NICK CARTER
STORIES
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=No. 151.= NEW YORK, July 31, 1915. =Price Five Cents.=
The Mystery of the Crossed Needles;
Or, NICK CARTER AND THE YELLOW TONG.
Edited by CHICKERING CARTER.
CHAPTER I.
TWICE IN THE HEART.
The electric bell from Andrew Anderton’s study rang sharply. It was
close to the ear of the butler dozing in his little room off the hall at
the back of the main staircase, and he awoke with a start.
“Lord love ’im!” exclaimed that functionary, stalking to the door with
as much haste as his dignity would permit. “Why doesn’t ’e stop ringing?
I ’eard ’im the first time, without ’im keeping the blooming bell going
all the time.” Then, as he reached the door and made for the stairs, he
continued grumblingly: “All right, Mr. Anderton. I ’ear you. You
certainly are a most impatient gentleman. I never seed anything like you
for ’urrying a man, not even in the old country. Though the Marquis of
Silsby--my last master before I left England--was a ’asty sort of
gentleman, too. This was the way ’e always acted. Wanted me to be right
on the spot as soon as he touched the bell, although ’e knew very well I
was two floors below ’im. My word! That bell’s still ringing. I can ’ear
it from up ’ere.”
The butler, by this time, was on the second floor of the handsome house
in upper Fifth Avenue, where Andrew Anderton, the millionaire traveler
and Oriental student, lived. He pushed open the door of the study.
“Did you ring, sir?”
He had these words out, from force of habit, before he even looked
around the room. When he did, he gave utterance to a shout that brought
a maid, who had been passing along the hallway, surging in, white-faced
and round-eyed, to see what was the matter.
Andrew Anderton, in the handsome, velvet, embroidered dressing gown he
generally wore when alone in his study, was lying across the floor, face
down. His body, pressed on the electric foot button, kept the bell below
ringing continuously.
“What’s the matter with him, Ruggins?” whispered the maid.
The butler knelt by the side of the still figure and gently turned it
over. The face of the student was white--the awful gray white of a
corpse--and the eyes were closed. The expression was peaceful. There was
nothing in it to suggest that he had died a violent death, or even that
he had suffered as he passed away.
“Heart disease, I should say,” murmured Ruggins. “Telephone for Doctor
Miles, Amelia.”
The girl took up the desk telephone on the large, heavy table that
Andrew Anderton had been writing at when stricken, and called up Doctor
Theophilus Miles, who had been a lifelong friend of the dead man, as
well as his physician.
As she telephoned she pointed mutely to a pen that evidently had dropped
from the fingers of the master at the moment of his collapse, for it was
still wet with black ink, and there was a smudge of it on the white
paper of the letter he had been inditing.
“Yes, I see,” nodded Ruggins. “It was awfully sudden. ’E must ’ave been
took all at once. I wonder whether it _was_ ’eart disease, after all.”
He opened the front of the velvet dressing gown--which was not fastened,
but had fallen together--and gave vent to a mumbled ejaculation, as he
saw that the waistcoat was open.
“And ’is shirt is the same way,” he went on. “You can see ’is bare
flesh. ’Ello! What’s this?”
Something glittering had caught his eye. A closer look revealed two long
needles, crossed and welded together in the center, where they were in
contact with each other.
“Save us!” muttered the butler. “This is murder!”
The points of both needles were deeply embedded in the flesh on the left
side, and Ruggins knew at once that they pierced the heart!
His first impulse was to pull the needles away. Then some vague
recollection of something he had heard about the illegality of touching
a body until it had been viewed by a coroner held his hand.
“I’ll wait till the doctor comes, anyhow. My poor master’s dead. It
wouldn’t do ’im any good to take out the needles. ’Ave you got the
doctor, Amelia?”
“Yes. He will be here in five minutes. His automobile is all ready at
his door, and he will come right along.”
It was less than five minutes when Doctor Theophilus Miles--a rather
gruff, although good-natured, man of sixty--came into the room, and,
with a nod to Ruggins, knelt by the side of the stiffened form upon the
floor. He opened one of the eyes with a calm, professional finger, felt
for a pulse, and then pulled aside the dressing gown to put his hand
over the heart.
He started as he saw the needles. Carefully he pulled them out, gazed at
them in silence for nearly a minute. Then he told Ruggins and the maid
to go out of the room.
“And don’t say anything about what has happened in this room to the
other people in the house until I tell you. If they have found out
anything, tell them Mr. Anderton is sick. Understand? And, whatever you
do, don’t mention these needles.”
“Don’t you want any ’elp, sir?” asked Ruggins, who did not like to be
thus dismissed.
“I’ll get all the help I want in a few minutes. I’m going to telephone
for it. A gentleman will come here soon--probably in less than a quarter
of an hour. If he says his name is Carter--Mr. Nicholas Carter--bring
him up at once. That’s all.”
He waved them both from the room. Then he shut the door and took up the
telephone. Soon he had a response to the number he had called, and he
asked whether Mr. Carter was on the wire. A reply came, and he went on:
“Oh, all right, Carter! This is Andrew Anderton’s house. You know where
it is. Can you come at once?... Yes, very important.... You will? Ten
minutes? All right! I’ll wait for you.”
As he hung up the receiver, he soliloquized: “That’s one good thing
about Carter. He doesn’t bother you with a lot of questions over the
telephone. He knew that if I had anything to tell I would have said it.
I wish everybody I have to deal with was like that. I’d have a much
easier life. So they got him! The Yellow Tong! This is the second time
I’ve seen their work. I believe some of those people on the Yellow Sea
must get their devilish ingenuity from the Evil One himself.”
He had placed the crossed needles on the white letter paper, which had
only the date line written upon it, and covered the face of Anderton
with a newspaper. Now he sat down in the big swing chair from which the
stricken man had fallen, to stare at the needles.
Soon he dropped into a doze, for he was a busy man, with a practice that
kept him out a large part of his time, and his sleep was a thing he had
to take when he could get it. He had acquired the ability to drop off
anywhere so long as he could sit down, and a short nap always did him
good.
He was brought to himself by the announcement of Ruggins, at the door,
as he ushered in a visitor:
“Mr. Carter!”
The great detective looked at the doctor--who jumped from his chair,
wide awake, at the first sound of the butler’s voice--and then glanced
at the figure stretched across the floor, with a newspaper over the
face. A frown drew his heavy brows together. He stooped and removed the
newspaper.
“Poor Anderton!” he murmured. “Ah, well! I’m not surprised. How was it,
doctor?”
For answer, Doctor Miles pointed to the white paper on the table.
“The crossed needles!” whispered the detective, in an awed tone. Then,
sternly: “The Yellow Tong is at it again. This is the second.”
“Yes, Carter. The other one was that poor hobo they got in a Bowery
lodging house. It was the same thing, you remember. But I was coroner at
that time, and I believed the ends of justice would be served by not
letting any one know what I found inside his shirt. I have those crossed
needles locked up in my laboratory now.”
“You’ve examined them, haven’t you?” asked Nick Carter.
“Of course. They are poisoned. Not that _that_ is necessary,” replied
the doctor. “When an inch of steel pierces the heart in two places, it
is quite likely to prove fatal, without introducing poison. Still, the
poison hurries the crime. Of course, when a victim dies on the instant,
as he does with these needles, it may save the murderer some
inconvenience. Poor Anderton! This is the penalty he pays for falling
foul of the tong.”
“Will there be an inquest?” asked Nick quietly. “Or can you avoid it by
certifying that he died of natural causes? I suppose you couldn’t do
that--although, in one sense, he did die that way. It is quite natural
for a human being to pass away when two poisoned needles are in his
heart,” he added, in a thoughtful tone.
“That’s good logic, Nick,” admitted the doctor, with a slight smile.
“But it wouldn’t do. In cases of sudden death, there must be an inquiry
by the proper officer. But I can keep the crossed needles out of sight.
I will cause the inquest to be entirely perfunctory, by certifying that
poor Anderton came to his death at the hands of some person or persons
unknown, without going too much into details. It will be passed up to
the police, of course, and I shall have to show the weapon to the man in
charge of the case from headquarters. But I can prevent its going any
further.”
“That’s what I want,” answered Carter. “You know, as well as I, that
this rascally gang from China, who call themselves the Yellow Tong,
intend to fairly honeycomb this country with secret avenues for bringing
in their people, if they can, and that, when they are ready, they will
commence a series of crimes that will give the government, as well as
the police of all the big cities, more trouble than the average citizen
dreams of as possible.”
“Yes, I know that,” agreed Miles.
“Poor Anderton was a warm, personal friend of mine,” said Nick Carter,
with a sobbing catch in his voice, “just as he was of yours. If I
haven’t expressed much grief since coming into this room, it is because
I feel that it is more important to avenge him than to mourn over his
remains.”
Doctor Miles put out his hand and grasped the firm, strong fingers of
the detective.
“I know you, Carter,” he returned. “You need not explain.”
“There is more than that,” went on Nick. “This is the first serious blow
they have struck. I don’t count the poor fellow in the Bowery so much,
because he was an unimportant person. If he had never accidentally come
across some of their secrets in China, when he was a seaman on board
that tramp steamer, they never would have troubled to wipe him out. But
Andrew Anderton is different.
“Yes, of course. He is a member of several scientific associations, a
wealthy New Yorker, and he has the confidence of the United States
government. He has done notable work in China for Washington, and I have
no doubt he has submitted a valuable report to the department of state,
with papers to verify it, that no other man could have given to it. It
is because he is so well informed a man that he has been cut off by the
Yellow Tong. There can be no doubt about that.”
“Not the slightest,” assented Nick Carter. “By the way, can you have
this room fastened up, so that there is no danger of anybody disturbing
it? I should like to go through it alone after the coroner has been
here.”
“I’ll fix that, of course,” was the doctor’s ready promise. “The coroner
is Doctor Farrell. I’ll call him up and get him to make his preliminary
investigation right away. When do you want to come back?”
“Let me see,” answered Nick, consulting his watch. “It is now nearly
nine. I’ll come back at ten. The coroner will be through by that time?”
“Long before,” replied Miles confidently. “I will be here with him, to
tell him all he wants to know. He’ll bring a jury with him in the
morning, and they’ll reach a verdict very soon. Do you want me here when
you get back at ten?”
“Not unless it is convenient to you. I should like to have you present,
of course. But, if you----”
“I’ve got half a dozen calls I ought to make to-night. I shall try to
cover some by telephone. But, anyhow, I have enough to keep me out of
bed till one in the morning, and I’m rather tired.”
“Don’t say a word,” interrupted Nick. “I’ll look through the room by
myself. I shan’t even bring my assistant with me. Good night, if you are
not here when I come back.”
They shook hands again--for each respected the ability and sterling
qualities of the other--and Nick Carter went out.
The detective was sharp-eyed, and it was seldom that any detail escaped
him. But he did not see an ugly yellow face, with black, oblique-set
eyes, in the narrow slit between the heavy brocaded curtains that
covered one of the windows. Yet that yellow face had been there from the
first--even when Ruggins was involuntarily summoned by the murdered man
when he fell from his chair with the crossed needles in his heart.