CHAPTER I.
THE WOMAN FOUND DEAD.
The telephone communication was from Arthur Gordon, the prominent New York banker and broker, then a candidate for election to Congress on the Fusion reform ticket—a communication so sensational in character and so imbued with alarm and anxiety on the part of the speaker, that it evoked only the following terse, decided response from Nick Carter, to whom the frantic appeal had been made:
“I will go right up there, Mr. Gordon. I will be there in ten minutes.”
“What’s the trouble?”
The inquiry came from Chick Carter, the celebrated detective’s chief assistant, when Nick arose from his swivel chair and hurriedly closed his roll-top desk.
“A murder has been committed, or said to have been,” he replied.
“A murder—where?”
“Columbus Avenue,” Nick said tersely. “Arthur Gordon is under arrest for the crime. The woman’s body was found by—but we’ll get the details later. You had better go with me. Luckily Danny is at the door with the touring car. We will lose no time.”
Both detectives were leaving Nick’s Madison Avenue residence when the last was said, hurriedly putting on their overcoats while entering his powerful motor car. In another moment both were seated in the tonneau and speeding north through the crisp air of the October morning. It then was nine o’clock.
Nick had hurriedly given Danny, his chauffeur, the Columbus Avenue address of the house in which the murder was said to have been committed, and he remarked, a bit grimly to Chick, while they settled back on the cushioned seat:
“By Jove, it’s strange how Gordon repeatedly gets into trouble.”
“I should say so.”
“He certainly is up against it good and hard. It’s less than a year since we pulled him out of that scrape in which he was suspected of having killed his stenographer—that double-dyed rascal, Mortimer Deland, who fooled him so completely in female attire.”
“Yes, I remember,” Chick nodded. “But what is he now up against? What did he tell you?”
“I did not wait to learn many of the details,” Nick replied. “He has just been arrested by a plain-clothes man and a policeman. The latter was sent to his house by Detective Phelan, who evidently had learned enough to warrant his arrest.”
“Great guns! is it possible?”
“Gordon yielded submissively, of course, and was allowed to telephone to me.”
“Was he at his home in the Bronx?”
“No. He has been living with his parents in Riverside Drive during his present political campaign. His wife and her uncle, Rudolph Strickland, are with them. It is more convenient for Gordon to be in town while making his political fight, than at his Bronx residence.”
“By Jove, this comes at a bad time for him, Nick, if there really is any serious evidence against him,” Chick said gravely.
“A bad time, indeed.”
“We are almost on the eve of election. Gordon has put up a splendid fight against Madison, his Congressional opponent on the Democratic ticket. His election, though the possibility was ridiculed at first, now is conceded in many quarters, and it looks to me like a cinch—unless this affair turns the tide of public opinion,” Chick added, more seriously.
“That suggests something,” Nick replied.
“You mean?”
“That this affair may be a frame-up, a dastardly scheme designed to have just the effect you mentioned. In other words, Chick, to throw Gordon down at the last moment and so insure Jack Madison’s election.”
“But Madison would not do such a beastly trick as that, nor even connive at it.”
“Don’t be so sure of it,” Nick said dryly. “Men with political ambitions, some men, at least, are capable of infernally wicked work. Madison is very anxious to carry this election, and so is the party machine. There is much depending on it.”
“That’s very true,” Chick allowed. “But I cannot believe Madison capable of such knavery, to say nothing of murder. Who is the victim?”
“Matilda Lancey.”
“The deuce you say! Her reputation is infernally bad in circles where she is well known.”
Both detectives had seen her occasionally and were aware of her shady reputation. She was a frequenter of the theaters, the best hotels and the fast restaurants, with a capacity for wine that made her, in one respect at least, a desirable patron, though in public she never went beyond certain discreet points.
Tilly Lancey, in fact, as she was familiarly known, enjoyed friendly relations with a small legion of fast society chaps and men about town, and was equally distinguished for her striking beauty, her fine figure, her costly jewels, and beautiful gowns. That she had met her death at the hands of a man of Arthur Gordon’s type seemed utterly incredible.
“Tilly Lancey, eh?” Chick muttered audibly. “So she has come to the end of her career. It has been hinted by some of the mud-slinging stump speakers, Nick, that Madison has been quite as friendly with Miss Lancey as the law allows, in view of the fact that he has a wife and family.”
“Still another reason, perhaps, why my suggestion has feet to stand on,” Nick replied. “There is nothing in speculating upon it, however, before we have learned just what has been done and what evidence has been found. Let her go lively, Danny.”
There was little occasion for the last. Danny then was running nearly at top speed up Fifth Avenue, guiding the flying car with the eye and hands of an expert.
Policemen on the crossings stared amazedly till they caught a glimpse at the face of the famous detective, and, when instantly recognized, they made no attempt to stop him. They knew that only an emergency case would take him at that high speed through the most fashionable New York thoroughfare.
Less than ten minutes had passed when Danny swerved to the curbing near the home of Miss Matilda Lancey. A taxicab was standing directly in front of the house.
It was a brownstone dwelling occupying a corner lot, one of a block of five, the house having three flats accessible through a single front door and entrance hall.
A policeman was standing on the steps. He was talking with a slender man in a plaid business suit, a man with an intellectual, or professional type of countenance, with wavy hair, a pointed beard, and gold-bowed spectacles. He had a wad of “copy paper” and pencil in his hand, and he turned quickly when Nick and Chick ascended the steps, asking politely:
“Do you object to my going in with you, Mr. Carter? I am a city news man. I will be very discreet as to the story I turn in, or will be governed entirely by your wishes. I happened to be passing and saw Officer Gilroy on the steps. He told me a murder has been committed.”
“How did you happen to recognize me?” Nick inquired, pausing briefly and eying the man a bit sharply.
“I did not recognize you,” smiled the other. “Gilroy mentioned your name when your car stopped at the curbing.”
“Well, I don’t know myself just what has been done here,” said Nick. “I prefer not to grant your request immediately. You may wait here until I have looked things over, if you like, and if I then have anything to give you for publication, I will inform you.”
“Very well, sir. Thank you for that.”
“Which flat, Gilroy?”
“The first one, Mr. Carter,” said the policeman. “Detective Phelan is in there. Wait in the vestibule, Mr. Hawley, if you like,” he added to the reporter. “Mr. Carter will not forget you.”
Nick heard these added remarks, including the reporter’s name, while he entered the house with Chick. He noticed that there were several drops of dry blood on the polished, uncarpeted floor near the door of the first flat.
A polished stairway led up to the second floor. There were three women in mourning gowns seated on the upper stairs; with pale and awed gaze they turned upon the two detectives.
Nick found the door of the first flat ajar, and he entered without knocking. A large dark man about fifty years old was seated in one of the armchairs in the handsomely furnished front parlor, but he at once arose when the two detectives entered.
“I have been waiting for you, Nick,” said he, after a word in hearty greeting. “Gordon telephoned to me after his arrest, stating that you were coming here at his request, and asking me not to disturb things before you arrived. I have done very little in that line, so I decided to wait for you. That’s equivalent to admitting, you see, that I realize your head to be longer than mine.”
“Thanks, Phelan,” said Nick, smiling faintly.
“I’m thinking, however, that this job won’t require a very long head,” Phelan quickly added. “The truth sticks out all over it.”
“Involving Arthur Gordon?”
“I feel so sure of it that I sent a policeman, Jim Kennedy, to arrest him.”
“As convincing as that, is it?”
“That’s what, Nick, and there’s no telling what a man might do who has done a job of this kind. I thought I’d better get him without delay.”
Nick glanced around the room, noting a few drops of blood on the thick Wilton carpet, a scattered trail leading through a broad, curtained doorway into an adjoining room. One curtain of the portière was partly torn from its pins and was hanging awry from its walnut rod.
“Step in there and have a look,” said Phelan. “Nothing can be done for the woman, so I’ve not called a physician. She was dead and gone long ago.”
Nick drew aside the portière and entered the adjoining room. It evidently had been used for a living room, or a library. In the middle of it stood a table covered with newspapers, books, and magazines.
A desk between two windows overlooking the side street, the roller shades of which still were drawn down, had been broken open and some of its contents were scattered over the floor.
Against the wall of an adjoining bedroom, accessible from a passageway leading to a dining room and kitchen, stood a sofa, on which were several handsome silk pillows. Two of them were bespattered with blood.
On the floor near one end of the sofa lay the lifeless form of the woman. She was clad in a handsome evening dress. Her bare neck and shoulders were covered with blood. Her luxuriant auburn hair was in disorder, matted with blood that had flowed from several gashes in the scalp. The skull had been beaten in with a heavy bludgeon of some kind.
She was lying on her left side, with her head nearly touching the baseboard of the wall, from which her right hand appeared to have fallen after a desperate effort to reach it, or to continue doing so.
In confirmation of this there was a coarse, angular, irregular scrawl on the wall paper, several words evidently written with a tremulous hand by the woman, and inscribed with the tip of her forefinger dipped in her own life’s blood—a scrawl ending abruptly with a direct downward stroke toward where her right hand was then lying. It was as if she had expired, or lost consciousness, at least, while making a desperate effort to write more, enough to tell in full the tragic story.
The several slanting, irregular words were legible, however, and there was no mistaking their fateful significance.
They read:
“Arthur Gordon did this to get the——”
That was all save the last downward stroke left by the falling hand.
Was it enough?
Was it all that would be required to convict, to send her assassin over the same dark river?
These were the first questions that arose in the mind of Nick Carter.