Nick Carter's Ghost Story, Page 2

  “I know better; and I tell you that these jewels were taken by the spirit of my deceased aunt, and that she did it to show me that my daughter was wrongfully in possession of them.”

  When a healthy, hearty old man, who seems to be as sane as anybody else in the world, stands up and talks such nonsense as this, what can one say to him?

  It is useless to tell him that he is wrong about the whole matter. It is folly to attempt to reason with him.

  The only way to do is to show him a perfectly natural explanation of the mystery, and simply make him see it.

  That was the task which Nick had before him, and it must be owned that, at the first glance, he did not see how he was going to accomplish it.

  He examined the room and satisfied himself that it had no secret entrances.

  Such being the case, Nick was unable to form a theory of the robbery which would fit the facts as they had been stated to him.

  After looking at the rooms, he went with Colonel Richmond to the parlor, on the ground floor, and there proceeded to question him about the mysterious occurrences.

  “There have been three robberies in all,” said the colonel, “and they have been exactly alike.

  “In every case my daughter has left some articles of jewelry on the dressing-table in her bed-room, and one of them has vanished. Never more than one at a time.

  “Twice it happened while she was in the adjoining room. The bed-room door which opens into the hall was locked on these occasions.

  “The third time she was in the hall, talking with my nephew. He was standing in the upper hall, leaning over the banister rail. They were discussing a plan for a drive out into the country. Quite a party was to go.

  “Horace had just received word from a gentleman whom they had invited that he would be unable to go. He had read the note in his room, and he called downstairs to my daughter to tell her about it.

  “That was how they happened to be standing in the hall. Presently she went back into her room, and almost immediately noticed that a small locket set with diamonds had been taken.

  “She screamed, and Horace and I came running to her room. We searched it thoroughly.

  “There was nobody there. The door between the bedroom and the sitting-room was open, but the other door of the sitting-room, which opens into the old portion of the house, was locked and bolted on the inside.

  “Now, I submit to you, Mr. Carter, whether in that case any other way of entrance or exit was possible except by the windows.”

  “I'm bound to admit,” responded Nick, “that if the doors were in the condition you describe, no person could have entered or left those rooms except by the windows.”

  “Well, it had been raining hard, and the ground was soft. We looked carefully under all the windows.

  “There was no sign of a footprint, and nobody could have walked there without making tracks. Oh, it is clear enough! Why do we waste your time in a search for invisible spirits of the dead?”

  He rambled on in this way for several minutes, and Nick did not try to stop him.

  The colonel was at last interrupted, however, by the entrance of his daughter.

  Mrs. Pond had been out driving. She learned, on her return, that a stranger had come to the house, and she hurried into the parlor, suspecting who was there.

  “I am delighted to see you, Mr. Carter,” she exclaimed. “You will clear up this abominable mystery and relieve my father's mind from these delusions.”

  “Then you do not share his opinions,” said Nick.

  Mrs. Pond laughed nervously.

  “No, indeed,” she said, “and yet I must admit that I am quite unable to explain the facts. I suppose you have heard the story?”

  “Yes.”

  “What do you think about it?”

  “It is much too early in the case for me to express an opinion. But there are one or two questions that I should like to ask you.”

  “Do so, by all means. It was at my request that you were called in.”

  “At your request?”

  “Yes; I talked with Horace about it, and at last we agreed to ask you to take the case. He didn't believe in it at first, for he did not want to let anybody into our family secrets.”

  She glanced at her father as she spoke. It was evident that the family was a good deal ashamed of Colonel Richmond's spiritualistic delusions and wanted to keep quiet about them.

  “I talked Horace into it after a while,” Mrs. Pond continued, “and at last he became as enthusiastic as myself. We know that you will find the thief.”

  “Thank you,” responded Nick. “There is one point which seems peculiar to me. After you had been robbed once, why did you continue to leave the jewels unwatched in the very place from which one of them had previously been taken?”

  “I insisted upon it,” said Colonel Richmond. “I told my daughter that she must make no change in her habit of wearing or caring for my aunt's jewels. I wished to show that we were not foolishly trying to hide them from the eye of a spirit, but that we wished to learn the desire of my departed aunt as soon as possible.”

  “It was by your order, then,” said Nick, “that your daughter continued to put the jewels on her dressing-table when she laid them aside for any reason?”

  “It was.”

  “I have just left some of them there now,” said Mrs. Pond. “I went to my room after my ride, and took off a light cloak which was fastened with three pins, each having a diamond in its head. I stuck them all into a cushion on that dressing-table.”

  “Is the room locked?” asked Nick.

  “Yes,” replied Mrs. Pond, and she produced the key of the door which opened from the hall above.

  “Will you allow me to go up there now?”

  “Certainly.”

  She handed the key to Nick.

  He took it and walked out of the parlor.

  Nick had already formed a sort of working theory in the case. He scarcely believed that it would hold water, but it would do for a starter.

  The most probable explanation that had come to him was that Mrs. Pond had not really been robbed at all.

  It might be that she had some motive for making these articles vanish. Perhaps she had some need of money, and was secretly selling them against the wish of her husband and her father.

  So, when Nick took that key and went toward that room he did not expect to find the three diamond pins in the position described by the lady.

  He found the door locked, and he opened it by means of the key. Then he locked it behind him, leaving the key in the lock.

  He turned at once to a dressing-table.

  The three pins were there, just as Mrs. Pond had said.

  Nick laughed softly to himself.

  “That looks bad for my first shot at this queer case,” he said; “but perhaps she didn't dare work the game while I was in the house.”

  He glanced out of the window of the room.

  Two servants were in the yard. They seemed to be explaining the robberies to a new driver of a groceryman's wagon, for they had one of his arms apiece, and were pointing to the window.

  Nick walked into the sitting-room, and spent some minutes examining the walls, and especially the door leading toward the old part of the house.

  He found nothing at all to reward his search. There absolutely was no secret entrance.

  The detective decided that nothing further could be done in that room. He walked toward the other.

  To his astonishment he found that the door had been closed while he had been busy with his investigations.

  He sprang against it.

  The door yielded a little, and yet he could not open it.

  Some person stronger than he seemed to be holding it on the other side.

  He drew back for a spring. That door would have gone to splinters if it had stood in his way again.

  Instead, it swung open the instant he touched it, and the force of his lunge took him nearly to the middle of the room.

 
In an instant he was on guard, but he saw no one.

  The room was quiet, and it was empty.

  The door into the hall was locked as he had left it.

  All was the same, except that on the dressing-table was the cushion bearing two diamond pins instead of three.

  The robbery had been done, as one might say, under the nose of the greatest detective in the world.

  “Well, this takes my breath away,” said Nick to himself. “It's the nerviest challenge that ever was sprung on me.”

  CHAPTER III. HOW NICK FOUND THE JEWELS.

  It certainly looked like sheer recklessness for this thief, whoever he might be, to play his game on Nick almost at the very moment when the great detective appeared upon the scene.

  Shrewd as Nick was, he had not expected this. His first thought, as the reader knows, was that it was a bold challenge, the defiance of a nervy criminal who thought himself absolutely safe from detection.

  But a moment's reflection made this seem less probable.

  Was it not more natural to suppose that this event proved that the detective was unknown to the thief?

  Such being the case, Colonel Richmond, his nephew and Mrs. Pond were acquitted at the start.

  It may seem ridiculous to suspect them, in any case, but so strange was the nature of this affair that Nick gave nobody the credit of certain innocence.

  Colonel Richmond was certainly very nearly crazy on one point. He might be so much of a lunatic as to commit these robberies from simple delusion. Or he might wish to prove to his daughter that the diamonds were not rightfully hers.

  Mrs. Pond might be pawning them for small extravagances which she was afraid to have known.

  As to Horace Richmond, there was no motive which seemed plausible. The value of the articles taken was so small as to make the game not worth while for a man in his position.

  And it was perfectly certain that no professional thief or dishonest servant was doing the work.

  If such a person had been in the game, he would not have taken one of those diamond pins; he would have taken all three.

  It was impossible to lose sight of the fact that the Stevenses would be the real gainers, if this ghost business led Colonel Richmond to insist that his daughter should give up the jewels.

  Mrs. Stevens and her daughter could not be doing the job personally, but they might have a secret agent among the servants, or more probably concealed in some secret recess of the strange old house.

  Nick resolved to go to see Mrs. and Miss Stevens without delay. He hoped to judge by their conduct whether they knew anything about the robberies.

  These thoughts passed through his mind in a flash.

  He quickly searched the room to be sure that the thief was not concealed in it, and then descended to the main hall. The outer door was open, and Colonel Richmond and his daughter were standing on the steps.

  Just as Nick joined them Horace Richmond strolled up. They all stood looking at a carriage which was coming up the driveway.

  “Why, it's Mrs. Stevens,” exclaimed Mrs. Pond. “I thought you said she did not come here any more.”

  “She hasn't been here in some time,” responded the colonel. “I have thought that she avoided us because of this matter of the jewels.”

  Nothing more could be said on the subject, for at that moment the carriage drew up before the door.

  Colonel Richmond advanced courteously and assisted Mrs. Stevens to alight.

  Nick noticed at once that she was much agitated.

  Colonel Richmond asked her into the house, but she said that she preferred to sit on the veranda. She had come on business, and would stay but a moment.

  She evidently wished to speak to the colonel privately, and so the others stepped aside; but Nick's eye was upon the woman every moment.

  Very few words had passed between them, when the colonel uttered a cry and called to Nick.

  The detective instantly advanced. He made a sign to Richmond, but it was not understood, and the colonel introduced Nick by his right name.

  “Here is an extraordinary thing, Mr. Carter,” he said. “We now have proof positive that this affair is not the work of mortal hands.”

  “What is that?” asked Nick.

  “The jewels have appeared!”

  “Where?”

  “In Mrs. Stevens' house. They have been mysteriously transported there without human aid.”

  “I should be glad to have that proven,” said Nick.

  “It shall be,” said the colonel. “Tell your story, Mrs. Stevens, if you please.”

  “It is very simple,” she said. “This noon, when I returned to my room after lunch, I found upon my dressing-table certain pieces of jewelry which I recognized as having belonged to the late Miss Lavina Richmond.

  “I knew them well. Nothing that I can imagine could have surprised me more than to find them there. I have no explanation to offer. I can't explain how it happened.”

  Nick could explain it very easily, at least so far as the appearance of the jewels in that particular place was concerned. It looked like a natural development of the plot. But his face expressed no emotion as he asked:

  “Who had access to that room?”

  “Nobody,” replied Mrs. Stevens. “It was locked.”

  “Is it customary for you to lock your bed-room door when you go to lunch?”

  “No; it is quite unusual. But we have a new servant in the house, and, as I had considerable money in the room, I took that precaution.

  “All the doors were locked. I had the key to one of them. The others were on the inside of the locks.

  “When I went to lunch the jewels were not there. When I returned they were there. That is all that I know about it. Here they are.”

  She drew from her pocket as she spoke a small cardboard box.

  The woman was making heroic efforts to be calm, but it seemed as if she might either faint or go into hysterics at any moment.

  Was she playing a game that was too hard for her?

  That was the question for Nick to answer; and yet, when he looked at this gentle, refined woman, he hardly had the heart to suspect her of any dishonesty.

  “I will show you the jewels,” she said, struggling to command her voice, “you can then see whether they are all here.”

  Her trembling hands could hardly find the string which was tied about the box.

  While she pulled at it she kept talking as if she must do it to relieve her overburdened mind. She described the articles of jewelry which were in the box.

  “They are the very ones,” said the colonel.

  As he uttered the words the string was loosened, and the cover fell off the box.

  There was a sharp cry. It came from Mrs. Pond, who, with Horace, had approached during this scene.

  “Why, there's one of my diamond pins!” she exclaimed. “How on earth did it come to be there?”

  Well, if Mrs. Pond was surprised, she wasn't a bit more so than Nick Carter.

  The pin referred to was the one which had been stolen from the cushion in Mrs. Pond's dressing-room not ten minutes before.

  “Why, this is impossible,” cried Mrs. Pond. “I left that pin with the two others like it in my room.”

  Without saying another word, she turned and ran into the house.

  Almost immediately her voice was heard in the hall.

  “It's gone!” she cried. “It's been taken out of my bedroom.”

  She appeared at the door with a very white face.

  But her excitement was nothing to that of Mrs. Stevens.

  Nick dropped the role of detective and assumed that of doctor in less than a second.

  When he had saved Mrs. Stevens from an attack of hysterics, he said:

  “I was aware that that pin had been taken. It was done while I was in your room, Mrs. Pond. The circumstances were exactly the same as those attending the other robberies.”

  “But I did not put it in the box,” exclaimed Mrs. Stevens. “It was not a
mong the jewels which I found.”

  She turned to Colonel Richmond. Her face was ghastly pale.

  “I have scorned your belief,” she said; “but now I am convinced. No mortal being could have done this thing.”