A DINNER WITH NICK CARTER.
The Baroness Latour sat at a little writing table behind the lace
curtains in her sitting room, making notes in a dainty memorandum book.
Occasionally she peered through the fine web of the curtain at the
handsome white yacht gently rising and falling on the swell in the bay.
A knock at the door, and her maid took a note from a bell boy and handed
it to the baroness.
“The boy is waiting for an answer,” said the maid.
“Very well, Florine. I’ll see what it is.”
The baroness started with uncontrollable astonishment when she found
that the letter was a respectful request from Colonel Pearson that she
would give him the pleasure of dining at his table that evening.
“Well, who would have thought this?” she murmured. “Colonel Pearson, eh?
Indeed, I’ll dine with him.”
She wrote a note of acceptance in a firm, but entirely feminine hand,
and sealed the envelope with golden wax, stamped with a large “L.”
“I rather think that ‘L’ is convincing,” she said to herself, with a
smile, as she handed the letter to Florine, to give to the waiting bell
boy.
“Keep the doors closed, Florine,” she ordered. “You can stay in the
room. Give me that telephone instrument.”
With Florine’s assistance, she placed the wireless-telephone apparatus
again on the sill, and, after a few moments of ineffective endeavor, got
a ticking that told her she was in communication with the yacht which
had awakened so much curiosity in Nick Carter.
Her conversation was very brief, but she contrived to give orders in a
few words, which, under certain conditions, would carry out some very
important work.
“There, Mr. Nicholas Carter!” she murmured, as she motioned to Florine
to help her in removing the apparatus from the window. “I don’t know how
you have grown suspicious. But I can’t explain your invitation on any
other supposition. If you are not suspicious, nothing will happen. If
you are--well, we shall see.”
Among the well-dressed women who dined in the brilliantly lighted
restaurant of the Hotel Amsterdam that evening, there was none more
strikingly beautiful or aristocratic than the Baroness Latour.
Her costume was the last word in fashion and costly material, and she
wore it like a queen. Her jewelry was dazzling.
Sitting opposite, at the small table set for two, was Nick Carter. His
strong, grave face, lighted up by those wonderful dark eyes of his, made
him, in his correct evening dress, an effective foil to the radiant
beauty of the fair young woman who was his guest.
As a thorough man of the world, Nick Carter knew how to order a dinner,
and the waiter looked at him in profound respect when he had the list of
dishes on his slip.
It will have been gathered that the Baroness Latour was not exactly what
she appeared to be. In fact, she had considered it necessary to change
her personal aspect long before she came to the Amsterdam and found that
Nick Carter, under the name and title of Colonel Pearson, was a guest.
The name she had assumed was not that by which the detective had known
her a year or so before.
For weeks she had been slowly and systematically disguising herself, and
she had done it more effectively than would be thought possible by a
person who did not appreciate what can be done with cosmetics,
instruments, and lotions in these days.
A “beauty doctor” would have gone into transports over her artistic
achievements in this way.
Paraffin injections had changed the contour of her whole face, and the
shape of her hands had been modified by the same means. Her heavy coils
of bronze hair had become dark brown, and she had even practiced
speaking in a different cadence, to hide her ordinary tones.
The perfection of the disguise can be understood when it is said that
Nick Carter had known the baroness very well under a different name, and
would have recognized her instantly had not her real personality been
absolutely concealed.
He had learned from Mallory that the baroness had engaged her rooms by
telegraph from New Orleans, and that she had particularly stipulated
that they should overlook the ocean.
Why had she been so insistent on this, and what had she been doing with
that wireless telephone on the window sill?
The dinner over, Nick asked if she would accept a cigarette, at the same
time offering his cigarette case.
“Thank you,” she replied sweetly. “I will smoke, but I prefer my own
cigarettes, if you will permit me.”
Nick bowed, and drawing forth a cigarette for himself, looked for a
match.
“Confound that waiter!” he exclaimed. “There are no matches on the
table, and I don’t believe I have one in my pocket.”
“I have some,” smiled the baroness, who had been taking a costly,
gold-tipped Turkish cigarette from a gold case. “Here!”
She took from her chatelaine a small gold match box--a companion piece
to the cigarette case--and pressing open the cover, offered it to the
detective.
He saw, as he took one of the wax matches in his fingers, that it was an
exact duplicate of the burned match he had picked up in the bedroom of
Mrs. de Puyster van Dietrich that morning.
Wax matches generally are more or less alike, but these were much
thicker than most of them.
He was obliged to drop his eyes to veil the gleam of excitement in them.
Then, coolly striking the match, he held it until the baroness’
cigarette was going.
When he lighted his own, he blew out the match and dropped it carelessly
to the floor at his feet.
“May I take a match or two from your box, in case of emergency, until I
get some,” he asked, smiling. Then, as she nodded assent, he continued:
“When am I to have the pleasure of another round with you on the links?”
The baroness laughed gleefully, and she answered his questions by asking
another:
“Do you do everything as seriously as you play golf, Colonel Pearson?”
“I suppose so,” smiled Nick. “It always seems to me that anything worth
doing at all should be taken up earnestly.”
“I believe that, too,” she returned, still laughing. “I was only
thinking that it was not unusual for you to find yourself pitted against
women. Judging by the way you played this morning, I should say you
respect the prowess of my sex, no matter how poorly they may play.”
“You are right, baroness,” admitted the detective. “I have played the
game very often against women.”
“And do you always win?”
“Is that a fair question?”
“I was curious to know.”
“I did not win this morning.”
“But you didn’t lose,” she rejoined quickly. “So there is neither
decided so far.”
“Perhaps we’d better leave it to the next game we shall play against
each other,” suggested Nick, with a peculiar smile.
“Yes,” she assented gayly. “The next game we shall play. Do you think
you will win that game, Colonel Pearson?”
“If I do, it won’t be for lack of a worthy adversary,” he replied, with
a deep bow.
They chatted about golf and other things for another half hour. Then the
baroness, after thanking “the colonel” for the pleasant evening he had
afforded her, arose to go to her room.
Nick Carter accompanied her to the elevator. When the car had shot
upward, he hurried back to the table where they had been sitting in the
restaurant and picked up the half-burned wax match he had dropped after
lighting his cigarette.
As he slipped the match into his waistcoat pocket, to keep company with
the other two whole matches he had borrowed from Baroness Latour’s gold
match box, he ran against James Mallory in the lobby.
“Can I have your head porter for an hour or two this evening, Mr.
Mallory?” asked the detective, in a low tone. “I’ve noticed him around
here. He’s the kind of husky chap I may need.”
“Why, what----”
“Never mind about talking it over, Mr. Mallory,” interrupted the
detective, with a protesting smile. “Can I have the man?”
“Certainly! His name is Mike Corrigan. He is a good, dependable fellow,
and strong enough for anything you are likely to ask of him. Moreover,
he is not afraid of anything. If you will come to my office, I will have
him come there.”
Mike Corrigan was quite willing to accompany Colonel Pearson anywhere,
and after a few minutes’ conversation, it was arranged that Mike was to
meet the detective in the lobby in fifteen minutes.
“Put a coat on,” directed Nick. “Have you such a thing as a revolver?”
“Never owned a gun in my life,” was Mike’s reply.
“Never mind. I’ll bring one down for you. You can fire it off, I
suppose, if it should become necessary?”
“I can that,” laughed Mike. “And swing a club, too.”
At this moment two telegrams were handed to Nick Carter. One was from
his assistant, Chick, saying he was on his way to Delaware, with the
bloodhound, Captain, and the other came from Joseph, Nick Carter’s head
man-servant in his Madison Avenue home. This latter message read:
“According your instructions, have sent black steel box labeled
number four on third shelf to left of door in laboratory.”
The detective went up to his room and put on a serviceable business suit
in place of his evening clothes, with a warm cap that he could pull well
down over his eyes. He kicked off his light patent-leather pumps and
substituted a pair of heavy waterproof shoes.
Finally he covered himself up in a long overcoat, in the pockets of
which he dropped two automatic pistols, fully charged.
Before leaving his room he compared the wax matches he had got from the
baroness in the restaurant with the burned match he had picked up in
Mrs. van Dietrich’s room. They were the same kind exactly.
“I see you’re there, all right, Mike,” he remarked cheerily, as the head
porter walked up to him in the lobby. “Wait a moment, while I go in to
see Mr. Mallory and Mr. Savage.”
He found both partners in their office, and bringing out the burned wax
match, he said, in a businesslike, brief manner:
“I should like you, please, to examine the baggage of Mrs. van Dietrich
and find out whether there are in it any wax matches like this. Also ask
her maid, Mary Cook, if she or Mrs. van D. ever used such matches.”
“Very well,” answered Savage, picking up the burned match. “We will do
it, of course. But I don’t see the point.”
“That makes no difference,” retorted Nick. “The point is important. Did
you find out anything at the railroad station this afternoon--whether
anybody from the hotel went away?”
“Nobody has gone all day, except two people who live in the village, and
whom the station agent knows quite well. You see, this is only a branch,
which the railroad company ran up here for the benefit of our hotel, so
it is not used much except by patrons of our house.”
“I see,” nodded Nick Carter. “Well, you may not see either Mike or me
until two or three o’clock in the morning. Good night!”
“I hope you will find out something,” called out Mallory, as he went
out.
“With ordinary luck, I hope to do so,” were Nick Carter’s parting words.