IN THE CORRIDOR.
The detective changed his mind about entering the box occupied by
Carleton Lynne, for he had already heard enough to give him occupation
for the ensuing day, and there was now nothing to be gained by an
interview with either of the principals in the case.
Nick was desirous now of leaving the box into which he had intruded,
even though the occupants of it were his friends; but he wished to leave
it without attracting attention from the box adjoining.
He knew perfectly well that if either Lynne or Madge Babbington should
chance to discover his presence so near to them, they would both realize
that it was not chance that had taken him there.
They would be put on their guard again, particularly Madge, and there
would be a longer interval than the one just passed before either of
them would make another move to betray the secrets of the game they were
playing.
Madge Babbington would be instantly on the alert if she were led to
suspect that Nick Carter was so near to her at the very first
interview--so the detective firmly believed--that she had had with
Carleton Lynne.
After considering for a moment what was best to do, Nick turned, and
managed to catch the eye of his friend, the owner of the box he was in,
and he motioned for him to cross over, so that they could have a word
alone together.
“Tom,” he said, in a whisper, “I want you to make my apologies to your
wife and her guests, will you?”
“But you’ll stop and see them, and say hello, won’t you, after this
act?” Stanton replied. “I know that Tillie will be greatly disappointed
if you do not.”
“I’d like to, Tom, but you see I am here to-night on business. I found
your box rather by accident, and took the liberty of dropping in to rest
and to listen, as I told you; but now I must get busy again.”
“Well, later, then?”
“I’ll try to return, if I can; but I won’t promise. Now, be a good chap,
and tell me that you’ll make my apologies, and I’ll slip out of the box
without their knowing anything about it.”
Nick had drawn his friend to the rear of the box while they were
whispering together, and they were standing so he could not see into the
box adjoining; and so he was not aware of the fact that Mrs.
Hurd-Babbington had stepped quietly out of it, and was, even at that
instant, in the corridor at the rear of the tier.
With a nod and a smile at Stanton, the detective stepped quickly from
the box, and--came face to face with the very woman whom he desired the
least to see at that particular time and place.
She was standing there, too, precisely as if she were awaiting him; as
if she had expected his coming, having known all the time that he was
in the box next to her.
Well, the fat was in the fire, he argued to himself the instant he saw
her, and so he governed his actions accordingly; that is, he merely
inclined his head in token of recognition, and made as if to pass on
without taking any further notice of her. In short, he acted precisely
as he would have done had he not been watching her--had the encounter
been purely an accidental one.
But Madge Babbington had no wish to permit him to pass in that manner,
and whether she had been waiting for him or not could not be told from
her manner. He knew that she was almost as perfect a master of her
impulses and of the expression of her face as he was of his own.
She stepped directly in front of him, and so barred the way, and, with a
flash of her strange eyes into his and a smile upon her lips that might
have had its effect upon any man but Nick Carter, she said:
“We meet again, Mr. Carter. Quite by accident, I suppose?”
“Quite, madam.” And it was true so far as he was concerned, at least, in
reference to the present encounter behind the tier of boxes.
“Are you sure that you are not here to watch me, Mr. Carter?” she asked,
but without a suggestion of offense in her tone, even though she might
have believed such to be the real condition.
He shrugged his shoulders and smiled back at her. He was on safe ground
in what he was about to say.
“Madam,” he said, “you may assume whatever pleases you best in that
regard, but the truth is that to-night is the first time in ten days
that I have seen your face, or heard the sound of your voice.”
She lifted her chin, looked boldly into the detective’s eyes, and
laughed softly.
“That counts for nothing,” she said. “I know you too well to take that
statement for what you wished me to understand by it. You have a fashion
of seeing with other eyes than your own, and of hearing with other ears
than your own. The fact that you have neither seen nor heard me does not
mean that you do not know of every move I have made, and have not been
told of every word I have uttered during those ten days.”
“I perceive, madam, that you understand something about the detective
business,” he replied, and attempted to pass on; but again she barred
the way.
“I suppose you saw me in the Lynne box, from some other part of the
house--no?” she said, tentatively.
“No, madam, I did not see you in the Lynne box from any other part of
the house,” he replied.
“Then you were told that I was there.”
“I was not told that you were there, Mrs. Babbington. May I ask if you
have occupied it all the evening?”
She looked into his eyes mockingly; then she laughed softly again, as if
to herself, and about something that amused her greatly.
“No,” she said, replying directly to his question; “I have not occupied
it all the evening. I am with some friends from the West who are farther
along the tier. They--er--are long-time acquaintances of Mr. Lynne, and
when we discovered that he was here, and alone, I induced them to send
for him. He came, and we were presented. I thought, perhaps, you would
be interested to hear about it.”
“So,” he said, “this marks the beginning of your campaign, does it?”
“Of my campaign?” she asked, raising her brows, as if she did not
understand.
“The beginning of the effort to carry out the threat you made,” he
added.
“A threat I made? To you, Mr. Carter? Surely, you are mistaken,” she
smiled back at him.
“At least, you took it upon yourself on the occasion of our last
interview, to give me what you were pleased to call a warning,” he said.
“Did I? A warning? Was I so foolish and childish as that? How absurd!”
This time she uttered a little rippling laugh which was not
unmistakable.
“How soon may we expect to receive cards, madam?” he asked her
derisively.
“Cards, Mr. Carter? For the wedding that I prognosticated? Really, I
couldn’t say, you know. The gentleman and I have only just met, you see.
But, really, I feel that I have already made an impression. He has
promised to drink tea with me at my home to-morrow at three.”
This statement, given voluntarily on her part, was a decided
disappointment to the detective. He would have preferred it
otherwise--that she had not told him, for he had made up his mind that
he would find a way to enter her house and to be present at that
interview, and now it was plainly impossible to do so.
“Does she know that I was listening in the adjoining box, and that I
overheard the making of the appointment?” he thought to himself. Aloud,
he asked her:
“Were you returning to that other box, alone?”
“No; I am going back into this one. My friend is there. Will you come
inside?”
“Thank you, no.”
“You have other business, then, than watching me?”
“I am never without much to do, madam.”
“Mr. Lynne seems to be a charming man,” she said irrelevantly.
“Quite so.”
“And his millions--how many are there, Mr. Carter?”
“You should know better than I. You have estimated them more than once,
have you not?”
“Ah, yes, many times. There are a dozen, at least. Fancy!” Then, with a
slight inclination of her head, and a quickly spoken “Good night, Mr.
Carter,” she turned away from him and disappeared inside the Lynne box.
For a moment the detective remained where he was, thinking over what had
happened, and endeavoring to account for it as best he could, and then
he walked slowly away, going directly to the street.
He looked at his watch as he passed outside, and it told him that the
hour was half-past ten o’clock--and then an idea occurred to him which,
because of the very boldness and strangeness of it, he determined on the
impulse to carry out at once.
He glanced at his watch again, to make sure of the time, and saw that it
was ten-thirty-two.
“They will not leave the opera house for another three-quarters of an
hour, at least,” was the thought that went through his mind. “After that
they will all go to Sherry’s, or Delmonico’s, or Louis Martin’s, for
supper. Good! It will be one or two o’clock before she can return to her
apartment. I’ll do it.”
The layman who reads these words will regard the thing that he so
impulsively decided to do as unprecedented--and even a harsher term may
be applied to it.
But, if there are those who would criticize the detective for what he
had decided to do, and did do, remember that Nick Carter was certain of
the real guilt of the woman in the matter of the murder of Edythe Lynne,
and remember, also, that he was thoroughly convinced in his own mind
that the man who was now in possession of the Lynne millions was an
impostor.
Nick Carter was never one to quibble about trivial things, or to
hesitate to perform an act because others might criticize it, if he
regarded it as his duty.
And in this matter of the inheritance of the vast property left by J.
Cephas Lynne he believed he had a bounden duty to perform.
He could never forget the moment when he had discovered the dead body
of the beautiful heiress, at Pleasantglades.
She had been ruthlessly and wantonly cut off in the very prime of her
young womanhood, in order that a scoundrelly cousin of her father’s, and
this unsexed woman back there in the opera house, now smiling and
talking and laughing, might possess themselves of the fortune.
Ever since the hour when he had followed the tracks in the snow between
the great gateposts at Pleasantglades, and so had unearthed the crime
that had been committed there, he had promised himself in his own silent
way that those who had done that deed, and who had planned it and been
instrumental in it, should never profit by reason of it.
There had been a time when he believed that he could convict Madge
Babbington, as well as Thomas Lynne, who had actually done the murder;
but that time was passed, and just now, if something heroic were not
done to prevent, the woman would yet win all that she had desired in the
beginning.
And so, Nick Carter, in that moment, decided that he would visit and
search the apartment of Madge Babbington before she could return to it
from the opera house.
That was what he had decided to do.