There was a wait for some time, and then the Brown Robin swept into the room.
“I am very glad to renew your acquaintance, Mr. Mountain,” said the Brown Robin.
Mr. Mountain fairly staggered in his surprise.
“Why! Why!” he exclaimed. “Alberta Curtis!”
“The same,” said the Brown Robin. “Although I have had many experiences since I was your typewriter, my name has remained the same through it all.”
“Then it was you, after all, that stole the confession,” blurted out Mr. Mountain.
“Stole is an ugly word, my dear old employer,” said the Brown Robin. “Be more polite. Say I confiscated it when I found it among loose papers.”
Mr. Mountain, though he had suspected this, yet, when he learned that it was so, seemed amazed and stupefied.
But the Brown Robin soon brought him to his senses by asking if he had come to do business.
In her dealings with Mr. Mountain, there was none of the coquetry she had displayed with Mr. Cary.
Thus aroused, Mr. Mountain said:
“Your terms are outrageous!”
“Let us be plain and brief, Mr. Mountain. You have become a very rich man. Fifty thousand dollars will not even embarrass you. I have informed myself exactly as to your financial condition.
“You can afford to pay that to preserve your good name and your reputation.
“Now, read this.”
She took from her pocket a typewritten roll of paper, and extended it to Mr. Mountain.
“You will see that it is a carefully-prepared newspaper article, which embraces your confession.
“If you refuse to pay what I believe is the value of that confession, in your handwriting, to you, that will be published.”
Mr. Mountain read it over, and saw with what skill it was prepared, and how eagerly a paper would seize on it.
“You would not have the cruelty to do that?”
“You are mistaken,” said the Brown Robin, coldly. “I would have and will do what I say I will. Make not the least mistake about that.”
“But you will do it for less?”
“Fifty thousand or nothing.”
This was said with the utmost firmness. Then she added:
“But why shuffle? The very fact you are here shows that you are here to comply.”
“I am to have the original confession for that payment?”
“Yes.”
“Must I trust to your honor to get it?”
“Show me the money and I will show you the document.”
“Very well.”
“Understand,” said the Brown Robin. “I am well guarded. I can defend myself with this.”
She displayed a revolver.
“I stand on a push-button,” she went on, “and the slightest pressure will summon to my aid, if you attempt any tricks, those who will defend me.”
“Very good!”
Mr. Mountain placed his hand in his pocket, and, taking out an envelope, took out a check, holding it in his hand.
The Brown Robin, in the act of drawing a paper from the breast of her dress, stopped.
“A check! Is this a trick, or is it your ignorance?”
“Why, yes, a check drawn to my own order for fifty thousand dollars, and indorsed by me. You did not tell me in what shape you wanted it.”
“True. But you must have understood.”
Suddenly she flew into a violent passion, in which she declared that she would ruin him, really frightening Mr. Mountain.
He tried to soothe her, and in doing so admitted that he had thought a check would not do.
“I did bring fifty thousand in bills with me. It is in a package that I left in the Park Avenue Hotel. I can destroy this, and get the package in ten minutes.”
“And bring a horde of officers down on me?”
“No; you can accompany me, or that young man who brought me here can.”
“That young man was myself, you fool.”
“Then go with me yourself.”
The Brown Robin thought a moment, and finally said:
“I will.”
She called for her hat and coat, which was brought by a servant, and to that servant she handed the confession, to retain until she returned.
She led the way out of the house in an energetic way, and, when they reached the hotel, entered the office with the broker.
“Now get it,” she said, stopping within twenty feet of the desk. “No tricks. I shall watch, and my punishment will be swift, no matter what occurs to me.”
Mr. Mountain went off and passed into the private office behind the counter or desk, and for a brief second was lost to sight to the Brown Robin, as he passed behind a high safe.
But she saw him go with the clerk to the safe and receive a package, and return with it to her.
Without a word she led the way out of the hotel and back to the house they had just left.
Entering the parlor again, Mr. Mountain tore off the wrapper to show the bills within, and held it out to her.
She called for the confession, and, receiving it from the servant, held it out to Mr. Mountain, who took it as she took the package of bills.
Mr. Mountain assured himself it was the original by a hasty glance. The Brown Robin was tearing the wrapper from the package.
When she opened it and shifted the bills she fairly screamed.
The package was a dummy, only one bill being on the top.
She sprang forward, but she faced two revolvers leveled at her.
“You are my prisoner, Brown Robin. I am not Mr. Mountain, but Chick Carter, the detective. Mr. Mountain stayed at the hotel that he went to with you. I came in his place.”
The woman stepped on the button she had boasted of, and bells sounded in the house.
At the same instant Chick gave a shrill whistle.
A door crashed in and the plate glass of a front window was broken by the heavy blows of a hammer.
Patsy sprang through the window, with revolvers up, and Nick Carter through the door, followed by Mr. Mountain.
Nick met two men dashing down the stairs, the first one of whom he struck in the face with the butt of his revolver, knocking him senseless, and grappled with the other.
Patsy had sprung at the servant woman, who had shown fight, to find she was a man in woman’s clothes, and he found his hands full.
Chick had easy work in overcoming the Brown Robin.
It was a fight soon over, however. The two men Nick had attacked in the hall, finding the door open, fled through it.
The other man, in woman’s clothes, was overcome by Patsy, and, with Nick’s aid, bound.
Though beaten, the Brown Robin was game.
“Well, Mr. Carter,” she said, “I have come to the end.I was told you would overreach me if I met you. You have. I did not think you would. I thought myself smarter than you.”
“You were very easy,” said Nick, quietly. “I could have taken you yesterday, when I dined with you, in the Lexington Avenue house, as Mr. Cary.”
“You?” she cried. “You did that?”
“Oh, yes, Mrs. Clymer. You do not offer your cheek to me to-day.”
He imitated perfectly Mr. Cary’s voice.
This was too much for the Brown Robin. She seemed to feel worse over this deception than over her arrest and defeat. Nick saw that she had been wounded in her conceit. Finally she said:
“Well, if I am no better than that, I deserve to fail. Lock me up.”
The Brown Robin and her servant were taken to the station house and locked up.
“Your imitation of me,” said Mr. Mountain to Chick, “was so good that when I passed behind that safe and saw you there waiting for me I was startled, though I expected to find you there. It was capitally done. I congratulate you.”
“Congratulate the chief, Mr. Mountain. It was his play from start to finish, and he made me up.”
The compromising photographs of Mr. Cary, together with the plate, were easily recovered in the house in which they were taken.
Nick’s inquiries into the life of the Brown Robinshowed that she had been engaged in a criminal career almost from the moment that she had eloped with the man Stymers from Mr. Mountain’s employ, though at one time she had been on the stage and at another time a newspaper writer.
Stymers was a bank burglar, who had led her into crime. Her criminal career had been most successful, and the first check called in it was when she met Nick Carter and his faithful band.
She received a long sentence, and it is hardly likely that she will ever again embark on a career of wickedness.
Next day was “blue Monday” with Nick, and he decided to try the Dog Show at Madison Square Garden as a cure for the “dumps.”
After luncheon he set out to visit the Garden, little dreaming what fresh adventures were in store for him as the result of that visit.
He had barely entered the hall than a prominent banker, known for the keen interest he took in the development of the dog, and who was one of the officers of the society under whose auspices the dog show was held, greeted him with the remark:
“Of all men, Mr. Carter, you are the man I most wish to see. Some miscreant is poisoning our dogs here. The fourth animal is just now dying from a dose—all valuable animals.”
“Have you suspicions?” asked Nick, scenting mystery at once, and nothing loath to tackle another puzzle now that he had placed the Brown Robin behind prison bars.
“Not the slightest suspicions,” replied the banker, “although the owner is making wild charges and threats, but, then, that is from her grief.”
“Her?” asked Nick, in surprise.
“Yes; Mrs. Constant—poor Al Constant’s widow.”
“Were all the dogs poisoned owned by her?”
“All of them.”
“Do you think it possible that rivalry or jealousy could be at the bottom of it?”
“In the contest here for prizes, do you mean?”
“Yes.”
“I cannot believe it.”
Nick asked no more questions, and looked over the room.
“Come with me and look at the dog,” said the banker.
Nick nodded, and the banker led the detective to a rear room, where he saw a noble setter dog writhing in agony on a blanket on the floor.
A well-known veterinary surgeon was laboring over the dog, and a beautiful woman of thirty, regardless of her costly raiment, was kneeling at the dog’s head, soothing and petting him, the tears streaming from her eyes, while she murmured:
“My old Don! My poor old Don!”
The dog’s eyes were glazed, and Nick saw at a glance as he came up that the dog was dying.
But from time to time, the poor beast would turn a look of deep affection on the beautiful woman and lick the hand that soothed and petted him.
“Mrs. Constant.” said the banker, “here is Mr. Carter, the celebrated detective. I have hopes that I can persuade him to look into this case.”
“It is too late to save my poor old Don,” said Mrs. Constant, looking up. “As for the miscreant, I know him. He is——”
“One moment,” hastily interrupted the banker. “What you have to say as to charges and suspicions say to Mr. Carter alone. He is to be trusted, and his advice will be well worth following.”
Mrs. Constant looked up at Nick, smiling through her tears, and said:
“Very well. When can I talk to you, Mr. Carter?”
Handing her his card, Nick said:
“Come to my house when you can.”
“I will do so,” said Mrs. Constant, “as soon as I have seen poor old Don cared for and my other dogs out of harm’s way.”
Now the dog had another spasm, and it proved to be his last. He stiffened out and died.
Nick turned away and went into the show room to inquire as to the manner in which the dogs on exhibition were guarded and cared for, and in doing so passed half an hour inspecting the dogs.
At the end of that time, as he approached the center division, he saw Mrs. Constant standing beside a dog with her hand upon its head.
He lifted his hat in salutation, and was surprised to see her state of wonder and doubtful return of the recognition.
He smiled as he thought swift forgetfulness of himself was not flattering. Excusing it on the ground that she was troubled over the death of her favorites, he passed on into the street and went home, where he related thepeculiar occurrence that had successfully driven away his fit of the “blues.”
A short time after his arrival the servant announced Mrs. Constant.
Nick directed that the lady should be shown into the room he was occupying.
Edith, Nick Carter’s wife, who was also in the room, arose to go, but before she could leave the apartment, Mrs. Constant entered, and exclaimed:
“Why, Edith!”
Edith responded by running across the room to Mrs. Constant, crying:
“Why, Blanche!”
All this was very surprising to Nick, who could not imagine how it was that his wife knew his client.
But, as he listened, he found that before Edith’s marriage Mrs. Constant had been a member of the same theatrical company with Edith, and, like Edith, had left the stage when she married.
Then that which had before puzzled him was made plain.
He knew that he had seen Mrs. Constant before when presented to her by the banker at the dog show. It was all explained. He had seen her on the stage as Blanche Romney.
When at length the ladies had finished their renewal of old times, Mrs. Constant turned to that which had brought her to Nick.
“I hardly know how to begin my story, Mr. Carter,”she said, “but I will tell you how I came to be an exhibitor of dogs at the show. My late husband was much interested in developing a certain strain of setters.
“As I am a great lover of dogs, I took a vast interest in the kennel, and soon came to know quite as much about it as he, taking my part in the management and supervision of it.
“I came to know what he was striving to do, and so, when he died and left all his dogs to me, I determined to carry out his plans and continue the kennel.
“Mr. Constant died very suddenly. The doctors called it apoplexy. He was in good health and was stricken down without warning.
“It is too late now to determine it, but I cannot rid myself of the idea that foul play was at the bottom of his death.”
“When did he die?” asked Nick.
“Nearly two years ago.”
“At his home?”
“He was brought home, but was taken ill at his club. I had gone over to Philadelphia early in the morning, not to return until the next day, so he dined at his club. The doctors insisted that he had been imprudent at the table, eating and drinking too much.
“Mr. Constant was a free liver, and that gave a basis for their decision. But if I tell you that Mr. Constant was a wine-drinker, do not believe that he used it in excess. He did not.
“Now I come to that which is unpleasant. His marriageto me was not agreeable to his family. They opposed it bitterly.
“I did not know that until after marriage. Whether it would have changed my course if I had, I don’t know. His family is very aristocratic, and I was a poor girl, of humble origin, working for wages on the stage.
“We were happy in our life together, but our marriage separated him from his family. He was independent in having a small competence, and a share in the income of a large estate, held in trust, his for life and to be his children’s after him, if he had them, which, by the way, he had not.
“I was telegraphed for, and reached him in time to have him die in my arms, but he never recognized me.
“When he was dead I found that he had left his own small fortune to me, but his share in the income of the estate did not become mine.
“I have been advised that I have a right to it, but to get it would mean a lawsuit, and I am comfortable and in plenty without it.
“Now, then; at the time of my marriage there was a man, Eric Masson, moving in the same club and social circle with my husband, who, while pretending to be on friendly terms with him, was his bitter enemy.
“He wanted to marry me. From the first I had disliked him. It was not indifference to him; it was positive dislike for him on my part.
“I had rejected him before I met Mr. Constant. When he learned that Mr. Constant was attentive to me, andthat I was likely to marry, Masson warned me not to do it, saying it would be well for neither Albert nor myself.
“He circulated stories as to myself, which had much to do with my husband’s family’s opposition, and one of them reaching my husband’s ears, who was then myfiancée, resulted in a violent quarrel between the two, ending in Albert giving Masson a thrashing.
“Though the differences were afterward healed, I know that he worked to my husband’s injury always.
“Masson was one of the party with whom my husband dined on his last day.
“My husband had not been dead two months when he renewed his attentions to me, declaring that he had been waiting for Albert’s death to step into his shoes.
“I drove him away from me angrily, telling him that I loved the memory of my husband too well to insult it by taking Masson as his successor.
“Since then he has been my vindictive enemy, making trouble for me when and where he could, starting scandals as to myself.
“He tried to take my kennel of dogs from me, declaring that Albert had sold them to him on the day of his death.
“He began a suit at law to obtain the dogs, going so far as to intrigue to get me to hire some creatures of his about the kennel, so that they might steal the dogs for him.
“In short, I have been persecuted by him ever since my husband’s death. He is the only enemy in life that I have,and I know he is at the bottom of the poisoning of my dogs.”
“I suppose,” said Nick, “that this Eric Masson is the broker of that name—the yachtsman?”
“The same person,” replied Mrs. Constant.
“Are you prepared to tell me the nature of his persecutions of you?”
“Yes; at any time.”
“I do not want them now,” said Nick, as Mrs. Constant showed signs of attempting to recite them. “Now, as to the injuries he attempted to do your husband. Can you prove those charges?”
“Yes; after my husband’s death I found among his private papers a package, which tells it all. My husband must have gathered them for a purpose that his death defeated.”
“Can you let me have that package?”
“Yes; whenever you like.”
“Will you let me have it at once?”
“I will bring it to you to-night.”
“Very well, Mrs. Constant. Say nothing to anybody that you have given the case to me.”
“Masson will know it.”
“Why?”
“If he does not know now, he will in a short time, that I have come to see you. He has me under espionage—every step I take he has followed.”
“So bad as that?” asked Nick.
With this Mrs. Constant went away, after saying toEdith, who had been an interested listener, that now, having met again, they must not lose sight of each other.
“What do you think of it, Nick?” asked Edith.
“A rather strange story, but there is more behind it than she has told—perhaps more than she really knows. When you knew her what sort of reputation did she bear?”
“The very best,” declared Edith. “Blanche was a good girl, Nick. She was so light-hearted and full of spirits in those days, so gay, that sometimes she was misunderstood, but there was not the least harm in her.”
“Well, Edith, I fancy you will have some detective work to do.”
“In what way?”
“She knows more than she thinks she does. You must get her to talk confidentially to you, and these things may crop out.
“Again, there are things she shied away from telling me, especially when you were present, but she will tell them to you.”
“I’ll do what I can.”
After dinner that evening Nick went out for a short time, and, returning, as he was about entering his house a carriage drove up and some one, leaning from it, called him by name.
Turning back, he saw Mrs. Constant. He went to the carriage door, and the lady thrust out a package to him, saying:
“I am so glad to have seen you here. I am so hurried—solittle time. It’s the package—Blanche, that is, Mrs. Constant, you know. By-bye, I must hurry. Please tell the driver to go on.”
Nick did so, wondering at her haste, and as the carriage drove off entered his house.
Nick sat down to study the package Mrs. Constant had given him, having some knowledge of the persons the package was supposed to tell about.
He knew Albert Constant had been a man of no occupation in life, living on his income; that his family was wealthy, and about the most exclusive in the city.
That his marriage to Blanche had been violently opposed by it, not alone because she was an actress, but because she was of that rank of life which his family believed was much below his own.
He also knew that Albert Constant had quarreled with his family because of this marriage, and as a consequence had withdrawn from society.
Of Eric Masson he knew less. That he moved in the same social circle as that in which the Constants were leaders he did know, and that he was not a popular member of it.
He also knew that he was a broker in Wall Street, and, if there were not charges of sharp practice against him, there were mutterings of them, while it was whispered that at poker with his friends he won too steadily and too heavily.
There were scandals also rumored about as to his privatelife, all of which, however, had not as yet affected his standing in the social world.
The papers of the package were not easy of understanding, nor did they tell a complete story.
Among them were letters from Masson to Albert Constant and copies of replies from Constant to the same. But the package was principally made up of memoranda in the handwriting of Constant, which was disjointed and seemed to be mere guides for the memory of Constant to be used at some future time.
It all indicated, however, as Mrs. Constant had said, that at some prior time Masson had done Constant an injury, and that, though Masson denied it, Constant was gathering the proof of that injury.
Nick spent the evening over the package, and at bed-time laid it away with a dissatisfied feeling that it did not confirm the charges Mrs. Constant had made.
The next morning, on coming down to the breakfast table, he found Edith sitting horror-stricken over the newspaper.
In answer to his anxious inquiry, his wife extended to him the newspaper, pointing to an article, the mere glance at which informed him that Mrs. Constant had been killed in her carriage the night previous.
Reading the account attentively, Nick found that it was a murder, but by whom it was not even suggested.
Beyond the fact that when the driver arrived at the destination he had been given, he discovered that the person he had driven was dead within the carriage, and thatthe surgeon, on being called, had quickly discovered that death was the result of a bullet from a small revolver entering the brain immediately back of the left ear. None of the circumstances were given.
Comparing the time, Nick concluded that the murder must have been committed between thirty minutes and an hour after she had driven up to his door to give him the package of papers over which he had spent the time just prior to going to his bed the night before.
The account was not informing, and was but little more than mere announcement of the discovery of the murder, except that it told who the dead woman was and who her husband had been.
Edith was much distressed over the fact that death should have come in such shocking form to her friend, and so shortly after her old associations had been renewed.
Nick devoted some time to soothing and calming Edith, and then sat down to his breakfast, determining that as soon as it was over he would begin an investigation.
But before his breakfast was over he received another shock, though of a different kind.
A note was brought him, evidently written that morning, from Mrs. Albert Constant, asking him to call upon her at once to consult with her on the new horror that had come into her life.
He was astounded. He picked up the paper again to read the article telling of Mrs. Albert Constant’s murder. There was no mistake. He had read aright.
It was distinctly stated that the murdered woman was the widow of the late Mr. Albert Constant, and even the poisoning of her dogs at the dog show was talked of. And yet he held in his hand, written that morning, a letter from the woman the paper said had been murdered in her carriage the night before.
“It is incomprehensible, Edith,” he said. “There can be no doubt about this letter, and it speaks of a new horror.”
“Perhaps,” said Edith, “she was not killed, but only wounded.”
“The newspaper account particularly says that the ball entered the brain behind the ear,” said Nick. “Any one receiving such a wound as that could not write a letter within twelve hours, if she ever could. No; it is not to be accounted for on that ground. I fear this letter was written prior to her murder, for early delivery this morning, on the discovery of some new happening like that of the poisoning of her dogs.”
He arose from the breakfast table, saying:
“I shall go to her home at once and try to reconcile what now seems to be a mystery.”
He went out of the house at once, and to the residence of Mrs. Constant, which was in the lower part of West End Avenue.
Arriving, there were unmistakable evidences of a tragedy within the house.
In front of it, on the pavement, were a number of people gazing with idle curiosity at the front of the house.
Drawn up at the curbing was the undertaker’s wagon, sure testimony that some one within the house was dead.
As Nick mounted the steps, the door opened and the coroner came forth.
“Ah, Mr. Carter,” said that official, “you are expected. I have done all that I can do here at present. I presume you will begin an investigation. I hope that you will.
“At present it is a dense mystery. I cannot give you a single point. All that we know is that the woman was killed somewhere between nine and half-past nine last night; that she was shot in the back of the head, and that death followed immediately. But who shot her we have no more idea after working all night than we had in the beginning.”
“What are the circumstances?” asked Nick.
“Very meager,” promptly responded the coroner. “The lady came from a dressmaker’s establishment, and before entering her carriage told her driver to drive directly home to this place.
“As soon as he heard the door close, he drove off, making but one stop on his way here, and that at Fifty-eighth Street, where his carriage was blocked for a minute or two.
“Arriving here, as the lady did not get out, he got down from his box and opened the door, to find her unconscious. He gave the alarm; the woman was carried into her home, and a doctor soon coming pronounced her dead.”
“No one was known to have been in the carriage with her?” asked Nick.
“No. That is the great mystery. I was disposed at first to look upon it as suicide. I have not abandoned that idea entirely yet, though all the physicians and surgeons who have examined the body say it is not probable.
“However, the body lies in the parlor. Go and look at it, and after you have made your first investigation, I shall be obliged if you will come and talk with me about it.”
The coroner stepped back and opened the door for Nick to pass through, closing the door after him and going his way.
Nick passed into the parlor, and there found Mrs. Constant lying in the box the undertaker had provided.
He stood looking down upon her face, thinking that death had brought its changes and sharpened peculiarities of features that he had not noticed in life.
While he looked, the undertaker came from a rear room, looking at him inquiringly. Nick said, quietly:
“I am Mr. Carter, the detective.”
“Oh, yes; Mrs. Constant is expecting you. Indeed, she is very anxious to see you.”
Nick looked up in great surprise, saying:
“Mrs. Constant?”
He pointed to the body lying within the box.
The undertaker smiled in a melancholy way, and said:
“That is what has puzzled and confused people so. Butlet me take you to Mrs. Constant. She has been asking every minute if you have come.”
Nick followed the undertaker up the stairs to the door of a room in the front of the house, at which the undertaker rapped lightly.
A maidservant opened the door, and when the undertaker said that Mr. Carter was there, flung it wide open, saying:
“Come, Mr. Carter, Mrs. Constant will be glad to see you.”
As Nick stepped into the room, the maidservant spoke to a lady sitting in the corner, telling her that Mr. Carter was there.
The lady arose immediately, and advanced to meet Nick.
At once Nick saw that she was Mrs. Constant in the life. Her face showed the distress she was suffering, for it was pale and haggard, and its lines deeply marked.
The resemblance between the woman before him and the one lying still in death in the room below was astonishing.
Mrs. Constant took Nick’s hand, attempting to speak, but broke into uncontrollable sobs.
However, she controlled herself in a few minutes, and said:
“This is the end, Mr. Carter. It is the last. It can go no further.”
“I cannot understand it,” said Nick. “The paper said it was you who was killed.”
“I wish it was myself who had been killed,” cried Mrs.Constant. “It was my twin sister, Ethel. But it was I he intended to kill.”
The word twin sister explained everything that had bewildered him, as in a flash.
“I did not know that you had a twin sister,” said Nick.
“Yes, I had,” said Mrs. Constant, sadly. “She came to live with me a week ago. She was so happy to come, and this is the end. She died for me.”
“Prior to her coming to live with you,” asked Nick, “where did she live?”
“In Philadelphia.”
“Had she spent much time in New York with you?”
“Not much time,” replied Mrs. Constant. “Only for short visits at long intervals.”
“Did she have many acquaintances in this city?”
Mrs. Constant, as in a flash, saw the end toward which Nick’s questions were tending, and said, hurriedly and impatiently:
“Waste no time on that, Mr. Carter. Ethel had no acquaintances in New York, except a very few that she had made within the past week. She was killed because the one who killed her thought it was I who was in the carriage.”
“I know that you think so,” said Nick. “But I was trying to explore the possibility of the other view.”
“It is wasted time, Mr. Carter. Ethel knew no one in New York, nor had relations with any one who would do such a thing.”
“Could any one have followed her from Philadelphia?”
“No,” said Mrs. Constant, earnestly. “Ethel was a good girl; she had no secrets apart from me, and no man had entered into her life in any way. She lived a very quiet life at home, and if there had been any love affair of hers or any one persecuting her, I should have known it. My secrets were hers and hers were mine.”
“It was not you, then,” asked Nick, “who came to me with that package last night?”
“No. I was detained at home by a caller, and as Ethel was going over to a dressmaker’s in Sixth Avenue, I asked her to take that package to you first.”
“What time did she leave here to go?”
“It must have been nearly eight o’clock. We were going out last evening, but the dress Ethel was to wear had not been sent home as promised, and Ethel wanted to go for it.”
“When she gave me that package,” said Nick, “she said she was much hurried. But all the time I thought it was you.”
“Yes, the resemblance between us was so great that all our lives we have been mistaken for each other, even by intimate friends. This resemblance is the cause of the announcement in the papers this morning that it was I who had been killed.”
“There was no one in the carriage with her when I saw her,” said Nick.
“And no one when the carriage arrived home,” replied Mrs. Constant. “But a man did get into that carriage,supposing I was in it, and killed her. I know who it was, and so do you.”
Nick raised his hand, warningly, and said:
“Mention no names, Mrs. Constant. Charge no one with so awful a deed. Trust to me. I will investigate that line to the end, but let your suspicions be unsaid, or, if you must talk of them, talk only to me.”
Mrs. Constant first turned impatiently away, but as impulsively turned back and placed her hand in Nick’s, saying:
“You are Edith’s husband as well. I will trust everything to you.”
“That is good,” said Nick. “Now a practical question. The driver of that coach, who was he?”
“The same as my own coachman. I have an arrangement with a livery stable near by, by which I have the same carriage, horses and driver by the month. The carriage is used by no one but me, and the coachman drives nobody but me.”
Securing the address of this livery stable and the name of the driver, Nick hurried to the stable, telling Mrs. Constant that he would return soon.
He found the driver without difficulty, and from him learned the course taken by Ethel Romney and the places she had called at.
The story he told was a straight one.
He had been summoned shortly before eight o’clock, and had turned out so quickly that he was at the Constant residence a few minutes before eight o’clock.
He had first driven Miss Romney to the dressmaker’s, in Sixth Avenue, where she had got out. She was gone but a few minutes, and, coming out, said that she would have to return to that place. Then she had instructed him to drive to Mr. Carter’s house, where she had seen Mr. Carter without getting out of the coach.
After that she had driven back again to the dressmaker’s, where she remained possibly twenty minutes, and, coming from there, she had seemed quite vexed.
She told him to drive directly home, and he had followed Sixth Avenue, intending to go up by way of Fifty-ninth Street.
She had made no stop on the way thither, and the carriage had not stopped except for a minute or two at Fifty-eighth Street, where the way had been blocked.
Arriving in front of the Constant residence, as she made no effort to get out, he had got down to see what the matter was.
Then he thought she had fainted, and, making an outcry, people had come from the house. They had carried her in, and he had driven off to the stable.
The man, whose name was Rawson, was positive that no man talked to Miss Romney, except Nick himself, during the ride. He was positive that no one had entered the coach with Miss Romney at any time.
“Are you certain,” asked Nick, “that while you were standing in front of the dressmaker’s the second time that some one did not enter the coach?”
The man replied that he had seen no one attempt to.
“But it is possible, isn’t it,” asked Nick, “that a man might have got in there and you not know it?”
“It might be, sir,” said Rawson, “but it isn’t likely.”
Nick turned away. The man had evidently given all the information he had.
He went back to Mrs. Constant, with no light shed on the mystery.
Nick had summoned his faithful aids, Chick, Ida, and Patsy, to meet him at his apartments on his arrival. He found them awaiting him when he got home, and, without waste of time, sat down to tell them the incidents of the new case they were engaged on.
“Of course,” he said, in conclusion, “you will see that in the occurrence of this murder, the poisoning of the dogs slips away into minor importance.
“Yet, if Mrs. Constant’s suspicions are correct, the same person is responsible for both.
“In that way, or that view of it, it becomes important to trace out that poisoning.”
“The thing stands this way, then,” said Chick. “If Mrs. Constant is right about the murder of her sister, she is right about the dogs; if she is wrong about the dogs, she is wrong about the murder.”
“As usual, Chick,” said Nick, “you state the whole thing in a nutshell. So, as the dog business is more easily followed than anything else, we will get into that investigation first.”
“Don’t treat Mrs. Constant’s suspicions too lightly,” said Ida. “I think you will find that she has kept back her strongest reasons for suspecting Masson. She haswanted you to guess them. Edith, as her friend, could get them from her.”
Nick looked up at Ida, sharply, and said:
“That is very shrewd, Ida.”
Turning to Patsy, he went on:
“I want you to take up the dog end of this case, Patsy.”
“I am aching for that,” replied Patsy. “I’d rather run down a man who would kill a dog like that than anything else. But I say, chief, put me next to that swell banker. He’s one of my kind.”
Chick and Ida laughed at this, and Nick said:
“You shall have a note to him. As for you, Ida, you must go to Philadelphia.
“There is this possibility, that the murder of Ethel Romney came out of her life in that city, before she came to New York—some trouble that she had there.
“You must look into that, and we must know all about the life, habits, and even the romances, if any there are, of Ethel Romney. Here is a list of people who would be likely to know about her.”
He handed her a slip of paper he had prepared for her, and went on:
“There are other possibilities that we must look into. There is that of suicide.
“It is possible, but not probable.
“Unless the girl had something back in her life, Ethel was more likely to look to the future with pleasure than otherwise.