THE GHOST OF JIMMY.
The game of tennis was over.
There were indications of a shower, and the spectators had scampered
toward the wide verandas for shelter, so that Nick Carter and the
so-called Ledger Dinwiddie stood alone near one end of the net. It was
the opportunity which Nick wanted.
“Well, Jimmy, this is a bolder game than usual, that you are playing,
isn’t it?” he asked smilingly.
Duryea raised his eyes to the detective’s without a trace of resentment
in them, and also without a vestige of surprise visible. He also raised
his brows interrogatively.
“Now, I wonder where in the world you hit upon that name?” he said,
in reply, and his expression denoted nothing more nor less than
wonderment. “That is what my dear old dad used to call me, Jimmy! James
Ledger Dinwiddie is my full name. How’d you hit upon the Jimmy part of
it?”
“Oh, come, Jimmy, don’t try to play it out with me. You know it won’t
work. You are Jimmy Duryea, all right—and the climate of The Birches
isn’t good for you, just now.”
“What the blazes do you mean?” was the indignant ejaculation; and then:
“I say, we’ll get caught in that shower, old chap. Come along!”
He seized his racket from the ground and started toward the house; but
he had not taken two steps before Nick Carter seized him by the arm and
propelled him toward a summerhouse that was near at hand.
“This place will shelter us, Jimmy,” he said coldly. “You come along
with me. If you attempt to resist, I shall take you there anyhow, so if
you don’t want a scene here on the lawn, come.”
“This is a high-handed——” began Duryea; but the detective interrupted
him.
“It’ll be higher-handed if you don’t do as I say,” he remarked; and
then the big, advance raindrops began to fall, and they ran together
beneath the shelter of the summerhouse.
“Now, what the deuce——”
“Drop it, Jimmy. If you don’t, I’ll put the handcuffs on you now, and
take you away with me through this storm. You know that I can do it.”
Bare-Faced Jimmy shrugged his shoulders. Then he laughed. He dropped
his lithe and graceful length upon one of the rustic settees, thrust
his hands deeply into his pockets, and replied:
“Well, speak your piece, Mr. Carter, since you seem bound to do so. I
can listen, and the storm prevents my leaving you. Besides, there is no
one to hear us.”
“No; there isn’t any one to overhear us. That is why I pulled you into
this place.”
“Extremely kind and thoughtful of you, I’m sure; only, you’d have done
better if you had not ventured to thrust yourself upon me at all,
wouldn’t you? What the blazes is the matter with you, anyway?”
“Drop it, I say, Jimmy.”
“Gladly—if you’ll tell me what it is that you want me to drop,” was
the cool reply. He removed his hands from his pockets long enough to
abstract a cigarette case from another one, and to light a cigarette.
“Have one? No? Too bad. They’re Russian.”
“Drop the play acting with me, Jimmy.”
“Say, look here, mister man, it was all right for you to make a play
with that name that my dad used to call me—at first; but it’s getting
tiresome,” exclaimed Duryea, with a fine show of rancour. “I’m Jimmy,
all right, only nobody calls me by that name now. I’m Mr. Dinwiddie,
particularly to strangers, if you don’t mind. I’ll thank you to address
me by that name. What kind of a game are you up to, anyway? Blackmail?”
The effrontery of the man was phenomenal.
Instead of being offended by it, Nick Carter was amused; and he could
not resist a small sense of admiration, too, for Duryea’s pluck,
under the circumstances. He resolved to meet him on the ground he had
selected.
“All right, Mr. Dinwiddie,” he said, smiling. “It is my wish to discuss
a certain person whom we both knew in the past. If you prefer to speak
of that person in the third person, I see no reason for not humoring
you. But, before we continue with the subject, I wish to warn you that
I am about through with your pose. I will talk in the third person
about that other man, but you’ve got to talk—or something will happen.”
“How melodramatic. Look here, Carter, what are you driving at?”
“I’m driving at one Bare-Faced Jimmy Duryea.”
“Oh; you are! And who might he be? Or who might he have been? Is he a
dead one, or is he alive, Mr. Carter? You interest me. Really, you do.”
“He has long since been supposed to be dead, but just now he seems to
be very much alive.”
“That’s where you are dead wrong, Carter. Believe me, you are. Dead men
do not return. Neither do they discuss tales of themselves. Bare-Faced
Jimmy, eh? What a name!”
“It was never more appropriate than at this moment, Jimmy, for if you
are not the most barefaced reprobate out of prison, I’ll eat my hat;
and that’s quite a compliment.”
“I suppose so. Anyway, I choose to take it so, rather than be offended.
But you said he was supposed to be dead—this Bare-Faced Jimmy, as you
call him. Why not let him lie? What is the use of stirring up the dead?”
“He has been stealing jewels, that’s all.”
“Oh; has he?”
“Yes. He can stay dead just as long as he pleases if he returns those
jewels, and then disappears again, at once.”
“I see. It must be his ghost that you are talking about, Carter.”
“Yes; we’ll call it that. The ghost of Bare-Faced Jimmy.”
“What has he got to do besides return the jewels he has stolen?”
“Beat it. Skip. Get out. Disappear.”
“What! All four, and all at once? Really. Say! Suppose the ghost
refuses to walk?”
“He won’t refuse when he realizes just what he is up against.”
“Won’t he? Maybe you wrong him there. Perhaps you do not do this ghost
full justice.”
“Perhaps not; but I think I do.”
“Say, Carter, honest, did you ever hear of a ghost that got caught? A
real ghost?”
“I don’t think I ever did.”
“Well, you don’t hear of this one’s getting caught, either. If the
ghost of Jimmy Duryea stole the jewels you are talking about, the ghost
of Jimmy Duryea intends to keep them, and it will go hard with the man
or woman—or shall I say the man and woman—who attempts to deprive the
ghost of them.”
Nick Carter’s reply was a smile.
“There aren’t any witnesses to this conversation, Carter,” Duryea went
on, “so I don’t mind being more or less plain with you for just a
moment.”
“I am glad that you have arrived at that conclusion, Jimmy.”
“I’ll tell you this: If anybody has got to ‘drop it,’ as you suggested
just now, you are the one to do it. You have bitten off more than you
can chew. You just now said that Mr. James Duryea is dead. Let him lie.
Mr. Ledger Dinwiddie stands before you, and Mr. Ledger Dinwiddie can
prove his descent for generations back, and that without the slightest
trouble. If Jimmy Duryea’s ghost walks, Nick Carter won’t be the man to
lay it. You can bet your last dollar on that.”
“All the same, I think he will; and to prove it to you, I’ll just clap
the irons upon you right now, Jimmy, and as soon as this storm is past
I’ll take you where you belong.”
As the detective spoke he produced a pair of handcuffs from one of
his pockets, and he held them, jingling before Duryea’s eyes, looking
straight at the man.
But Duryea only laughed.
“Put ’em away, Carter,” he said. “You won’t use them; not on me; not
to-day, at least.”
“Why not?”
“Because you won’t. That’s reason enough. What do you think would
happen, if you should be ass enough to do what you threaten?”
“I think it would be Sing Sing for yours, Jimmy.”
“Not on your life; not much.”
“Why not?”
“Oh, I’ll admit, for the sake of argument, that you may have enough
against the aforesaid James Duryea to send him up for the rest of his
life; but—you know the old receipt for roasting a hare, don’t you?”
“Well?”
“First catch your hare, Carter. In this case, first catch the man—or
shall I say the ghost?”
“Say what you please; it does not alter the circumstance.”
“Doesn’t it? You would find that it did. Admitting that the ghost of
Jimmy Duryea is now standing before you, you have already agreed that a
ghost was never caught. Do you suppose—you who claim to know me—that I
would be fool enough, if I were the man you believe me to be, to stand
here and defy you unless I knew exactly what I was doing?”
“You’ve got cheek enough to do almost anything, Jimmy.”
“Yes, and I have got brains enough to have prepared for all the
emergencies that might arise, too. I asked you a moment ago if you
realized what would happen if you should clap those irons onto me and
take me away. You haven’t replied to that question, yet.”
“You answer it, then.”
“You would make a charge against me—as James Duryea. I would establish
the fact that I am not James Duryea. All the pictures in the world, no
matter whether they are in a rogues’ gallery or not, would have any
effect upon the proof that I would be able to offer. I have a long
line of ancestry to fall back upon. Ledger Dinwiddie is a personality,
widely known in a certain locality where his home is—now. Jimmy Duryea
is dead, and buried, and his bones can be dug up, if necessary. Nick
Carter, the great detective, would make himself the laughingstock of
the whole country.”
“Nick Carter isn’t a bit afraid of doing that, Jimmy.”
“And then, again, you heard my opinion—the one I gave out there on the
lawn—about the personality of the thief who stole the jewels. I need
only suggest to you that if you should enter that house now, and make
a search, you might find the jewels, and you might not; but if you did
find them, you would find that everything would point to the identity
of the thief as I named it out there.”
“You scoundrel! Do you mean to say——”
“I mean what I have said—no more, no less. You cannot crush me, Carter;
you haven’t got it in your power to do so, just now. I would rise, like
a phœnix from the ashes, and laugh at you.”
“You think so.”
“No; I know so. I know exactly how thoroughly I have builded this
edifice in which I am now living. And so, Mr. Nicholas Carter, the
ghost of Bare-Faced Jimmy defies you!”
He stopped and then laughed mockingly.