NICK CARTER
STORIES
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=No. 156.= NEW YORK, September 4, 1915. =Price Five Cents.=
BLOOD WILL TELL;
Or, NICK CARTER’S PLAY IN POLITICS.
Edited by CHICKERING CARTER.
CHAPTER I.
THE WOMAN FOUND DEAD.
The telephone communication was from Arthur Gordon, the prominent New
York banker and broker, then a candidate for election to Congress on the
Fusion reform ticket--a communication so sensational in character and so
imbued with alarm and anxiety on the part of the speaker, that it evoked
only the following terse, decided response from Nick Carter, to whom the
frantic appeal had been made:
“I will go right up there, Mr. Gordon. I will be there in ten minutes.”
“What’s the trouble?”
The inquiry came from Chick Carter, the celebrated detective’s chief
assistant, when Nick arose from his swivel chair and hurriedly closed
his roll-top desk.
“A murder has been committed, or said to have been,” he replied.
“A murder--where?”
“Columbus Avenue,” Nick said tersely. “Arthur Gordon is under arrest for
the crime. The woman’s body was found by--but we’ll get the details
later. You had better go with me. Luckily Danny is at the door with the
touring car. We will lose no time.”
Both detectives were leaving Nick’s Madison Avenue residence when the
last was said, hurriedly putting on their overcoats while entering his
powerful motor car. In another moment both were seated in the tonneau
and speeding north through the crisp air of the October morning. It then
was nine o’clock.
Nick had hurriedly given Danny, his chauffeur, the Columbus Avenue
address of the house in which the murder was said to have been
committed, and he remarked, a bit grimly to Chick, while they settled
back on the cushioned seat:
“By Jove, it’s strange how Gordon repeatedly gets into trouble.”
“I should say so.”
“He certainly is up against it good and hard. It’s less than a year
since we pulled him out of that scrape in which he was suspected of
having killed his stenographer--that double-dyed rascal, Mortimer
Deland, who fooled him so completely in female attire.”
“Yes, I remember,” Chick nodded. “But what is he now up against? What
did he tell you?”
“I did not wait to learn many of the details,” Nick replied. “He has
just been arrested by a plain-clothes man and a policeman. The latter
was sent to his house by Detective Phelan, who evidently had learned
enough to warrant his arrest.”
“Great guns! is it possible?”
“Gordon yielded submissively, of course, and was allowed to telephone to
me.”
“Was he at his home in the Bronx?”
“No. He has been living with his parents in Riverside Drive during his
present political campaign. His wife and her uncle, Rudolph Strickland,
are with them. It is more convenient for Gordon to be in town while
making his political fight, than at his Bronx residence.”
“By Jove, this comes at a bad time for him, Nick, if there really is any
serious evidence against him,” Chick said gravely.
“A bad time, indeed.”
“We are almost on the eve of election. Gordon has put up a splendid
fight against Madison, his Congressional opponent on the Democratic
ticket. His election, though the possibility was ridiculed at first, now
is conceded in many quarters, and it looks to me like a cinch--unless
this affair turns the tide of public opinion,” Chick added, more
seriously.
“That suggests something,” Nick replied.
“You mean?”
“That this affair may be a frame-up, a dastardly scheme designed to have
just the effect you mentioned. In other words, Chick, to throw Gordon
down at the last moment and so insure Jack Madison’s election.”
“But Madison would not do such a beastly trick as that, nor even connive
at it.”
“Don’t be so sure of it,” Nick said dryly. “Men with political
ambitions, some men, at least, are capable of infernally wicked work.
Madison is very anxious to carry this election, and so is the party
machine. There is much depending on it.”
“That’s very true,” Chick allowed. “But I cannot believe Madison capable
of such knavery, to say nothing of murder. Who is the victim?”
“Matilda Lancey.”
“The deuce you say! Her reputation is infernally bad in circles where
she is well known.”
Both detectives had seen her occasionally and were aware of her shady
reputation. She was a frequenter of the theaters, the best hotels and
the fast restaurants, with a capacity for wine that made her, in one
respect at least, a desirable patron, though in public she never went
beyond certain discreet points.
Tilly Lancey, in fact, as she was familiarly known, enjoyed friendly
relations with a small legion of fast society chaps and men about town,
and was equally distinguished for her striking beauty, her fine figure,
her costly jewels, and beautiful gowns. That she had met her death at
the hands of a man of Arthur Gordon’s type seemed utterly incredible.
“Tilly Lancey, eh?” Chick muttered audibly. “So she has come to the end
of her career. It has been hinted by some of the mud-slinging stump
speakers, Nick, that Madison has been quite as friendly with Miss Lancey
as the law allows, in view of the fact that he has a wife and family.”
“Still another reason, perhaps, why my suggestion has feet to stand on,”
Nick replied. “There is nothing in speculating upon it, however, before
we have learned just what has been done and what evidence has been
found. Let her go lively, Danny.”
There was little occasion for the last. Danny then was running nearly at
top speed up Fifth Avenue, guiding the flying car with the eye and hands
of an expert.
Policemen on the crossings stared amazedly till they caught a glimpse at
the face of the famous detective, and, when instantly recognized, they
made no attempt to stop him. They knew that only an emergency case would
take him at that high speed through the most fashionable New York
thoroughfare.
Less than ten minutes had passed when Danny swerved to the curbing near
the home of Miss Matilda Lancey. A taxicab was standing directly in
front of the house.
It was a brownstone dwelling occupying a corner lot, one of a block of
five, the house having three flats accessible through a single front
door and entrance hall.
A policeman was standing on the steps. He was talking with a slender man
in a plaid business suit, a man with an intellectual, or professional
type of countenance, with wavy hair, a pointed beard, and gold-bowed
spectacles. He had a wad of “copy paper” and pencil in his hand, and he
turned quickly when Nick and Chick ascended the steps, asking politely:
“Do you object to my going in with you, Mr. Carter? I am a city news
man. I will be very discreet as to the story I turn in, or will be
governed entirely by your wishes. I happened to be passing and saw
Officer Gilroy on the steps. He told me a murder has been committed.”
“How did you happen to recognize me?” Nick inquired, pausing briefly and
eying the man a bit sharply.
“I did not recognize you,” smiled the other. “Gilroy mentioned your name
when your car stopped at the curbing.”
“Well, I don’t know myself just what has been done here,” said Nick. “I
prefer not to grant your request immediately. You may wait here until I
have looked things over, if you like, and if I then have anything to
give you for publication, I will inform you.”
“Very well, sir. Thank you for that.”
“Which flat, Gilroy?”
“The first one, Mr. Carter,” said the policeman. “Detective Phelan is in
there. Wait in the vestibule, Mr. Hawley, if you like,” he added to the
reporter. “Mr. Carter will not forget you.”
Nick heard these added remarks, including the reporter’s name, while he
entered the house with Chick. He noticed that there were several drops
of dry blood on the polished, uncarpeted floor near the door of the
first flat.
A polished stairway led up to the second floor. There were three women
in mourning gowns seated on the upper stairs; with pale and awed gaze
they turned upon the two detectives.
Nick found the door of the first flat ajar, and he entered without
knocking. A large dark man about fifty years old was seated in one of
the armchairs in the handsomely furnished front parlor, but he at once
arose when the two detectives entered.
“I have been waiting for you, Nick,” said he, after a word in hearty
greeting. “Gordon telephoned to me after his arrest, stating that you
were coming here at his request, and asking me not to disturb things
before you arrived. I have done very little in that line, so I decided
to wait for you. That’s equivalent to admitting, you see, that I realize
your head to be longer than mine.”
“Thanks, Phelan,” said Nick, smiling faintly.
“I’m thinking, however, that this job won’t require a very long head,”
Phelan quickly added. “The truth sticks out all over it.”
“Involving Arthur Gordon?”
“I feel so sure of it that I sent a policeman, Jim Kennedy, to arrest
him.”
“As convincing as that, is it?”
“That’s what, Nick, and there’s no telling what a man might do who has
done a job of this kind. I thought I’d better get him without delay.”
Nick glanced around the room, noting a few drops of blood on the thick
Wilton carpet, a scattered trail leading through a broad, curtained
doorway into an adjoining room. One curtain of the portière was partly
torn from its pins and was hanging awry from its walnut rod.
“Step in there and have a look,” said Phelan. “Nothing can be done for
the woman, so I’ve not called a physician. She was dead and gone long
ago.”
Nick drew aside the portière and entered the adjoining room. It
evidently had been used for a living room, or a library. In the middle
of it stood a table covered with newspapers, books, and magazines.
A desk between two windows overlooking the side street, the roller
shades of which still were drawn down, had been broken open and some of
its contents were scattered over the floor.
Against the wall of an adjoining bedroom, accessible from a passageway
leading to a dining room and kitchen, stood a sofa, on which were
several handsome silk pillows. Two of them were bespattered with blood.
On the floor near one end of the sofa lay the lifeless form of the
woman. She was clad in a handsome evening dress. Her bare neck and
shoulders were covered with blood. Her luxuriant auburn hair was in
disorder, matted with blood that had flowed from several gashes in the
scalp. The skull had been beaten in with a heavy bludgeon of some kind.
She was lying on her left side, with her head nearly touching the
baseboard of the wall, from which her right hand appeared to have fallen
after a desperate effort to reach it, or to continue doing so.
In confirmation of this there was a coarse, angular, irregular scrawl on
the wall paper, several words evidently written with a tremulous hand by
the woman, and inscribed with the tip of her forefinger dipped in her
own life’s blood--a scrawl ending abruptly with a direct downward stroke
toward where her right hand was then lying. It was as if she had
expired, or lost consciousness, at least, while making a desperate
effort to write more, enough to tell in full the tragic story.
The several slanting, irregular words were legible, however, and there
was no mistaking their fateful significance.
They read:
“Arthur Gordon did this to get the----”
That was all save the last downward stroke left by the falling hand.
Was it enough?
Was it all that would be required to convict, to send her assassin over
the same dark river?
These were the first questions that arose in the mind of Nick Carter.