NICK CARTER STORIES
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=No. 147.= NEW YORK, July 3, 1915. =Price Five Cents.=
ON DEATH’S TRAIL;
Or, NICK CARTER’S STRANGEST CASE.
Edited by CHICKERING CARTER.
CHAPTER I.
AN OPEN QUESTION.
The solitary ray of light that found its way into the dismal room seemed
to shrink from entering.
Silence reigned supreme within.
Outside, even the stillness of the night was hardly broken.
It was a ray of moonlight, as feeble through the misty air as “the
glowworm’s ineffectual fire.”
It found its way in, nevertheless, under one broken slat of a closed
blind, and then it seemed to hesitate, losing life and shrinking from
going farther.
Was there a lost life within?
The ray of light came farther and fell upon only one object in the room.
All else was gloom and silence.
It stood near the partly open window and the closed blinds. It was as
motionless as a block of stone, as white as a figure of marble, as cold
as a form of clay.
Its covering of white hid it entirely from view, had there been eyes to
see. It hung in flimsy folds on either side of the narrow, unpillowed
bed. Now and then a breath of the night air stirred it, but only as if
in mockery, and an observer would have shrunk and shuddered--lest its
motion had been imparted by what it covered.
It was the only sign of life amid the gloom and silence.
Suddenly the stillness was broken, but only faintly. It was as if a bell
tolled too soon the funeral knell. In some quarter remote from the
dismal room, a clock struck the hour--three slow, mellow strokes of the
bell.
Three o’clock in the morning.
Five hours afterward, when the November sun had risen into the heavens
and dispelled the night mists that had hung over the slow-winding
Potomac and the nation’s Capitol, a telephone communication sped from
the office of the Washington chief of police to a suite in the Willard,
in which three persons then were completing their toilets for breakfast.
One was the celebrated New York detective, Nick Carter, and his two
companions were his two chief assistants, Chickering Carter and Patsy
Garvan.
“I’ll answer it, chief,” said Patsy, who happened to be the nearest to
the room telephone.
“Go ahead,” Nick nodded. “Who can want me at this hour? Harold Garland,
perhaps, or Senator Barclay, though I can’t imagine for what.”
“It’s Captain Hadley, the chief of police,” said Patsy. “He wants to
talk with you.”
Nick took the receiver and called:
“Hello! What’s wanted, Hadley?”
“That you, Nick?”
“Yes.”
“How soon can you leave to meet me?”
“Immediately, Hadley, if necessary.”
“Do so, then. Meet me as soon as possible, at Herman Fink’s undertaking
rooms. You know the place. It’s where that crook, Andy Margate, who
committed suicide when you cornered him last night, was laid out to
remain until this morning.”
“I know, Hadley, of course,” Nick replied. “But what about him?”
“His body is missing.”
“Missing!” Nick echoed, amazed.
“Yes. It was stolen in the night. Fink just telephoned me that he cannot
find----”
“Enough said, Hadley,” Nick interrupted. “We’ll see what we can find. I
will join you there as soon as possible. I will leave at once.”
“Great guns!” Chick exclaimed, after Nick had told him what had
occurred. “Margate’s body stolen! What’s the meaning of that? Are we up
against another job in which that miscreant figures?”
“Gee! he’ll not cut much of a figure in any kind of a job,” said Patsy.
“He was dead as a doornail when he was lugged into Fink’s back room. I
can swear to that, chief, for I saw him stripped, and saw Doctor Nolan
view the body. He’s the district coroner and ought to know his business.
Say, chief, you don’t think that that rat has put anything over on us,
do you?”
The last came from Patsy when he noticed the serious expression that had
settled on Nick’s face.
“I hardly think so, though the bare possibility of it occurred to me,”
Nick replied, hastening to finish his toilet.
“Holy smoke! it don’t seem possible.”
“Margate was a crafty dog,” Nick added. “He knew more than a wooden
Indian. No, I don’t think, of course, that he can have fooled us.”
“Gee! that would be the last straw. I can’t believe it.”
“The theft of his body, nevertheless, unless it can be traced and proved
to have been disposed of in some way is a serious matter.”
“Why so, Nick?”
“Because Margate was a dangerous crook. The disappearance of his remains
is a thousand times more serious, in view of all of the possibilities
involved, than would be that of an ordinary person. If Margate is still
alive, incredible though it seems, he again becomes a dangerous menace
to society.”
“Very true,” Chick admitted. “But, great guns, it seems utterly
incredible. The undertaker, or surely the physician, would have detected
it. Besides, we saw him keel over, toes up, when he swallowed poison,
and----”
“Stop a moment,” Nick interrupted. “We don’t positively know that it was
poison. I’m not dead sure of it, now, in view of what has occurred.”
“You suspect that it was only a drug?”
“That is possible.”
“Something that instantly caused a condition resembling death, but from
which he revived later?”
“Such tricks have been turned.”
“But----”
“There is nothing in speculation,” Nick again interposed. “We’ll defer
breakfast until we have looked into the matter. There may be evidence
that will definitely settle it.”
“Let’s hope so.”
“You had better both go with me,” Nick added. “If the body has, indeed,
been stolen, we must find a way to trace it and make absolutely sure
that there was no monkey business in the death of Andy Margate. I shall
not rest easy while any doubts exist concerning the fate of that
designing rascal.”
It then was eight o’clock, precisely ten hours since Nick Carter and his
assistants had rounded up Margate and his three confederates for the
murder of Father Cleary, a Roman Catholic priest, and the abduction of
Lottie Trent, the girl employed in the war department who had confided
to the priest the details of a plot to blackmail Harold Garland, an
engineer in the same department, as well as the father of his fiancée,
Senator Barclay, both of whom had previously been seriously involved in
the theft of secret fortification plans by Margate and a gang of foreign
spies, all of whom had been run down by the three detectives.
Cornered by Nick and his assistants the previous night, one of the
crooks had been fatally wounded, two of them arrested, and their
ringleader, Margate, had committed suicide by swallowing poison from a
vial seized from his pocket.
There had appeared to be no reasonable doubt of it. The district medical
examiner who viewed the body pronounced the man dead, and ordered the
removal of the corpse to the rooms of an undertaker until morning, it
then being too late to have it placed in the city morgue, pending the
necessary legal steps in such cases.
Thus it occurred that the corpse of Andy Margate, or the supposed
corpse, if Nick Carter’s present misgivings were warranted, rested that
night in the back room of Herman Fink’s undertaking establishment, to
which Nick and his assistants repaired as quickly as possible after the
astounding telephone communication from Captain Hadley that morning.
The chief had just arrived when Nick entered with Chick and Patsy. They
found him in the front office, talking with Herman Fink and Doctor
Nolan, the coroner who had viewed the body the previous night, and who
was solely responsible for the temporary disposal of it in charge of the
undertaker.
The ruddy face of Herman Fink, who was a short, corpulent little German,
evinced not only his consternation over what had occurred, but also the
fact that he was utterly incapable of having connived in any way at the
theft of the notorious crook’s remains.
“Ah, here is Carter, now,” Captain Hadley exclaimed, when the three
detectives entered. “Here’s a fine mess, Nick, for fair. I have known
live crooks to slip through the fingers of the police, but never a dead
one. This is the first case on record.”
“We have no precedent, then, to serve us as a guide,” Nick replied,
smiling a bit grimly. “Is there any question, then, as to the theft of
the body?”
Herman Fink threw up his pudgy hands and exclaimed, before Chief Hadley
could reply:
“Mein Gott! Vot a question? Not der slightest, Mr. Carter, not der
slightest. How can there be any question, Der pody is gone, stolen from
my pack room, lugged out through der vindow. Come in and see for
yourself. Der plinds----”
“One moment,” Nick interposed, detaining him. “I will presently make an
investigation. I understand, Doctor Nolan, that you were present when
Margate’s body was brought here last night.”
The physician bowed, looking inexpressibly annoyed over what had
occurred and evidently feeling that he was in a measure responsible for
it.
“I was here, Mr. Carter,” he replied. “I remained until after Fink and
his assistant had stripped the body and laid it out. It was nearly one
o’clock, mind you, which was the only reason why I deferred sending it
to the morgue until this morning. A thought of its being stolen did not
enter my mind. I would not have believed it possible.”
“In view of what has occurred, can you believe it possible that the man
was not dead?” Nick asked, a bit dryly.
“Not dead!” Doctor Nolan echoed, with a look of derision. “No, no,
certainly not. That is absurd, Mr. Carter. I know that he was dead.”
“You feel absolutely sure of it, eh?”
“I certainly do, sir.”
“Did you make any tests to verify your opinion?”
“I did not,” Doctor Nolan declared, a bit brusquely. “No test was
necessary. I can tell when a man is dead, Mr. Carter, without resorting
to tests.”
“Mein gracious!” Fink exclaimed, starting with a sort of ludicrous
commiseration at the detective. “Vat an idea! Not tead--vy, vy, Mr.
Carter, dot is der vorst I ever heard. I know der man vas tead.”
Nick did not resent these positive assertions of both the physician and
the undertaker. He knew much better than they, however, to what
consummate trickery knaves of Margate’s caliber sometimes resort, and he
was better informed than either of the ways and means that make it
possible.
“I infer, Mr. Fink, that the body was not embalmed, or you would have
said so,” Nick replied.
“No, sir, it was not,” Fink allowed.
“At what time did you leave it laid out in your back room?”
“It vas half past von when I vent up to ped.”
“Do you reside over your business establishment?”
“I do, Mr. Carter, mit my family and my assistant, Hans Grost. He came
down at half past seven this morning and found der pody vas stolen.
He----”
“Who now has the vial, Chief Hadley, from which Margate took the
supposed poison?” Nick cut in, turning to the police chief.
“Doctor Nolan has it, I believe.”
“I have,” bowed the physician. “It is in a safe in my office.”
“Does it still contain any of the liquid?”
“A very little, Mr. Carter.”
“Do you know of what it consists? Have you examined it?”
“Not yet. I anticipated no such occasion as this.”
“Hang on to it, doctor,” Nick directed. “A careful chemical analysis may
become necessary. Now, Mr. Fink, lead the way to your back room. I’ll
see what I make of this extraordinary robbery.”