CHAPTER IV.
A STARTLING DISCOVERY.
It was nearly noon when the touring car containing Nick Carter and his companions sped up the broad driveway and stopped under the porte-cochère of the magnificent Mantell mansion overlooking the Hudson.
“We shall not find my father at home, Nick,” Mantell remarked, while alighting from the car. “He still is engaged in settling up the affairs of our defunct department store, wrecked by the knavery of his junior partner, that treacherous miscreant, Gaston Goulard. No need to tell you of that rascal, Nick, whom you so quickly pulled up to the ringbolt after taking on the case.”
“No need, indeed,” Nick replied, a bit grimly. “It was deucedly unfortunate, though, that he slipped through the meshes of the legal net and eluded the punishment he deserved.”
“Decidedly so.”
“His being a partner in the business was all that saved him,” Nick added. “It enabled a clever criminal lawyer to pull him out of the fire, on grounds that either of the partners had a legal right to dispose at will of the property of the firm. It was a hard fight, and the rascal got away without punishment, barring the penalty he had brought upon himself, that of financial ruin and hopeless dishonor.”
“Right in both respects,” Mantell nodded. “Gaston Goulard is down and out forever.”
“By the way, Mantell, do you ever see him?” Nick inquired.
“Yes, occasionally,” was the reply. “I never see him, however, that he does not threaten to get even with me for the past.”
“Humph!” Nick ejaculated contemptuously.
“Get even, indeed!” Mantell bitterly added. “The boot should be on the other leg. He hates me for having won and married Helen Bailey, Nick, to whose hand he had aspirations even while engaged in his treacherous robberies. I saw him about ten days ago, looking seedy enough, Nick, and as if dissipation was making inroads upon his health.”
“Threatened you, Mantell, has he?” questioned Nick, with brows knitting slightly.
“Repeatedly,” Mantell nodded, as they mounted the steps. “I somehow fear the rascal, Nick, for he is capable of any degree of knavery, and is a desperate dog when crossed. I expect trouble from him, in fact, and for that reason am constantly alert.”
“I predicted after his exposure and arrest that he would go to the bad,” said Nick. “Ah, this is a pleasure, indeed, Mrs. Mantell.”
Having entered the handsomely furnished house while speaking, where they were met in the hall by Mantell’s charming young wife, the beautiful girl whom Nick first had seen at a telephone switchboard, under circumstances that revealed her lofty and heroic character, as well as which enabled him to be of great service to her.
She hastened to shake hands with both him and Patsy, saying feelingly:
“Your pleasure could not be greater than mine, Mr. Carter. I am delighted to see you. I ought to scold you roundly, however, for not having called here occasionally, at least.”
“That’s right, too, Helen,” put in Mantell.
“You overlook one fact,” smiled Nick, replying to her.
“What is that, Mr. Carter?”
“That I have hardly an hour in the week, not to say in a day, that I can really call my own,” Nick said gravely. “I am a very busy man, you know.”
“Ah, I suppose so,” Helen rejoined. “And chiefly because other men are so wicked.”
“True.”
“It is deplorable.”
“True again,” said Nick. “Nor am I less busy than usual this morning. I think, Frank, we had better get right at this matter.”
“I think so, too.”
“I’m sure your wife will excuse us.”
She bowed and smiled agreeably, and Nick and Patsy followed Mantell into the library, a superbly furnished room overlooking the side grounds.
“Now, Nick, what can I tell you?” he asked, placing chairs for them. “Why have you come here?”
“To begin with, Mantell, I want to see the letter written to you by Calvin Vandyke,” said Nick. “Where have you kept it?”
“Here, in my desk,” said Mantell, rising to unlock a large roll-top desk in one corner of the spacious room.
“Is your desk usually locked?”
“Always, Nick, when I am absent.”
“Wait one moment,” said the detective. “Let me examine the lock.”
Mantell complied, handing him the key.
Nick unlocked the desk, and, rolling the top partly up, he began a careful inspection of the brass socket which received the bolt of the lock when the desk was securely closed. He found several tiny, faint scratches on one side of it, which could not have been caused by the action of the bolt, not being where it came in contact with the socket. An examination with a powerful lens, moreover, showed that these slight marks were quite bright, as if recently made and with an instrument as sharp as the point of a pin.
Nick returned the ring of keys and resumed his seat.
“That lock has recently been picked, Mantell,” he said confidently.
“Picked!” Mantell exclaimed amazedly. “Are you sure of it?”
“Positively.”
“But——”
“There aren’t any buts,” Nick interrupted. “I know when evidence shows that a lock has been picked. The crook who picked that one used a tool with a sharp point, which at times touched one side of the bolt socket and left faint marks in the brass. The brightness of them shows that it was quite recently done.”
“But our servants are entirely trustworthy, Nick, and——”
“I don’t think it was done by one of your servants,” Nick again interrupted. “Have you a burglar alarm in the house?”
“Yes, an electric alarm,” said Mantell. “All of the doors and windows on the ground floor are protected. Perkins, the butler, sets it each night before he retires.”
“This job may have been done during the day.”
“But there is always some one in the house.”
“I will look farther presently,” said Nick, not inclined to argue the point. “Let me see the Vandyke letter, also the envelope, if you have it.”
Mantell took them from a pigeonhole in the desk and placed them in the detective’s hand.
Nick turned to the window and began to inspect them with his lens, which he had not replaced in his pocket. He did not read the letter, which covered several closely written sheets, and in which he apparently had no interest aside from the paper on which it was written.
“A man handling a tool small enough to pick the lock of a desk is very likely to soil the balls of his thumb and fingers with the metal,” he remarked, after several moments. “There are faint marks and smooches both on this envelope and the backs of several sheets of the paper.”
“I did not observe them,” said Mantell, noting the detective’s subtle intonation. “What do you make of them, Carter?”
“They look very much like finger prints,” said Nick. “Patsy——”
“Yes, chief.”
Patsy had foreseen what was coming and was alert on the instant.
“Mantell’s car is waiting outside,” said Nick, folding the letter and replacing it in the envelope. “His chauffeur will take you to our office and bring you back here. Examine these smooches with a magnifying glass and see what you make of them. If finger prints, compare them with our collection. Report as quickly as possible.”
“Trust me for that, chief,” cried Patsy, hastening from the room.
“While we are waiting, Mantell, I will have a look around the outside of the house,” said Nick, rising. “I may find evidence that it has been recently entered, in spite of your burglar alarm. You had better wait here. I can work more quickly alone.”
Nick walked out through the hall after the last remark, and ten minutes had passed, when he returned.
“Well?” questioned Mantell anxiously. “What have you found?”
“Nothing positively showing that the house was entered by night,” Nick replied, resuming his seat. “It may have been accomplished through a second-story window, however, several of which can be quite easily reached. I found, nevertheless, positive evidence of something else.”
“Of what?”
“That two men quite recently were playing the eavesdropper under your library windows,” said Nick. “There are partly obliterated footprints in the greensward and the flower beds flanking the foundation wall below the windows.”
“By Jove, is it possible!”
“If they were under only one window, I would feel less confident,” Nick added. “The fact that traces of the same impressions appear under all of the windows convinces me that I am right. They were spying outside ten evenings ago.”
“How do you fix the exact day?” Mantell questioned perplexedly.
“By the character of the imprints and the condition of the near greensward, to which they frequently stepped,” Nick explained. “We had a hard rain eleven days ago, and have had none since then.”
“I remember.”
“A hard rain would completely obliterate such imprints from the soil of a flower bed,” Nick went on. “These, then, must have been formed since the storm. The depth and irregular character of them, however, show that the soil must have been very soft and muddy, as if very soon after the rain. This appears, too, in that when they stepped to the greensward they left many traces of the soil clinging to their soles. I feel perfectly safe in saying that they were there the night after the storm.”
Mantell’s face had taken on a more serious expression.
“By Jove, you have reminded me of something, Carter,” he said gravely.
“What is that?”
“It was on the day following that storm that I received Vandyke’s letter, and I read it aloud that evening to my wife and parents. We were here in the library. I begin to think your deductions are correct.”
“I am very sure of it,” Nick declared, smiling a bit oddly.
“But who could have been spying upon us, or playing the eavesdropper?”
“There were two men, Mantell, judging from the different imprints, or what little is left of them,” said Nick. “They may have been here with some other object in view, possibly the planning of a burglary. Their hearing that letter, however, may have been only incidental, though it evidently resulted in a change of their plans for an entirely different job.”
“You mean that of getting and robbing Juan Padillo.”
“Precisely.”
“But why do you suspect that a burglary was contemplated?”
“Because a notorious burglar, one of the most dangerous yeggs in the country, was killed last night in a house in Manhattanville,” Nick now explained. “I refer to Cornelius Taggart, quite commonly known as Connie Taggart, the cracksman.”
“Good heavens!” Mantell’s color had been steadily waning. “You imply, Carter, that he may have been one of the eavesdroppers, that he may have been the scoundrel who used my name to deceive Juan Padillo.”
“Either he, Mantell, or his confederate,” bowed Nick. “That is precisely what I think.”
“But why? For any other reason?” Mantell asked anxiously.
“Yes, a very potent reason,” nodded the detective. “Listen, Mantell, and I will tell why I think so.”
Nick then informed him of what had been discovered in the Manhattanville house, the evidence he had found, and many of the conclusions at which he had arrived.
Mantell listened without interrupting, but with steadily increasing apprehensions, as appeared in the look of despair that finally settled on his drawn, white face.
“There is nothing to it, Carter,” he said, with a groan, when Nick had concluded. “They have got both the man and the jewels. They have killed Padillo, and the jewels are gone forever.”
“Don’t be so sure of that,” said Nick. “I may find a way to save the man and recover the gems. That’s what I am seeking—the way.”
“You mean——”
“I mean that I want to discover, if possible, the identity of Taggart’s confederate,” Nick interrupted. “I then can shape up my work. That is why I came here to see Vandyke’s letter. I suspect that a copy of it was made. I suspected, also, if it was obtained by breaking into the house and forcing your desk, that it might bear finger prints of the crooks. Patsy will report a little later.”
“But why wouldn’t a crook have taken the letter itself?” questioned Mantell. “Why would he have made a copy of it?”
“Because you would have missed the letter, and, of course, would have become suspicious,” Nick pointed out. “You would immediately have taken steps to thwart the knavery that has been successfully accomplished through leaving the letter in its customary place.”
“Yes, yes, I see,” Mantell nodded. “I ought to have thought of that. You suspect then, that——”
“Wait! There comes my touring car with Chick and Danny, my chauffeur,” Nick interrupted, glancing from the window. “I must see what more he has learned.”
“I will admit him,” cried Mantell, hastening to do so.
Chick entered the library with him a few moments later. He at once proceeded to report to Nick that Gibson, the house broker, could add nothing definite to the statements he had made by telephone, and that his description of the couple who had called to rent the house were of but little value, the woman having been veiled at the time, while the man probably was in disguise.
On one of the basement windows, however, Chick had found convincing evidence that the house had been forcibly entered, but he could discover no clew to the identity or number of the burglars.
“Whether they were confederates of Taggart or——”
“They were not,” said Nick, interrupting Chick’s report. “Taggart was killed by Padillo, and he either was the man who lured the Mexican to the house, or a confederate of the man who did so. In either case, Chick, the Taggart gang would have had access to the house without breaking into it.”
“That’s logical,” Chick quickly admitted. “There is no denying it.”
“If we can discover the identity of Taggart’s confederate, therefore, we shall have a definite clew to both gangs that evidently were in the house,” Nick added. “Ah, Patsy is returning. Admit him, Mantell. His haste indicates that he has made a discovery of some importance.”
Nick had caught sight of the returning automobile, from which Patsy was hastening to alight before it came to a stop in the driveway. He entered the library a moment later, and his first words confirmed Nick’s prediction.
“They are finger prints, chief, all right,” he cried, returning the Vandyke letter.
“Are there corresponding ones in our collection?” Nick inquired.
“That’s what, chief.”
“Whose are they, Patsy?”
“Those of the crook who gave the law the slip, but not before we got his measurements and identification marks,” cried Patsy. “There is no mistaking them, chief. They are the finger prints of—Gaston Goulard!”