EXCITEMENT IN THE NIGHT.
Nick Carter was seated alone in the room that had been assigned to him.
It was rather more than an hour after midnight, and the guests of the
house had retired to their respective rooms, and it so happened that
Chick had been roomed in an entirely different part of the house from
Nick.
The detective was uneasy in his mind. The atmosphere, somehow, seemed
filled with portent of some sinister kind, and he could not define just
the feeling that was upon him.
No further opportunity had been obtained for conversation with Nan
Nightingale since that talk in the corner of the veranda; indeed, when
Nick returned downstairs, after his inspection of Nan’s rooms, and
the encounter, at the door of them, with Jimmy, the party had divided
itself into groups, some of which were playing cards, and others were
indulging in music and the usual occupations of an evening of that sort.
But Nick was uneasy about Nan.
He realized that Jimmy could protect himself only by casting suspicion
upon the songbird of the stage, and Nick knew that Jimmy would not
hesitate to do that very thing—if it happened that the opportunity was
offered him.
The detective’s own impotency, so far as Jimmy was concerned, was
apparent, and the reader must understand that, too.
Put yourself in his place for a moment.
Nick Carter could not arrest Ledger Dinwiddie and charge him with being
Bare-Faced Jimmy Duryea, without the ability to produce proofs of the
assertion—and Jimmy was undoubtedly prepared to meet and to refute
all such charges; was prepared to prove his claim to the name and
reputation of Ledger Dinwiddie, and therefore to establish a sufficient
alibi to whatever charge the detective might bring against him.
Nick Carter could not charge Ledger Dinwiddie with the theft of the
jewels, because there was absolutely no evidence against him to support
such a theory; there was only the statement of Nan, that she had seen
him with them in his possession, in the library, during the night when
they were stolen. That would be the unsupported word of one person
against another—and Jimmy, as Ledger Dinwiddie, would not come off
second best in such a scene. Nan could not, or at least would not, deny
her past history, if it came to a show-down, and Jimmy would have to
deny only that he was Jimmy, and to bring forward his proofs that he
was, in reality, Dinwiddie.
Nick had had no opportunity to find out the exact location of Chick’s
room. Rooms had not been assigned to either of them until it was too
late to do that.
“It is a remarkable circumstance,” the detective told himself, in
thought. “Here is a case where I know to a certainty the identity of
the thief, and yet have no means of establishing the fact; a case where
I know, approximately, where the stolen property is concealed, and yet
I dare not make an open search for them; a case where the criminal
is in a position to look me in the eyes and defy me, simply because
his own proofs are far better and more convincing than any that I can
supply.”
It was a remarkable circumstance.
The detective was cogitating upon these conditions when there came a
low tapping against the panel of his door, and he sprang to his feet,
snapped off the electric lights, and opened the door.
The hall outside was only dimly lighted, and Nick discovered, as he
opened the door, the figure of a woman, clothed in a silken princess
wrapper, and with a large veil, such as are worn in automobiles, thrown
over her head, gliding rapidly toward the top of the stairs.
Nick followed swiftly, having not a doubt that the figure was Nan’s,
and that she was conducting him to one of the rooms on the parlor floor
for the purposes of further conversation; but she was so far in advance
of him that he could not see her distinctly, and he did not dare to
call to her lest he should arouse other members of the household.
But the figure ahead of the detective did not approach the library door
when it reached the parlor floor of the house; it passed the door,
still keeping far in advance of Nick.
It hastened to the rear of the house, it opened a door that was there,
which gave upon a back porch—and instantly, when that happened, the air
was filled with the ringing of gongs, and the house itself—all of it,
it seemed—was flooded with light.
Nick Carter realized at once, if too late, just what had happened.
The opening of that rear door had set off the burglar alarms in the
house. Automatically it had switched on the lights in the house—and
Nick understood that it was not Nan Nightingale he had followed, but
Jimmy Duryea. Jimmy, in a woman’s wrapper and with the veil over his
head, so that in the dim light, and with the hasty glance through the
partial darkness, Nick Carter would not be able to recognize him.
When that rear door opened, and the figure passed through it; when
the lights flashed on, and the ringing of the alarm gongs began their
din, Nick Carter leaped forward toward the open door; but only to trip
and fall headlong in the hall before he had taken three more steps. He
had tripped over a rope that had been stretched across the hallway,
purposely to catch him.
As he fell, he heard the whir of an automobile engine, and the
chug-chug of the machine as it started forward. As he sprang to his
feet again, he not only knew that he was too late to overtake it, but
he realized that he had fallen into a trap of some sort that had been
carefully prepared by Jimmy Duryea.
Men think quickly in emergencies like that one; and Nick’s first
thought as he leaped to his feet was that the crux of the occasion
remained inside the house, and that the apparent escape from it could
be nothing more than a blind.
Of course the house was instantly in an uproar.
Doors opened and closed. Heads and shoulders were thrust over the
balustrades. Voices called from above, demanding to know what was
the matter. Men and women appeared from every conceivable quarter,
in all stages of dress, and undress. Foremost among them, incased in
a bathrobe which he was tying around his person, was Jimmy Duryea,
otherwise Mr. Ledger Dinwiddie.
Behind him appeared the owner of the house, Theodore Remsen. He was
followed by Mrs. Remsen, and by Lenore. Other guests, in various
conditions, so far as clothing was concerned, appeared on the stairs,
all demanding with one voice, almost, to know what had happened.
Nick Carter was the only person in that motley group who was fully
clothed; but even as he turned to face those who were rushing toward
him he noticed that there were two absentees.
Nan Nightingale and Chick were nowhere to be seen.
Because Nan was not there, Nick instantly felt undefined misgivings;
because Chick was not present, Nick experienced a certain amount of
assurance, for he knew that unless Chick were otherwise employed, he
would have been among the first to put in an appearance.
It was Jimmy Duryea who gave expression to the first coherent thought,
in the midst of that scene. He exclaimed:
“Really, Mr. Carter, if it is a part of the practice of your profession
to scare us all to death, you might have given us some warning of it.”
“There has been a burglar in the house!” shouted one of the women.
“Some one entered my room, and stole——”
“Oh dear, I never was so frightened in my life. I——”
“Did he get away?”
“It was a woman. I saw her. She ran out at that——”
“Where is Miss Nightingale? She isn’t here. Perhaps she has been
murdered in her sleep. Oh, it is horrible. I wish——”
And so on, and so on, ad libitum, ad infinitum. Half-finished
sentences, all of them. Excitement everywhere, and then a general
rush toward Nan Nightingale’s rooms to find why she was not among
them. Hysterical cries from the women; reassuring expressions from the
men. Expressions of wonder at the din of the alarm, and at the sudden
appearance of the lights—and then, the interior of Nan’s suite of rooms.
Nan Nightingale was not there.
Everywhere within those rooms were evidences of disorder, but Nan
Nightingale, herself, had disappeared.
More than that, it was discovered, presently, that many of her effects
had disappeared with her. In one of the rooms, where the maid slept,
the maid herself was discovered, deep in the stupor of a drug which was
supposed to be chloroform.
One by one the house guests crowded into the parlor of Nan’s suite.
Some of them remained standing; some of the men perched themselves upon
the arms of chairs, or upon the edges of tables; the women dropped
upon chairs, or upon hassocks, and without exception they gazed at
one another in utter consternation. Then, one by one, they began the
recounting of the experiences of the night, which was still young, for
it was not yet two o’clock.
Chick was not there, and, strangely enough, nobody seemed to have
noticed his absence.
Without giving in detail all that was said at that informal meeting in
Nan’s boudoir, suffice it to say that there was not a woman present who
was not willing to swear that she had seen or heard some person in her
room; and in the midst of it all Lenore Remsen exclaimed:
“But why should a burglar have carried Nan away?”
Every one was silent; then the voice of Duryea:
“Little goose! She wasn’t carried away. She ran away.”
“But why? Why?”
“My dear, there could be only one reason. Carter was right behind her.
She had to escape, or get caught, and she took the former course.
I caught a glimpse of her as she ran through the rear doorway, and
apparently jumped into a motor car. That must have been held there
by an accomplice who was waiting to take away the spoils; the swag,
I believe they call it? Eh? Carter? You’re a detective. You ought to
know.”
Every eye in the room was turned upon Nick Carter then.
The situation was a clever one, adroitly arranged by Jimmy Duryea.
Nick met their looks calmly, and he replied quietly:
“I ran after a person, but it was not a woman. It was not Miss
Nightingale. Of that, I am certain.”
“Oh, come, Carter, what’s the use of all that?” exclaimed Duryea. “I
saw her, too. She wore some sort of a red wrapper, and an automobile
veil, and——”
“And trousers under the wrapper, and a mustache under the veil,” the
detective interrupted him.
“Then where is Nan Nightingale?” demanded Theodore Remsen, stepping
forward.
“She has been abducted,” replied the detective coolly.
“Abducted? Nonsense! By whom?”
“By a scoundrel named Jimmy Duryea, known to the police as Bare-Faced
Jimmy, all-around crook and expert cracksman. Just now the man is
posing under another name, and is imposing upon certain confiding
people, who believe all that he tells them. But, Mr. Remsen, the time
has come to denounce him, and now——”
He stopped suddenly. A figure had appeared in the doorway, and all
turned to follow Nick Carter’s glance.
It was Nan Nightingale who stood there, facing them.