SCENTING A PLOT.
When Nick Carter left the Wall Street office of the great lawyer he
walked up Broadway to the Western Union Building, where he wrote and
forwarded several telegrams, all of which were addressed to different
localities in the State of Idaho.
That done he took the subway uptown and went directly to his own home,
where, after entering his study, he summoned Chick and Patsy to him.
“Patsy,” he said, “you start for Idaho on the Twentieth Century at four
this afternoon; and you, Chick, will take the trail of Mr. Carleton
Lynne, now at the Mammoth, and you will report to me every move that he
makes, no matter how unimportant it may appear to be.”
Each of the assistants nodded in reply, but neither of them made any
audible remark.
“Now,” said the detective, “give me your close attention, both of you.
What I shall tell you will be the only instructions you will
receive--will be all, in fact, that I can give you.”
Again they nodded in comprehension.
“I don’t know whether this is a case or not,” the detective continued.
“I am acting, just now, as I have done many times in the past--upon that
kind of an impulse which I call a ‘hunch.’”
“The Lynne inheritance, of course?” Chick asked.
“Yes; the Lynne inheritance, and the Babbington case, as well. If I am
anywhere near to being correct in my conjectures, the two matters just
about dovetail, right here.”
“To start with,” suggested Patsy, “you don’t believe that the Carleton
Lynne you saw yesterday, and again to-day, is the real article. This is
the size of it, isn’t it?”
“To begin with,” replied Nick Carter, “I do not believe that the
Carleton Lynne I saw yesterday, and again to-day, is the real article,
and I have the least logical reason for that lack of faith. Put that
down in your minds and think it over.”
“Just a hunch, eh?” said Chick.
“Just a hunch in the beginning--yesterday when I walked into the office
of Ben Oaks directly behind this chap from the West. Since then that
hunch has been strengthened by a few unimportant incidents which I will
relate to you.
“Incident number one, and it really should take third or fourth place in
the list, because I paid no attention to it at the time: When I entered
the private office, before Carleton Lynne was admitted, Oaks sent his
stenographer, whom he calls his secretary, out of the room. She went
into the library, which adjoins the private office, and she left the
communicating door ajar. Whether that was accident or design, I know
that she listened intently to our conversation. I could see her doing
that, by means of a mirror that hangs in the library, and which I could
see through the half-open door.
“Incident number two: While I was there it developed that Oaks had been
to the Tombs, before the trial, to see Mrs. Babbington, at her
request--at her second request--and I assumed, from what was told to me
about it, that she had also asked him to take his stenographer with him;
at least he did so.”
“Why?” asked Patsy.
“Wait and ask that question again after I have finished, Patsy--unless,
perhaps, you should find an answer to it that suits you.”
“All right, chief.”
“Incident number three: Oaks came away from the Tombs, leaving Miss
McQueen there, alone with Mrs. Babbington. The incident happened two
weeks ago. Miss McQueen remained about an hour with the prisoner.”
“Do you mean that she took dictation from her?” asked Chick.
“Yes; a few short letters to former social friends and acquaintances,
all of which were read by the district attorney and by Oaks.”
“Are you sure that all of them were treated in that manner?” asked
Patsy.
“That is the presumption, Patsy. I am not saying that I am sure about
it, or that there was not another notebook which Oaks did not see; or
that there were no oral instructions given to Miss McQueen, which were
not taken down in shorthand.”
The two assistants nodded in unison.
“Remember that happened more than two weeks ago. Letters and telegrams
have had ample time to reach Idaho, and to bring Carleton Lynne to New
York, since then.”
“Sure,” commented Chick.
“Incident number four: When I came away from the office of Ben Oaks
yesterday afternoon, Carleton Lynne was admitted to the private office.
He produced his papers and credentials to establish himself. They
appeared satisfactory. But he lied to Oaks about the time of his arrival
in the city, and without any apparent reason. Later, he found out that
his deception would be discovered, and so he made a clean breast of it
to-day, giving an excuse which I do not for a moment believe.
“Incident number five: When I arrived home late yesterday afternoon,
after leaving the office of Benjamin Oaks, I found that Madge Babbington
was here awaiting me.”
“Just what has that got to do with the case in hand?” Patsy interrupted.
“Possibly nothing at all, but if I am at all on the right track, it has
much to do with it.”
“How so?”
“She came here, ostensibly, to offer to supply the address of the
missing heir, Carleton Lynne, which she claims to have known for a
considerable time. I would not gratify her enough to ask her for
particulars about it, for I judged that she was lying to me from the
beginning.”
“If that was the ostensible reason, what was the real one?” asked Chick.
“I think it was to endeavor to convince me in the roundabout way she
used, that she had never seen this Carleton Lynne; but she only
succeeded in convincing me that she had seen him, probably knows him
well, and that she had already been informed that I was at the Oaks
office when he arrived there.”
“Let us return for a moment to the two incidents you have mentioned in
which the stenographer is concerned,” said Chick.
“Well?”
“How do you associate her with the others? I mean, aside from the
possible sending of messages from the Tombs, for the Babbington woman.”
“In this way: I have known Ben Oaks more or less familiarly for twelve
years. He has had a secretary named Miss Hunt who was with him until
about the time of the beginning of the advertising effort to find
Carleton Lynne--eight or nine weeks ago; and I know of my own knowledge
that Miss Hunt was his secretary for four or five consecutive years.
Miss Hunt is not there now; this Miss McQueen is.”
“Well, what of that?” asked Patsy. “A lawyer often changes his
stenographers.”
“But this change appears to have been so coincidental with other things
that I use it here as incident number six.”
“Do you mean that she was sent there by--by the Babbington woman, for
instance?”
“Possibly.”
“But, Miss Hunt----”
“Miss Hunt, or any other stenographer of my knowledge would readily
enough give up a position if there was sufficient inducement offered.”
“Oh; you mean that she was bought off?”
“That is the possibility.”
“Then,” said Chick, “I would suggest that Miss Hunt be found without
delay.”
“That is a duty that I have reserved for myself,” replied the detective.
“But what would be the object of it all?”
“To have a competent spy in the office of the man who must decide upon
the credentials of the claimant, for one thing; to arrange for an easy
method of getting a person into the Tombs and to the prisoner at the
opportune moment for sending out an important message, for another.”
“I see. What are your conclusions, Nick?” It was Chick who asked the
question.
“I don’t know that I have arrived at any conclusions; at least, definite
ones.”
“What then?”
“I am only convinced of the determination of Madge Babbington to possess
herself of those millions, and that she will stop at nothing to attain
her ends.”
“Have you any more incidents to recount?”
“Yes. Incident number seven is the fact that when Madge Babbington was
here yesterday, she took particular pains to give me warning that she
intended to make the acquaintance of Carleton Lynne, to fascinate him,
and finally to marry him.”
“Did she say that?”
“Yes; in the form of a warning.”
“But you read a different meaning in her words?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“Chick, I believe that her real purpose in coming here to see me was to
pronounce that very warning, and thus to open the way for an
acquaintance with this Carleton Lynne which would not suggest the
suspicion to me that the two had known each other before now.”
“I see.”
“The man is supposed to have come here out of the West--as he doubtless
has done. He has the marks of the West upon him, all right. But he is
supposed to know nobody here; he went to the length of informing me that
he had not seen New York since he was a kid, to use his own expression.
A sudden acquaintance between him and the woman lately acquitted of
murder would attract my attention, so she comes here and deliberately
tells me, with an assumption of bravado, that she intends to make his
acquaintance at the first possible moment.”
“She’s got her gall with her, all right--to come here at all,” said
Patsy.
“She has got her brains with her, too; don’t forget that, either of
you,” said Nick.
“Well, what do you suspect the game to be, Nick?” asked Chick.
“I only suspect a game. What it is, I don’t pretend to guess,” was the
reply. “Only, there is one thing which I cannot believe--which I cannot
bring myself to accept.”
“The identity of this man who has appeared here as a claimant?”
“Yes.”
“You think that he is an impostor?”
“I suspect that he is; that is all.”
“And that there is perhaps another murder back of it all; the murder of
the real Carleton Lynne?”
“I don’t know about that. That is going at it rather strong. It may be
that the real Carleton Lynne has been dead a long time; or that he has
been lost sight of for a long time. He may have gone to the Klondike
with the rush and never have reappeared. There are a thousand and one
things that may have happened to him, any one of which would give a
clever impostor who had known him well in the past the opportunity;
particularly if he were spurred to it by such a woman as Madge
Babbington.”
“Or he may be lying now in a newly made grave somewhere, his papers and
his birthright stolen by another,” suggested Patsy.
“Well, lad,” replied the detective, “that is what you are going to Idaho
to ascertain. You are going there to trace every trail you can find of
Carleton Lynne, and to follow one of them till it brings you here, if he
is here; to wherever he is now, if he is not here.”