MURDER.
All Washington was excited the following morning, anent the murder of
Colonel Alexis Turnieff.
There were extras of the morning papers on the streets, in which the
full particulars were given, and summed up into one paragraph, an
epitome of the accounts of the crime was about like this:
Turnieff had been one of the guests at the reception given last night
by Countess Narnine, at her home in K Street. There had been another
guest there who had arrived and departed within less than an hour.
That guest had been seen by many persons, but was not personally
known to any of them save the countess herself. That he passed under
the name of Carter, was admitted, but no first name was given, and
the countess asserted that she did not remember it. It was said that
the man called Carter had in some way given offense to the countess,
although she utterly refused to discuss that point with any person. It
was sufficient, however, that she had asked him to leave her house, and
a servant had shown the man to the door.
Colonel Alexis Turnieff, supposed to have been a witness to the
affront offered the countess and avowedly in love with her, although
hopelessly so, had followed the stranger from the house. The two had
met in the street outside; there had been words and a hand-to-hand
struggle. At the end of it, Turnieff had fallen to the pavement,
stabbed to the heart, and he had never spoken again.
Three men—their names were given—passing along the avenue at the
opposite side had seen the beginning and the end of the struggle.
At first they had not thought to interfere, but finally had rushed
forward, just at the moment when Turnieff had fallen, stabbed to death
by the man with whom he had been fighting.
Even then the three men had not suspected what had happened. They
supposed that Turnieff had merely been knocked down and had rushed
to his assistance; but on attempting to lift him to his feet, they
discovered that he had received his death wound.
They had called for help. Two other men, unknown to them till then,
had rushed to their assistance, and the five together had endeavored
to hold the murderer. But the strength of the man had proven to be
prodigious. He had torn himself away from them. He had piled them into
a heap upon the pavement. He had made his escape.
Then other men came to the rescue, among them two policemen. They had
pursued the murderer; but that terrible man had made good his escape
and disappeared.
The city was being scoured for him. Every nook and corner of it was
being searched. A fairly good description of him had been obtained,
and the chief of police gave it as his opinion that the fellow would
quickly be apprehended.
In the meantime the “murderer”—that terrible fellow who had thrown
five men into an ignominious heap on the pavement _had_ made good his
escape, although for a time it seemed that it might be impossible for
him to do so.
Nick Carter had never been in quite such a predicament as that one,
and he realized on the instant that he decided to run for it, that his
reputation would not save him. His life, or at least his liberty, would
be sworn away by those five hired assassins who had taken advantage of
the opportunity offered to rid the principals who hired them, of a man
who had become obnoxious.
For so Nick Carter read the truth of the incident.
Doubtless the life of Turnieff had already been sworn away by the spies
of that unnamed country, which, for the purpose of this story, had been
called Siam, but which, of course, was not Siam.
Doubtless it had already been decreed that Turnieff should die that
night, after he came away from the reception at the home of the
countess. More than likely the five men who appeared so opportunely
for their own purposes upon the scene would have murdered the Russian
anyway, before he reached his own home. In the quarrel with Nick Carter
they had seen an opportunity not only to accomplish what they had been
ordered to do, but to cast the blame of it upon another.
Nick regarded it merely as a coincidence that that other should have
been himself. He did not associate the murder with that other incident
of the night, at the house of the countess. He did not connect her with
it, although there were moments when he thought of doing so.
The thing that the crime did tell the detective was this: That Turnieff
had been in some way instrumental in the theft of the tin cylinder with
its contents, from the house of the ambassador, and that his usefulness
was over. Considering him a weakling who might at any time betray them,
he had been sacrificed.
And yet—the matter was most opportune.
There was always the possibility that the countess had seen in
Turnieff’s anger at Nick Carter for the supposed affront an opportunity
of ridding herself of two dangerous men—Turnieff and Nick Carter.
But Nick knew that even if he could ultimately establish his own
innocence, there was sure to be much inconvenience and trouble
connected with it. He realized when he saw through the thing that
the best way for him to do was to get out of sight, and to keep out
of sight until he could clear up the mystery and apprehend the real
murderers.
That was why he ran away.
That was why, after he had made good his escape, he directed his steps
straight for the embassy and roused the ambassador from his slumbers.
For the detective had been provided with a means of entering that house
at any hour of the day or night without calling upon the servants to
admit him. When he entered it that night, he took himself straight
to the room where the big teester bed was located, and where the
ambassador slept.
Nobody saw the detective enter the house; nobody but the ambassador was
aware of his presence there; and Nick’s first words to the Russian were
a shock to him. He said:
“Turnieff has been sacrificed, prince. I do not know that he is dead,
but I fear that he is.”
“My God!” cried the ambassador.
And then with deliberation Nick recounted all that occurred at the
house of the countess, the quarrel in the street that followed it—and
the crime.
“You had the forethought to escape,” said the ambassador, when he was
able to speak after he had heard the story. “Heavens, Mr. Carter, think
of the fix you would be in if you had been captured.”
The detective smiled, though sadly.
“I have thought of it,” he said. “I thought of it then, and I had
to think very quickly, too. On the whole, I believe that those men
were not sorry to have me get away from them, since it saved them the
necessity of swearing away the life of an innocent man; although I have
very little idea that they would have hesitated at that.”
“Hesitated? Not at all. Poor Turnieff! First the father; now the son.
It is awful! But, Mr. Carter, I see men fall about me all the time. The
life of a man is not considered where the schemes of a government are
at stake. What a terrible woman!”
“Eh? Why do you say that, prince?”
“Because there can be no doubt, not the slightest, that she set those
men upon you.”
The detective shook his head in a positive negative.
“No,” he said, “I do not think so.”
“You do not? Why not?”
“For several reasons, the chief one being because it would have been
bad policy on her part. Then there are minor reasons. For example,
there was not time for her to arrange it. She could not know that I
would stop on the corner near her house, puzzled by the experiences of
the night, and that Turnieff would overtake me there. For if I had not
stopped there for five minutes or more, he would not have found me and
there would have been no quarrel.”
“And he would still be among the living.”
“No; I do not think so.”
“You do not? Why?”
“Prince, hasn’t it occurred to you that in order that this affair could
happen just as it did, those men must have been there on the watch?”
“Yes. But——”
“Wait. If they were there on the watch, they saw me leave the house,
did they not?”
“Supposedly so.”
“Well, they permitted me to go my way unmolested. If they had received
instructions concerning me, they would hardly have done that. No,
they were watching and waiting for Turnieff, intending that he should
die—intending to kill him. I had no place in that plot. It was
hatched—it must have been—without considering me, and only because
they deemed it expedient to get him out of the way. He would have been
killed just the same—only it would have been a mysterious crime, and no
person would have been directly charged with it.”
“I see what you mean.”
“If I had not stopped at that corner, where I remained certainly five
minutes if not longer before Turnieff overtook me, he would not have
found me at all. I should have gone around the next corner.”
“Perhaps you are right; and yet——”
“Well?”
“It does look to me like the work of that woman’s craft.”
“It looks so on the face of it; yes. But when one stops to analyze it,
it does not. She could not have arranged it in the time allowed, even
if it had occurred to her—and honestly, I do not think that she knew of
the attack that was to be made on Turnieff. It was necessary that she
should have known of that in order to have involved me in it.”
“You are defending her, Carter.”
“No; I am merely being just to her.”
“But poor Turnieff is dead, and he has been killed by the men with whom
she is working.”
“We surmise that; but we do not know it. Even if it is so, it does not
follow that she is in any way accountable for his murder, or that she
knew that it was decreed.”
“I think it does. Anyhow I shall act on that belief.”
“As you please, prince.”
“But, Carter, what are you to do now?”
“I am to work this case out to the end, I believe; and incidentally, I
shall seek and find the men who murdered Turnieff, and who would have
charged me with the crime.”
“Good. I believe you will do it. But how? You are a suspected man,
Carter. You cannot go abroad in the streets now as you would have done.
The papers will be filled with talk about you.”
“I know it. I am anxious to see them. But I shall go about in the
streets just the same, prince. I have not studied the art of disguising
myself for nothing. Really, the case has just begun.”