NICK CARTER
                                STORIES

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 =No. 152.=       NEW YORK, August 7, 1915.       =Price Five Cents.=




                           THE FORCED CRIME;

                    Or, NICK CARTER’S BRAZEN CLEW.

                     Edited by CHICKERING CARTER.




CHAPTER I.

A TALE OF BURGLARS.


“You say this burglar has got into your bedroom three times?”

“Yes, Carter. Three times that I know of. He may have got in oftener for
aught I know.”

“Hardly likely, Mr. Bentham. If you woke up three times and saw him, it
indicates that there is something in his presence which affects you even
in your sleep. It is a psychological influence, evidently.”

Professor Matthew Bentham, one of the most learned scientists in
Brooklyn, shook his head. He knew too much about psychology to believe
it was an agent in his case.

“That explanation won’t do, Carter,” he declared. “On each occasion I
have been awakened by a distinct noise in the room.”

“But you never got up to interfere with the man,” Nick Carter reminded
him. “That isn’t your way. No one ever has insinuated that you lack in
physical courage. You are an athlete, too. I have had the gloves on with
you, remember, and I know how you handle yourself. There must have been
something to make you lie still in bed while a stranger was ransacking
your bedchamber.”

The famous detective was sitting comfortably in Professor Bentham’s
well-appointed library on the ground floor of the latter’s home near
Prospect Park, and both were smoking.

Carter had dropped in casually to see his friend, and the subject of the
mysterious burglar had come up without any previous knowledge of it by
the detective. They had been talking about other things, particularly
about some important records of a Chinese secret organization which were
in Matthew Bentham’s care, and which were soon to be sent to Washington.

Suddenly, Bentham had confided to Carter that he was worried over
certain midnight visits that had been forced upon him, and instantly the
great criminologist was deeply interested.

“Did your burglar--or burglars--get away with anything?” he asked.

“There is only one of him. At least, I think so. I never have had a
clear view of his face. He is a slim, active sort of man, dressed in an
ordinary dark business suit, with a soft hat pulled down over his eyes.
The hat has always prevented my seeing as much of his features as I
should like.”

“There are many thousands of slim, active men, in dark business suits
and soft hats, moving about Greater New York,” remarked Nick, between
puffs at his cigar.

“True,” conceded Bentham. “But you know, as well as anybody, that every
human being has certain peculiarities of movement, attitude, and poise,
that are not exactly the same as those of anybody else. There is a sort
of what I may call ‘atmosphere’ about each one of us--an aura--that
distinguishes us from all our fellows. You know that, Carter?”

The detective nodded.

“Yes, professor. That is pretty well understood by most persons, I
think. Well, we’ll say it is only one particular burglar who favors you
with his company in this way. What I asked is whether he steals
anything.”

“He never has yet. But I think that is because I never leave valuables
lying about the room. I never carry much cash in my pockets--have no use
for it unless I am going away somewhere--and my watch is always under my
pillow.”

“And why have you never got up to argue matters with him?”

“Because I can’t. He seems to hypnotize me.”

“Then there _is_ a psychological influence?” smiled Nick.

“To that extent, yes. But I do not believe it is that that awakens me.”

Nick Carter took his cigar from his mouth, and, with a careless gesture,
knocked off the ash into a silver tray on the table.

“Well, that is of not much consequence, after all,” he said. “What is
the fellow after? He must have some purpose in coming three separate
times, only a night or two apart. You say you don’t know how he gets
in?”

“Haven’t an idea. The doors and windows are all locked at night before
we retire, and we find them the same way in the morning.”

“What servants have you?”

“Only two maids, besides the boy who does odd jobs, such as polishing
brasswork, sweeping the front steps, and waiting on the cook. He sleeps
out of the house. My daughter lets him in early in the morning. There is
an electric contrivance, operating from her bedroom, which opens the
side gate, and also connects with the lock of the back door to the
kitchen.”

Nick Carter stopped smoking and looked hard at the professor. He was
interested in this mechanical device.

“I should like to see that electric connection,” he said. “Can you show
it to me?”

“Certainly. Wait a moment.”

Bentham went out of the room. When he returned he smiled apologetically.

“My daughter is dressing to go out this afternoon. But I can tell you
all about it. There is nothing remarkable about the apparatus. I had it
put in by a regular electrician. It is a great deal like the electric
door openers used in flat houses, by which tenants open the front door
at the street without leaving their apartments.”

Nick Carter resumed his cigar and smoked for several minutes in silence.
His host could see that he was thinking hard, and did not disturb him.
Instead, he kept on gravely smoking himself.

“The last time this fellow came in was last night, eh?” asked Nick
Carter, after a long pause.

“Yes.”

“And you have not told anybody about these visits?”

“No one. You see, my daughter Clarice and I are alone, except for the
two maids. I would not worry Clarice, and there would be no use in
telling the maids. They probably would take fright and leave. You know
what a bother is to get good servants in New York.”

“Those records of the Yellow Tong, sent to you by Andrew Anderton on the
night that he died--you have them?”

“Yes.”

“Who brought them? As I remember Mr. Anderton’s last letter to you, he
said they would be sent by safe hands. What did he mean by that?”

“They were sent by express to a club I belong to, but which I seldom
visit. Then I got a cipher telegram from the club, informing me that
there was a package in the safe there for me. I went to the club and got
the package.”

“I see. It was a wise precaution on the part of Anderton. He knew that
you were likely to be shadowed by some members of the tong, and that if
you brought anything direct from his house, in Fifth Avenue, it would be
doubtful whether you ever would get it home.”

Nick Carter spoke in low tones, as if he were deep in thought, and were
letting his tongue run on almost without guidance. At the same time, it
need hardly be said that this astute, long-experienced student of
criminology was not the man to say anything without knowing exactly what
he was saying.

“You have the package quite secure, I suppose?” he asked.

“Quite, I believe. Nobody knows where it is but myself--not even
Clarice. It is not that I would not trust my daughter. But there would
be nothing gained by her knowing, and it might worry her to think that
she held an important secret.”

“Women like secrets generally, don’t they?” smiled Nick Carter.

“That is the tradition,” acknowledged Bentham, also with a smile. “But
Clarice is a level-headed girl. Then she has had to take care of me for
three years, since her mother died, and that has given her a sense of
responsibility, I think, which is beyond her years. She does not know
anything about the package, and would not be interested in it, anyhow.”

“Don’t you see any connection between the visits of this mysterious
stranger and the package?” asked Nick slowly. “May it not be that the
Yellow Tong--and you know how powerful and far-reaching it is--has set
its agents to get from you the records that it is so important to the
organization to keep from the government at Washington?”

Bentham smoked a few seconds before replying. The same suspicion had
been in his own mind, but he had brushed it away. Now, here was this
cool-headed, straight-seeing master detective suggesting the same thing.

“It is possible you are right, Carter,” admitted the professor. “I’ll
take those records to Washington to-morrow night. I can’t go before,
because I am going to a reception this evening given by the famous
Indian savant from the Punjab, Ched Ramar. You have heard of him?”

“Yes. He has been in the newspapers a great deal the last few weeks. Who
and what is he?”

“One of the most eminent scholars from that country,” answered Bentham
enthusiastically. “He has traveled a great deal, especially in Tibet. He
has a collection of idols from that country which are well worth seeing,
I am told. I am delighted with the prospect of looking them over
to-night.”

“I should think you would be. Is there a special invitation needed to
get into his house this evening?”

“Well, I don’t know. I got a card addressed to me. But there is a line
on the card to the effect that any friend of mine will be welcome. It is
written in pencil. The remainder of the card is lithographed. If you
would like to go, I should be pleased to take you in. My daughter is
going, with her aunt, Mrs. Morrison. She is Clarice’s mother’s sister.”

“I accept your invitation with pleasure,” said Nick Carter. “But--here
is a request I have to make. You won’t think it very strange, knowing my
profession. I should like to go in disguise, and under another name than
my own.”

“Don’t want to be recognized, eh?” smiled Bentham. “Why? You don’t think
there will be anybody there who would be afraid of you as Nicholas
Carter, the detective, do you? Ched Ramar is a man who moves in the
highest circles and is known all over India. His house, in Brooklyn
Heights, is one that questionable characters would find it hard to
enter. He has two tall men of his own race perpetually on guard at his
door--besides many other servants engaged in this country.”

“It is merely a fancy of mine, perhaps,” returned Nick. “I will be
Doctor Hodgson, if you don’t mind. Shall I come here to-night?”

“If you will. I’ll take you in our car. Mrs. Morrison and Clarice will
be with us. Get here about half past eight. We don’t want to go too
early. It will be ten o’clock or so before things get into full swing at
Ched Ramar’s house.”

“All right! I’ll be here at eight-thirty,” replied Nick, as he got up to
go. “I’ll have just about time to go home and dress, and get back
again.”

“It takes you a long time to dress,” laughed Professor Bentham. “I can
get ready in half an hour any time.”

“My dress will be rather more elaborate than yours, perhaps. I have to
change my face, you know.”




CHAPTER II.

A HOUSE OF MYSTERY.


When a grave, bearded man, with gold-rimmed spectacles and hair brushed
up straight from his forehead, presented himself in Matthew Bentham’s
library at half past eight, the professor could not see anything in him
to suggest the clean-cut, up-to-date American whom he knew as Nicholas
Carter.

The big, blond beard and mustache completely changed the contour of his
countenance, while the pompadour hair and the lines in the forehead were
not those of the detective, although they seemed to be perfectly natural
in Doctor Hodgson. The rather shabby cape overcoat which covered his
evening clothes was not such a garment as he would wear in his own
proper person, either.

It was only when the door of the library was closed, and Nick knew they
were alone, that he dropped the deliberate speech he had used, and spoke
in his own natural, quick tones.

“The package still all right, professor?” he asked.

“Yes. I looked a few minutes ago, to make sure. Somehow, I hate to leave
it in the house when I am away. It is something I never have done
before. Still, I am not afraid it will be found--even if my burglar
should come while I am away. He may do that, if he is keeping as close a
watch on me as I think he must. I have too much faith in my hiding
place.”

Nothing more was said, for just then Clarice knocked at the library
door, and, on her father telling her to come in, she stood before them.

Clarice was a beautiful girl, who looked enough like her father for any
one to recognize the relationship. She had something of the intellectual
gravity of the professor, and Nick set her down at once as a very bright
young woman. He put her age at not more than twenty. Later her father
told him she lacked two months of that age.

With Mrs. Morrison--a middle-aged, dignified matron, richly attired and
bejeweled--on one side of him, and Clarice on the other, in the tonneau,
Nick Carter kept up his character of a learned doctor by talking
authoritatively on tuberculosis, typhus, and similar cheerful subjects
brought up by Mrs. Morrison, but always with one eye on Clarice. He
wanted to hear the girl talk, so that he could judge whether she would
be careful in guarding her father’s house against strangers.

But Mrs. Morrison--who was a good woman in her way, and devoted much
time to the poor and sick of New York--would not let him off. They got
to the house of Ched Ramar without Clarice getting an opportunity to
throw in more than a few words here and there, and he did not see her
again until they were in the handsomely furnished reception rooms of the
Indian scholar, and were looking at the curiosities on all sides.

Nick Carter got an opportunity soon to stand back and look steadily at
Ched Ramar. He saw a tall man, with the dark skin and black eyes of the
East Indian, and wearing the white turban of his race, who talked good
English and was the essence of suave courtesy.

“I don’t know how it is,” thought Nick Carter. “His face seems familiar
and yet I know I never saw Ched Ramar before.”

As the detective moved about with the others, looking at the many
curious idols of various metals that were disposed about the great
rooms, and answering readily to his assumed name of Doctor Hodgson, he
seemed not to have any interest outside of what he was inspecting with
the other guests. But his gaze never left the swarthy face of Ched Ramar
for more than a few seconds at a time.

“Where have I seen him before?”

This was the question that would not keep out of Nick Carter’s mind. It
might have worried him, too, only that he had quite determined that he
would answer it before he was many days older.

“Perhaps not to-night,” he told himself. “But when I get alone, in my
own room. I’ll go through my portrait gallery of people I have met, and
I’ll place him, or know the reason why.”

There were other rooms besides these two great double drawing-rooms to
which the guests were invited. In all the apartments of the house were
some strange things worth seeing, and Ched Ramar took pleasure in
offering them to the inspection of those who had honored him by coming.

He said this himself, and he seemed sincere when he did so. He seemed
inclined to pay particular attention to Matthew Bentham, Clarice, and
Mrs. Morrison. He talked to them more than to any of the other guests,
Nick Carter thought.

The two tall Indian guards, in glittering military uniforms, with curved
swords at their sides, and gaudy turbans setting off their dark, solemn
faces, were always at the wide door of the reception rooms, and the
detective noted that they watched every move of the throng as it surged
about the apartments.

Ched Ramar had the air of a man who trusted everybody, but his guards’
vigilance suggested that he had given them orders to be suspicious
unceasingly.

“Hello! Where’s he taking that girl?” suddenly exclaimed the detective.

Ched Ramar had directed the general attention to a large glass case
filled with magnificently jeweled weapons at one end of the
drawing-room. Then he called one of the guards.

“Show and explain these, Keshub,” he ordered shortly.

Keshub, the guard, made a deep salaam and marched to the end of the
case. He spoke as good English as his chief, and his sonorous tones
rolled through the rooms as he told the history of each dagger, sword,
and gun to his open-mouthed listeners.

It was at this instant that Nick Carter made his inaudible remark, for
Ched Ramar led the girl behind some heavy red velvet hangings, which
dropped back into place, hiding them.

For a few moments Nick stood still, uncertain what to do. He had no idea
of allowing this young girl to be taken into a secret part of this big,
strange house by a man like this Indian, whom no one knew except as a
famous man in his own country.

“I’ve got to see what is back of those portières,” muttered the
detective. “I don’t see Matthew about, or I’d tell him. By George! This
is New York--even if it is Brooklyn--and we don’t do things of this
kind. He must think he is still in the Punjab.”

He saw that Keshub was busy with the people who were admiring the really
wonderful display of weapons in the glass cases, and that the other
guard was staring at the people over there. No one was taking any notice
of himself.

“All the better,” he thought.

He edged around the wall till he stood in front of the red velvet
curtains. Then he gently pulled them apart and looked behind. What he
saw was the gilt railings of a door that evidently belonged to an
elevator. The elevator car was above, on another floor.

“One of those automatic affairs,” he thought. “Well, all the better. I’m
going up. If one of the guests is entitled to ride in the elevator, it
ought to be all right for another. Anyhow, I can easily explain that I
supposed we were all to go up here, if there is any question.”

He pressed an electric button, and the car slid noiselessly down. The
coming down of the car released a latch on the railed door, and Nick
pulled it open. Taking his place in the car, he pressed a button inside,
and was wafted upward.

The elevator was so delicately adjusted that it made not the slightest
noise, and it stopped at the next floor above without a jar. There were
thick curtains outside, like those below. Also a railed door.

Gently, Nick opened the door and stood inside the curtains, listening.
He caught a low murmur of voices, which told him that the speakers were
at some distance.

He opened the curtains a little way, and then stepped between them. He
was in a dimly lighted room, with a red lantern giving the only
illumination. At one end were heavy portières draped back, so that he
could look beyond, into another room.

In the farther room he saw that there were idols of all sizes and kinds.
He remembered that Ched Ramar’s collection of idols was said to be the
finest possessed by any private person in New York. Moreover, each idol
had a history.

Standing, with their backs to him, were Clarice Bentham and Ched Ramar
himself. The latter was pointing to one immense image of Buddha which
faced the opening in the curtains. He was talking in a low earnest tone,
and it seemed to Nick as if the girl were completely entranced by the
great, golden figure and the words that poured from the grave lips of
the Indian.

“I can’t hear what he is saying,” muttered the detective. “I suppose the
way to find out is to step forward and show myself. And yet----”

At this instant the low tones of Ched Ramar changed to loud, clear
accents, delivered in a matter-of-fact way, as he waved his hand toward
the Buddha.

“That Buddha and other things in this room will interest you for some
time, Miss Bentham, I have no doubt,” he said. “But I can hardly remain
away from my guests. I will leave you alone. When you are ready to come
down, you know how to work the elevator. Although it is possible that
some of the other ladies below will be up to see the idols before you
have finished looking at them.”

“Oh, but I don’t know whether I dare be left here alone with these
dreadful things,” she protested, with a shudder. “I’m rather afraid of
them.”

Ched Ramar laughed good-naturedly as he shook his head at her.

“I beg your pardon for laughing, Miss Bentham,” he said. “But, really, I
had never thought of my poor idols in that light before. These things
that so many thousands of people in Asia believe can save them from all
ill, and bring succor to them in distress--surely ought not to frighten
any one, even an American young lady. But, if you are timid, why, I’ll
take you down at once.”

This offer seemed to bring Clarice to herself. She was ashamed of her
apprehensions, and Nick saw her shoulders stiffen as she declared, in a
resolute voice:

“No, I’ll stay till I’ve looked at all of them. I hope you won’t think
I’m a coward. When I said I was afraid I meant that I felt a sort of
awe. I should think most persons would experience some such feeling on
beholding all these strange figures for the first time. No doubt, if I
lived in Tibet, or wherever these images come from, I should regard them
only with reverence, and believe in them as sacred guardians, like the
others who have been familiar with them from childhood.”

Nick Carter slipped behind a tall vase on a stand close to where he had
been standing. He saw that Ched Ramar was about to go downstairs, and he
did not want to be seen.

“I’ll stay up here till she has finished her examination,” he thought.
“Then, if she should get frightened--as she may when she is alone--I’ll
step forward and try to give her courage. She knows me only as Doctor
Hodgson, and I flatter myself I took the part of a grave and reverend
medico pretty nearly to perfection.”

Ched Ramar, with a low bow, turned away from the girl, strode to the red
velvet curtains, and pulled open the railed door. That was the last Nick
saw of him, for the curtains fell together before he had stepped into
the elevator.

Clarice, her two delicate, white-gloved hands interlocked behind her,
stood gazing thoughtfully at the gigantic Buddha.




CHAPTER III.

WHAT THE BUDDHA SAID.


The Buddha was a work that would have attracted special attention in any
collection. If it had been in a public museum, there is no doubt there
would have been a crowd in front of it most of the time.

It was on a dais of its own, a giant statue of a squatting Buddha,
wrought in hammered brass, with an enormous sapphire in the middle of
its great forehead. The sapphire alone must have been worth an immense
sum, just as a jewel.

The figure reached almost from floor to ceiling, so that the sapphire
was very high. If one wished to look at the jewel at close range--and
most persons who entered this room did want to do so--he had to climb a
small stepladder which stood conveniently at one side. Nick saw the girl
looking at this ladder, and he was about to make his presence known so
that he could move it for her, when she carried it over herself to the
front of the image and placed it firmly for use.

“No timidity about that girl,” thought the detective. “Ched Ramar
needn’t get that idea into his head.”

Unlike most statues of Buddha, the eyes of this one were not closed.
They were merely skillfully made openings, which, in the gloom of the
room, might easily be imagined to have cruel, shifty eyes in their
depths.

“I must go up and look at that sapphire,” the girl said aloud. “I never
saw such a magnificent jewel in my life before. I have heard that they
have precious stones in India that are never equaled anywhere else, and
I can believe that now. What a heavenly blue! Yet I wish those eyes
weren’t there. Pshaw! They are only holes! I believe I am a coward,
after all.”

This thought seemed to put courage into her, for she had her foot on the
bottom step of the ladder even as she spoke. She did not go up at once,
however. Standing at the bottom of the ladder, with one foot on the
step, she looked up at the face of the idol in a reverie that was half
fascination and half repulsion.

“I’ve got to go up and look at that sapphire!” she breathed at last.
“Besides, I want to look at its face close. I feel as if I must.”

With her hands out to steady herself, so that they touched the knees of
the great figure, she went slowly upward, hesitating at each step. She
could not have told why she went up so slowly and uncertainly. It seemed
as if there were a power greater than her own controlling her movements.

It seemed to Nick as if the blue light of the sapphire changed to a
horrible green as the girl drew her face level with the great brass
visage of the statue.

“Pshaw!” he murmured. “It was only the shadow of her head. But in such a
place as this one might imagine anything.”

Up a little higher she went, and, as one hand hung rigidly at her side,
the other rested on the shoulder of the god. It was an incongruous
picture they made--the beautiful young American girl seemingly
exchanging confidences with this grotesque representation of a deity
coming down through countless ages.

Suddenly a hollow voice seemed to fill the room. It came from the
sneering, parted lips of the image. There could be no doubt of that. The
detective involuntarily tried to get a little nearer, to catch what the
words were.

Clarice was gazing intently into the eye sockets of the idol. She
saw--what was not visible to Carter where he stood--two staring eyes
that were _alive_!

“You will obey--obey--obey!”

The voice sounded like the distant murmur of rushing waters. It was
rather that of some strange, unearthly being than of anything human.

“I will obey,” replied the girl, in a dull monotone.

To Nick it sounded as if she were talking in her sleep, but she never
relaxed her hold on the brazen shoulder, and she stood perfectly upright
on the stepladder.

“It is well,” went on the mysterious voice. “You know what to do. Follow
the instructions that will come to you later.”

“How am I to know?” she gasped.

“Listen! Bring your face close to my lips. What I have to tell is for
you alone.”

Nick Carter thought he heard her utter a low cry of terror and protest.
But immediately afterward she pressed her beautiful, warm cheek against
the brazen mouth of the image, and Nick saw in her eyes that she was not
cognizant of anything save the message that had already begun to come to
her.

The detective made an impulsive step forward. Should he dash up the
steps, drag the girl away, and see for himself what this strange scene
meant?

He knew that the whole contrivance was some fiendish trick. But who had
arranged it, and why, was beyond him. Ched Ramar was a man of high
standing in the scientific world--even though he had not been long known
in New York. It was inconceivable that he could have any evil purpose in
all this. And yet--what was it all about?

If it was an experiment of some kind, to prove a scientific or psychic
theory, then certainly this East Indian must not be allowed to work it
out with the aid of this innocent young girl. Still, it was not for him,
Nick Carter, to interfere, until he knew. All he could do was to watch,
and be ready to give help if it should be needed. He kept still and
waited.

For two or three minutes the girl stood there, while a low murmur
reached Nick’s ears, telling him that the image--or somebody inside
it--was talking to Clarice Bentham.

At last she moved back, and again came the distinct words: “You will
obey!”

“I will obey,” she replied.

“It is well. Before you leave this house, a small gold image of myself
will be placed in your hands. Each afternoon, at six o’clock, you will
look into its eyes. As you do so, you will be subject to my will. It
will be my eyes you will see there.”

“Bunk!” muttered Nick Carter.

“If I have any orders for you,” continued the voice, “you will hear my
suggestions, for at that very moment I shall be sending mental messages.
If I have none for you, you will put the image away--until the next
afternoon. You understand?”

“Yes.”

“That is all. You will forget all about this--that you have looked into
my eyes and heard my voice. You will not remember how long you have been
standing up here, and you will not recall anything when the small image
is given to you. Now! Awake!”

Clarice’s right hand passed over her eyes, and she stared at the idol
curiously. Then she looked around, and Nick Carter saw that her gaze was
normal. She seemed to be quite her usual self. He stepped forward and
spoke to her.

“Taking a close view of that statue, Miss Bentham?”

“Yes, Doctor Hodgson! It is a wonderful piece of work, isn’t it? And no
one can tell how old it is. That sapphire in its forehead attracted me,
and I felt as if I must look at it from the ladder. You have to allow
for feminine curiosity, you know,” she laughed.

“Masculine curiosity would impel me to go up there,” returned Nick,
with a smile. “Indeed, it was curiosity of that kind that brought me
into this room just this moment. I found the elevator, and I was bold
enough to make use of it. I am glad I was, for I should not like to have
missed this room. Ched Ramar has a wonderful house.”

Nick made this remark about only just having come up because he did not
know who might be listening. If a man could get inside that statue and
pretend the statue itself was speaking, it was quite possible that he
was now hiding somewhere else within hearing.

The girl came down the steps, and Carter had placed his foot on the
bottom one, intending to go up, to look into the cavernous depths of the
eye sockets himself, when the curtains in front of the elevator parted,
and Ched Ramar came into the room. He brought with him Matthew Bentham
and Mrs. Morrison.

The latter ran forward as she saw Clarice. Then she stopped abruptly, as
her gaze fell upon the immense brass statue.

“Mercy! What an awful-looking thing! It’s an idol, isn’t it? I was
wondering where you’d gone, Clarice. So was your father. How did you
find your way up here alone?”

“She did not come alone,” broke in Ched Ramar, smiling gravely. “I led
her up here. Then I left her for a moment to bring you and Mr. Bentham.
I was going to ask Doctor Hodgson, too, but he anticipated me, I see,”
he added, with a bow to Nick Carter.

“I have just come up,” responded Nick. “This Buddha is worth seeing, and
I’m glad I found my way here.”

“Yes,” was Ched Ramar’s reply. “This is an extremely ancient image of
the god. It was captured during a Tartar raid many centuries ago. It is
reputed to possess marvelous occult powers. I would not dare to deny
that that is untrue. The sapphire in its forehead is, I believe, one of
the finest specimens in existence.”

“Aren’t you afraid the sapphire may be stolen?” asked Mrs. Morrison,
fascinated by the blazing beauty of the jewel. “I should think a thief
would risk a great deal to get it.”

Ched Ramar smiled significantly.

“Any thief who thinks he can get it, is welcome to try,” he said, with
great confidence. “This Buddha is able to take care of itself and of
everything it possesses. You remember what I said just now--that it is
supposed to be endowed with strange powers. But let me show you
something else. I am rather proud of this room. It contains the finest
specimens in my collection of antiques.”

He went to a table in a distant corner, and came back, carrying a very
small gold idol in his long fingers. The image was exquisitely wrought,
and so much soul had the artist put into his work that, from certain
angles, the diminutive god seemed actually to be alive.

“What a beautiful thing!” ejaculated Clarice, as she bent nearer to the
idol. “And what wonderful eyes!”

There were eyes in the sockets, and they seemed to goggle and stare as
one looked into the gold face. Everybody examined the image separately,
as it was passed from hand to hand, but it was only Nick Carter who
noted that the colored iris of each eye was an exact duplicate, in tone
and shape, of those belonging to the grave East Indian student who
called himself Ched Ramar.

Clarice, more than any of the others, seemed to be taken with the
beauty of the golden idol. She stood, holding it in her hands and gazing
in silent admiration, as if she were fascinated.

“Miss Bentham seems to like my poor specimen. Will she honor me by
accepting it?”

“Why, I--I--don’t think I should,” she protested, making as if she would
put it down. “It is too valuable. It would be too much. I really
couldn’t take such a priceless----”

“What’s that?” asked Mrs. Morrison, turning from some other images she
had been looking at on a table near her. “What did you say, Clarice?”

“Professor Ched Ramar has asked me to accept this exquisite gold idol,
aunt. I couldn’t--could I?”

“No, I think not, dear,” returned Mrs. Morrison. “It is such a wonderful
and costly thing, that----”

“It pains me that you decline,” murmured Ched Ramar. “If I have
offended, I am sorry--deeply sorry. But my excuse must be that it is a
custom of my country to offer trifling gifts like this to ladies who
seem to admire them. You understand, I hope?”

Mrs. Morrison looked from the tall, dark Indian to her niece, and seemed
to make up her mind with a jerk.

“Yes, I think I understand,” she answered. “Of course, if it is the
Indian custom, that makes a difference.” Then, turning to Clarice, she
went on: “I think you may accept it, Clarice. And, I may add, that it is
an opportunity which does not often come to a girl.”

Ched Ramar put the idol in Clarice’s hands, and she held it before her
with an expression of rapturous delight in her fair face.

“How can I thank you?” she murmured.

“Oh, it is nothing,” declared Ched Ramar, putting up his hands with a
protesting gesture. “Let us go down again. There are some pieces of
jade--vases--that I don’t think I have shown you, and that I should feel
honored if you and Mrs. Morrison would take with you as mementos of this
evening.”

When, half an hour later, the party left the house, the two ladies had
the magnificently carved jade vases to which Ched Ramar had referred.
But Clarice held clasped to her bosom, as if she feared she might lose
it, the gold idol that seemed to have been merely an uncontemplated
gift, but which Nick Carter remembered had been promised to her by the
strange voice from the lips of the gigantic Buddha.

“I wonder just how far thought transference and hypnotism really can
go?” he said, as he entered his library and lighted a cigar, an hour or
so afterward.




CHAPTER IV.

AN EARLY-MORNING CALL.


It was a custom of Nick Carter to take a brisk walk by himself in the
early morning when he had been able to get to bed at a reasonable hour
the night before. In accordance with this habit he was out of the house
and on his way to Madison Square before seven the day after his visit,
with the Benthams and Mrs. Morrison, to the home of Ched Ramar, in
Brooklyn.

The grass looked and smelled fresh at that hour, for it was a bright
morning, and there had been a light shower of rain during the night,
which had freshened the verdure and flowers, and brought out their
fragrance more than usual. The detective enjoyed a stroll about the
little park, and his thoughts were clearer than they would have been in
a room. At least, he believed they were.

“Hypnotism!” he mused, half aloud. “That is the explanation, no doubt.
But it doesn’t make everything clear. For instance, it doesn’t tell me
who this Ched Ramar really is. I looked at him closely last night, and I
couldn’t see anything in him that warranted my doubting him.
Nevertheless, I _do_ doubt him--from the top of his turban to the heels
of his slippers.”

He took another turn up the path he had chosen for his stroll, in a
rather retired part of the square, before he resumed his half-audible
cogitations. Then he went on slowly:

“It is fortunate for society that the understanding of hypnotism rests
chiefly in the hands of men who are to be trusted. Were its power to be
wielded to any great extent by criminals, there would be many innocent
tools of lawbreakers. It may be that Clarice Bentham is one of them. I
hope not, but it looks suspicious.

“The greatest tragedy is that, while under the dominion of another’s
will, the hypnotic subject has no realization of its doings, and, when
consciousness returns, no remembrance. Well, if Ched Ramar is taking
advantage of that young girl’s innocence of the ways of the world to
make her do things she would shrink from under ordinary circumstances, I
don’t think it will be well for Ched Ramar. In fact---- Hello! What’s
the trouble now? Here comes Chick!”

Indeed, Chick came hurrying along the path at a pace that told he had
something important to communicate--even if his face had not shown that
he was excited.

“Telephone, chief!” cried Chick, as soon as he came within hearing. “It
is Professor Matthew Bentham. Wanted to know if you could see him if he
came. I told him you were out just then, but I believed I could find
you.”

“Yes?”

“I also said that I had no doubt you would see him, and that he’d better
come over from Brooklyn--that’s where he lives--and get to our house by
the time you were there.”

“That was right. Did he say he would come?”

“Yes. He said he would come over in his motor car and be there in a few
minutes.”

So well had Matthew Bentham timed himself that his car drew up in front
of the Madison Avenue house just as Nick Carter and Chick walked up from
Madison Square. The three entered the house together, while the
chauffeur kept the car at the curb, to wait.

“It’s gone!” were Matthew Bentham’s first words, as soon as they were in
the library. “I’ve just found it out.”

“You mean the package of papers sent by Andrew Anderton?”

“Yes. There are not many things would have made me trouble you at this
time of the morning, so you can easily guess. I was tired when I got
home last night, after that reception at Ched Ramar’s, or I would have
looked then to see that the records were safe. But I went to the place
where I had put them the first thing this morning, even before
breakfast.”

“In a secret place?”

“Yes. The one I told you about yesterday afternoon.”

“Did you say nobody knew where they were but yourself? Think hard,
please. You are quite sure you have never let it out to your daughter,
for instance?”

“I told you yesterday that I have been careful to keep it from her--for
her own sake. She has not the slightest idea where I kept those papers.”

“What is the name of the boy who does odd jobs about your house--and
sleeps away?” asked Nick, with seeming irrelevance.

“Swagara.”

“Curious name. What countryman is he?”

“Japanese.”

Nick Carter started and looked hard at the professor. Then he smiled
grimly, as he asked:

“Where did the boy come from? How did you get him?”

“An employment agency in New York. He had been a valet for a theatrical
man before he came to me. But he didn’t like traveling, and he was
willing to do the menial work I require rather than go on the road
again. He wanted to stay in New York, so that he could study more
conveniently. He is a bright chap, and he speaks German and French, as
well as English and his own native tongue.”

“He brought good references, I suppose?”

“Unimpeachable,” was Bentham’s prompt reply. “He has been in this
country three years, and there are many persons in Brooklyn who knew him
before he went with the theatrical man, Goddard. They all speak well of
Swagara. He attended a college there, studying languages, and everybody
says he was marvelously quick.”

“I don’t doubt it,” was Nick Carter’s dry response. “However, please
tell me all the facts of this case. Then we will see what we can do.”

“There is nothing to tell, except that the records sent to me by my
friend Andrew Anderton, just before his death, have been stolen from my
home since yesterday afternoon, when I last looked at them. The theft
may have been committed while we were at Ched Ramar’s, or afterward,
when we were asleep.”

“Who was in the house while you were at Ched Ramar’s? This Japanese of
yours, Swagara?”

“No. Only the two maids--the cook and the general servant. They would
never touch anything. We’ve had them a long time. Besides, I’ve seen
them proof against all kinds of accidental temptations. They could have
robbed me hundreds of times if they had been criminally disposed. You
may as well cut them out of the list of possible thieves, Carter.”

“I have cut them out,” replied Nick.

“And Swagara, too?”

“Not yet. I should like to know a little more about Swagara. You are
sure he was not in the house while you were away?”

“Quite.”

“How do you know?”

“He has proved an alibi--without trying to do so. He mentioned that he
was visiting a fellow countryman of his who is employed at Yonkers, and
that he did not get home till two o’clock this morning. This friend of
his is in the service of a friend of mine, and I had him on the
telephone just before I came out this afternoon. Swagara did not leave
the house in Yonkers till one o’clock. He and his chum sat in the
kitchen, talking till that hour. My friend happened to have company,
and he did not go to bed till Swagara left. So he knows. I was home by
one.”

“That settles that, then,” agreed Nick. “We must look elsewhere. By the
way, have you ever heard exactly how Andrew Anderton died?”

“No. I was told that he died of heart failure. But from what I have
heard about Sang Tu and the Yellow Tong, and of its hatred for Anderton,
I am inclined to think that hideous Chinese organization was somehow
responsible for his death.”

“It was responsible,” declared the detective. “Wait a moment. I want to
show you something.”

He went to his iron safe, and, twisting the combination knob for a few
seconds, opened the great door. Then, after using a key he carried on
his key ring to open one drawer within another, he brought out a small
tin box and placed it on the table.

“Don’t touch what I am about to show you, Mr. Bentham,” he warned. “It
is dangerous.”

When he opened the box, he held it close to his visitor. Inside were two
long, glittering needles, crossed and held together at the point of
contact.

“Harmless-looking things, aren’t they?” asked Nick. “Yet it was these
that killed Andrew Anderton. Well, not these exactly, but two needles of
the same kind. They are poisoned, so that even a slight scratch with one
of the points will cause instant unconsciousness, followed by death in a
few seconds.”

“Who did it?”

“That has never been found out. Two men concerned in the murder have
paid the penalty. But the one at the back of it all is still at large.
We shall get him, but we haven’t done it yet. I only mentioned this to
convince you that the power which put Andrew Anderton out of the world
is not likely to hesitate at breaking into your house and stealing the
records that were the cause of his assassination.”

“The crossed needles,” murmured Bentham musingly. “I have heard of them.
But I did not really believe they were in use in New York. They are a
cheerful feature of certain phases of life in China, I understand. I
heard a guest of mine talking about them the other night. He was a
Chinese professor from Peking, introduced by a member of the Oriental
Association.”

“What was his name?” asked Nick casually.

“Upon my word, I forget. Something like Ning Po, though I don’t think
that was it exactly.”

“Not Sang Tu?”

“No, indeed,” replied Bentham, with a slight smile, as he shook his
head. “You don’t suppose I should receive the head of the Yellow Tong in
my house without knowing who he was? This Professor Ning Po--or whatever
his name was--did not look the kind of man to be connected with such an
infamous organization. He was a very mild sort of man, blinking behind
large spectacles, and a decidedly entertaining personage.”

“I should like to have seen him.”

“I think you would have found him worth while. He has made himself
famous by his translations of ancient Chinese literature into English. I
hope to see him again. I enjoyed his conversation very much.”

“Was Professor Ning Po, by any chance, alone in the room in which you
have these records hidden, at any time, during that evening?” asked
Nick, with one of those sudden changes of topic that he often indulged
in when working on a puzzling case. “I don’t ask which room that was.”

“It was the library,” replied Bentham. “I was about to tell you that. In
fact, I should like to show you the secret place where I kept the
package of papers, if you can spare time to come with me.”

“I shall spare the time, of course. I could not give you much help, I am
afraid, unless I had your entire confidence. That means that I want to
see the receptacle from which the thieves took the papers. You have not
breakfasted, I think you said?”

“No, I was too anxious. I just hurried right out, to see you, without
thinking about breakfast.”

“Nevertheless, it is not well to work seriously without proper meals.
Will you honor me by taking breakfast here?”

“Thank you, I will,” answered Matthew Bentham. “Now that I have confided
the case to your hands, I am not so worried, and my appetite seems to be
returning.”




CHAPTER V.

THE HOLLOW TABLE LEG.


When Matthew Bentham’s motor car left Nick Carter’s house, it held,
besides Bentham, the chauffeur, and Nick, the latter’s assistant, Chick.

The detective had explained that he often found Chick’s quick
observation of inestimable benefit, and Bentham had been only too
willing for him to accompany them.

“I confess the whole thing is such a puzzle to me that I cannot see how
even you are to get to the bottom of it,” he remarked, as the car swept
over the Manhattan Bridge. “Perhaps Mr. Chick will see into the problem.
At all events, the more there are working on it, the better chance there
seems to be of success.”

Once in the library in Matthew Bentham’s house, with the door locked,
and only Bentham, Carter, and Chick in the room, the detective proceeded
to make a close examination of the window. There was only one window,
and it overlooked a garden at the back of the house.

Access to this garden could be obtained from the street through a narrow
passageway at the side of the house, which was guarded by a high wooden
gate, with a row of spikes on top. The gate had a spring lock, which
could be opened from without only by a key.

“The window has an electric burglar alarm, Carter,” observed Bentham, as
Nick began to look it over. “There was no indication that it had been
tampered with when I examined it this morning. The catch was properly
secured, too. I can’t think the thief got in that way.”

Nick Carter did not reply. Instead, he called to Chick, and throwing
open the window, went through and dropped to the garden beneath.

“Come down here, Chick, and look around,” he directed.

The ground below the window had been newly sown with seed, and as yet
was only sparsely covered with grass. Mr. Bentham intended to have a
small patch of lawn there eventually. So soft was the soil that the
footprints of sparrows who had been digging up the grass seed were
plainly revealed.

“No footprints, so far as I can see, chief,” remarked Chick. “If any one
had been here, his heels would sink in a couple of inches.”

“That’s true, Chick. I agree with you. But I guess we’ll make sure no
one has been in the garden. Look all over it on that side, and I’ll do
the same on the other.”

In about ten minutes both of them were in the library again, with the
window closed.

“Now will you show me the place in which you hid the papers?” asked Nick
Carter, in a businesslike way. “But, if you don’t wish my assistant to
know, he will step outside the room.”

“I don’t wish him to do so,” interrupted Bentham. “Why should I? This is
a confidential affair, and certainly Mr. Chick is in my confidence when
I know he has proved himself worthy of yours.”

He pulled down the window shade, and added to his precaution by closing
a solid, wooden shutter inside. Then he hung a velvet jacket he
generally wore in the library on the handle of the door, so that it
covered the keyhole.

“I am not afraid of anybody eavesdropping,” he explained. “But I do not
want you to feel that it is possible. We are quite sure nobody can peek
in here now.”

He pulled out the drawer of his massive, mahogany library table and laid
it on a chair. Then he thrust his hand into the opening and pressed in a
certain spot. His next move was to replace the drawer, following this by
clasping with fingers the thick, round leg on his right as he sat at the
table.

It seemed to take considerable strength to accomplish his purpose, and
it was several seconds before he slid the front of the leg around,
disclosing an opening in it some ten inches long and three wide. This
part of the table leg was hollow.

“There is the place, Carter. You see that it is empty.”

“Has anything about the table been forced?” asked the detective. “Or was
the table leg opened in the same way that you did it just now, by
pressing certain buttons and unscrewing part of the leg?”

“Nothing has been injured, so far as I can see,” returned Bentham. “Let
me show you just how it works.”

He took out the table drawer again, and Nick Carter, flash light in
hand, peered under the table. It did not take him a moment to understand
the ingenious contrivance.

“You see, what adds to the security of this table-leg cupboard, is that
the drawer must not only be taken out, but also put back, before the
opening can be made,” said Bentham. “It is not the kind of thing that
could be discovered accidentally.”

“That is apparent,” agreed Nick. “Whoever stole those papers knew just
how to get at them. Would you mind asking Miss Bentham to come into the
library for a few moments?”

“I will do so if you wish it,” was the reply. “But Clarice cannot help
us. She did not know anything about the papers being gone till I told
her, and she had no idea even then of their great importance.”

He rang the bell as he spoke, and in a minute a fresh-looking maid came
in and looked inquiringly at Matthew Bentham.

Nick Carter decided that it would be hard to suspect this maid of being
mixed up in the affair. Obviously, she was the sort of girl who would
attend to her work conscientiously, and think of nothing else after it
was done except her personal affairs--new clothes, and so forth.

“Mary, ask Miss Clarice to step here,” requested Bentham.

Almost directly, Clarice Bentham came into the room, followed by her
aunt, Mrs. Morrison.

“I took the liberty of coming with Clarice, Matthew,” explained Mrs.
Morrison. “I have not gone home yet, and I am very anxious to know
whether you have found out anything about your papers.”

Nick Carter bowed to Mrs. Morrison and Clarice. They returned his bow
with smiles, for both of them knew that the famous detective, Nick
Carter, was in the house. Neither had the slightest idea that this
keen-faced man, with the brisk manner, was the rather slow-spoken Doctor
Hodgson whom they had seen last night. It was not the detective’s
intention that they should know it, either.

“I am sorry to trouble you, Miss Bentham,” he began. “But it occurred to
me that it might be worth while hearing what Professor Ched Ramar said
to you last night when you were examining the big statue of Buddha in
his famous idol room. Everybody has heard of that wonderful image. Your
father tells me you examined it closely.”

“I did,” she admitted readily. “Professor Ched Ramar showed it to me
himself. He only told me that it was a fine specimen. Then he went away.
When I was alone, I climbed up to look at the face of the idol, and
Doctor Hodgson, who came into the room, spoke to me about it in a
general way. Professor Ched Ramar also came in, with my aunt, Mrs.
Morrison, and my father. Ched Ramar afterward gave me a small gold
idol.”

“Yes? Was Doctor Hodgson there at the time?”

“I believe so. But I am quite sure Doctor Hodgson had nothing to do with
the loss of these papers, any more than Ched Ramar had. You don’t think
my visit last night had any connection with the burglary, do you?” she
added, with a quizzical smile.

He passed over this query, as if it were too absurd to be taken
seriously, and turned the conversation by hoping that the ladies were
not fatigued by their examination of Ched Ramar’s antiques the night
before.

“That sort of thing always tires me excessively,” he explained. “I am
afraid I ought not to have come to you so early in the morning
afterward.”

“This is not early, Mr. Carter,” protested Clarice, still smiling. “I am
ashamed to be so late. We have only just finished breakfast. By the way,
here is the gold idol that was given to me. I was looking at it just now
when Mary told me I was wanted in the library, and I forgot to put it
down.”

She passed the idol to Nick Carter, and he stared at it intently for a
few seconds, as he tried to understand why the eyes looked so human,
although he knew they were only of skillfully fashioned glass.

“I will not detain Miss Bentham any longer,” he said to Bentham. “It was
hardly worth while to trouble her at all. But I thought possibly she
might have heard something that would put us on the right track.”

“You surely don’t suspect Professor Ched Ramar of stealing papa’s
papers, do you, Mr. Carter?” she asked, laughing. “I hope you’ll pardon
me if I say that you seem to look suspiciously at everybody. That is the
way it strikes me now. But I know it is the only way to find out things,
and I do hope you will find papa’s valuable papers. I hate to see him so
worried.”

With a playful wave of the hand to Nick Carter, as if she were asking
his pardon again for speaking so bluntly, the girl went out of the
room, followed by her rather stately aunt, and Chick whistled softly to
himself.

“She’s a mighty pretty girl,” he muttered. “But she’s rather too fresh
in the way she talks to the chief. He never suspects anybody without
very good reason.”




CHAPTER VI.

BROKEN THREADS.


For five minutes after Clarice and Mrs. Morrison had left the library,
Nick Carter sat in front of the table in a brown study. He felt as if he
had run against a brick wall, and that it would take some climbing to
get over it.

“Chick,” he said, at last, “suppose you go down into the kitchen regions
and interview the Japanese young man you’ll find down there. His name is
Swagara. Find out if he has any Chinese friends, and whether he knows
Ched Ramar. Don’t be rough with him. Lead him on gently. Understand?”

“Yes. That’s clear enough,” replied Chick.

“You are wasting your time with Swagara, I’m sure,” put in Bentham.
“I’ll answer for him.”

“It is from apparently unlikely sources that valuable information often
is obtained,” answered Nick Carter quietly. “Oh, and by the way, Chick.”

He walked over to the door, where Chick already had his hand on the
knob, and spoke quietly to him for a few moments. Then Chick nodded
comprehendingly and went out.

“While Chick is talking to Swagara, will you have the cook and Mary up
here? I should like to question them in the presence of each other. No,”
continued Nick, with a smile, as he saw a peculiar expression in Matthew
Bentham’s face, “it isn’t that I want them to contradict each other, and
so prove that they are not telling the truth. In their nervousness they
are likely to tell different stories. My object is to get at the exact
truth by letting one remind the other of details she may have forgotten.
I believe both those young women are honest.”

The cook was a woman of thirty-five or so, while Mary was ten years
younger. When they came into the library, Nick Carter politely gave them
chairs side by side. Then he took a seat at the table and looked them
over judicially.

“I am sorry to say,” he opened, “that Mr. Bentham has lost something of
value, and he has permitted me to ask you a few questions. Of course,
not a shadow of suspicion attaches to anybody in the house, but we have
asked everybody to help. Miss Bentham and Mrs. Morrison have just told
me all they know--which is nothing at all. It may be the same with you,
but you won’t mind my asking you a few things, I am sure.”

This diplomatic way of putting it disarmed the two young women at once.
The cook, in particular, would have fiercely resented the slightest
intimation that she could touch anything which was not her own, and Mary
would not have been far behind.

“We shall be glad to tell anything that will help,” replied the cook,
who answered to the name of Maggie, and whose surname was Quinn. “But I
do not think either me or Mary can be of much help. What was it you were
wanting to know, sir?”

“Will you both cast your minds back to last night? Begin at ten o’clock,
after Mr. Bentham, Miss Clarice, and Mrs. Morrison had gone out, and
think carefully. Did anything whatsoever happen which was at all out of
the ordinary? Remember that what may seem of no moment to you may be of
importance to us. Please go over every moment.”

“I can’t think of anything out of the ordinary,” replied the cook. “I
went around, with Mary, to see that all the doors and windows were
fastened. Then we went to bed.”

“That’s so,” confirmed Mary. “We both went to bed.”

“And slept soundly all night?”

“Yes,” replied Mary. “Except----” she stopped.

“Yes?” prompted Nick. “Except what?”

“Well, we generally get up at seven o’clock. But something woke me at
six this morning, and I looked out of our window, which is in the front
of the house, on the top floor.”

“What did you see?”

“Nothing much, except Miss Clarice walking away from the front door, and
going fast down the avenue, to where the street cars pass. It wasn’t
anything remarkable, except that she doesn’t often go out so early as
that.”

“I never knowed her to do it before,” put in the cook.

“Especially after being out so late the night before,” added Mary.

“You’d think she’d be tired,” remarked Maggie.

“Too tired to get up before six in the morning,” supplemented Mary.

“Where did she go when she went down the avenue?” asked Nick. “Did you
see whether she got on a car?”

“I didn’t see, sir,” was Mary’s reply. “But it would have been easy to
do, if she wanted to.”

“Look here, Carter!” interrupted Bentham impatiently. “This is sheer
waste of time. What if my daughter did take an early-morning walk? There
is nothing remarkable in that. She is a healthy young girl, with a love
of nature. When can you enjoy nature better than in the beginning of a
fine day? But it has nothing to do with this loss of my papers. How
could it have any bearing on such a matter?”

“Still, I should like to know,” insisted Nick. “This is all I want to
ask of these two young women, but I should like a few more words with
Miss Bentham. Perhaps Mary will tell her so when she goes out?”

Mary looked inquiringly at her employer. He nodded savagely, and Mary
and Maggie left the room.

When Clarice came in, a few moments later, she appeared to be slightly
surprised, but she took the chair her father pointed to without remark.

“Mr. Carter desires to ask you one or two more questions, my dear,”
blurted out her father angrily. “I don’t see the necessity, but perhaps
I shall understand later.”

His accent and manner said, plainly enough, that he did not expect to be
convinced, but he meant to give Nick Carter all the opportunity he
sought.

“I shall be only too pleased to tell you anything I can, Mr. Carter,”
she said. “But I feel as if I have given you all the information I
have--which is simply nothing at all.”

“We can’t always tell at the beginning,” returned Nick. “I will not take
up much time, but there are one or two things I wanted to discuss with
you, if you don’t mind. You went for a walk this morning earlier than is
your custom, I believe?”

“Yes. But why do you ask?”

She smiled as she put this query, in the manner of one who feels
something like pity for a puerile question. The detective was not
disturbed, however. He continued his questioning in an even tone:

“Did you go for any special purpose, or merely for the benefit of the
exercise?”

She pondered for a few moments, as if this was something that had not
occurred to her. A slightly troubled look clouded her pretty face.

“I really cannot say exactly, Mr. Carter. But I think it was only
because the beautiful morning tempted me. I went to bed late last
night--or, rather, this morning. But it is often the case with me that,
when I retire much later than my usual time, I am awake several hours
earlier in the morning. When I wake, I always want to get up.”

“H’m!” muttered Nick Carter. “There is reason in that. I am often the
same way.” Then, in a more brisk tone: “Do you mind telling me where you
went?”

“I don’t mind at all. I went down this avenue till I got to where the
trolley cars pass. It had been my intention to go into the park for ten
minutes or so. But I thought it would be pleasanter to ride in one of
the open cars for a few blocks, and come back in the same manner. So I
stepped on a car.”

“A Brooklyn Heights car?”

“Yes. It was going in that direction.”

“Do you remember where you got off the car, and what you did then?”

The girl shook her head, with a smile, and held out her two hands
protestingly.

“Actually, Mr. Carter, I cannot tell. I must have been so absorbed in my
own thoughts that I didn’t notice how far the car went, or where I left
it. All I know is that I found myself at home again after a while, and
that I got off the car that brought me here at the corner, two blocks
down our avenue. I had been thinking about various things the whole
time, and I had performed my whole journey mechanically. It is not often
I do that, but it has happened before, and if you had not asked me about
it, I should not have given it any further thought.”

The sincerity of the girl was beyond question, and Nick Carter knew he
could not expect to find out anything more from her. His manner was easy
and courteous, as he told her he was sorry to have troubled her, and
begged her not to think any more about him or his questions, either.

“I don’t mind the questions at all,” she declared. “If I could have told
you anything that would be of assistance to my father, I should have
been only too glad.”

“I am sure of that,” Nick assured her warmly.

When Clarice had gone out of the library, with a graceful bow and smile
for the detective, Matthew Bentham heaved a sigh of relief.

“I knew Clarice could not tell you anything that would have a bearing on
this case. I hope you will not consider it necessary to ask her anything
more. She is of a nervous temperament, and I am always careful not to do
or say anything to distress her when it can be avoided.”

“Naturally,” said Nick. “But, as you saw, the few innocent questions I
put did not agitate her. As for the case as a whole, I confess it is
very baffling. I shall have to go home and think it over.”

“You think you will be able to recover the papers eventually, do you
not? I suppose that is a foolish question, but I am so anxious that I
cannot help saying what completely fills my mind.”

“I shall not rest until I have satisfied myself on several points that
have a direct bearing on the mystery. I am in hopes that when I have
done that, I shall have a report for you that will be valuable. I cannot
say any more than that at this stage. I will call you up as soon as I
have something to communicate. Meanwhile, I should advise you not to
walk about the streets or go into public places much.”

“I never do, for that matter,” replied Bentham. “You think some of the
Yellow Tong might get after me personally then, do you?”

“Have you a gun?”

“Yes. I got a permit to keep one in the house and to carry it, some time
ago, when these burglaries began. Look!”

He showed a serviceable-looking automatic pistol in the table drawer, in
a chamois bag. Nick saw that it was well supplied with cartridges and
ready for instant use.

“That’s well,” said the detective. “If any of the tong should find their
way to you and ask insolent questions, or if you should see any
suspicious movements on the part of any burglar, I should advise that
you shoot first and ask questions afterward.”

Before Matthew Bentham could comment on this emphatic advice, Chick came
into the room and showed, in a way that Nick Carter understood--although
it meant nothing to Bentham--that he had something weighty to
communicate.

The detective arose and nodded carelessly to Chick.

“Ready to go, eh, Chick? I was just saying ‘good morning’ to Mr.
Bentham.”

“Did you find anything from Swagara?” asked Bentham, in a tone that told
plainly enough how surprised he would have been if the answer had been
in the affirmative.

“Swagara hadn’t anything to say of any consequence,” replied Chick, as
he and Nick Carter left the room and the house.




CHAPTER VII.

PATSY GETS INTO THE GAME.


“What did you find out from the Jap, Chick?” were the detective’s first
words, as soon as they were well away from the front of Bentham’s home.

“Nothing. What I told Mr. Bentham just now was the absolute truth. But I
learned something from the cook, Maggie. Swagara had to go out to get
some vegetables for her, and while he was away, Maggie loosened up.”

“Go on! Hurry up!” urged Nick. “What did she say?”

“Only that Swagara used to be employed by Ched Ramar, the Indian
millionaire. That is how Maggie describes him. She knew it through
another cook--a cousin or sister of hers, I believe--who lives in the
next house to Ched Ramar. She’s seen Swagara go into the house, at
night, and I guess he’s been holding two jobs--one here and the other at
Ched Ramar’s.”

“Is he employed there still?”

“I couldn’t find that out. Maggie seems to be afraid to say much about
Ched. All she has been told is that he is a millionaire, and she has
that only on the strength of the jewelry he wears when he goes out, and
the fact that swell people visit him. He has not lived at that house
very long. When he moved in, about six weeks ago, all the things he
brought with him were truckloads of big packing cases. Some of these
were as big as a house, according to Maggie’s cousin--or sister. When
all those were in, furniture came from some big store. It was all new,
and Maggie’s relative thinks it is only rented.”

Nick Carter had been listening so closely to Chick’s recital that they
were at the subway station they intended to go to before they knew it.
He told Chick to save the rest till they were in a train. When the train
started with them, Chick resumed:

“Maggie says Swagara is a quiet young man, who doesn’t talk much. But
she has never cared for him since she found he was sneaking away to work
somewhere else at night, when he ought to be resting, so as to be ready
for what he had to do at Mr. Bentham’s house the next day.”

“What time does he leave Bentham’s usually?” asked Nick.

“About half past eight. He gets there at nine in the morning, ready to
begin work after breakfast.”

“Where does he live?”

“He has a room in a street off Fulton, down near Borough Hall, Maggie
says. That’s all she knows about it. Of course, I had to get all this
out of her by degrees, and under the seal of confidence. I tried to make
a good impression on Maggie,” continued Chick, with a grin, “and I
flatter myself she thinks I’m all right. I told her I was your clerk,
and that I sometimes acted as a chauffeur.”

“Good!” commended Nick. “Half past eight, you say, Swagara leaves Mr.
Bentham’s house at night?”

“Yes.”

“I want you to bring Swagara to our house when he leaves Bentham’s
to-night, Chick. Have him in my library by nine, if you can.”

Chick did not express any astonishment at this order. Neither did he
seem to have any doubt that he could fill it. He had been told to do
strange and difficult things so many times that there was nothing could
surprise him now.

“All right, chief,” was all he said. “I’ll work it through Maggie.”

Nick Carter did not reply. He did not care how his instructions were
carried out, so long as he was obeyed.

When, after luncheon--which he took at his home, with Chick and Patsy
Garvan, his other confidential assistant, for table companions--Chick
said he was going out and would not be back till nine at night, most
likely, the detective only nodded. He knew that Chick was going after
Swagara.

For some little time after the departure of Chick, the famous detective
busied himself in looking over his mail, which he had not had time to
attend to before, and Patsy Garvan helped him.

“Say, chief,” broke out Patsy, after working industriously for an hour
sorting letters and putting them in their respective piles under Nick
Carter’s eye, “can’t you let me in on this Yellow Tong case again? I was
in it before, you know. Didn’t I make good then?”

“You certainly did, Patsy. I have no fault to find.”

“That’s what I thought. But, gee! You and Chick are having a lot of
things doing with this Mr. Bentham, and I’m out of it. Of course, I
ain’t kicking, because you know what you want. But--gee!--I’d like to
get into it. Ain’t there anything I can do?”

Nick Carter smiled as he tossed another letter across the table to the
pleading Patsy.

“Put that letter in the ‘No-answer-required’ pile, and don’t get
excited,” he said. “I’m going to get you into this case to-night.”

“You are?” almost screamed Patsy. “Suffering crumpets! That’s healthy
news. Where do I come in? Have I got to lick somebody? Or is it to be
the smooth and ‘Thanks-very-kindly’ stunt? Gee! When it comes to the
fresh-laundried diplomatic game, with the honeyed words and eagle eye,
you can count me in as standing on the pedestal, with both feet pressed
down into the granite. Say, ‘Tact’ is my maiden name!”

“I’m glad to hear it,” smiled Nick Carter. “Because that is the quality
I expect you to use. Still, there might be a fight, too. I hope you are
not opposed to a scrap, if one should turn up.”

This was too much for Patsy. He could not reply. The bare idea that he,
Patsy Garvan, who had licked all the boys of his weight and twenty
pounds over, in his part of the Bowery, before he was sixteen, would
want to sidestep a battle, completely choked him.

“All right, Patsy,” laughed Nick. “Don’t say anything.”

“Don’t say anything?” repeated Patsy, when at last he could get his
breath. “No, I won’t say anything. I want to see the man that gets in
front of me to-night and looks crooked. Gee! I’ll mash his face through
his back hair. That’s what I’ll do!”

It was not till nine that night that Patsy knew what he was to do,
however. That was when Chick led Swagara, the Japanese servant of
Matthew Bentham, into Nick Carter’s library, and gave him a chair in
front of the detective’s table.

Swagara was a polite young man, of about Patsy Garvan’s size and build,
who seemed to be rather anxious to get away as soon as possible.

“I have an engagement to-night,” he announced, in the precise English of
one who has not always known the language. “But Mr. Chickering told me
that I should hear of something very much to my advantage if I came
here, and, of course, I came. I am ambitious, Mr. Carter, and I never
neglect anything that seems likely to help me along.”

Swagara made this admission quite freely. He seemed to be frankness
itself. He smiled widely, and then waited for Nick Carter to say
something else, blinking amiably through rather large spectacles.

“Your engagement is with Professor Ched Ramar,” remarked Nick Carter
casually. “How long have you been employed by him, Mr. Swagara?”

“Six weeks,” blurted out Swagara, evidently before he realized what he
was saying. “That is--I have been told not to say anything about it,” he
added lamely.

“I know that. Ched Ramar doesn’t like his affairs talked about. But you
are quite safe here. I know Ched Ramar, and he has no secrets from me--I
mean, of an ordinary nature. You have been with him ever since he took
that house in which he lives at present--on Brooklyn Heights. You never
met him until you were recommended to him by somebody whom you do not
know. Ched Ramar has never told you how he came to know of you.”

This was all shooting in the dark for Nick Carter. But he knew the ways
of Ched Ramar. He had not been idle all day, and he had found out from a
friend of his at police headquarters considerably about Ched Ramar’s
methods. It is a way the police have--that of making a few secret
inquiries about mysterious foreigners in New York who have plenty of
money and no particular apparent business.

“It was something like that,” confessed Swagara. “But not quite. Ched
Ramar saw me in a restaurant on the East Side of New York, where I
sometimes play chess. He is a chess player, and he got into conversation
with me one night. It ended in my saying I wanted employment, and
soon--I don’t know how it was--I found myself engaged by him. I keep his
rooms in order, and I do anything he tells me.”

“Exactly. You do what he tells you, whether you want to do so or not.”

As Nick Carter spoke, he moved his hands quickly before Swagara’s face,
at the same moment that he turned on it a fierce light from a crystal
disk set at a certain angle to the electric light over his desk.

Swagara stiffened in his chair. Then he heaved a deep sigh and fell fast
asleep.

“A very easy subject,” observed Nick. “No wonder Ched Ramar uses him in
his house. He finds it convenient to have a man he can handle as he does
Swagara. Patsy!”

“I’m here!” responded Patsy promptly.

“Take a good look at this young man. Can you make up to pass for him, do
you think?”

“Can I?” snorted Patsy confidently. “Watch me. Where shall I do it?
Right here?”

“Yes. I’ll give you the paints and things. You can take his suit of
clothes when your face and hands are made up. Be careful to get the
exact shading of his features. You will have to use plain-glass
spectacles. You couldn’t see through his. But I can give you a pair that
will look exactly like them.”

“Say!” exclaimed Patsy, with a chuckle, as Nick Carter brought a box of
grease paints, with boxes of powder, puffs, and bits of soft chamois
leather and put them on the table in front of him. “This is the easiest
thing I have had for six months. Can I look like this Jap? Well, when I
get through, he’ll think _he’s_ Patsy Garvan, and he’ll be asking me
when I got in from Tokyo.”

“I don’t intend to let him ask you anything,” corrected Nick Carter.
“But I hope you will make yourself look like him. Unless you do, you
won’t be able to do anything in this case.”

Patsy went on with his making up. He whispered to himself that he’d “be
a native Jap or bu’st,” and both Nick Carter and Chick knew it would be
all right.




CHAPTER VIII.

UNDER THE SPELL.


When, at nine o’clock, Nick Carter gave final instructions to the
Japanese-appearing young man, who looked at him soberly through his
large spectacles, any one who knew Swagara would have been ready to
swear that this was he.

Patsy Garvan had not promised more than he could achieve when he said he
could make himself look like the young man from Tokyo who was expected
to go to Ched Ramar’s house that night.

By the deft use of grease paint, and the careful adjusting of a wig of
coarse, straight black hair, he had changed his appearance so
marvelously that there was nothing left of the broad, freckled face of
Patsy Garvan. His features seemed to be pinched, like those of the Jap,
and he had even made his gray eyes look a deep black.

It was a triumph of make-up, and Nick Carter secretly acknowledged it to
himself. He did not tell Patsy what he thought. If he had, there was
danger that his assistant would depend too much on his appearance, and
perhaps grow careless in keeping up his character in other respects.

They had carried Swagara to an unoccupied bedroom at the top of the
house, and, after undressing him and putting him into a set of pajamas
owned by Patsy Garvan, had left him there in a deep sleep. Then they
locked the door on the outside, to make assurance doubly sure.

“Not that there is any likelihood of his coming to his senses until I
wake him,” remarked Nick Carter. “Ched Ramar is not the only person in
Greater New York who has made a study of mental control. I know
something about hypnotism myself.”

Swagara’s clothes fitted Patsy as if they had been made for him, and the
gentle manner of the original owner went with the costume, so that there
was practically no danger that Ched Ramar would suspect the
substitution.

For it was Ched Ramar that Nick Carter meant to deceive, and it was all
part of a well-laid plan to get to the bottom of the mystery of the
stolen records.

The great detective had not promised positively that the papers would be
restored to their legitimate possessor, but he intended that they should
be, nevertheless.

Nick did not believe Ched Ramar was the person he pretended to be. He
doubted even whether he were an Indian at all. Well did the detective
know the almost diabolical skill of the notorious Sang Tu, head of the
Yellow Tong, and it would not surprise him at all to find that Ched
Ramar was carrying out the behests of the unscrupulous Celestial in
obtaining his strange power over Clarice Bentham.

“That there is much more in the queer performance of that Buddha than
merely frightening that young girl, I am convinced,” mused Nick, while
Patsy was putting an overcoat over his costume, and Chick was getting
into a disguise. “I’ll find out what it is if I have to pull that image
all to pieces.”

It was at this moment that Chick came into the library, attired as a
Chinaman of the poorer class. He wore the blue blouse and trousers
common to laundrymen in America, and his face was of the pale yellow
that is always associated with Mongolians in the average mind. He wore a
large, soft black hat, which completely concealed his head. He wore a
wig, with a queue, but it was not convincing if closely examined, and
Nick Carter had told him to keep on his hat under all circumstances.

Patsy Garvan had his instructions, and when the taxicab in which all
three were carried over to Brooklyn reached the vicinity of Borough
Hall, they got out and sent the cab away.

It happened to be a cloudy night, so that when the three detectives
turned into a side street, with only an occasional arc light to relieve
the gloom, there was no danger of their being closely inspected by
passers-by.

Three blocks from Ched Ramar’s house Patsy left his companions and
walked on, with the short steps peculiar to Swagara, and presented
himself at the basement door to one of the Indian guards, who opened it
cautiously.

“Swagara!” whispered Patsy.

Without a word, the guard opened the door and admitted the supposed Jap.
Then he closed it and walked away, leaving Patsy in a half-lighted
kitchen.

“Gee! What am I to do now?” thought Patsy. “Why didn’t that big
chocolate drop tell me what to do?”

It was evident that Swagara had a regular routine of duties, and that
Keshub, the guard, assumed he would go about it as usual.

Chance aided Patsy in his dilemma. He had taken off his overcoat and was
carrying it on his arm as he walked through the kitchen to a dark hall,
where he saw a flight of stairs, when the deep tones of Ched Ramar came
down to him:

“Is that you, Swagara?”

Patsy did not know exactly in what terms Swagara would have answered
this query. So he gave an inarticulate grunt, which he turned into a
singularly distressing cough.

“What is that, Swagara? You have a cold? Well, never mind. You need not
talk. You know, I have always told you I prefer you to answer me by
signs, rather than by words.”

“Gee! That’s a good one,” muttered Patsy. “He doesn’t know what a fine
thing he has handed me.”

He walked forward, happy in the knowledge that he could not be seen well
in the gloom, and waited for further instructions.

“Go to the room of the great Buddha,” rumbled Ched Ramar. “Stay there.
Make no sound when visitors come. I want you to see, but not to show
yourself. You understand?”

Patsy bowed in acknowledgment, and began to ascend the stairs. He was
wondering how he would stand the scrutiny of those fierce eyes when he
should pass close to the red-shaded electric light in the main hall.

Ched Ramar gazed at him as he came up, and the eyes followed him on his
way up the other stairs to the second floor of the great, shadowy house.
Patsy had not been directed to the elevator. That seemed to be reserved
only for the use of Ched Ramar and his guests.

He found himself in the idol room, where the dim red glow from a large
lamp enabled him to see the gigantic Buddha squatting in the middle of
the apartment, while other small images, equally grotesque, were ranged
about.

“Say! This is a regular museum, all right,” thought Patsy. “Hello!
Here’s a feather duster in this corner. That means that Swagara is
supposed to keep things clean. Well, that’s me!”

He was passing the duster over the great Buddha when he heard a sound
behind him. It was Ched Ramar. He nodded approvingly as he saw how Patsy
was occupied.

“It is well!” he boomed. “But when you hear the bell over there, you
will know guests have arrived, and you will keep behind there.”

He pointed to a space at the back of the big image, where Patsy saw
there was a small door, which now stood partly open. Then, with a
careless wave of the hand toward a large gong which Patsy decided was
rather of Chinese, than Indian, design, Ched Ramar disappeared behind
the velvet curtains which concealed the door of the elevator.

“Now is the time,” thought Patsy. “I’ll do what he says about going
behind this big brass dub of an idol. But, first of all, I’ve got a
little private business of my own to pull off. I didn’t see anybody in
the kitchen when I came through. I hope it will be the same now. If it
isn’t---- Well, the chief said I wasn’t to mind getting into a scrap
when it was forced on me. I’d just like to land on that black guy who
let me in.”

It was in this disrespectful way that Patsy Garvan referred to Keshub.
But Keshub was not in the kitchen. He, with his fellow guard, was in the
large double drawing-rooms into which Matthew Bentham, Clarice, and the
others had been ushered the night before.

Patsy got down to the kitchen without meeting anybody. He slipped
noiselessly down the stairs and found himself at the back door, entirely
unopposed.

As he opened the door a little way, the voice of Nick Carter sounded in
a whisper from the darkness:

“All right?”

“Fine as silk,” was Patsy’s response. “Come in.”

Nick Carter, followed by Chick, stepped into the kitchen, and Patsy
closed and secured the door. Then he directed the others to stand still,
against the wall, where they would be in deep shadow, while he
reconnoitered. Almost directly, after creeping up the back stairs and
making sure the hall was empty, he was back.

Two minutes later they were all in the idol room. Patsy hastily related
what his orders were--to hide behind the idol.

“He expects some guests, he says,” continued Patsy. “And I think he
means to put something over on them.”

“I think I know who the guests will be,” returned Nick. “You go to the
place you’ve been told. Is there room for more than one there?”

He went to the cupboard Patsy had pointed out and stepped inside. With
his pocket flash light he examined it, and a grim smile illumined his
face as he saw how it had been arranged to deceive strangers.

There was a door at the other end of the little room, communicating with
a ladder that went down from a trap in the floor. Another ladder led
upward, and it did not take Nick more than a moment to see that,
standing on this ladder, a person could lean forward into the hollow
brass head of the Buddha, and speak through its parted lips.

“It’s an old trick of the Buddhist priests,” he murmured. “They keep
their devotees well in hand by these supposed miracles. No doubt
thousands of devout believers in this old god have listened to priests
in this way, and been bent to their will because they supposed they were
listening to the voice of Buddha himself. This whole trick is
transparent when you have a clew.”

This was all straight enough so far. But Nick Carter well knew that,
without the hypnotic power that this mysterious Ched Ramar possessed, he
could not have used the idol so effectively to make Clarice Bentham do
what he wanted.

That the girl had been made an unconscious agent in crime he never
doubted for an instant. Just how it had been done he hoped to find out
now.

“I know he got a promise from Clarice to obey,” he thought. “I saw how
the image held her in its power. But that is as far as I have been able
to go. I may even be wrong in supposing the girl will come to-night. But
I think not. Let me see, they are all going to a ball to-night, Bentham
told me. That means they will leave home about eleven o’clock. It isn’t
ten yet. Can it be possible that she would come here first?”

“Look out!” suddenly whispered Patsy. “He’s coming. I’ve been watching
the hall below. He’s on his way to the elevator. Hide somewhere, both of
you!”

Nick Carter and Chick both stooped behind one of the draped tables on
which the small idols were displayed, and Patsy crept behind the big
Buddha.

There were a few moments of silence. Then the red curtains moved, and
from the elevator came forth Ched Ramar. He held the curtains open to
allow a companion also to come through. That companion was Clarice
Bentham.

She wore a rich evening gown of white silk and lace. Over it was thrown
a handsome opera cloak, and covering that again was another cloak of
black, which draped her from head to foot.

Her eyes were wide open, as if she were staring hard. But, from his
retreat at the back of the table, Nick Carter had a full view of her
face in the light of the red lamp.

“She is fast asleep!” he murmured.




CHAPTER IX.

POWER AGAINST POWER.


Ched Ramar placed a chair for her in the middle of the room, where she
faced the large statue. Nick observed that, as he passed her, he waved
one long hand before her face--twice! There was a slight twitch in the
girl’s eyelids, and her stare at the image became more intense.

The tall Indian went out of the room--by the door at which Nick Carter
and his companions had entered--and which was near the Buddha.

For a few moments there was stillness. Then, from somewhere came a deep,
subdued voice, almost like the sighing of a strong wind.

“Come!” it said.

“What does all this mean?” whispered Chick to his chief.

“Hush!” was all Nick replied.

The girl was slowly rising from her chair. As she did so, the opera
cloak dropped from her, revealing her white shoulders in the décolleté
gown and the equally white arms, bare except for a jeweled bracelet on
each wrist.

She stood perfectly still in front of the chair, her vacant gaze toward
the brazen face of the great effigy.

“Come!” repeated the strange voice.

With measured steps she walked forward, and without hesitation went up
the ladder which stood in front of the Buddha. She stood there, in about
the same position that Nick Carter had seen her before. One hand rested
on the idol’s shoulder, and she was looking into the large eye sockets
as if held under a deep spell.

“Say, chief! Let’s get after this,” whispered Chick restively. “We can’t
let this go on.”

“Keep quiet, Chick!”

“You will obey--obey--obey!” moaned the deep voice.

The girl did not speak. She only stared. Nick Carter could not see her
eyes now, because her face was turned away, but he had no doubt that
some intelligence had come into them, and that she was looking into
those strange eyes which had appeared in the idol’s sockets on the
former occasion.

“Speak! I command!” went on the idol. “You will obey?”

“Yes, I will obey,” replied Clarice, in a low monotone.

“It will be death if you do not,” said the deep voice.

“It will be death!” repeated Clarice.

“Before you leave this house, a package of papers will be placed in your
hand.”

“A package of papers!” she repeated, like an automaton.

“Those papers, with the exception of a few, are the same that you
brought this morning.”

“The same that I brought.”

“You will take them from here and return them to the place from which
you took them. Afterward, you will go to the ball and forget where you
have been--or what you have done.”

“Forget!” she answered, in the same strange, toneless accents.

“Forget utterly! Forget! Obey!”

She repeated the words slowly, and each accent was perfectly clear,
although it seemed as if she uttered them without knowing that she was
speaking.

It was an awe-inspiring spectacle--this fair young girl, in the
fripperies of her handsome ball dress, standing there, talking to an
image, and never taking her gaze from its unnatural eyes.

“That is all. You will go down the steps and seat yourself in that
chair. Soon the packet of papers will be given to you. Then you will be
taken downstairs to the car that brought you, and be left at the corner
of your own avenue. You will not know. When you are in your home you
will do as you have been commanded. Then--you will forget. Obey!”

Slowly she descended, and, with unseeing gaze, walked to the chair and
sat down. From force of habit alone, she arranged her skirts, allowing
her long train, which had escaped from the loop that ordinarily held it
up, to sweep the floor.

“Say, chief! Are you there?”

It was Patsy Garvan. He had come out from behind the idol, and was
looking about the room for his chief. He took no notice of the girl in
the chair, and she betrayed no consciousness of having heard or seen
him.

Nick Carter came out from behind the table, and went over to Clarice.
She seemed not to know that he stood in front of her, and when he passed
his hand across her eyes, they did not wink.

“She’s in a deep hypnotic sleep,” he murmured. “Well, I’ll leave her so
for the present. What did you see back there, Patsy?”

“It was all such a bald fake, that it isn’t worth talking about,”
replied Patsy. “He just stood up on the stepladder and gave her all that
bluff, with his head shoved into the hollow. When he got through, he
came down and told me to keep the door of the cupboard shut until he got
back.”

“I see. Is that all?”

“Not quite. Before he went up on that ladder, he tried to hypnotize me.
But I was wise and I kept thinking about other things, and he couldn’t
work it. I know how to beat that game. You’ve taught me that.”

“Yes. A hypnotic subject can often resist if he or she has a strong
will,” replied Nick Carter. “I shouldn’t like to say that everybody
could do it, however.”

“Maybe not. But they can’t bluff me,” chuckled Patsy. “I’ve had that
tried on me too often, and no one ever got away with it yet.”

Nick knew that this was true. He had seen too many proofs that Patsy
Garvan had a powerful will of his own to fear that he could be easily
put under the influence of such a man as this East Indian. Neither he
nor Chick were the kind of young men who would yield without a fight to
an attack, whether physical or mental.

“Look out!” suddenly whispered Patsy. “Duck! He’s coming back!”

He slipped behind the idol, dragging Nick Carter and Chick with him.

“There’s room for all of us in here,” went on Patsy, in a scarcely
audible tone. “But keep quiet. If he comes back here, we’ve got to land
on him. That will be all. I don’t care if he does come.”

“Hush!” warned Nick.

If there was any weakness in Patsy Garvan which had to be controlled, it
was a disposition to talk too much.

The curtain at the elevator parted, and a man came through.

“Gee!” whispered Patsy. “It’s the fellow they call Keshub!”

“One of the guards,” added Nick.

Keshub was not as tall as Ched Ramar. But he was a big fellow, and he
had all the dignity of the Oriental, even though he was not of as high
caste as Ched Ramar was supposed to be.

He strode into the room and looked at the big idol. Then he made a deep
salaam to the image, joining the tips of the fingers of his two hands
over and in front of his bowed head as he bent low, and dropping them to
his sides as he straightened up.

“Teaching old Brassy to swim, I guess,” grinned Patsy.

Nick gave him a hard dig in the side, to quiet him, although he found it
hard to repress a smile at this irreverent designation of the god as
“old Brassy.”

Keshub turned from the idol and strode over to Clarice. Nick saw
then--as he cautiously peeped around the idol, and partly concealed by
draperies--that the Indian had taken from his clothing a package of
papers, held together by a rubber band.

“Take!” he said curtly.

The girl sat perfectly quiet, and appeared not to hear the word. He
repeated it, at the same time lifting the girl’s right hand and placing
the packet in her fingers.

The touch of the packet seemed to revive some sleeping memory in her
being. She clutched it tightly and arose from her seat.

“Obey! Forget!” she murmured.

“I will return in a short time and take you out to the car,” said
Keshub. “Stay here.”

Whether the girl heard and understood this Nick Carter could not tell.
All he knew was that she stood perfectly still, her eyes staring into
vacancy, but always turned toward the idol, while Keshub disappeared
between the curtains to the elevator.

“Now, Patsy! Go to that elevator and see if you can fasten it so that no
one can get out of it. There is a door with gilt railings. I think it
can be bolted from this side. I noticed it when I was in this place
before.”

Patsy ran to obey his chief, and a low chuckle told that he had found
the bolt referred to. Then there was a click as the bolt slipped into
the socket, and Patsy came back.

By this time Nick Carter had begun something that had been in his mind
while Keshub talked to the girl. He went to her, and staring straight at
her eyes, whispered:

“Obey! The packet!”

Mechanically she held out the packet and he took it from her unresisting
fingers. Then, as if another power were fighting against the influence
which Nick Carter had brought to bear, she held out her hand as if to
get the packet back.

He waved his hands before her face and whispered again, in the same
sharp, staccato tones he had used before:

“Go to the ladder and listen again to what will be said to you from the
mouth of Buddha.”

She moved across the floor, and reaching the ladder, went up in the
mechanical way that always distinguished her in that particular action.
When she was in her usual place there, with one hand on the shoulder of
the idol, Nick slipped behind, and, going up the hidden ladder, took his
place in the hollow, where he could lean forward into the head.

“Chick!” he called down to his assistant. “If anybody comes, tell me.
Then, if you must, bring him down at all risks. But--make no noise.”

“Am I in on this?” asked Patsy.

“Of course.”

“Good! Here’s where we shake down the plums. But telling us not to make
any noise sort of puts prickles on the job.”

With his two assistants at the foot of the ladder, ready to fly at any
intruder, Nick Carter leaned forward, and, in lowered tones, spoke
through the brazen lips of the great Buddha.

“You will obey!” were his first words.

As he spoke he fastened his gaze firmly on the eyes of the girl, and was
encouraged when she looked steadily at him. The vacant expression had
left them. This told him that he had been able to take the place of Ched
Ramar, and that the hypnotic power exerted by the East Indian had been
maintained by himself.

That it would not be easy to make this sort of transfer he had realized
from the first. But he believed it could be done if he could concentrate
himself sufficiently to overwhelm the mentality of the subject. He had
succeeded now, almost beyond his hopes. The girl would do anything he
commanded.




CHAPTER X.

HIS HOUR OF SUCCESS.


“You will obey!” repeated Nick Carter.

“Obey!” she responded dreamily.

“That is well. Tell me what you did when you got the packet you brought
to me this morning. You remember that it _was_ this morning?”

“It was this morning,” she replied, repeating the last few words of his
query, as was always her way.

“Where did you get them? The library?”

“The library.”

“Who showed you where they were?”

“Where they were?” she repeated.

“Yes. Tell me.”

“He did,” she answered. “The man I fear.”

“What’s his name?”

But to this there was no reply. She seemed to have no remembrance of
names. Perhaps she never had known the name of this man she feared.

“Is it the man who speaks through Buddha?”

She seemed to wrestle hard with this question, as if trying to
comprehend its meaning. At last she slowly nodded.

“You are sure?”

“Sure!” she repeated.

“That is enough,” said Nick Carter. “The packet will again be placed in
your hands. Take it, as you were commanded, and put it where you got
it--in the table leg.”

A gleam of understanding came into her eyes, that had in it more of
memory than she had shown before. Nick Carter knew then that this girl,
under the fiendish influence of Ched Ramar, had indeed robbed her father
without knowing that she had done so. A half-repressed ejaculation
dangerously near an oath broke from the detective’s lips, as he came
down the ladder.

Hurriedly he took the packet from his pocket, where he had slipped it
before ascending the ladder, and looked through it under the red lamp in
front of the idol.

The girl had already descended, and was walking, like a somnambulist,
toward her chair.

Nick Carter ran through the half dozen large sheets of manuscript, and
saw that none of them bore reference to the Yellow Tong. All were of a
character that would be valuable to the scientific world, but not one
was concerned with the secret, far-reaching organization whose methods
and intentions Washington was so eager to know something about.

“The cunning wretches,” he murmured. “They have taken what they want,
and are returning these, so that they shall not furnish a clew to the
others. Well, I think I shall beat their game. I’m going to find out
where those other papers are before I leave this house.”

He walked over to the girl and gave her the packet. Then he said to her,
in the quiet, even accents which seemed to penetrate easiest to her
beclouded brain:

“Take the packet back and put it into the hands of your father. You
understand that. Father.”

“Father!” she repeated dully.

“Look out, chief!” whispered Patsy. “I hear the elevator.”

Nick and Chick got back to the idol and secreted themselves. But Patsy
went to the elevator door and unlocked it--just in time to admit Ched
Ramar and Keshub.

“Why did you lock the door?” thundered Ched Ramar, at Patsy.

Patsy shrugged his shoulders in a way that he had seen Swagara do it,
and there was an expression of bland protest in his yellowed face, as if
he considered he were being shouted at unjustly.

He did not speak, but contented himself with pointing to Clarice, who
sat still where Nick Carter had just left her.

“She wouldn’t have gone away, if that is what you mean,” growled Ched
Ramar. “Keshub, take her down to the limousine and see that she gets
home in safety.”

Keshub salaamed. Then he went over to Clarice, touched her arm, and
pointed to the curtains shadowing the elevator door. She went over to
it, quite docile, and Keshub accompanied her down, out of sight. Ched
Ramar let the curtains fall together.

“Watch the doors and windows, Swagara,” he ordered briefly. “There is no
danger. But--watch them.”

Patsy responded with a funny little bow peculiar to Swagara, and stood
back while Ched Ramar went up the stepladder on which Clarice had stood,
and regarded the great brass face of the Buddha for a few moments in
silence.

“Great Buddha,” he muttered, at last. “How many secrets dost thou hide!
But how willing art thou to give them up when he who has the right puts
the request! Siddartha, holy one! It is thy servant who makes the
demand. Give him what he seeks!”

He placed his hand on the left arm of the idol, and his long fingers
fumbled under the head.

As is usually the case with statues of Buddha, the arm lay across his
lap in a negligent way, while the other was stretched forward on his
knee. Ched Ramar was pressing a certain little knob under the brass
hand. This released a spring, as was evidenced by the slight click that
Nick Carter and his assistants could hear.

“That is well, holy one!” murmured Ched Ramar.

He took the hand of the god and raised it slowly, as if it were of great
weight--as indeed it was. When he held it clear of the lap, there was
revealed a square hole beneath, like a box, some eight inches square.

Into this square opening Ched Ramar dipped his fingers, bringing them
out immediately with several papers rolled up, and fastened by a silken
cord made of many strands of different colors twisted together.

“My task is nearly done!” exclaimed Ched Ramar, smiling. “It has been a
hard one, but the result is worth it. My great master, Sang Tu, will be
pleased. Much pleased!”

“Will he?” thought Nick Carter. “Well, it isn’t all over yet.”

Still smiling--but in a grave way, as if he felt that he should not
permit himself thus to show joy--Ched Ramar lowered the brazen arm
slowly to its former position, and a click announced that it was
fastened in its place. When this had been done, no one not in the secret
would have suspected that there was anything of the kind there.

“Did you see that, chief?” whispered Chick.

“Yes. Keep quiet. We want the papers. But we want him, too.”

“That’s what,” put in Patsy. “And that Keshub and the other
coffee-colored guy, too. There may be others in the house as well as
them. There are some maids, we know.”

“They are probably in another part of the house,” answered Nick. “We
need not trouble about the maids. What we want is this fellow, papers
and all. Keep ready!”

Ched Ramar stepped over the red lamp and looked carefully at the papers
he had got from the lap of the image. His sinister smile again spread
over his dark countenance, and he muttered to himself in his own tongue.

“This is all!” he suddenly exclaimed in English. “I will take these
records to Sang Tu in the morning. Meanwhile, they shall not leave me. I
do not trust any one. I will not go to bed. Such sleep as I need I can
get here, in this chair.”

He walked over to the chair in which the girl had sat. It was very
large, and when she had been in it had seemed actually to swallow her
up. Even Ched Ramar, tall as he was, had plenty of room to curl up in
it.

He tried it in this way. Then he arose and strode over to the big idol,
as if to look behind it. Nick Carter, Chick, and Patsy were standing
ready to fling themselves upon him.

But he changed his mind, when nearly up to them, and contented himself
with calling sternly:

“Swagara!”

For a moment Patsy Garvan had forgotten his assumed name. He made no
move to go out. Instead, he held his automatic pistol ready to be used
either as a club or a firearm. Nick Carter brought him to himself with a
sharp tug at his elbow.

“Go out, confound you!” he whispered. “You are Swagara!”

“Gee! So I am!”

“Swagara!” called Ched Ramar, again, in a fiercer tone. “Come here!”

Patsy slipped out from behind the statue and made his Swagara bow with
due humility.

Ched Ramar raised his fist, as if he would bring it down on Patsy’s
shoulder. It was as well that he did not carry out his intention, for
Patsy surely would have forgotten his assumed character and retaliated
with another and harder blow.

“You deserve to be kicked, you dog!” snarled Ched Ramar. “You are to
come quickly when I call. But let that pass. You will keep awake in this
room till I tell you that you may sleep. Understand?”

Patsy bowed. He never had spoken more than a word or two to the Indian.
He had a presentiment that if ever he did so, he would be known as a
bogus Swagara at once.

“Very well,” went on Ched Ramar. “I would sleep for an hour--in this
chair. Keshub and Meirum are asleep in the hall without. They will not
come in unless I summon them. But you! You are not to sleep at all. Now,
walk over there to the large Buddha and let me see that you are quite
awake now. Go over and march back. Do as I bid you.”

Somehow, Patsy Garvan did not exactly understand what was meant by this
command, and he hesitated when he got to the idol. Turning toward Ched
Ramar, he was about to give him a pleading look, which would mean that
he wanted clearer instructions.

This angered Ched Ramar, and he bounded from the chair, drawing a large
jeweled scimitar that he generally wore, concealed by the folds of his
robe.

Flourishing this weapon, he flew at Patsy, as if he would strike him
down with it. The belligerent action was a great deal like his former
one, only that this time he held a deadly weapon, instead of merely
menacing with his fist.

“Gee!” shouted Patsy, forgetting entirely the part he was playing. “If
you don’t drop that cheese knife, I’ll plug you as if you were a rat!”

He drew his pistol as he spoke and leveled it at the head of the
surprised Indian.

Instantly it occurred to the cunning mind of Ched Ramar that there was
treachery somewhere, and he leaped forward to seize Patsy. Rascal as he
might be, there was no cowardice about Ched Ramar.

He did not catch Patsy, however. Instead, the supposed Japanese suddenly
stooped, and just as the Indian got to him, he arose and sent his fist
into the brown neck.

Ched Ramar uttered a choking gasp, and dashed behind the Buddha. As he
got there, he found himself facing not only Patsy Garvan, but Nick
Carter and Chick, as well. All three were in hostile attitudes that
could not be mistaken for a moment.




CHAPTER XI.

THE CRASH OF THE IDOL.


The utter astonishment in the face of Ched Ramar when he saw these three
men where he had expected to find one only--and he a submissive
servant--made Patsy Garvan emit a shrill chuckle. Patsy never would hold
back his emotions when they got a good grip on him.

“Gee! Look at the map of him!” he shouted.

“Who are you?” roared Ched Ramar. “You’re not Swagara!”

“Not by a jugful!” returned Patsy Garvan. “There isn’t anything like
that in me. Say, chief! We want to work quick! There’s two more right
outside the door.”

Nick Carter stepped in front of the East Indian and held up his hand for
a chance to speak.

“Ched Ramar,” he said in his usual cool tones, “the game is up. You have
some papers in your pocket that you stole from Professor Matthew
Bentham. You got them with the help of the man you call Swagara, who is
already my prisoner.”

“Prisoner?” broke from Ched Ramar’s lips before he knew that he was
speaking. “Prisoner? Who are you?”

“My name is Nicholas Carter,” answered Nick.

“Nicholas Carter? Ah! Yes! I never saw you before. But your picture is
in our archives. We all know what you look like. If it had been lighter
here, I should have recognized you at once. Well, Mr. Nicholas Carter,
all I have to say to you is--this!”

The curved scimitar, with its richly jeweled hilt and its heavy,
Damascus-steel blade, swept through the air like a great half moon of
fire, as it caught and reflected the red glow of the lamp. The next
moment, it circled Nick Carter’s neck, and seemed as if it must actually
sever his head from his body.

But the detective had been in critical situations of this kind before,
and he knew how to meet even an attack by such an unusual weapon as this
cruel, curved saber.

He stooped just in time. He had very little to spare, for the keen blade
caught the top of his soft hat and actually shaved away a thin sliver as
clean as if done by a razor. In fact, the convex edge of the scimitar
was ground almost to a razor edge.

The force of the blow made Ched Ramar swing around, so that he could not
recover himself immediately. Nick took advantage of this momentary
confusion to close with the tall Indian and grasp the handle of the
saber.

There was a short and desperate struggle. The muscles of Ched Ramar were
as tough and flexible as Nick Carter’s, and the detective knew he had a
foe worthy of his best endeavors.

Up and down in the narrow space behind the big idol they fought, each
trying to gain possession of the scimitar.

Nick did not want to make noise enough to attract outside attention. But
he soon realized that this was something he could not prevent--the more
so as Ched Ramar seemed desirous of causing as much disturbance as
possible.

A banging at the door explained why Ched Ramar had made as much noise as
he could.

“Now, Mr. Nicholas Carter,” hissed the tall Indian, “I think you will
find you have stepped into a trap. I have two men outside that door who
will do anything they are commanded, and never speak of it afterward.
You have been in countries where men are slaves to other men, I know.
You shall see what my men will do for me.”

During this speech, which was delivered jerkily, as the two struggled
for possession of the scimitar, the banging at the door increased in
violence. Chick and Patsy were against it on the inside, trying to
prevent its being battered down.

“Chick!” called Nick. “Come here!”

Chick looked over his shoulder.

“If I leave this door, Patsy can’t hold it by himself. It takes all we
can both do to hold those fellows back.”

“Never mind!” returned Nick. “Come here!”

As Chick came toward the two powerful fighters, Ched Ramar laughed
derisively.

“The door will fall,” he shouted. “When it does, you will wish you were
out of this place. I’m glad you are here. It is fortunate.”

He wrenched with tremendous energy to get the scimitar away from Nick
Carter. But the detective’s grip was not to be shaken. He held the
handle of the weapon at top and bottom, with the Indian’s two hands
doubled around it between. Neither could gain any advantage over the
other.

“What am I to do?” queried Chick, looking at his chief, and making a
grab at the handle of the scimitar.

“Don’t bother with this,” directed Nick sharply. “Feel in the front of
this man’s robe and get the papers he has hidden there.”

“What?” bellowed Ched Ramar. “You’ll try such a thing as that? Ha, ha,
ha!” he laughed, as the door broke down, throwing Patsy Garvan to the
floor. “Get these men, Keshub! And you, Meirum! You did well to come!
You heard the noise? Yes? Now to your duty!”

Instantly there was a fray in which all six were engaged. The two guards
were nearly as strong as their employer, and all three of the Indians
were vindictive, and determined to be victorious.

“Get the one who is trying to rob me!” shouted Ched Ramar.

The two big guards rushed on Chick together, and with such sudden
violence that they hurled him away before he could set himself for
resistance.

“Look out, Patsy!” cried Chick. “Get those papers! The chief wants them!
Didn’t you hear him?”

“Did I hear him?” roared Patsy Garvan. “Well, I guess I did! Let me in
there!”

As Chick was hurled aside, Patsy rushed at Ched Ramar and sent his head
full into the Indian’s stomach. Patsy had had training in
rough-and-tumble warfare in the Bowery in his younger days, and he still
remembered the tricks that had availed him then.

The concussion was too much for Ched Ramar. It doubled him up, so that
Nick Carter got a better hold on the handle of the scimitar than he had
been able to obtain heretofore. At first he thought he had won the
weapon altogether. But Ched Ramar’s hold was too sure for that. He still
retained his grip, but not quite so good a one as he had had, because
there was not so much room for his fingers.

As Ched Ramar bent forward, still intent on not letting the scimitar out
of his grasp, Patsy reached in among the flowing robes that were flying
in all directions in the turbulence of the fight, and, after a little
fumbling, felt the end of the packet of papers sticking from an inner
pocket.

“Got them!” he shouted, as he dragged out the papers and passed them to
Chick. “Gee! This is where we make the riffle!” cried Patsy delightedly.
“Hand them to the chief!”

Nick Carter shook his head quickly. He was holding Ched Ramar with both
hands.

“No! Keep them yourself, Chick, until I’ve got this man where I want
him. They’ll be safe enough now. Patsy, lay out that big fellow behind
you with your gun, before it is too late.”

Patsy employed a little ruse, and grinned as he saw how successful it
was. Turning swiftly, he presented his automatic pistol at the head of
Meirum, and there was a glint in the eye looking along the barrel which
convinced the man Patsy meant business.

As a result of his terror, Meirum backed away quickly, and let go of
Patsy’s arm, which he had seized as Patsy handed the papers to Chick.

On the instant, Patsy changed ends with his pistol, and brought the
heavy butt down on Meirum’s turbaned head with a crash that made nothing
of the white linen swathed about it. A turban is not much protection
against a hard blow with a steel-bound pistol butt.

As Meirum went down, there were only the two left--Keshub and Ched
Ramar.

“Take those papers, Keshub!” cried Ched Ramar. “Quick! Before he goes
away.”

“I’m not going away!” interposed Chick. “I’ve something else to do
before I go.”

He threw his arms suddenly around the big Keshub as he spoke, and forced
him backward.

“Pull that turban off the other fellow’s head!” he shouted to Patsy. “It
will make a good rope.”

This was a happy thought. Patsy unceremoniously stripped the white
turban from the head of the unconscious Meirum, and found himself with a
long strip of strong, white linen, which would, indeed, make a
serviceable rope.

But Keshub had not been overcome yet. He was almost as powerful as Ched
Ramar, and quite as full of fight. He tore himself out of Chick’s grasp
and rushed to the aid of his employer. The two of them set to work to
get the papers from Chick.

Nick Carter was equally resolved that Ched Ramar should not interfere
with Chick. He argued that Patsy Garvan and Chick were quite able to
deal with Keshub together--even if Chick could not do it alone.

“But Chick could do it himself,” he muttered. “Only that it might
require a little more time.”

It seemed as if Ched Ramar might have guessed what was passing in the
mind of Nick Carter, for he redoubled his efforts to get away, scimitar
and all, to go to the aid of his man.

“You may as well give up, Ched Ramar,” panted Nick Carter--for the long
fight was beginning to tell on his wind, just as it did on his foe’s.
“We’ve got you. We have the papers, and one of your men is done right
here. Another is a prisoner in my house. What is more, I know who you
are.”

“I am Ched Ramar!” cried the Indian proudly.

“Perhaps. I don’t know what your name may be. The main thing is that
you are a member of the Yellow Tong, and that you are trying to steal
these papers for your chief, the infamous Sang Tu.”

“He is not infamous!” shouted Ched Ramar indignantly. “He is the
greatest man in the world to-day, and it will not be long before he will
control every nation on earth.”

“Beginning with the United States, I suppose?” exclaimed Nick Carter
ironically.

“Yes. We have this country of yours mapped out and given to different
sections of our great organization already,” snarled Ched Ramar. “As for
giving up, why--see here!”

He bent almost double, as he exerted every ounce of his immense strength
to tear the scimitar away from the detective. The latter felt the handle
slipping through his fingers. But he had strength, too, and in another
instant he had gained a firmer hold than ever, as he pushed with all his
might against the powerful bulk of his towering antagonist.

For a moment neither side gave way. It was like two mountains pressing
against each other. No one could say what the end might be. They might
stand thus for an indefinite period.

But they didn’t. Nick Carter felt his foe yield ever so little--not more
than a fraction of an inch. But the fact remained that he had given way
slightly, and Nick was quick to take advantage of anything that would
help him in such a desperate fight as this.

He pushed harder, and back went Ched Ramar two or three inches this
time.

“Keshub!” shouted Ched Ramar.

But Keshub had his own troubles just now. Chick had applied a backheel
to him, and was slowly pushing him backward, until he must fall flat on
his back, while Patsy hovered above them and grumbled because he
couldn’t get into the fight.

“Keep off, Patsy!” cried Chick. “Don’t come into this, or you’ll spoil
it. Don’t you see that?”

“Gee! I can see it, all right. But it’s mighty tough on me. I’ve been
shut out of this whole circus. When this is over, I’m a goat if I don’t
go out and hit a policeman. I’ve got to get action somehow.”

Nick Carter saw that he had Ched Ramar giving way now, and he determined
to make an end of the struggle without further waste of time. The fight
had been conducted very quietly. It had not even disturbed the two
maids, asleep upstairs, and there was no reason to suppose the fracas
had been heard on the street.

“You think you have me, I suppose?” hissed Ched Ramar, as he fought with
all the energy he had left.

Nick Carter did not answer. He knew that the cunning Indian was trying
to make him talk, and thus divert his attention. Instead, he gave his
enemy a sudden and harder twist that took him an inch farther back.

There was an inarticulate ejaculation of rage from the Indian, and his
black eyes glowed fiercely through his glasses. He stopped for a second
the onward rush of his assailant. Then, as he was obliged to give way,
he jerked up his arms and tried to bring the edge of the scimitar across
Nick Carter’s face.

The attempt failed, but it brought the battle to an abrupt end.

As Nick Carter leaped aside to avoid the scimitar, he kicked the feet of
Ched Ramar from under him. Back went the Indian, crashing against the
gigantic image of Buddha behind him.

For a moment the enormous idol rocked on its pedestal. Then, as it lost
its balance, down it came, pedestal and all, toward the two fighters!

One corner of the pedestal struck Nick Carter on the shoulder and laid
him out flat on his back.

He was not hurt, and he jumped to his feet on the instant. As he did so,
he shook his head--partly in satisfaction, but still more in horror.

The body of Ched Ramar lay under the great idol, and the brazen knees
were pressed into its victim’s head, crushing it out of all semblance to
what it had been!

Ched Ramar had paid the penalty of his rascality through the very agent
he had employed to make an innocent girl a participant in his crime.

“Look out, Chick!” shouted Nick Carter, as he saw Keshub breaking away
from his assistant’s hold. “He’s going to get out, if you don’t hurry.”

But Patsy Garvan was on the alert. He was only too glad to get into the
fight in any way, and he tripped Keshub, just as he leaped through the
doorway, in a very skillful and workmanlike manner.

“Oh, I guess not!” observed Patsy. “I saw you getting up after Chick had
laid you out, and I was looking for you to make a break like this. Come
back here!”

The cloth from Meirum’s turban was bound about Keshub, and he was laid
on the floor by the side of the knocked-out Meirum. Then, with
considerable exertion, the image of Buddha was rolled completely away
from the body of Ched Ramar, so that Nick could look it over with his
flash light.

“He died on the instant,” decided Nick. “Cover it with one of those
curtains, while I go downstairs and telephone the police station.”

In due course, the remains of Ched Ramar were viewed by the coroner, and
a verdict of “accidental death” was rendered.

Very little got into the papers about it. This was arranged by Nick
Carter. He did not want too much publicity while any of the Yellow Tong
were still likely to be active. It might interfere with work he had yet
to do.

Keshub and Meirum, as well as Swagara, were not prosecuted. Nick made up
his mind that he could better afford to let them escape than to draw
general attention to the rascality they had been carrying on.

So he put them aboard a tramp steamer bound for Japan, and India, and
which would not touch anywhere until it got to Yokohama. Swagara was to
be put off there.

The next port would be Bombay. Both Keshub and Meirum said they would
never leave Indian soil again if once they could get back to it, and
there is no reason to suppose they were telling anything but the truth.

Matthew Bentham never knew the part his daughter had played in taking
and returning the precious papers. Nick Carter decided that no good end
would be served by letting him find it out.

Even Clarice herself was quite unaware of what she had done. The subtle
influence of hypnotism had permeated her whole being at the time, and
when she came to herself, it was entirely without recollection of what
she had passed through when in the power of another and stronger will.
Hypnotism is a wonderful science.

“Is this all of the Yellow Tong, chief?” asked Chick, smiling.

“There will be no end to this investigation until I have my hands on
Sang Tu,” replied Nick Carter sternly.

“I thought so,” was Chick’s reply.


THE END.

     “The Doom of Sang Tu; or, Nick Carter’s Golden Foe,” will be the
     title of the long, complete story which you will find in the next
     issue, No. 153, of the NICK CARTER STORIES, out August 14th. In
     this story you will read of the great detective’s ultimate triumph
     over the shrewd leader of the Yellow Tong. Then, too, you will also
     find an installment of a new serial, together with several other
     articles of interest.




Sheridan of the U. S. Mail.

By RALPH BOSTON.

(This interesting story was commenced in No. 148 of NICK CARTER STORIES.
Back numbers can always be obtained from your news dealer or the
publishers.)




CHAPTER XXII.

A QUESTION OF COLOR.


After Owen had seen Jake Hines safely locked up in a local police
station, he went back to Dallas to fulfill this mission which had
brought him to Chicago. “I want you to explain to me about that letter
you got from the mail box,” he said. “You got the wrong letter by a
mistake, of course? Instead of the one which you had mailed to your
brother, you got the pink envelope which the Reverend Doctor Moore
dropped into the box?”

“Yes,” answered Dallas, “when the letter carrier opened the box and took
out the mail, and I caught sight of that square, pink envelope lying on
top of the heap, I jumped to the conclusion that it was mine, and I
grabbed it and hurried away, fearing that he might change his mind about
giving it to me. You see, Owen, I was very much excited. The letter
which I had received from my scapegrace brother that day was very
startling. It informed me that he was in great trouble, and was about to
do something desperate--the letter didn’t state what--and that the only
thing which could prevent him from taking this step was my coming to
Chicago immediately. It warned me, too, that I mustn’t let a soul in New
York know where I was going.”

“That was Hines’ work, of course,” said Owen. “He couldn’t come to you
in New York, so he contrived that scheme to bring you out to him.”

“Yes; but I didn’t suspect anything like that. I was very much worried.
From the tone of Chester’s letter I feared that he contemplated suicide,
and I was awfully scared. But I didn’t very well see how I could get out
to him, because”--she hesitated, and blushed painfully--“because I--I
didn’t have the fare, Owen. I had been sending more than I could spare
to Chester recently, to help him to get out of a scrape, and I was very
hard up. So I had to write him that I was very sorry, but I really
couldn’t come to Chicago.”

“And then?” said Owen eagerly.

“Then, after I had mailed that letter, I suddenly thought of the
engagement ring which you had given to me, dear. I hated to pawn it, of
course, but I was so scared about Chester, and I--I thought you
wouldn’t mind, under the circumstances.”

“So that’s how you raised the fare to Chicago!” said Owen, with a smile
of great relief.

“Yes; and when I found that I could go, naturally I wanted to get back
that letter; for I feared the effect it might have upon my brother.”

“So you waited at the box until Pop Andrews came to collect the mail,
and you prevailed upon him to violate the rules and let you have it, and
he handed you the wrong letter,” said Owen. “So far, so good. And now,
Dallas, when you found that you had the Reverend Doctor Moore’s pink
envelope, with the hundred-dollar bill inside, what did you do with it?”

“When I got to my room at the boarding house, I started to tear the
letter up without opening it, still thinking, of course, that it was the
one which I had sent Chester. When I caught sight of the money inside,
and realized the mistake I had made, I was in a quandary. The
hundred-dollar bill and the letter which the envelope contained were
each in four pieces. I was afraid to go to the post office and explain
how it had happened, because I knew that if I did so it would get
Carrier Andrews into trouble for violating the rules. So I decided to
cut some sticking plaster into small strips, and paste the pieces
together. I made quite a neat job of it; then I addressed a fresh
envelope, inclosed the patched-up letter and hundred-dollar bill, and
dropped it into a mail box.”

Owen drew a deep breath of relief. “And I suppose the envelope which you
addressed was a white one?”

“Yes. I didn’t have any pink ones at the boarding house.”

“And that explains, of course, why they thought at Branch X Y that the
letter was missing from the mail. Naturally they didn’t think to go
through the white envelopes. No doubt by this time the Reverend Doctor
Moore’s friend in Pennsylvania is in receipt of his hundred-dollar bill.
Your explanation, Dallas, clears the mystery! What a gink I am not to
have thought of that solution before!”

But suddenly a puzzled look came to Inspector Sheridan’s face. “There’s
one point that isn’t cleared up yet: If you got the wrong pink envelope,
Dallas, what became of the right one? The letter which you sent to your
brother ought to have been in the mail still.”

“And so it was,” answered Dallas, with a smile. “When I reached here I
found that Chester was already in receipt of it.”

“But how could that be? They searched all through the mail at Branch X
Y, and failed to find any square, pink envelope.”

“The letter which Chester received was in a square, white envelope,”
said Dallas. “I noticed that as soon as he showed it to me. And,” she
went on, with a puzzled frown, “that’s something which I can’t
understand at all. I know that it sometimes happens that in a box of
colored stationery a white envelope will get mixed with the tinted ones,
but I am ready to take oath that the envelope in which I inclosed
Chester’s letter was pink. If it wasn’t so perfectly ridiculous I should
be inclined to believe that it must have changed color while in the
mail.”

“Wait a minute!” exclaimed Owen, an inspiration coming to him. “I think
I’ve got the answer. This envelope was exactly the same shape and
design as the rest in the box, wasn’t it, Dallas?”

“Yes; exactly the same as the others, except that it was white instead
of pink.”

“And it appeared to you to be pink?”

“Yes; and I am not color blind--if that is what you are going to imply,”
replied Dallas, mildly indignant.

“I’m not quite so sure of that,” said Owen, with a smile. “I’ll grant
that you are not color blind under ordinary conditions, but these were
not ordinary conditions.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“It was a dark afternoon when you addressed that envelope, and the
electric light over your desk at the office was turned on, wasn’t it?”

The girl nodded. “Yes, that’s so; but still----”

“And the electric globe over your desk throws such a strong light that
you have a piece of paper around it to shade it, haven’t you, Dallas? A
piece of red paper; I noticed it the other day.”

A look of enlightenment came to the girl’s face. “Why, yes; I understand
how it happened now. That red shade around the electric light made that
white envelope look pink, just like the rest.”

“Exactly!” cried Owen happily; “and that solves the mystery of the
missing pink envelope. I’m mighty glad now that I followed you to
Chicago, Dallas.”




CHAPTER XXIII.

UNTO THE LAST.


When Samuel J. Coggswell learned that his disciple and confidential man,
Jake Hines, had been brought back to New York under arrest, he was
greatly perturbed.

“And what does he say?” he asked the reporter who brought him the news.
“What does the misguided young man say? I suppose he has been making
some sensational and, of course, absolutely false statements about me,
eh?” He looked at his visitor anxiously.

“On the contrary,” the newspaper man replied, “they can’t get a thing
out of Jake, Mr. Coggswell. He refuses to talk.”

An expression of great relief came to the district leader’s face. “Ah!”
he exclaimed, his ears wiggling rapidly as he spoke. “Poor Jake, poor
Jake! So they can’t get a word out of him, eh? Jake always was a
stubborn young man--a very stubborn young man.”

After the newspaper man had gone, Boss Coggswell sat in his private
office at the clubhouse, smiling confidently to himself.

“I might have known Jake wouldn’t squeal,” he mused. “He’s not that
kind. Even though they’ve got him, I guess I’m safe.”

Even in the worst of men there is usually some redeeming trait. Crook,
grafter, and scoundrel as Jake Hines was, there was one thing which,
perhaps, should be put down to his credit--his unswerving loyalty to his
master.

The prosecuting attorney, certain that Samuel J. Coggswell was behind
the conspiracy against Owen Sheridan, which had landed Jake in the
toils, and anxious to get the bigger fish in his net, if possible,
offered to deal leniently with Hines if he would make a confession
involving the boss. But Jake stubbornly refused.

“No,” he said, “I ain’t convicted yet, and while Boss Coggswell’s my
friend I won’t give up hope of beatin’ this case. But if the worst comes
to worst, and I have to go up--well, I’ll be the goat. You won’t get a
squeal out of me!”

Coggswell made every effort to keep his subordinate from going to jail;
that is to say, every effort which it was possible to make in secret. He
got a bondsman for Jake, even though the latter’s bail was set at a very
high figure, and arranged for the young man to skip his bail and escape
beyond the jurisdiction of the courts before the case came up for trial.

But this plan was defeated by the vigilance of the prosecuting attorney,
who, anticipating such a move, had Hines watched so closely by
detectives that it was impossible for him to get away.

Failing in this attempt, Coggswell retained the very best lawyers
obtainable to defend his faithful follower; and when this array of legal
talent met with defeat, and Hines was found guilty by a jury, the
politician exerted all his powerful influence to save the convicted man
from a jail sentence. But this attempt also failed, and Jake Hines had
to go to prison.




CHAPTER XXIV.

A SAD FAREWELL.


The young politician took his medicine with a stoicism worthy of a
better cause. There was actually a broad grin on his beefy face as he
heard the judge utter the words which condemned him to several years
behind prison bars. But it was not wholly stoicism. His attitude was
partly due to the fact that even at that desperate stage of the game he
had not quite lost faith in the power of his master and mentor to aid
him.

“I won’t be in the jug long,” he declared confidently to the deputy
sheriff who led him, shackled, out of the courtroom. “Boss Coggswell
will get me out. His pull will win me a pardon, all right. So long as
he’s my friend I’m not worryin’. And not only will he get me free,” he
added, a glint coming into his beady eyes, “but you can bet he’ll make
it hot for everybody that’s had a hand in sending me up. That judge’ll
get his for handing me such a stiff sentence; the district attorney will
be made to regret that he wouldn’t let up when the boss gave him the
hint; and as for that big stiff of a Sheridan--well, I’m willing to bet
a thousand to a hundred that he won’t be holding that inspector’s job
very long. They’ll all be made to feel that it ain’t healthy to defy a
man like Samuel J. Coggswell.”

Just as the train which was to carry him off to prison was about to pull
out of the station, Jake received a visit from the man in whom he had
such faith. Coggswell rarely yielded to sentiment when it was against
his interest to do so, but in this instance, although he realized that
he could ill afford to be seen shaking hands with the convicted man, he
decided that the latter’s loyalty in refusing to “squeal” was deserving
of this tribute; so he was there to say farewell to his faithful
henchman.

“I need scarcely say,” he explained unctuously to the group of newspaper
men who were on the platform to see Hines depart, “that there is no man
who condemns and deplores more than I the atrocious crime for which that
wretched young man is about to pay the penalty. Still, I cannot quite
forget the time when poor, misguided Jake Hines was an honest man, who
enjoyed my esteem and friendship. It is in memory of those days,
gentlemen, that I am here now to give him a parting handclasp. Who
knows,” he added, raising his eyes piously toward the ceiling of the
train shed, “but what the lingering recollection of that last touch of
an old friend’s hand may soften his heart and cause his feet to seek
once more the straight and narrow path after he emerges from his gloomy
prison cell?”

Having delivered himself of this worthy sentiment, and noting, with
satisfaction, that several of the scribes were taking it down verbatim,
Mr. Coggswell stepped aboard the train and approached the seat which
contained Jake and the deputy sheriff.

“How do you feel, my boy?” he inquired, in a sympathetic whisper.

“First class, boss,” Hines assured him, with a cheerful grin. “Say, it’s
mighty white of you to come to see me off, but you shouldn’t have done
it. It might cause talk.”

“Let evil tongues wag if they will,” was the sententious response. “You
ought to know me better, Jake, than to think for a moment that I would
consider myself at all in a case like this. I hope, my boy, that you are
accepting this unfortunate situation with philosophy and--er--are still
determined not to talk.”

“Don’t worry, boss,” said Hines, with another grin. “They’re not going
to get a word out of me, even though I have to stay in the jug for the
full term of my sentence. I’m no squealer.”

Hearing which, Coggswell exhaled a sigh of relief, and, as the train was
about to get under way, took a hurried leave of his unfortunate
lieutenant.

“Boss,” Hines said to him wistfully, as they once more clasped hands,
“I’m sorry I won’t be there to help you at the coming primary fight. I’m
afraid you’ll miss me.”

“I’m afraid I shall, Jake,” Coggswell answered, taking care not to speak
above a whisper. “I’m afraid I shall.”

And his ears were not wiggling as he said it.




CHAPTER XXV.

THE LAST STAND.


Deprived of the services of his able lieutenant, Boss Coggswell faced
the coming primary-election contest with some misgivings. He realized
that he was up against the biggest battle of his political career.

Several times in the past attempts had been made to wrest the district
leadership from him, but in all those cases his opponents had been so
weak, and their campaigns so poorly organized, that he had been able to
defeat them without much effort. The Honorable Sugden Lawrence, he had
reason to believe, would prove a much more formidable foeman. The
ex-judge possessed a personality which made him an opponent to be feared
even by so powerful a boss as Samuel J. Coggswell. Therefore the latter
had spoken with the utmost sincerity when he told Jake Hines that he
would miss him. He feared that in order to win, much dirty work would
have to be done; and Boss Coggswell disliked dirty work--when he had to
do it himself. It would have been so much pleasanter to have the
indefatigable Jake on hand to take care of the hiring of “guerrillas,”
the “fixing” of election inspectors, and various other details of a
similarly sordid and disagreeable character which Jake had always taken
care of so faithfully.

Perhaps it is needless to say that the enforced absence of his trusty
helper did not increase the boss’ good will toward the man who was
directly responsible for that calamity. Coggswell promised himself
grimly that if the primary election went his way Mr. Owen Sheridan’s
chances of holding down his job as post-office inspector wouldn’t be
worth a plugged nickel.

True, Sheridan was protected--to some extent, by the civil-service laws;
but that fact did not worry Coggswell. He had his own little ways for
overcoming such obstacles.

It was not only a desire for vengeance which actuated him; fear and
self-preservation were also his motives. He considered it positively
dangerous to have Sheridan remain in the detective branch of the postal
service, for there were certain transactions past, present, and
contemplated, with which he was closely identified, which would not bear
the scrutiny of a post-office inspector.

He was afraid, however, to bring about the dismissal of the man before
primary-election day; he knew that if he did so Judge Lawrence would not
fail to make political capital out of the incident; so he decided to
wait until the contest for the district leadership was over. In the
meantime, for safety’s sake, he contrived to have Sheridan transferred
from the New York district. This he could bring about without laying
himself open to the charge of persecution. A little wire pulling at
Washington, and, without Boss Coggswell’s name being mentioned in the
matter at all, Owen received peremptory orders to report to the chief
inspector of the San Francisco branch.

“I wouldn’t mind the change at all,” said Owen to Judge Lawrence. “It
will be a nice honeymoon trip for us”--for the transfer order reached
him on the very day of his marriage to Dallas--“but I hate the idea of
being away from New York while you are waging your primary battle
against that crook. I was in hopes that I would be able to repay a
little of what you have done for me by helping you in your campaign.”

“For shame!” exclaimed the ex-jurist good-humoredly. “Even if you were
in New York, you couldn’t possibly afford to take any part in the fight.
Don’t you know that employees of the United States postal service are
forbidden to mix up in politics?”

He smiled ironically as he said the words, for, although things are
somewhat different to-day, in those days it was an open secret that
every member of the service, from the humblest letter carrier to the
head of the department, was an active political worker.

“Besides,” Judge Lawrence continued seriously, “I shall not need your
help. There isn’t any doubt in my mind that I am going to defeat that
rascal. All the trickery and corrupt practices which his crooked brain
can devise won’t suffice to avert his downfall. You can go to San
Francisco thoroughly assured that the days of Samuel J. Coggswell as a
political boss are numbered.”

This did not appear to be an idle boast. As primary day drew nearer,
Coggswell grew more and more alarmed by the strength which his opponent
displayed. Word reached him that the voters of the district were
flocking by thousands to the ex-jurist’s banner. Men who had never taken
the trouble to vote at a primary election before were taking a keen
interest in this fight. Judge Lawrence was conducting a whirlwind
campaign, and his forceful oratory had the district stirred as it had
never been stirred before.

So worried was Boss Coggswell that he decided to take the stump
himself--a step which he had never before found necessary in all the
years he had been a political boss.

During the closing days of the campaign he followed his opponent around
the district, speaking from carts and in halls, denying vehemently the
judge’s charge that he had been mixed up in the conspiracy for which his
man--Jake Hines--was in prison stripes, and hotly denouncing the rival
candidate’s “mud-slinging” tactics as “un-American and ungentlemanly.”

But, although he was an eloquent speaker, he was forced to realize that
his oratory could not save the day. His audiences smiled skeptically
when he protested that he had had nothing to do with the desperate
attempt to railroad young Sheridan to jail. They smiled still more
incredulously when he denied Judge Lawrence’s charge that he had derived
revenue from the sale of tickets for the various outings of the Samuel
J. Coggswell Association.

The judge made it a point to go extensively into the details of those
notorious outings. He quoted figures to show that at each outing the
sale of tickets had brought in several thousand dollars more than the
total expenses. He charged that this surplus had gone into the boss’
coffers, and exposed the blackmailing methods by which Jake Hines and
the other lieutenants had forced the reluctant civil-service employees
and business men of the district to take tickets. It made excellent
campaign material.

What worried Boss Coggswell most of all was the fear that he would not
be able to carry out successfully on election day the corrupt practices
which now constituted his only hope of winning. That he could not win by
fair means he was already sadly convinced, but he hoped to be able to
steal the election by the aid of the guerrilla bands of “repeaters,”
fraudulent election inspectors, and stuffed ballot boxes.

But a doubt had arisen within Coggswell’s troubled mind whether, with a
fighter like the Honorable Sugden Lawrence to contend with, it would be
possible to “get away” with these violent measures. The judge had issued
a warning from the stump that he intended to have a fair, honest
primary, and that if any rough work were attempted, those participating
would be prosecuted.

Moreover--most serious blow of all--Judge Lawrence had enough pull at
police headquarters to bring about the transfer of the captain of the
precinct--an officer kindly disposed toward Coggswell. The man who had
been sent up to take his place was an officer who was noted for his
impartiality at elections and his ability to quell disorder at the
voting places.

Altogether, things looked very bad for the boss. But just when the
outlook appeared darkest and he was about to give up hope, he suddenly
saw an opportunity to crush the enemy by a single blow.




CHAPTER XXVI.

CRUSHING EVIDENCE.


The opportunity which came to Boss Coggswell was in the form of a
letter. Bill Hillman brought it to him as he sat in his private office
at the headquarters of the Samuel J. Coggswell Association. Hillman was
one of his henchmen, who, during the enforced absence of Jake Hines, had
been chosen by the boss to fill that unfortunate young man’s place as
his confidential man. He was not as able a worker as Jake, judged by the
standard which had made the latter so useful to his chief, but he
combined the qualities of shrewdness, audacity, and unscrupulousness to
a greater degree than anybody else in the organization; therefore,
Coggswell had picked him as the man best fitted to wear Jake’s mantle.

“Here’s something important, boss,” Hillman exclaimed, bursting
excitedly into his chief’s presence and waving a pink envelope with an
ungummed flap.

Coggswell took the envelope, and noted with interest that it was
addressed to the Honorable Sugden Lawrence. It bore in the left-hand
corner the imprint: “Hodginson & Lehman, Attorneys, 22 Wall Street.”

He drew out the inclosure, and read eagerly the following typed
communication:

     “MY DEAR JUDGE: I beg to acknowledge receipt of your check for
     thirty thousand dollars, in full settlement of the claims of our
     client, Miss Marjorie Dorman. In consideration of this payment our
     client agrees to abandon her action against you for breach of
     promise of marriage, and to return all letters written to her by
     you. Formal agreement to this effect will be mailed to you under
     separate cover.

     “May I take the liberty, my dear judge, of congratulating you upon
     the satisfactory outcome of this unpleasant case, and upon the rare
     good sense you have displayed in deciding to settle the matter out
     of court, thereby avoiding a lot of painful notoriety, which, no
     doubt, would have been most distressing to a man as prominent in
     public life as yourself? We need scarcely assure you, now, that
     there will be absolutely no publicity. Yours cordially,

                                                     HARVEY HODGINSON.”

The last sentence of this letter afforded Boss Coggswell much amusement.
“No publicity!” he chuckled. “Well, I don’t know about that. I rather
think that Mr. Harvey Hodginson is going to find himself mistaken on
that point.”

He turned to Bill Hillman. “This letter is indeed interesting,” he
remarked. “How did you get it, my boy? I hope you came by it honestly?”

Hillman’s only response was a broad grin. He knew that the boss knew
very well how the letter came into his possession. In spite of the
narrow escape he had had once before, Coggswell, for several days past,
had been up to his old trick of having Judge Lawrence’s mail intercepted
and carefully scrutinized before it was delivered to its addressee. He
was so anxious to “get something on” his opponent that he considered the
risk worth while.

Hillman grinned again as the boss folded the letter, replaced it in the
envelope, and carefully gummed down the flap. It had been opened by
holding it over a steaming kettle, and was necessary for Coggswell to
resort to the mucilage bottle on his desk in order to close it again. He
performed the task with a dexterity which showed that he was a master
craftsman at that sort of thing, taking great care not to invite
suspicion by applying too much mucilage.

“Bless me!” he exclaimed, suddenly drawing back with affected
astonishment after he had completed this operation. “There’s a postage
stamp on this envelope, Bill--an uncanceled stamp. Queer that I didn’t
notice it before. It looked as if this letter must have somehow dropped
out of the mail. You’d better take it right away and hand it to a letter
carrier. As good citizens, Bill, it is our duty to see that the United
States mails are not delayed any longer than is absolutely necessary.”

As Hillman hurried out to restore the letter to the unscrupulous carrier
from whom he had “borrowed” it, Coggswell reached for his desk
telephone, and called up a certain newspaper man with whom he was on
very friendly terms.

“Can you come around to the club right away?” he inquired. “There’s a
chance for you to make twenty dollars and get a good story for your
paper, besides.”

Half an hour later he was explaining to the reporter what was required
of him. The latter was to earn the twenty dollars by interviewing a firm
of lawyers named Hodginson & Lehman, and a young woman named Miss
Marjorie Dorman, if he could find her. He was to ask them about a
breach-of-promise suit which the Honorable Sugden Lawrence had settled
out of court by the payment of thirty thousand dollars.

“It is probable that you won’t find either the lawyers or the young lady
willing to talk,” he remarked. “They don’t wish any publicity. But a
reporter of your experience ought to be able to wring some information
out of either one or the other. Do the best you can, and let me know as
soon as possible what you find out.”

The reporter was not successful. At the law offices of Hodginson &
Lehman he was told curtly that the firm never discussed its clients’
affairs with representatives of the press. A search through city
directories and telephone books failed to locate Miss Marjorie Dorman.

Boss Coggswell was disappointed, but not dismayed. “I scarcely expected
that you’d be able to make them talk,” he told his newspaper friend;
“but I thought it was worth trying. Of course, the more details I could
get about the case the better. However, I have enough information for my
purpose. Come around to Colfax Hall to-night, and you’ll see some fun.
I’m going to address a big meeting there--the biggest of the whole
campaign--and I’m going to hand a big jolt to my dear friend the judge.
I don’t imagine that he’ll be as popular with the voters of this
district after I get through with him. If you can’t come yourself, you’d
better see that your paper sends another man to cover the meeting. I’m
going to notify all the other papers. I want every sheet in town to
print my speech.”




CHAPTER XXVII.

A BOOMERANG.


At nine o’clock that evening Coggswell proceeded to hand his opponent
the big jolt, as planned. Standing on the platform at Colfax Hall, which
was filled with some two thousand voters of the district, he began
earnestly:

“My friends, as you all know, since the start of this contest I have
deplored personal attacks. I have raised my voice in protest against the
outrageous mud slinging indulged in by my opponent and his misguided
friends. But inasmuch as they have persisted in their shameful abuse of
a man who for seventeen years has worked night and day to serve the
people of this district, I feel justified in showing you that we can do
a little mud slinging, too. I am going to handle this Mr. Justice
Lawrence without gloves. I am going to show him to you in his true
colors.”

Boss Coggswell raised his clenched fist above his head. “A rascal who
deceives his fellow men is bad enough,” he yelled, “but I cannot find
words, my friends, to express my contempt for a scoundrel who would dupe
a woman--an innocent, trusting young girl. And that’s the kind of a man
the Honorable Sugden Lawrence is.”

He was interrupted at this point by a storm of groans and hisses, and
one man with a brazen voice shouted: “That’s a lie!”

“It’s the truth!” roared Boss Coggswell, shaking his fist frenziedly in
the direction of this disturber. “It’s the truth, my friends, and I can
prove it. This rascal Lawrence has just paid the sum of thirty thousand
dollars to a young woman whom he promised to marry and then shamelessly
jilted. He paid her the money, not out of a sense of shame, my friends,
or a sense of justice, but because she had started a suit for breach of
promise against him, and he was afraid of the scandal. He was afraid of
being shown up to his fellow men in his true colors, so he paid her
thirty thousand dollars hush money to call off the suit. The name of
this young woman is Miss Marjorie Dorman. I challenge the _Honorable_
Sugden Lawrence to deny these facts.” The speaker placed withering
emphasis upon the word honorable. “I challenge him to deny that he paid
that money to prevent the breach-of-promise suit from going to court.”

Amid the excitement which followed this sensational charge, a young man
strode down the center aisle toward the platform. Boss Coggswell saw him
coming, and stared at him in astonishment. He scarcely could believe
that his eyes were not playing him a trick.

The young man, a grim smile on his face, mounted the three stairs
leading to the platform, and stood in the background, waiting patiently
until Boss Coggswell was through with his speech. He did not have long
to wait. Although the speaker had intended to say much more, his
thoughts were so upset by the arrival of this visitor that he cut short
his remarks.

As he stepped to the rear of the platform, he was confronted by the
newcomer.

“Well, if it isn’t my young friend, Inspector Sheridan!” he exclaimed,
with affected heartiness. “What are you doing here, my boy? I thought
you were in San Francisco. I heard that you had been transferred there.”

“Evidently your informant hasn’t kept you well posted,” Owen replied
dryly. “I was ordered there, but I was called back. You see, Mr.
Coggswell, you are not the only man who has a pull at Washington. My
friend Judge Lawrence has a friend there who is quite influential in
post-office affairs. He lives at the White House. When he heard that the
judge needed me here, he was kind enough to countermand that transfer
order.”

“So the judge needed you here, did he?” remarked the boss uneasily.
“Might I ask what for?”

“Certainly. I have no objection to telling you that--now. Judge Lawrence
had a suspicion that his mail was being tampered with. He thought that I
might be able to find out who was responsible for the outrage.”

“And have you found out?” inquired Coggswell, his ears beginning to
wiggle.

“I have,” Inspector Sheridan answered. “That is why I am here now. I
have come to place you under arrest, Mr. Coggswell. I wish I could say
that it is an unpleasant duty, but I must be truthful. As a good
citizen, I have been looking forward to this moment for some time.”

Their voices were sufficiently loud to carry to all parts of the hall,
and a hush had fallen upon the audience. Every man was listening
intently.

Boss Coggswell frowned. “Young man, you had better be careful. I warn
you that if you go ahead with this foolishness the consequences will be
most disastrous to you. I presume this is a piece of spite work on the
part of my opponent. No doubt he has heard that I’ve got the goods on
him regarding that breach-of-promise case, and he thinks he’ll be able
to square himself with the voters of this district by making this
outrageous move.”

“Are you quite sure that you have the goods on Judge Lawrence regarding
that breach-of-promise case?” asked Sheridan, with a quizzical smile.
“Perhaps you are mistaken, Coggswell. Perhaps the judge is not quite the
rascal you have painted him. It is true that he is acquainted with a
young person named Marjorie Dorman. It is also true that he is very fond
of her. But it is not true that he has ever asked her to marry him. As a
matter of fact, she is not quite old enough to consider a proposal of
that sort. She is only six years old. She is the judge’s little niece.”

Boss Coggswell looked very uneasy. His face had turned pale. His ears
were wiggling furiously.

“Then what was the idea?” he inquired hoarsely.

“The idea was to set a little trap for you,” Owen explained. “As I said
before, the judge has had cause to suspect for some time that his mail
was being tampered with--that somebody was steaming open the envelopes
and reading their contents before they were delivered to him. He put the
matter in my hands, and we decided to make a little test to ascertain
whether his suspicions were correct. We fixed up a decoy letter. It told
of an imaginary check for thirty thousand dollars which the judge paid
to settle an imaginary breach-of-promise suit. It was sent to the judge
through the mails, and was intercepted in the usual way by you,
Coggswell----”

“That’s a lie!” Coggswell interrupted furiously. “I never saw your
confounded letter. I----”

“It is the truth,” Inspector Sheridan returned quietly. “The speech you
have just made on this platform is enough to convict you. But, in
addition to that, I have arrested the carrier who handed the letter to
your man, Bill Hillman, and I have a complete confession from him. We
have such a good case, Boss Coggswell, that we are fully confident of
the result. Not only are you going to lose the leadership of this
district, but you are going away for a few years to keep your friend and
accomplice, Jake Hines, company in prison.”

And, although he was not the seventh son of a seventh son, Post-office
Inspector Owen Sheridan proved to be a true prophet.


THE END.


“SOLD.”

As the man went across the street, several persons saw it, and turned to
laugh at him. The second boy, who was waiting across the street, ran up
to the man and said:

“Mister, there’s a card hooked to your coat behind. Let me take it off.”

“Goodness me!” said the man. “How did that get there?”

“One o’ them ragamuffins put it on, I s’pose.”

“Confound them! Well, here’s a dime for you.”

Two minutes later the good little boy hung it on a fat man, and his
partner on the other side collected another dime. He had to ask for it,
but he got it. A man would be a brute to refuse a dime to a poor boy who
had done him such a service.


A SMART TOAD.

Professor Botkins tells of a remarkable instance of intelligence
exhibited by a garden toad. He was watching the efforts of his pet toad
to capture a very large worm. The toad had been sitting still, and
giving no sign that it saw anything. The worm gave a little wriggle as
it began to come out of the ground, when, quick as a flash the toad made
a leap, and seized the end of the worm in its mouth.

Then began a tug of war. Every time that the toad gave a pull, the worm
drew back. But the toad was not to be discouraged. It jerked and jerked
until it fairly stood on its hind legs. Still it could not dislodge the
worm.

He glanced down again, and saw the toad twisting its legs about until
the worm was wrapped twice around it, then the toad gave a hop, and out
came the worm.


IT WAS FOUND.

An Irish clergyman, riding from his home to chapel one morning had the
misfortune to lose a new cloak, which he carried attached to his saddle.

Before commencing his discourse, he thought well to advertise the loss
of the garment and to enlist the services of the congregation in its
recovery.

“Dearly beloved,” he began, “I have met with a great loss this morning.
I have lost my fine new cloak. If any of you find it, I hope you will be
so good as to bring it home to me.”

“It’s found, yer riverence,” cried a voice from the bottom of the
chapel.

“God bless you, my child!” exclaimed the pastor, with unction.

“It’s found, sir,” continued the voice; “for I kem that road this
mornin’, an’ it wasn’t on it.”


TOO SHARP BY A THIRD.

Harry had just begun to go to school, and was very proud of what he had
learned.

One day he thought he would show his father how much he knew, and asked
him at dinner:

“Papa, how many chickens are there on that dish?”

“Two, my boy,” said papa. “I thought you knew how to count.”

“You’re wrong,” said Harry; “there are three. That’s one, that’s two,
and two and one make three.”

“Very well,” said his father; “your mother may have one for her dinner,
I’ll take the other, and you can have the third.”




THE NEWS OF ALL NATIONS.


Gets Another Prison Term.

Charles F. Kline, who, at the age of fifty-five, has spent thirty-three
years of his life in prison, and who pleaded guilty in Federal court in
Columbus, Ohio, to charges that he had counterfeited silver dollars, was
sentenced by Judge Sater to four and one-half years in the Moundsville,
W. Va., Penitentiary. Kline was arrested several months ago in a log
cabin near West Jefferson, Ohio.


Woman, Seventy-four, Cutting New Teeth.

Mrs. H. Vincent, of Medford, Ore., seventy-four years old, and a pioneer
of the Rogue River Valley, is cutting a new set of teeth, nine uppers
and eight lowers. The unusual condition has necessitated the casting
aside of false teeth.

Last summer Mrs. Vincent suffered from a paralytic stroke in the left
arm, and the nervous shock is supposed to be responsible for the sudden
reversal in Nature’s routine. Mrs. Vincent is suffering but slight
inconvenience from her second “teething.”


Saved by Strip of Canvas.

Falling forty feet and not being injured was the unique experience of
Worley Hassler, an employee of the Spring Grove Stone and Lime Co., of
Spring Grove, Pa. A thin strip of canvas put up to protect the firemen
from the sun saved his life.

Hassler was working on the top of a kiln when he was overcome by gaseous
fumes, falling over the edge. Workmen who saw him hurtling through the
air were surprised when he alighted on the canvas covering, bounded into
the air again, and landed safely on the ground, unhurt.


Snake’s Queer Predicament.

When James Moriarity, of Lead Hill, Ark., heard a rustling of the bushes
in a fence corner near his barn, he pushed aside the shrubbery and saw a
large blacksnake apparently making a furious effort to crawl through a
narrow crack between two rails of the fence. When the snake saw
Moriarity, the reptile made an effort to withdraw but could not do so.

Moriarity investigated the predicament of the snake and saw that it had
found a nest of eggs, part of which were on one side of the fence and
part on the other side. The snake had swallowed an egg on the “near”
side of the fence and then had poked its head through the crack and
swallowed another egg. With two eggs in its throat, one on each side of
the crack, the snake was a prisoner. Moriarity killed the snake but did
not rescue the eggs.


Terrapin Back After Twenty-five Years.

This is the story of how a Georgia terrapin came back after twenty-five
years. It is vouched for by a number of well-known citizens.

One day back in the year 1890, Harry Lee Jarvis and W. H. Prater were
strolling over the latter’s plantation near Varnell Station, above
Atlanta, when they encountered a highland tortoise or what is commonly
known as a terrapin, and pronounced “tarrypin” by the portions of the
population who know and love him best.

Prater did what quite a number of now celebrated men have done
before--he carved his initials and the year on the unresisting
terrapin’s lid, and let him go. And last week the terrapin did what
quite a number of now celebrated tortoises have done before--it came
back.

Prater was directing the clearing of a ditch, when one of the workmen
picked up a terrapin. On its shell were plainly carved the initials W.
H. P. and date 1890, partly grown over by a new growth of shell, but
still perfectly distinct. Mr. Prater says the terrapin didn’t seem to
have grown much, but looked hale and hearty as when they first met.


Makes Tumblers Out of Ice.

Instead of icing drinks, why not put them in tumblers made of ice? It
looks as if this would soon be possible in every home, for the United
States patent office has issued a patent to Hendrik Douwe Pieter Huizer,
of The Hague, Netherlands, for an apparatus for making tumblers of ice.
Besides cooling the contents, such tumblers will have the hygienic
advantage of never being used more than once. The inventor suggests
insulating his ice tumblers in paper or celluloid cases in order to make
them last at least as long as the drink.


Interesting New Inventions.

A new piano for traveling musicians weighs but one hundred and twenty
pounds and can be packed and shipped like a trunk.

A rat trap has been patented that first catches a rodent, then
electrocutes it, and finally drops the body into a receptacle out of
sight of others.

A German speedometer for automobiles has an illuminated dial which makes
several color changes as the speed of the car to which it is attached
increases.

For the blind there has been invented a watch with the hours marked by
raised dots and dashes that can be read by the sense of touch.

A new traveling bag locks automatically when it is lifted by the handle.

A California inventor has patented a chair for amusement places that can
be opened for use only when a coin is dropped into a slot.

A saddle has been patented by a New Jersey inventor which includes
leather flaps to cover the buckles, which frequently wear out riders’
clothing.


Champion Quiltmaker--A Man--Defies Rivals.

W. W. Yale, of Ouaquaga, N. Y., champion patchwork-quilt piecer of the
State, defended his title by completing his twentieth quilt for the
year.

Encouraged by his tremendous accomplishment for the fiscal year, Mr.
Yale, who fears no thimbled demon in America, has issued a challenge to
every hemstitching, quiltmaking, embroidery lover in the nation for the
coming year. He says openly that he will complete twenty-five quilts or
know the reason why, and those who know Mr. Yale declare that this is
strong language for him.

Already the champion has made arrangements for the construction of a
quilt, the central decoration of which is to be the Ouaquaga town hall.
Facetious persons who are familiar with the Ouaquaga town hall, figure
that the reproduction in needlework may be life size, which would make
the quilt ample to cover a cot or for use as a doily.

A great number of punsters make remarks about Mr. Yale and his life
work, but he never gives them a thought, as is evidenced by the fact
that he has heard their tirades frequently without so much as dropping a
stitch. Frequently he has caused gasps of delight by his colorings,
which he takes from the flower beds in the front yard of his home. The
colorings are those of the cannas, bleeding hearts, hollyhocks,
sunflowers, salvias, dahlias, and marigolds.

Mr. Yale dreads to have women advise him regarding his work, for they
frequently annoy him by their overbearing attitude in matters which he,
as champion, should be consulted about as the last authority. He gets
terribly angry sometimes, but as yet has never struck any one.


Smallest Electric Motor.

The smallest electric motor in the world, just high enough to reach up
under the chin of the head of Lincoln on a one-cent piece, has been
built by H. F. Keeler, a student in the Highland Park College of
Engineering at Des Moines, Iowa.

The armature is less than one-fourth of an inch in diameter, and the
wire is of the size of number one-hundred thread. A jeweler’s microscope
must be used to see the different parts, and the whole thing weighs only
twenty grains, or as much as a third of a teaspoonful of water. When
coupled with small dry batteries, it runs at very high velocity and
makes a noise like a fly on a windowpane.


Says Eyes Tell Tales to Most Shrewd Observers.

Are your eyes predominantly blue or gray, or brown or black?

According to some elaborate statistical researches, if they are blue or
gray you are of an intellectual rather than emotional nature. If brown
or black, the emotional nature. If brown or black, the emotional in you
exceeds the intellectual, and you need to be specially on your guard to
keep your passions in check.

If, again, your eye is not strongly colorful; if it is prominent, with
the pupil small and seldom dilating to any extent, and with the glance
fixed, the modern physiognomist warns you to cultivate generosity of
heart and breadth and tolerance of mind. For these are the qualities
which this eye formation indicates that you lack.

So, too, there is a danger signal for you if you find a puffiness below
your eyes, with the rim of the lower lid falling away from the eye,
showing the red, while the upper lid droops. These signs usually point
to one of two things, we are told.

Either you are wasting your energies in some form of dissipation or your
internal organs, particularly your kidneys, are not functioning as they
should. You yourself know best to which of these evils--dissipation or
ill health--the puffiness is due.

Does your glance meet that of other people squarely and fearlessly? Or
do you have a tendency to shift your eyes and look away when talking
with others?

In the latter event, says the physiognomist, you may be sure something
is wrong with you. You are perhaps suffering from some slight nervous
weakness. Or, what is more likely, you have thoughts in your mind which
are not altogether to your credit. The shifting or drooping of your gaze
is then based on a subconscious fear that your eyes will betray what is
passing through your mind.

Finally, note the position of your eyes. Mistrust yourself especially if
you find your eyes “slanting upward from the nose under brows also
slanting upward with fullness in the upper lid which overhangs the eye
and hides the rim of the lid, the eyeball thrown upward.”

“This,” says the physiognomist Foshbroke, and the writer has verified
his observation, “is the eye of craft and treachery, indicating the
nature of the tiger and the fox, whose eye it resembles.”

A person with such an eye cannot too soon begin a course of moral
self-education to straighten out the kinks in his nature.

This can always be done. Eye indications do not mean that your nature is
fixed and unalterable in accordance with the signs shown by the eyes. On
the contrary, the value of such signs is that they specify precisely in
what respects reforms are most desirable.


Fierce Man-eating Lion Dines on Dog.

Julia, the ferocious “snarling lioness,” billed as one of the most
terrifying features of the Firemen’s Carnival in Mount Vernon, N. Y.,
escaped from her cage the other night when she sneezed and blew out two
of the many half-inch bars forming the front of her den.

Fortunately it was three o’clock in the morning, at which times nothing
is out in Mount Vernon but the street lamps and the downtown dogs. Of
these latter Julia partook sparingly, as will be seen.

When Julia was brought here in connection with the effort to raise funds
for Hose Truck No. 2, her fierce, untamed conduct, coupled with the fact
that she was said to have two teeth, made the firemen fearful for the
safety of their friends, who, after paying their admission, foolishly
insisted upon feeding peanuts and stick caramels to the evil-eyed
man-eater. The situation became so desperate that Julia growled every
time she woke up--about twice a day.

One night, when her trainers left her, she was over in one corner of the
cage, yawning. As she had yawned every couple of minutes since she was a
cub, nothing was thought of it. They took their dinner pails and went
home, confident that they had trained her enough for one day.

Soon after two o’clock, one of the trainers, unable to sleep because of
a presentiment that something was wrong with the Firemen’s Carnival,
walked down to the wild-animal cage and looked in. Julia was gone! The
keeper, fully convinced of this alarming fact, took his life in his
hands and immediately jumped into the cage. Then he called for a bit of
help at the top of his lungs.

The police force, who had been sleeping fitfully, responded as soon as
he could get his helmet and shield on. When he reached the Firemen’s
Carnival, the awful situation was finally made clear to him, and the two
of them, working in shifts, soon aroused the greater part of the town.

Julia was found cowering in the doorway of an apartment house. It was
high time for her to cower, for it was found that in her jaunt she had
eaten one of Alphonse Camera’s dogs, fell over an Airedale, which died
of fright, and chased a black cat to its death in a heavy door at the
apartment house which was swinging at an unfortunate moment.

While one of the trainers threatened Julia with a revolver, another got
a box, and they shooed her into it.

The Firemen’s Carnival management say that the whole thing is a good
advertisement for every one concerned--except possibly Julia’s trainer
and the firm that made the cage.


Lawyer Seems to Have Amazing Dual Nature.

The strange case of Charles Williams, of Whitewater, Wis., is likely to
become a cause for celebration among medical men, for it is one of the
clearest cases of dual identity on record. The two personalities are
Charles Williams, lawyer, justice, man of culture and personality, and
the same man as a farm laborer.

The doctors, bringing Williams back from Merriville, Ind., where he was
found after he had been missing for three days, are working to transform
him once again to his true identity, that of the Whitewater court
commissioner.

Mr. Williams was, while in college, a famous baseball pitcher, but in
1895, just after his graduation from the State University, disappeared
while en route to Chicago to begin his life work as a lawyer. It was
seven years before he was found, and he was then a farm laborer near
Merriville, Ind.

He came back to Whitewater, and all went well for a dozen years. Last
week Mr. Williams began to complain of headaches, and on Tuesday started
for Janesville on some legal business. He disappeared exactly as he had
twenty years ago. And the strange display of his dual personality was
that he immediately went to Merriville, Ind., and tried to get work at
the same farm where he was found after his first disappearance.

It took him three days to reach there, and as soon as he arrived, word
was sent back to his home here, and relatives went after him. The
doctors hope to restore his mind to the regular legal channels so
strangely abandoned for the “call of the farm.”


War Hits Circus Men; Few Tent Shows on Road.

The circus has received two hard blows this year, and daddy, uncle, and
auntie may not have many opportunities to take Johnny under the canvas
to see acrobats, tigers, and such.

War was the first setback circus people experienced. Then came the
foot-and-mouth disease among live stock. Each at first had an indirect
result, but now the loss of foreign acrobats, animal trainers, and wild
animals, together with the United States Bureau of Animal Industry
prescribing narrow zones in which a circus can move for fear of carrying
or contracting the foot-and-mouth disease, have caused lots of trouble
for the three-ring showmen.

As evidence of this condition, A. L. Wilson, manager of a big tent and
awning company of Kansas City, Mo., says that the demand for circus and
concession tents has practically been suspended, and he does not expect
it to resume until the European War is ended and the United States
government officials pronounce the country free of the foot-and-mouth
disease.


Persistent Wooer Mauled.

That the course of John Jestor’s true love for Miss May Sutton, of New
York, has been an intolerable rocky path was indicated when his cries
for assistance called several policemen into the vestibule of Miss
Sutton’s home. They barely dodged a butcher knife, of which the young
woman had disarmed her persistent suitor and had hurled it into the
street.

The policemen found Miss Sutton kicking Jestor about the vestibule,
cuffing his ears soundly and occasionally landing a doubled little fist
on his eyes, while he bellowed for aid.

Miss Sutton said that Jestor had declared that as she would not be his
wife, he would end both their lives.

Jestor, who is forty-five years old, cut both his wrists with a razor
three months ago, according to the police, because Miss Sutton had told
him to stay away from her. He was locked up on a charge of attempted
felonious assault.


Boy Bandit Comes to Grief.

After he had held up and robbed Miss Martha Zelf, eighteen years old,
assistant cashier of the People’s State Bank at Dodson, a suburb of
Kansas City, Mo., and forced her to give him three hundred and four
dollars of the bank’s money, a man giving his name as Luther Afton,
nineteen years old, of Merrick, Okla., was captured, and an hour later
pleaded guilty in the criminal court and was sentenced to twenty years
in the penitentiary.

The girl was alone in the bank when the young man entered. He pointed a
revolver at her and ordered her to hand him the money in the teller’s
cage. At first Miss Zelf laughed at him, and then handed him a double
handful of silver dollars. These he refused. The girl parleyed with him
a moment and finally complied with his demand for currency.

As the robber reached the door, the girl screamed for help. Immediately
a number of citizens gathered and pursued the robber, catching him in a
chicken yard.


Renders Objects Invisible.

Michael Comerford, of St. Johns, Newfoundland, claims to have discovered
a process of developing a film which, when placed in front of any
object, no matter of what character or size, absorbs the color and exact
form of the said object and presents a surrounding which hides from view
any object behind without the object being visible. In other words, the
invention is all that is claimed for it, and it makes it possible for a
man or a body of men to disappear in a twinkling. Mr. Comerford has
given several demonstrations of the invention to his friends, who say
that it will revolutionize modern warfare.


Discovers Funniest Joke.

The “funniest joke” has been rediscovered. Samuel Ramsey, a carpenter of
New Orleans, La., knows it, though a waiting world is yet to hear it.
Just as soon as Sam gets entirely free from the ether of the Charity
Hospital, he says he’s going to tell it.

Sam laughed so heartily at the joke that there came a click to his jaw,
and, to his dismay, he was unable to close his mouth. In his
predicament he was removed from his home to the hospital, where surgeons
endeavored to set the jawbones. A reporter interviewed Sam on his little
cot, and Sam wrote this on a slip of paper:

“I can’t tell it to you now--it’s too funny, but if you wait until I get
out of here, I’ll try to tell it.”


Patient is a Wireless “Nut.”

A patient in the State asylum, in Pueblo, Col., is suffering from an
unusual form of insanity. He believes that the wireless stations
throughout the world are preying on him and sapping his strength.

He wants to form a union for the purpose of elaborately attempting to
abolish aërial communication throughout the world.

So far as known this is the first time this peculiar hallucination has
come to notice.


Favors Pardon for Youtsey.

The Reverend Andrew Johnson, nominated for governor of Kentucky on the
Prohibition platform, announced that his first official act, if elected,
would be to pardon Henry E. Youtsey, who is serving a life sentence for
the assassination of William Goebel in 1899, while Goebel was contesting
W. S. Taylor’s gubernatorial seat.

This announcement will carry more weight than is apparent on the
surface, since the Democratic party has been divided two or three times
over efforts to pardon Youtsey, and petitions have been put in
circulation, principally by women, in aid of such effort.

Youtsey is only one out of more than forty men arrested for complicity
in the Goebel murder. Caleb Powers and James Howard, who were alleged to
be most concerned, were pardoned by Governor Wilson, Republican, several
years ago. As Youtsey confessed to his part in the crime, Democrats
contend he should be pardoned.

Mr. Johnson offers to withdraw from the race if the Republican or
Democratic party puts a State-wide prohibition plank in its platform.


Horse Falls in Hidden Well.

Chester Tupper, of Paternos, Wash., was riding through the orchard of C.
J. Stiner in pursuit of some cattle, when his horse broke through a
hidden well, which had been dug to a depth of sixty feet and then
covered with loose boards. Tupper threw himself clear of the saddle and
saved himself. The horse went down, but somehow managed to keep his head
above the water. A tripod was rigged with pulley and snatch block. A
team was hitched to this and the horse was brought safely to the
surface.


How White Woman Came Near Being an Indian.

If Mrs. Josephine Carroll, of South Omaha, Neb., had become a little
Indian papoose as she was slated to have been, one of Omaha’s most
enthusiastic charity workers and night-school instructors would be
missing to-day.

Mrs. Carroll was once slated to be a papoose. A squaw so wished her when
her parents were not looking. The squaw kidnaped the child a little more
than half a century ago, when Omaha was a buffalo pasture.

There was a rescue. But it never got into the papers. There were no
papers to print thrilling adventures that occurred around the Missouri
River bluffs in those days. The mother, Mrs. John Godola, walked right
out of the house, stopped the squaw, and took the child away from her.
If it were to-day, the movies would have a thriller on the screen about
it. But that was before Edison or any one else had thought of making
pictures walk and talk; also, those were the days when experience with
the Indians were many and grotesque. A mere kidnaping did not attract
much attention.

Mrs. Carroll’s mother lived at what is now Thirteenth and Farnam
Streets. At that time it was neither Thirteenth nor Farnam. It was just
a place in the hills, prairie and timber. The present Mrs. Carroll was
about three years of age. Her mother employed a young Indian squaw as a
domestic. All was fine, but the domestic didn’t like to work. She liked
to play with the baby, however. The baby took a great liking to the
brown maid.

One day the brown maid and the baby’s mother fell out. Straightway the
servant was dismissed. Being fired was a somewhat novel experience to
this brown maiden. She knew principally that she was expected to leave
the premises, and that her pay, whatever that may have been, was to
stop.

When the childish prattle was no longer heard, the mother rushed out
just in time to see the squaw disappearing over the hill with the child.
There was a hotly contested half-mile race. It was a race of the white
and the red. White won, and the precious child was brought back.


Millionaire is Generous.

Henry Pfeiffer, of Philadelphia, son of one of Cedar Falls’ earliest
pioneers, now head of the big chemical company of Philadelphia, St.
Louis, and Chicago, and a multi-millionaire, concluded a two weeks’
visit with his brothers and sisters here by presenting each of them with
a check for ten thousand dollars and an automobile. His benefactions in
this way totaled nearly one hundred thousand dollars.

The beneficiaries are H. J. Pfeiffer, L. Pfeiffer, Mrs. D. C. Merner,
Mrs. W. F. Noble, brothers and sisters, and ex-Mayor W. H. Merner, D. C.
Merner, and S. S. Merner, brothers-in-law. Besides this, the children of
all these people were likewise remembered handsomely.


Twin Children Made Taller.

Phaon and Uriah Schaeffer, four-year-old twins from Pinegrove, will be
returned to their home from the Miners’ Hospital, in Pottsville, Pa.,
fully an inch and a half taller than when they were admitted three weeks
ago.

The twins were so bowlegged as to be deformed, and Doctor J. C. Biddle,
to straighten out their limbs, put them in a plaster cast. The result
has not only been to straighten out the legs but to make the boys much
taller, while their walk is so different that they could hardly be
recognized by relatives.


Little Ship Sails to Find Arctic Explorer.

Within a month the little schooner _George B. Cluett_ will be bucking
ice in the arctic waters, on her way to Etah, Greenland. The _Cluett_
sailed from New York recently for Nova Scotia and Labrador, where she
will put off part of her cargo for the coast hospitals of the Grenfell
Association. Then she will sail on to search for Donald B. MacMillan and
his party.

MacMillan set out from New York just two years ago to explore Crocker
Land, the existence of which Rear Admiral Peary believed he had
discovered. According to a message which MacMillan managed to get back
some time ago, there is no such land. The American Museum of Natural
History, one of the chief backers of the expedition, is sending the
schooner _Cluett_ to find MacMillan.

At one of the hospital stations where the schooner will stop, Doctor E.
O. Hovey, of the museum, will be taken aboard. Captain H. C. Pickels, of
the _Cluett_, hopes to find MacMillan and his comrades waiting at Etah,
the expedition’s base, and to get out before the winter ice closes in on
the schooner. In that case he will be back in November. But the schooner
carries provisions to last two years.

If MacMillan has to be awaited for or search made for him, the long
winter will make neither task easy. The ship will then find herself
encompassed with leagues of ice. Eskimo huts will spring up around her
like mushrooms, and in the long arctic night it would be difficult to
identify the little _Cluett_ with the picture of her taken at New York
the other day.

But a closer acquaintance with Captain Pickels and the _Cluett_ helps
one’s imagination to bridge the gap. Ever since she was built, four
years ago, for the Grenfell mission service on the Labrador coast,
Pickels has commanded her. She was designed for work in Northern waters.
As the bronze plate in the captain’s cabin sets forth, she was presented
to Doctor Wilfred Grenfell in July, 1911, by George B. Cluett. That she
went to sea with purposes other than those of the ordinary trading
schooner, the plate makes plain in these few words: “The Sea is His and
He Made It.” The inscription in the brass band which binds the wheel,
“Jesus saith I will make you fishers of men,” serves to distinguish her
from the run of fishing craft which infest the Labrador waters. But for
these symbols of a higher vocation she is just like them, save that she
is much more stanch.

Although the proved nimbleness of the _Cluett_ leads her charterers to
hope that she may slip in and out with the rescued MacMillan party in
time to get back to New York in November, the way food supplies have
been poured into her show that no chances are to be taken in a locality
where, as the captain remarked, “ye can’t fetch stuff from a grocery
’round the corner.’” He shed light upon what for a dozen men might be
considered a two years’ food supply. Some two thousand pounds of beef,
nearly half of it canned and the rest pickled in brine, and an almost
equal quantity of mutton and pork, formed the backbone of the stores.
Beans and potatoes and barrel on barrel of pilot bread set off this
impressive meat supply, which winter hunting is to vary with fresh
steaks and roasts.

Several hundred pounds of coffee and a hundred of tea, onions, and many
gallons of lime juice to ward off scurvy, were important items;
strangely enough, not a particle of chocolate or coco. A comment upon
the rather small supply of milk--condensed, of course--as compared with,
for one thing, three hundred pounds of rolled oats, drew from the hardy
captain the explanation that crews in the North preferred molasses with
their oatmeal, and of molasses he had nearly a hundred gallons.

When the schooner starts on the last leg of the journey north, with
decks piled high with barrels of kerosene--the _Cluett_ is to be stocked
with nearly five thousand gallons of kerosene and nine hundred gallons
of gasoline for her engines--the only persons aboard beside the crew of
eight hardy Nova Scotians, will be the representative of the Natural
History Museum. Captain Pickels’ Newfoundland dog, “Chum,” completes the
list.


“Belled” Buzzard Appears.

When working on the Charles Dufour farm, two miles north of Vevay, Ind.,
Charles Hollcraft and son were surprised to hear a bell ringing in the
top of a high tree. On investigation they discovered a buzzard with a
sheep’s bell strapped around one of its wings in such a manner that at
each flap of the wings the bell tinkled. Seven years ago a “belled
buzzard” was seen in various parts of Switzerland County at frequent
intervals, but finally disappeared.


Woman Operates Zinc Mine.

One of the most active prospectors and mine operators in the extensive
zinc-mining district of southwest Missouri is a woman, Mrs. Sarah
Matlock. There is much activity in the Wentworth district, where her
interests are located, and she is carrying on operations on a big scale.
One of her many mining properties comprises one hundred and sixty acres.
The biggest mine in that district is owned by her. Much of her land is
subleased.


Indian Given State Office.

Oliver la Mere, of the town of Winnebago, Neb., is the first Indian to
hold an appointment under the Nebraska State government. He has been
appointed dairy inspector by Food Commissioner C. E. Harman, a
department of which Governor Morehead is the chief.

Mr. la Mere is not an expert dairyman, but is a farmer, and has had
considerable experience with dairy cattle and dairy products.

He is thirty-six years of age and has a wife and seven children. He
attended the Indian school at Genoa, Neb., three years and attended
school at Carlisle, Pa., in the year 1902. While he was a student there
during that year he played center on the famous Indian football team. He
then weighed two hundred and five pounds. He has written some newspaper
articles on Indian clan organizations and Indian burial customs, and has
coöperated with the government in anthropological research.


Lightning-rod Dispute is Officially Settled.

A few days ago a lightning-rod salesman near Bloomington, Ill., was
struck by lightning and seriously injured. Notwithstanding the fact that
the unfortunate salesman could not be expected to have his person and
rig fitted out with a system of his alleged lightning catchers,
extending far above his head and continually plowing into the roadway,
as he made his tours of the country, still, the incident again revived
the oft-discussed question as to the efficacy of the wares that
constituted his stock in trade--the great American lightning rod--the
mysterious economic discovery that has caused thousands of American
farmers the loss of so much sleep and so many dollars in coin of the
realm.

Ever since Ben Franklin designed the lightning rod as a means of
protecting structures from lightning stroke, there has been periodically
raised the question of the efficiency of these rods as a means of
warding off the bolts from the heavens. Men of eminence in the
electrical world have been found arrayed on both sides of the question,
and in order to arrive at some well-founded conclusion, the subject was
taken up by the weather department.

The investigation was conducted by Professor J. Warren Smith, who
addressed an open letter to the mutual fire-insurance companies
throughout the country, especially those in the rural districts, asking
for any information which these organizations might have which might
throw some light on the subject. The value of the rods was undoubtedly
attested to in the answers, and Benjamin Franklin has received full
vindication.

In two recent years two hundred mutual companies doing a business of
fully $300,000,000 had 1,845 buildings struck by lightning. Of this
number only sixty-seven were equipped with lightning rods. So far as
could be learned, about thirty-one per cent of the buildings insured by
these companies were rodded; hence, if the rods had furnished no
protection, the number of rodded buildings struck should have been five
hundred and seventy-two instead of sixty-seven.

Thus the efficiency of the rods in actually preventing lightning strokes
appears to have been about ninety per cent. It may be fairly assumed
that a large part of the damage done to the rodded buildings occurred in
cases where the rods were improperly installed or in poor condition.

Five companies, with over 18,000 buildings insured, of which more than
fifty per cent were rodded, reported that they had never had a building
burned or even materially damaged by lightning that was equipped with a
lightning rod; their records covering periods ranging from thirteen to
twenty-five years.

Another important fact brought out by Professor Smith’s figures is that
when a rodded building is struck by lightning and damaged but not burned
down, the average damage is much less than in an unrodded building,
viz., ten dollars in the former and twenty-two hundred dollars in the
latter.


Boy Attempts to Fly; Falls.

John Mitchell, aged fourteen, living in the Mount Vernon Road below
Evansville, Ind., attempted to rival the birds, and came to grief, with
a broken arm. Mitchell made a girder and wings after a pattern in a
boy’s book which he bought at a local store.

He attempted to glide from the loft of the stable to the ground. The
girders were not strong and the wings collapsed. Mitchell fell to the
ground and his left arm was broken near the elbow and he suffered slight
internal injuries.


Sharpening Stones; Their Various Uses.

Not many people realize that there is a special sort of whetstone for
nearly every purpose. The proper sharpening stones for each different
use are exhibited in the National Museum at Washington, D. C., and there
are hundreds of them.

The hard, white, compact sandstone found near Hot Springs, Ark., are
among the best whetstones known, equaling, if not surpassing, the Turkey
stone, which for years has been considered one of the best.

The hard, flintlike stone should be used only to sharpen instruments
made of the very best steel, requiring very keen edges and points such
as those used by surgeons, dentists, and jewelers. Other grades,
although composed of the same ingredients, are more porous, the sand
grains are not as close together, and a rougher edge is given to the
sharpened tool. Because of their more porous nature, these stones cut
faster, proving suitable for the finer-edged tools and for honing
razors.

Indiana and Ohio supply a whetstone made from a sandstone of a coarser
grain than the novaculite of Arkansas, but nevertheless quite uniform.
It may be used with either oil or water, and is useful for sharpening
household cutlery or ordinary carpenters’ tools. But since it is easily
cut and grooved by hard steel, it is not suitable for the fine
instruments of dentists and surgeons.

Scythe stones and mowing-machine stones are practically all made from
mica schist rocks found in New Hampshire and Vermont. These rocks are
composed of very thin sheets of mica and quartz crystals. The grit of
the schist is not as sharp as that of the sandstone, because it contains
foreign material other than silica, which prevents the quartz grains
from abrading freely.

Mica-schist stones wear down quickly from constant use--an advantage
rather than a disadvantage, for, as they wear down, more of the hard
silica grains are exposed to do the sharpening. Neither oil nor water is
needed to keep the pores of the stone open, as with other whetstone
rocks. Scythes require stones with these qualities.


Stove Trouble is Solved.

For some time it has been impossible for the family of James Rich, of
Fidelity, to use the stove in the summer kitchen, because the flue had
become choked in some manner. The other day Mrs. Rich noticed a cat
sitting on the stove and looking steadfastly at the stovepipe. At the
same time Mrs. Rich’s attention was attracted by a tap-tap-tapping
sound. Although the woman is not a spiritualist, she answered the three
taps by rapping on the stove with a fork handle. The taps responded from
the stovepipe.

She called her husband and he too listened to the mysterious rappings.
Finally they decided to take down the pipe and investigate. They did so,
and what should suddenly emerge from the pipe but a red-headed
woodpecker much soiled from his adventure in the pipe’s sooty retreat.

The bird immediately took wing and flew away, pursued by other birds
that seemed to mistake him for some new species. Mr. Rich then lighted a
fire in the stove, and the flue has been drawing excellently ever since.


Girls Hang to Ties for Life.

Hanging from their hands from a high trestle of the Baltimore & Ohio
Railroad, near Yarklyn, Del., residents of Mount Cuba escaped death when
an express train overtook them.

Mrs. Mary Flusher attempted to run to the end of the trestle, but was
overtaken by the train and hurled down an embankment after her leg had
been cut off. She was taken to the Delaware Hospital in a critical
condition.

Miss Ryan and Miss Sastburn, together with Mrs. Fisher, were utilizing a
short cut homeward. Both girls dropped between the ties and clung with
their fingers as the train thundered over them. Members of the train
crew dragged them to safety after it was brought to a stop.




The Nick Carter Stories

ISSUED EVERY SATURDAY         BEAUTIFUL COLORED COVERS


When it comes to detective stories worth while, the =Nick Carter Stories=
contain the only ones that should be considered. They are not overdrawn
tales of bloodshed. They rather show the working of one of the finest
minds ever conceived by a writer. The name of Nick Carter is familiar
all over the world, for the stories of his adventures may be read in
twenty languages. No other stories have withstood the severe test of
time so well as those contained in the =Nick Carter Stories=. It proves
conclusively that they are the best. We give herewith a list of some of
the back numbers in print. You can have your news dealer order them, or
they will be sent direct by the publishers to any address upon receipt
of the price in money or postage stamps.

714--The Taxicab Riddle.
717--The Master Rogue’s Alibi.
719--The Dead Letter.
720--The Allerton Millions.
728--The Mummy’s Head.
729--The Statue Clue.
730--The Torn Card.
731--Under Desperation’s Spur.
732--The Connecting Link.
733--The Abduction Syndicate.
736--The Toils of a Siren.
738--A Plot Within a Plot.
739--The Dead Accomplice.
741--The Green Scarab.
746--The Secret Entrance.
747--The Cavern Mystery.
748--The Disappearing Fortune.
749--A Voice from the Past.
752--The Spider’s Web.
753--The Man With a Crutch.
754--The Rajah’s Regalia.
755--Saved from Death.
756--The Man Inside.
757--Out for Vengeance.
758--The Poisons of Exili.
759--The Antique Vial.
760--The House of Slumber.
761--A Double Identity.
762--“The Mocker’s” Stratagem.
763--The Man that Came Back.
764--The Tracks in the Snow.
765--The Babbington Case.
766--The Masters of Millions.
767--The Blue Stain.
768--The Lost Clew.
770--The Turn of a Card.
771--A Message in the Dust.
772--A Royal Flush.
774--The Great Buddha Beryl.
775--The Vanishing Heiress.
776--The Unfinished Letter.
777--A Difficult Trail.
782--A Woman’s Stratagem.
783--The Cliff Castle Affair.
784--A Prisoner of the Tomb.
785--A Resourceful Foe.
789--The Great Hotel Tragedies.
795--Zanoni, the Transfigured.
796--The Lure of Gold.
797--The Man With a Chest.
798--A Shadowed Life.
799--The Secret Agent.
800--A Plot for a Crown.
801--The Red Button.
802--Up Against It.
803--The Gold Certificate.
804--Jack Wise’s Hurry Call.
805--Nick Carter’s Ocean Chase.
807--Nick Carter’s Advertisement.
808--The Kregoff Necklace.
811--Nick Carter and the Nihilists.
812--Nick Carter and the Convict Gang.
813--Nick Carter and the Guilty Governor.
814--The Triangled Coin.
815--Ninety-nine--and One.
816--Coin Number 77.


NEW SERIES

NICK CARTER STORIES

1--The Man from Nowhere.
2--The Face at the Window.
3--A Fight for a Million.
4--Nick Carter’s Land Office.
5--Nick Carter and the Professor.
6--Nick Carter as a Mill Hand.
7--A Single Clew.
8--The Emerald Snake.
9--The Currie Outfit.
10--Nick Carter and the Kidnaped Heiress.
11--Nick Carter Strikes Oil.
12--Nick Carter’s Hunt for a Treasure.
13--A Mystery of the Highway.
14--The Silent Passenger.
15--Jack Dreen’s Secret.
16--Nick Carter’s Pipe Line Case.
17--Nick Carter and the Gold Thieves.
18--Nick Carter’s Auto Chase.
19--The Corrigan Inheritance.
20--The Keen Eye of Denton.
21--The Spider’s Parlor.
22--Nick Carter’s Quick Guess.
23--Nick Carter and the Murderess.
24--Nick Carter and the Pay Car.
25--The Stolen Antique.
26--The Crook League.
27--An English Cracksman.
28--Nick Carter’s Still Hunt.
29--Nick Carter’s Electric Shock.
30--Nick Carter and the Stolen Duchess.
31--The Purple Spot.
32--The Stolen Groom.
33--The Inverted Cross.
34--Nick Carter and Keno McCall.
35--Nick Carter’s Death Trap.
36--Nick Carter’s Siamese Puzzle.
37--The Man Outside.
38--The Death Chamber.
39--The Wind and the Wire.
40--Nick Carter’s Three Cornered Chase.
41--Dazaar, the Arch-Fiend.
42--The Queen of the Seven.
43--Crossed Wires.
44--A Crimson Clew.
45--The Third Man.
46--The Sign of the Dagger.
47--The Devil Worshipers.
48--The Cross of Daggers.
49--At Risk of Life.
50--The Deeper Game.
51--The Code Message.
52--The Last of the Seven.
53--Ten-Ichi, the Wonderful.
54--The Secret Order of Associated Crooks.
55--The Golden Hair Clew.
56--Back From the Dead.
57--Through Dark Ways.
58--When Aces Were Trumps.
59--The Gambler’s Last Hand.
60--The Murder at Linden Fells.
61--A Game for Millions.
62--Under Cover.
63--The Last Call.
64--Mercedes Danton’s Double.
65--The Millionaire’s Nemesis.
66--A Princess of the Underworld.
67--The Crook’s Blind.
68--The Fatal Hour.
69--Blood Money.
70--A Queen of Her Kind.
71--Isabel Benton’s Trump Card.
72--A Princess of Hades.
73--A Prince of Plotters.
74--The Crook’s Double.
75--For Life and Honor.
76--A Compact With Dazaar.
77--In the Shadow of Dazaar.
78--The Crime of a Money King.
79--Birds of Prey.
80--The Unknown Dead.
81--The Severed Hand.
82--The Terrible Game of Millions.
83--A Dead Man’s Power.
84--The Secrets of an Old House.
85--The Wolf Within.
86--The Yellow Coupon.
87--In the Toils.
88--The Stolen Radium.
89--A Crime in Paradise.
90--Behind Prison Bars.
91--The Blind Man’s Daughter.
92--On the Brink of Ruin.
93--Letter of Fire.
94--The $100,000 Kiss.
95--Outlaws of the Militia.
96--The Opium-Runners.
97--In Record Time.
98--The Wag-Nuk Clew.
99--The Middle Link.
100--The Crystal Maze.
101--A New Serpent in Eden.
102--The Auburn Sensation.
103--A Dying Chance.
104--The Gargoni Girdle.
105--Twice in Jeopardy.
106--The Ghost Launch.
107--Up in the Air.
108--The Girl Prisoner.
109--The Red Plague.
110--The Arson Trust.
111--The King of the Firebugs.
112--“Lifter’s” of the Lofts.
113--French Jimmie and His Forty Thieves.
114--The Death Plot.
115--The Evil Formula.
116--The Blue Button.
117--The Deadly Parallel.
118--The Vivisectionists.
119--The Stolen Brain.
120--An Uncanny Revenge.
121--The Call of Death.
122--The Suicide.
123--Half a Million Ransom.
124--The Girl Kidnaper.
125--The Pirate Yacht.
126--The Crime of the White Hand.
127--Found in the Jungle.
128--Six Men in a Loop.
129--The Jewels of Wat Chang.
130--The Crime in the Tower.
131--The Fatal Message.
132--Broken Bars.
133--Won by Magic.
134--The Secret of Shangore.
135--Straight to the Goal.
136--The Man They Held Back.
137--The Seal of Gijon.
138--The Traitors of the Tropics.
139--The Pressing Peril.
140--The Melting-Pot.
141--The Duplicate Night.
142--The Edge of a Crime.
143--The Sultan’s Pearls.
144--The Clew of the White Collar.


Dated June 19th, 1915.

145--An Unsolved Mystery.


Dated June 26th, 1915.

146--Paying the Price.


Dated July 3d, 1915.

147--On Death’s Trail.


Dated July 10th, 1915.

148--The Mark of Cain.


   =PRICE, FIVE CENTS PER COPY.= If you want any back numbers of our
  weeklies and cannot procure them from your news dealer, they can be
  obtained direct from this office. Postage stamps taken the same as
                                money.

     STREET & SMITH, Publishers, 79-89 Seventh Ave., NEW YORK CITY