The Second Nick Carter MEGAPACK®, page 35
“What’s the answer, though?” he went on mentally. “Hanged if I can see more than one possibility. It strikes me that the great advantage of an electric in the hands of a crook would be its silence. That must be it—silence. But why should silence be of any particular importance to Simpson? He didn’t have to use any gumshoe methods at the bank; therefore, it looks as if he must have anticipated the need of stealth at the other end when delivering the loot at its destination.
“That’s the problem—that destination.”
CHAPTER XIII.
THE POLICE DOG ACTS STRANGELY.
“The fellow has lived in and around New York for fifteen years, at least, for he has been in the employ of the paper that long,” Gordon thought, continuing his analysis. “Probably he hasn’t had more than two weeks’ vacation a year. If so, he hasn’t had much chance to make friends elsewhere, or familiarize himself with the criminal possibilities of any particular locality. Hold up, though, my boy! The fellow may have been born in the East, and may have spent every vacation there. Better settle that before you go much farther.”
Impelled by this, he promptly called up Griswold’s office, and, after a little delay, Nick Carter’s magic name brought him directly into touch with the newspaper proprietor.
“It occurred to me to ask you another question or two about our friend S., Mr. Griswold,” Green Eye said apologetically. “What is he, a New Englander? Do you happen to know?”
“No, no! He comes from the Middle West—somewhere in Ohio.”
“But perhaps he has been in the habit of spending his vacations in Massachusetts?”
“I’ve already looked that up, Mr. Carter. The question occurred to me when I first learned of his disappearance. Those who know him best, though, in the office, tell me that he has either spent his little vacations at home, in New Pelham, or back in Ohio.”
“Then, so far as you know, New England is strange country to him?”
“It would seem so.”
“Now, about that electric—you haven’t known of his owning one in the past, have you?”
“Certainly not—he was paid only eighteen hundred a year.”
“I see. That’s all at present, thanks. Sorry to have troubled you.”
The clever scoundrel felt he was making headway.
“Now we can go ahead with a little more assurance,” he soliloquized, after he had hung up the receiver. “If New England is unknown to the fellow, or known only in a superficial way, it doesn’t seem reasonable to suppose that he would think of hiding the yellow boys there. Besides, he must have them where he can obtain access to them at frequent intervals—for he would be almost certain to be arrested if he presented a quantity of gold at any bank, either for deposit or to be exchanged for paper. That’s his hoard, therefore, from which he must draw.”
He grinned to himself.
“Tastes differ, of course,” he went on mentally, “but New England isn’t the place I’d choose if I had eighty thousand to spend. I would want a little more action than I could get there.
“Then what? Well, something tells me that the chap has headed back in this direction. New York would attract that money as surely as a magnet attracts iron filings. What’s more, Simpson is on his own ground here. And the electric car? It’s a tempting theory, confoundedly tempting! Why would a stay-at-home shrimp like Simpson think of hiding his treasure if not somewhere on his own bit of land? That’s it, I’ll wager! Not a bad idea, either, for, ordinarily, no one would think of looking there for him or his loot. The police, for instance, would spend a few years going over the rest of the world with a fine-tooth comb before it would ever occur to them to look for the fugitive at home.
“But apparently the wife is straight, and doesn’t know of her husband’s fall from grace. He can’t show himself to her, but he might safely pay visits to the place at night, thanks to the silence of his little electric. By George! What if I’m right? What a cinch for your Uncle Ernest! I’m almost tempted to go there at once, and see if I can locate the good old stuff. But, no, that won’t do. I’ll keep on playing a thinking game as long as I can, and leave the legwork to the worthy Jack Cray.”
He threw a glance in the direction of Nick Carter’s safe.
“Besides,” he continued inwardly, “eighty thousand isn’t so much, after all. If I find what I hope to in that safe, and play my cards right, I ought to make several times eighty thousand, and I mustn’t let the grass grow under my feet, for Carter may come home in a very few days.”
He got up, and was about to approach the safe, when there came a knock at the door, and, in response to his somewhat surly invitation, Mrs. Peters, the housekeeper, appeared on the threshold. She was dressed for the street, and had a strap wrapped about the knuckles of one hand.
“I’m going to take my usual constitutional, sir,” she announced, “and I thought, if you had no objection, that I would take Prince with me. He’s been shut up in the kennel most of the time since you went away, and what he really needs is a good run.”
Just then the detective’s famous police dog pushed past the housekeeper’s skirts, and pattered into the study at the end of the leash which Mrs. Peters held.
The animal started eagerly for his master, as if surprised to find him there. Suddenly, however, he halted, the hair along his back raised in a bristling line, and an unmistakable snarl escaped him.
“Good boy! Good old Prince!” Gordon said, in a wheedling tone, but he had turned pale, and his eyes were very ugly. “Take him by all means, Mrs. Peters. His confinement doesn’t seem to have improved his temper—and I’m busy.”
But the housekeeper was staring from Prince to the man she believed to be her employer.
“Well, I never expected to see anything like that!” she ejaculated wonderingly. “Don’t you know your own master, Prince? What’s the matter with you, anyway? You are not going mad, are you?”
Green Eye’s hand had mechanically sought the pocket in which the automatic lay.
“Oh, it’s nothing like that,” he said, with assumed lightness. “The heat has put him a bit out of temper, that’s all. Take him away, and let him work off his grouch.”
Still looking very much bewildered, Mrs. Peters turned to go, but she had to drag the dog from the room by main force, and the more she pulled at the leash, the more he snarled.
When the door finally closed upon them, Gordon passed a trembling hand across his forehead, and his fingers came away damp with sweat.
“Curse the brute!” he muttered savagely. “If he does that again, I’ll have to put him out of the way.”
He had intended to tackle the safe, but now he changed his mind once more. He was too much shaken by this last experience to attempt anything of that sort at present, and, therefore, he determined to take a walk and steady his nerves. In less than an hour he was back in Nick’s study, though, and the door was locked.
He was about to try his luck with the detective’s safe.
CHAPTER XIV.
CRAY CALLS ON MRS. SIMPSON.
It was quite early in the afternoon when Jack Cray reached New Pelham, and during his journey to that outlying suburb he had plenty of time in which to think out a plan of action, using as a basis Gordon’s suggestion that he should present himself as a fellow employee of the missing Simpson.
Cray walked briskly through the little town, having inquired the direction in which Floral Avenue lay, and soon came to a steep hill.
On the top of the hill the detective stopped to mop his brow, and as he did so, his keen eyes took in every detail of the scene that lay before him. There was not much of it—just a dozen or so houses strewn about at haphazard in the midst of a maze of newly built roads.
The latter ran here and there, not at right angles, but obliquely, in sweeping curves, circles, and what not. The houses were all different and distinctive in type, with not a single old-fashioned veranda to be seen. In short, the settlement on the hill aimed to be a modern and “artistic” suburban development, which, like most of its kind, was still in the early stages of growth.
Floral Avenue proved to be at the very end of the development, and everything about it seemed newest and most unfinished. At the corner of it stood a small house of two stories and a half, with dull-red shingled roof and trimmings.
Beside the door, in big, brass figures, was the number 31.
That it was the only house on the street seemed to have made no difference to the builder, who doubtless saw all the rest of the houses from one to thirty and on indefinitely in his mind’s eye.
No. 31 was very new, indeed. The lawn still plainly showed the seams where the strips of turf met, and the gravel walks evidently had not been rolled sufficiently, for they were scarred with footprints.
Plainly, Jack Cray had not looked for just this sort of thing. He paused at the gate and gave his red forehead a thoughtful mopping.
“Looks as if Griswold didn’t know the whole story, or forgot this part of it,” he speculated. “I got the impression that friend Simpson had been living in New Pelham for a long time, but he certainly hasn’t been living long in No. 31 Floral Avenue. Besides, this looks like a buying proposition, not a renting one.”
He ran his tongue along his lips, and a knowing look came into his eyes.
“I’ll bet he squeezed that fund for a few thousands before he raked in the whole bunch!” he muttered. “A little slick bookkeeping would have done the trick while they were disbursing funds for the immediate needs of the Hattontown sufferers. Some of it went into this house, if I’m not mighty badly mistaken, and I have a hunch that some more of it went to buy that electric machine he sported in Hattontown.”
Without further hesitation, Cray opened the gate and started up the front walk to an oddly shaped little stoop, which gave access to the front door. A neatly dressed servant answered his summons.
“Mrs. Simpson in?” Cray inquired.
“Yes, sir,” the girl answered, looking doubtfully at him, “but I don’t believe she will feel like seeing any one. She hasn’t been very well.”
“I hope she will see me,” Cray declared. “Please say that I’m Mr. Jones, from the Chronicle and Observer office, and would like very much to see her for a few minutes.”
The girl was obviously impressed by this information, and, without further argument, conducted him into one of the rooms off the reception hall, and then hurried away to communicate with her mistress.
With the natural instinct of the detective, Cray looked keenly about him, and there was something that impressed him at once.
The house he was in was by no means a large one, but the furniture seemed to have come from a much smaller house. The diminutive hatrack was positively lost in the square hall, the rugs were little more than patches on the inlaid floor, and the stair carpet—which he could see through the door—was shabby, and too narrow for the stairs.
In short, though John Simpson had recently taken a larger house, he had either been unable to furnish it adequately, or else had been too hurried or careless to do so.
“Mrs. Simpson will see you, sir,” the maid announced, when she returned. “She will be down in a few minutes.”
Presently, the fugitive’s wife descended the stairs. She was a small, slight woman, plainly dressed, and apparently about forty years of age, though her lined face and gray hair caused her to look much older than many women do nowadays at that age.
“You have news of my husband, Mr. Jones?” she asked eagerly, holding her hands out in unconscious pleading, so that Cray could see that they had been roughened by hard work.
It seemed curious that the mistress of such a house should find it necessary to do menial labor.
“Not yet, Mrs. Simpson, I’m sorry to say,” Cray answered reluctantly.
The woman sank into a chair and buried her face in her hands. There was no longer the slightest room for doubt as to her innocence. Plainly, she knew nothing whatever about the theft, although it might be that some of her worry was due to fear that something of the sort might account for her husband’s unprecedented absence.
“It’s hard lines, Mrs. Simpson,” the detective said sympathetically. “Your husband will turn up pretty soon, though, I’m sure.”
The wife raised her head and hastily wiped her eyes.
“You—you don’t think that he’s dead, then?”
“Oh, no, nothing like that!” Cray hastened to assure her.
“Oh, I do hope you are right, sir!” Mrs. Simpson said fervently. “If he isn’t dead, though, or terribly injured and unable to communicate with me, what can it possibly mean? Have they reported it to the police yet?”
“You mean the office?”
“Yes.”
Cray shook his head.
“That hasn’t seemed necessary—at least, that’s what the office seems to think,” he answered. “Mr. Simpson isn’t in a hospital, though, you may be sure.”
“Then where is he? If they don’t do something at the office, I shall be obliged to go to the police myself. I can’t understand why it wasn’t done long ago. John has been gone days and days now, and he’s never before stayed away from home unexpectedly for more than a few hours without letting me know just where he was. I don’t understand it; I don’t, I don’t!”
“I know it’s tough, Mrs. Simpson,” Cray admitted awkwardly. “I wish I had some good news for you, but I came, instead, to see if you could not tell me something that might throw some light on it. We are naturally very much interested at the office, and they thought I might be able to find out what had happened. Will you help me?”
“Of course, I’ll do anything I possibly can,” the distracted woman assured him. “It’s very kind in them, and of you, to take all this trouble. What is it you want to know, though?”
CHAPTER XV.
SOME INTERESTING INFORMATION.
Mrs. Simpson asked the question bravely enough, but there was a certain haunted expression in her eyes which suggested that some inkling of the situation might have come to her. If so, however, her love and loyalty had caused her to brush it aside.
Jack Cray did not feel quite comfortable. It seemed like tempting the woman to betray her own husband—was nothing less, in fact. That was unavoidable, however.
“Well, I hardly know what to ask,” he confessed, desiring to keep her, if possible, from attaching any great importance to his line of inquiry. “Something unusual is keeping Mr. Simpson away, that’s sure, and I’ve got to try to find out what it is. I’m afraid I’m not much of a detective”—he was mentally comparing himself with Nick Carter—“and, therefore, the only thing I can think of doing just now is to ask a lot of questions, and hope to hit upon something of interest before I get through.”
Mrs. Simpson did not look as if this appealed to her in all respects, despite her great desire to have the mystery cleared up.
“Of course, I’m not going to peddle what you tell me all over the office,” Cray hastened to say, noting her look of doubt. “Besides, you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to. I’ll try not to seem impertinent, though, or to tire you out, and remember it’s only because we want to find your husband.”
The woman nodded. “I understand,” she said. “Ask me anything you please, and I’ll try to answer it.”
“That’s the way to talk,” Cray commented, and then went on, after a slight pause: “They generally began a long ways back when they’re trying to dope out a thing like this. Suppose we try that method?”
He was playing the part of the novice very well, and it was clear that Mrs. Simpson had no suspicion of his real status. On the contrary, she soon showed signs of impatience, as if she looked upon his questions as boring and pointless. She continued to answer them politely and truthfully, however, and that was all Cray asked.
“You have lived here, in New Pelham, for some years, haven’t you, Mrs. Simpson?” the detective inquired.
“Yes, sir; ten years.”
“But not in this same house?”
“Oh, no, Mr. Jones. This has only been built a few months, and we were hardly settled, when my husband disappeared. We lived right in the village until recently.”
“Mr. Simpson is buying this on installment, I suppose?”
“Yes, sir. We have always rented until now, but he has long wanted to have a place of his own, and just lately he decided that he could afford it. It didn’t seem possible to me at first, but my husband’s salary had just been raised, and they had given him quite a lump sum, I believe, for the extra work entailed in handling this relief fund.”
The woman’s eyes were on Cray now, and there was a troubled, searching expression in them.
He nodded—there did not seem to be anything else to do. “Naturally, that would have made a difference,” he agreed, and was glad to see that Mrs. Simpson looked relieved. Apparently she had feared that he might deny the raise and the bonus.
“What a pity this should have happened just after you had moved into your new house!” he went on. “I hope Mr. Simpson hasn’t shouldered more than he can carry. That might explain it, you know. Possibly he has gone away in a fit of discouragement, after finding that the place would cost him more than he could afford. Real-estate people sometimes hold back essential facts, you know, in order to get a man’s signature to a contract.”
But he saw that that was a hardly less disturbing possibility in the woman’s eyes, and hastened to turn her thoughts into another channel.
“Or it may be loss of memory, or something of that sort,” he added. “Your husband may be wandering about without knowing his own name.”
Naturally, that suggestion met with no better reception, and Cray was obliged to give it up.
“There isn’t much use in speculating about it, though, until we get hold of more facts,” he declared. “I suppose you picked out this house?”
“No, I didn’t,” Mrs. Simpson said with some feeling. “I had nothing to say about it.”
“Is that so? I wouldn’t have thought Mr. Simpson would have gone ahead in any such way as that.”
