NICK CARTER STORIES
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=No. 145.= NEW YORK, June 19, 1915. =Price Five Cents.=
AN UNSOLVED MYSTERY;
Or, NICK CARTER’S GOVERNMENT CASE.
Edited by CHICKERING CARTER.
CHAPTER I.
A SECRET CONFERENCE.
The old gentleman passed the other two as if they were strangers. He
jostled by them without so much as a glance. The most observing person
in the throng then pouring out of the railway station, like a swarm of
busy bees out of a colossal hive, would have detected no relation
between them.
While passing the couple, nevertheless, the old gentleman said quickly
to one of them, though scarce above his breath:
“Go to the new Willard. Register as directed, and get a suite, Wait
there till I come.”
The man addressed heard him, but did not turn his head, nor evince the
fact with the slightest change of countenance.
His companion, a natty, keen-eyed chap with a blond mustache twirled
upward at the ends à la kaiser, appeared oblivious to what had occurred.
The scene of this trivial episode, which was far more portentous than
one would suppose, having a bearing on no less tremendous an issue than
the possible fate of a nation, was the new Union Station in the city of
Washington, and the hour was two o’clock one fine afternoon in October.
The old gentleman hastened out with the throng into Massachusetts
Avenue, seeking a trolley car and mingling with the crowd in a plebian
sort of a way, as if business of no great importance had brought him to
the nation’s capital.
He rode down Pennsylvania Avenue as far as Fourteenth Street, where he
alighted and walked the remaining distance to the Treasury Building,
entering one of the side doors with an air and display of interest often
observed in the crowds of tourists to be seen in this vast building at
that hour of the day. No observer would have supposed him other than a
sight-seeing stranger, viewing Uncle Sam’s great money box and financial
institution for the first time in his life.
Something like five minutes later, nevertheless, he entered one of the
numerous offices without the ceremony of knocking, and blandly addressed
a clerk who turned from his desk to see who had entered.
“I suppose Chief Welden is inside?” he said inquiringly.
“Yes, sir,” bowed the clerk. “I will take in your card, or name, if----”
“Don’t trouble,” interrupted the old gentleman, smiling. “I am his
uncle. He is expecting me. I will go right in.”
He did not wait for an objection, had any been forthcoming, but opened a
near door and walked into an adjoining private office. It was quite
large and elaborately furnished. But the only occupant was an
attractive, clean-cut man seated at a large, roll-top desk.
“Don’t rise, Welden,” said the old gentleman, after closing the door.
“Have a look at my card. It will supply the needed link. Even you are
not likely to recognize me.”
Chief Welden, then the head of the United States secret service, glanced
at the card the speaker displayed for a moment and then coolly returned
to his own pocket.
It bore the name of the celebrated New York detective--Nick Carter.
Chief Welden laughed.
“Gracious!” said he, pointing to a chair with one hand and extending the
other. “No, indeed; I would not recognize you. You’re the limit, Nick,
when it comes to giving one a surprise. Why did you come in this rig?”
“A summons direct from the nation’s chief executive, Welden, must be
occasioned by something of vast importance,” Nick replied, drawing up a
chair and cordially shaking hands with the treasury official. “It
imposes corresponding circumspection upon one of my vocation. I decided
to drop in here under cover and learn what is wanted of me.”
“I knew that the president had communicated with you and I was expecting
you to show up during the day,” said Chief Welden, more gravely.
“I got the special-delivery letter this morning.”
“When did you arrive?”
“Half an hour ago.”
“Alone?”
“As you see,” said Nick evasively.
Chief Welden swung round in his swivel chair, so as to directly face the
noted detective. There had been other times when the keen and clever men
under his direction had been baffled by perplexing problems, resulting
in an appeal to the famous New York detective; but judging from Welden’s
expression at that moment, none could have been more important than that
which had occasioned this summons of Nick Carter to Washington, an
appeal direct from the president himself.
“I will tell you as briefly as possible what has occurred, Nick, and why
it has been thought wise to employ you,” said Welden.
“Do so,” bowed the detective.
“To begin with, Carter, we have in the war department a young man named
Harold Garland. He is about thirty, remarkably gifted along certain
lines, and strictly reliable. Understand that at the outset; his
integrity is above suspicion. I am absolutely sure of that.”
“Very good,” said Nick. “What about him?”
“He is a graduate from West Point, and is in the employ of the
government as an expert engineer, in which capacity he is, as I have
said, remarkably gifted. He unquestionably is without a peer in this
country in his special line. He has an office in the war department, and
I will presently send for him.”
“I shall be glad to meet him,” Nick observed.
“Now, to go back a little,” Chief Welden continued. “Something like
eight months ago, Nick, I was informed by two of our secret-service
agents abroad that foreign spies were known to be in Washington, said to
be here on some secret mission, the nature of which was not definitely
known. It was suspected, nevertheless, that they were here after
information concerning elaborate coast defenses and fortifications
contemplated by the government, which in some sections are under secret
construction.”
“You received that information eight months ago?”
“Yes.”
“Were the reports verified? Were the spies identified?”
“Neither,” said Welden. “The suspicion could not be confirmed either
here or abroad. The fact that the same report came at about the same
time from two of our foreign agents, one then located in Vienna and the
other in Paris, and there having been no communication between them, led
me to give considerable credit to their report, much more than if there
had been but one.”
“I see the point,” Nick nodded.
“We were not able to verify it, nevertheless, nor have we since
succeeded in doing so. Nor have our agents abroad been able to add to
the meager information obtained at the time. Under such circumstances,
of course, having no confirmation of their reports, the matter became a
little stale after eight months.”
“Naturally,” Nick allowed.
“But it was brought up again very vividly three days ago,” Chief Welden
pointedly added.
“How so?”
“I will explain in a nutshell.”
“I’m all attention.”
“For nearly a year, now, Garland has been collaborating with Captain
Arthur Backas, a naval officer now stationed in Annapolis, and who also
is a recognized expert along engineering lines.”
“I know him by name,” Nick bowed.
“For the past year these two government engineers have been secretly and
exclusively at work on plans for elaborate coast-line defenses and
fortifications extending from Chesapeake Bay to Sandy Hook. It is one
section of a vast and for the most part secret coast-defense system
contemplated by the government, and the first steps in the construction
of which have already been taken.”
“I follow you, Welden.”
“And you know, of course, that secrecy is one of the absolute
requirements in such work,” Chief Welden proceeded. “There is no
occasion for me to enlarge upon that. Secrecy is imperative to adequate
protection. If other nations were to learn----”
“I know all about that, Welden,” Nick interposed, checking him with a
gesture. “It goes without saying. Come to the point.”
“That may be done with few words,” Chief Welden replied. “Last Friday,
three days ago, Garland had occasion to confer with Captain Backas about
a very important part of their mutual plans, and he went to Annapolis
for that purpose.”
“I see.”
“He took the plans with him in a leather portfolio. He spent most of the
day with Captain Backas, returning alone to Washington in the early
evening. He was met at the Union Station by two young women, one the
only daughter of Senator Barclay, the other a Miss Verona Warren, an
intimate friend of Miss Barclay, and with whom Garland is deeply in
love. The girls knew he was to arrive from Annapolis at seven o’clock,
and they met him with Senator Barclay’s touring car, driven by his
chauffeur. They at once took Garland to his apartments, where they
dropped him and returned home.”
“Garland, I infer, brought back the plans taken to Annapolis,” Nick
observed.
“He put them in the portfolio before leaving the office in which he had
talked with Captain Backas. Their conference had been strictly private.
The portfolio did not leave Garland’s hands from that time until he
entered his apartments in the Grayling, where he has a safe in which to
lock them. He opened the portfolio to inclose a memorandum relating to
the plans--and found them gone.”
“The plans?”
“Yes. The portfolio contained, instead, a quantity of blank paper
resembling them in size and thickness.”
“I disagree with you,” said Nick, after listening with scarce a change
of countenance. “You have made one wrong statement.”
“Namely?”
“You said the portfolio did not leave Garland’s hands after he had
placed the plans in it,” said Nick. “It did leave them, Welden, or there
could not have been a substitution of worthless paper for such
tremendously important plans.”
Chief Welden smiled and nodded.
“That goes without saying,” he admitted. “As a matter of fact, Nick, it
was not the same portfolio.”
“The whole business had been substituted?”
“Exactly. The substituted portfolio was so like his own, however, that
he did not detect the difference until after he had opened it,” said
Welden. “His own was nearly new and his name was written with ink on the
inside of a flap that closes it, and which is secured with two small
straps and buckles. There was no name in the substituted portfolio. It
was slightly defaced, moreover, so like his own that he detected no
difference.”
“Which plainly denotes that whoever turned the trick, or planned and
directed the job, was perfectly familiar with Garland’s portfolio,” said
Nick.
“That is obvious, of course,” Chief Welden agreed.
Nick Carter took up the matter as if it were merely a petty theft,
instead of one threatening the nation. No need to tell him,
nevertheless, of the terrible danger from further construction in accord
with the stolen plans, or of the vast expense and innumerable
difficulties in changing them, they presumably having been made to the
best advantages discernible to the expert government engineers in charge
of that part of the work. One scarce could conceive of a more serious
and possibly far-reaching loss.
Nick gazed at Chief Welden for a moment, then asked tersely:
“Any clew?”
“None, so far,” was the reply.
“You suspect it was the work of the spies mentioned?”
“Naturally.”
“Who is on the case?”
“Several of my best men,” said Welden. “I have talked with the
president, who is much disturbed by the matter, and we realize that
these men may be known by sight and that they are connected with the
secret service. We have thought wise, therefore, to employ you on the
case, assuming that you are not known and can work to greater advantage.
There is this much to it, Carter,” he forcibly added: “Those plans must
be recovered. They must be found before copies can be made, or----”
“One moment,” Nick interposed. “I appreciate all that is involved. It is
bad, terribly bad, but I will do my best to meet the situation. Send for
Garland. I wish to question him.”
“I think I can answer any questions that----”
“You won’t do,” Nick again interrupted. “I might ask questions that you
could not possibly answer. I shall want them answered. Send for Garland.
I wish to talk with him.”
Chief Welden turned to his desk and rang for the clerk in the outer
office.