The Yellow Label by Nick Carter - HTML preview

CHAPTER XIII.
 NICK COMES TO MEADOWVIEW.

It was quite true, as Mr. Pyle had heard, that Francis Massey had sent for Nick Carter.

He had first left the case in the hands of the local police, but when at the end of a week they had frankly confessed that they were baffled, he had wired for Nick Carter.

The detective promptly responded to the summons, and arrived at Meadowview in one of his private cars, accompanied by Chick and Captain, their police dog.

Massey received them in the study, his right hand swathed in bandages, and his left arm in a sling.

“If I had followed my own inclination,” he said, “I should have sent for you at first. I was persuaded to place the matter in the hands of the police, but although they have been searching and investigating and inquiring and cross-examining for just a week, they’re as far as ever from discovering any clew to the identity of the scoundrels. I sincerely trust you will be more successful.”

The detective looked a little dubious.

“You haven’t improved my chances by waiting a week before sending for me. However, I’ll do my best, of course. Needless to say, I’ve read the newspaper accounts of the case, but I should be glad to hear your version of the affair.”

“If you’ve read the newspapers,” replied Massey, “I don’t suppose I can tell you anything that will be very new. We’d been to the opera—my wife and daughters and myself—and, in the ordinary course of events, we should have returned about half past twelve. Owing to engine troubles and a blow-out, however, it was just after two when we got here.

“We were all rather tired,” he continued, “and we decided to go straight to bed. Before my wife and daughters retired, however, they handed me their jewels. I placed the latter in their proper cases, brought them to this room, and locked them in that safe.”

He pointed to the mutilated safe in the corner. It was empty now, but was otherwise in the same condition as when the burglars had left it.

“After I’d locked up the jewels,” Massey resumed, “I switched off the lights and went to bed. For some reason or other I could not get to sleep at once, and when I’d been in bed about half an hour I thought I heard somebody moving in the study. I got up quietly, put on a dressing gown and slippers, armed myself with a revolver, and stole downstairs.

“When I’d crept up to the door here,” he went on, “I distinctly heard men at work in the room. I waited for a few seconds, and then I suddenly flung the door open and sprang in, switching on the lights as I did so. One glance showed me that the safe had been forced and the jewels removed. Two men were about to stow the cases in a leather bag, and two others were packing up the apparatus with which they had opened the safe.”

“All the four men wore masks, I understand,” Nick put in.

“That’s true.”

“So you never saw their faces?”

“Unfortunately I did not. From the cut of their clothes, however, and the appearance of their hands, I judged them to be men of a much superior type to the common housebreaker. Their hands were as white as my own, and their clothes were as good as those I’m wearing at this moment.”

“That’s interesting. Now, tell me what you did.”

Massey described how he had covered the men with his revolver, and had ordered them to raise their hands and stand with their backs to the wall.

“They obeyed without a word,” he said. “I thought I’d cowed them, and that I only had to ring for help in order to make my capture complete. But evidently they had posted a fifth man outside the window, to keep watch, and just as I was about to ring the bell—this bell on the desk—the scoundrel fired at me through the window and broke my wrist.”

“Did you ever see the fifth man?”

“No, I should never have known of his existence had he not fired. It was very clever on their part to leave him out there.”

“I see. What happened next?”

“Then for a moment the four masked men seemed almost as startled as myself—at least, so it appeared to me, although I had troubles of my own just then, and was hardly in a position to study them at my leisure. At any rate, panic seized them, I suppose, owing to the fear that the shot would be heard all over the house. The pain of my shattered wrist made it impossible for me to do anything more. I was helpless, and the jewels were at their mercy, but, to my amazement, they seemed to forget all about them.”

“They bolted at once?”

Massey nodded.

“Yes,” he answered. “They rushed to the window, tore down the curtain in their haste, and took to their heels through the grounds.

“The report of the revolver had aroused the household,” he continued, “and, in a remarkably short time, the servants were scouring the grounds in all directions. Two of them saw a man in the act of mounting a motor cycle in the little lane at the back here. They tried to capture him, but he got away, and from that day to this nothing more has been seen or heard of any of the five of them.”

“The man whom your servants saw in the lane—was he one of those in the study?”

“Apparently not. My people describe him as a young man of rather foreign appearance, wearing a dark-blue suit. There was no such man in this room. It seems clear to me that he was the one who was posted outside the window, and who fired at me.”

“He escaped, you say, on a motor cycle? How did the others get away?”

“The police have a theory that they came here in a motor car, in which they afterward made their escape. If is only a theory, however. At least, there doesn’t seem to be any proof. There was a heavy thunder shower an hour or two later, and that may have obliterated the marks of the car.”

“They left the jewels behind, I understand.”

“Yes, and they also left their apparatus and the leather bag in which they were about to pack the jewels when I disturbed them. Would you like to see the things?”

The continuation of this story will be found in the first issue of DETECTIVE STORY MAGAZINE.