upon
that were the scarf and veil that she had worn as a head covering, and
they had been put there with exactly the same degree of careless
attention that she might have used in doing so.
A fan, her gloves, and a gold vanity box set with jewels were upon the
table in the middle of the room, and, beside them, was a sealed
envelope addressed to J. Cephas Lynne.
The writing on the envelope was in the bold, rather large feminine hand
that was in vogue at that time, and was presumably her own--or an
imitation of her own handwriting; underneath the address was written the
one further word, “Personal.”
There was not a thing about the room to indicate that another person
than herself had visited it, and, although the detective searched
diligently for such evidence, he could find no trace of the man who had
accompanied her to the house which had been her home.
Never in the experience of Nick Carter had he known of a clear case of
murder like this one, where the murderer had left absolutely nothing
undone to demonstrate a suicide; but Nick Carter, because of those
tracks in the snow, because he had arrived upon the scene at precisely
the psychological moment to understand them, and because he had read the
other signs that we have described, knew it to be a deliberately planned
and executed crime.
There was not the slightest doubt of that in his mind, and, therefore,
he did not hesitate to break the seal of that letter which otherwise
would have been sacred.
But there was no time to be lost in getting a trace of that man who had
accompanied the young woman to the house.
One who could plan and execute a crime in such a masterly manner would
have planned much farther ahead of him than that, also, and would have
arranged to cover his tracks so that if the accident of Nick Carter’s
passing that way at the moment he did so had not happened, it is
doubtful if the crime and criminal would ever have been discovered, and
the young woman who died that night in all the glory of her young
womanhood would have been remembered only as a suicide.
Therefore, the detective broke the seal and read the letter--after which
he returned it to the envelope and put it carefully away in one of his
pockets, already determined that no eyes but his own and his assistants
should see it until he had run down the man who had committed the awful
outrage.
The contents of that letter are not important save to demonstrate the
cleverness of the murderer; but we will give them as the detective found
them:
“DARLING PAPA: I will not ask you to forgive me for this act, for I
know you will do that. I also know that I will have made you suffer
deeply by it. Yet I do it with deliberation--because I feel that I
must do it. The reasons why I have decided that there is no other
way, you will discover soon enough, and you will feel deep regret
because I did not go to you and tell you all about it, instead of
doing this thing. Yet there are some things which one cannot face,
and the one thing that I cannot face is your sorrow when you come
to know what I have done. I would never have believed it possible
that I could be brought to this pass, but here I am, and soon I
shall be only a memory. I hope you will cherish only the tenderest
parts of that memory, and that you will always believe that even in
taking my own life, I love you.
EDYTHE.”
Such was the letter that the detective read and then hid away in his
pocket; but there was one sentence of the letter that burned itself upon
his memory, one sentence that must be the explanation of the crime
itself. It was:
“The reasons why I have decided that there is no other way, you
will discover soon enough, and you will feel deep regret because I
did not go to you and tell you all about it, instead of doing this
thing.”
In that sentence was concealed, doubtless, the secret of why the crime
had been committed, and Nick Carter felt as certain as he had ever felt
assured of anything in his life, that the dead girl on the couch, if she
could have come to life at that moment, would have been utterly ignorant
of what those reasons were.
In other words Nick Carter read the scene in this manner:
This crime was committed to conceal another crime, and the murderer,
knowing that his lesser crime would presently be discovered, determined
to fix it upon this innocent girl, the daughter of the house.
Therein existed the nucleus of the whole affair as the detective saw it.
It was plain, of course, that the man who could have induced Edythe
Lynne to go with him to her out-of-town home in the dead of night must
have been a near relative, or a person who was entirely in the
confidence of the family--otherwise she would not have consented to
accompany him.
And even then there must have been a powerful motive beyond any that
could appear on the surface.
Was the man who had done this thing young or old, or middle aged? There
was no present means of ascertaining that, but that he must be one who
stood upon terms of at least cordial familiarity with J. Cephas Lynne
and his daughter was beyond doubt.
The detective made one further hasty survey of the room, throwing the
beam of his flash light again upon every detail that he had discovered;
and then he left the room, leaving every detail as he had found it, save
only the letter which he carried away with him in his pocket.
It was snowing hard when he got outside, and he nodded, as if to say:
“The murderer foresaw this additional fall of snow, and hence took no
trouble to cover his tracks.”
Then he went on through the gate, fixing the chain again after him as he
had done upon entering the place, and he hurried in the direction from
whence he had first approached the gate, less than an hour before.
He walked rapidly onward a quarter of a mile or more, and presently came
upon his own car, to discover that Danny, his chauffeur, and his two
assistants, Chick and Patsy, were already there, awaiting him.
He looked at his watch before he spoke to them, and they had a fashion,
born of long experience, of never addressing him on such an occasion
until he had spoken. It was not always well to break in upon Nick
Carter’s preoccupation.
“It is now a quarter to four,” he said; “a good two hours and a half
before daylight. Danny, I want you to remain here with the car until we
return, which will be within three-quarters of an hour. And, lads, I
want you both to come with me. I have made a discovery that I want you
both to see.”
Then, without further words, he led them both back to the house where he
had discovered the crime, led them inside with the same care that he had
used in the first place, making them dust the snow from their feet and
clothing before they entered the house, and then he piloted them
straight to the room where all that remained of beautiful Edythe Lynne
awaited them.
Not until they were all inside that room and Chick and Patsy had looked
upon the sad scene that was there, did he offer the slightest
explanation; but then, in detail, just as it has been told here, he told
them everything that had occurred, and everything that he had found
since he first saw the tracks in the snow. But he expressed no opinions
upon any of the incidents, for it was their separate opinions that he
wanted, unbiased by his own. But he gave each of them the letter to
read; and after that they left the house again, together.