Читать книгу A Stolen Name; Or, The Man Who Defied Nick Carter - Carter Nicholas - Страница 7

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The game of tennis was over.

There were indications of a shower, and the spectators had scampered toward the wide verandas for shelter, so that Nick Carter and the so-called Ledger Dinwiddie stood alone near one end of the net. It was the opportunity which Nick wanted.

“Well, Jimmy, this is a bolder game than usual, that you are playing, isn’t it?” he asked smilingly.

Duryea raised his eyes to the detective’s without a trace of resentment in them, and also without a vestige of surprise visible. He also raised his brows interrogatively.

“Now, I wonder where in the world you hit upon that name?” he said, in reply, and his expression denoted nothing more nor less than wonderment. “That is what my dear old dad used to call me, Jimmy! James Ledger Dinwiddie is my full name. How’d you hit upon the Jimmy part of it?”

“Oh, come, Jimmy, don’t try to play it out with me. You know it won’t work. You are Jimmy Duryea, all right—and the climate of The Birches isn’t good for you, just now.”

“What the blazes do you mean?” was the indignant ejaculation; and then: “I say, we’ll get caught in that shower, old chap. Come along!”

He seized his racket from the ground and started toward the house; but he had not taken two steps before Nick Carter seized him by the arm and propelled him toward a summerhouse that was near at hand.

“This place will shelter us, Jimmy,” he said coldly. “You come along with me. If you attempt to resist, I shall take you there anyhow, so if you don’t want a scene here on the lawn, come.”

“This is a high-handed——” began Duryea; but the detective interrupted him.

“It’ll be higher-handed if you don’t do as I say,” he remarked; and then the big, advance raindrops began to fall, and they ran together beneath the shelter of the summerhouse.

“Now, what the deuce——”

“Drop it, Jimmy. If you don’t, I’ll put the handcuffs on you now, and take you away with me through this storm. You know that I can do it.”

Bare-Faced Jimmy shrugged his shoulders. Then he laughed. He dropped his lithe and graceful length upon one of the rustic settees, thrust his hands deeply into his pockets, and replied:

“Well, speak your piece, Mr. Carter, since you seem bound to do so. I can listen, and the storm prevents my leaving you. Besides, there is no one to hear us.”

“No; there isn’t any one to overhear us. That is why I pulled you into this place.”

“Extremely kind and thoughtful of you, I’m sure; only, you’d have done better if you had not ventured to thrust yourself upon me at all, wouldn’t you? What the blazes is the matter with you, anyway?”

“Drop it, I say, Jimmy.”

“Gladly—if you’ll tell me what it is that you want me to drop,” was the cool reply. He removed his hands from his pockets long enough to abstract a cigarette case from another one, and to light a cigarette. “Have one? No? Too bad. They’re Russian.”

“Drop the play acting with me, Jimmy.”

“Say, look here, mister man, it was all right for you to make a play with that name that my dad used to call me—at first; but it’s getting tiresome,” exclaimed Duryea, with a fine show of rancour. “I’m Jimmy, all right, only nobody calls me by that name now. I’m Mr. Dinwiddie, particularly to strangers, if you don’t mind. I’ll thank you to address me by that name. What kind of a game are you up to, anyway? Blackmail?”

The effrontery of the man was phenomenal.

Instead of being offended by it, Nick Carter was amused; and he could not resist a small sense of admiration, too, for Duryea’s pluck, under the circumstances. He resolved to meet him on the ground he had selected.

“All right, Mr. Dinwiddie,” he said, smiling. “It is my wish to discuss a certain person whom we both knew in the past. If you prefer to speak of that person in the third person, I see no reason for not humoring you. But, before we continue with the subject, I wish to warn you that I am about through with your pose. I will talk in the third person about that other man, but you’ve got to talk—or something will happen.”

“How melodramatic. Look here, Carter, what are you driving at?”

“I’m driving at one Bare-Faced Jimmy Duryea.”

“Oh; you are! And who might he be? Or who might he have been? Is he a dead one, or is he alive, Mr. Carter? You interest me. Really, you do.”

“He has long since been supposed to be dead, but just now he seems to be very much alive.”

“That’s where you are dead wrong, Carter. Believe me, you are. Dead men do not return. Neither do they discuss tales of themselves. Bare-Faced Jimmy, eh? What a name!”

“It was never more appropriate than at this moment, Jimmy, for if you are not the most barefaced reprobate out of prison, I’ll eat my hat; and that’s quite a compliment.”

“I suppose so. Anyway, I choose to take it so, rather than be offended. But you said he was supposed to be dead—this Bare-Faced Jimmy, as you call him. Why not let him lie? What is the use of stirring up the dead?”

“He has been stealing jewels, that’s all.”

“Oh; has he?”

“Yes. He can stay dead just as long as he pleases if he returns those jewels, and then disappears again, at once.”

“I see. It must be his ghost that you are talking about, Carter.”

“Yes; we’ll call it that. The ghost of Bare-Faced Jimmy.”

“What has he got to do besides return the jewels he has stolen?”

“Beat it. Skip. Get out. Disappear.”

“What! All four, and all at once? Really. Say! Suppose the ghost refuses to walk?”

“He won’t refuse when he realizes just what he is up against.”

“Won’t he? Maybe you wrong him there. Perhaps you do not do this ghost full justice.”

“Perhaps not; but I think I do.”

“Say, Carter, honest, did you ever hear of a ghost that got caught? A real ghost?”

“I don’t think I ever did.”

“Well, you don’t hear of this one’s getting caught, either. If the ghost of Jimmy Duryea stole the jewels you are talking about, the ghost of Jimmy Duryea intends to keep them, and it will go hard with the man or woman—or shall I say the man and woman—who attempts to deprive the ghost of them.”

Nick Carter’s reply was a smile.

“There aren’t any witnesses to this conversation, Carter,” Duryea went on, “so I don’t mind being more or less plain with you for just a moment.”

“I am glad that you have arrived at that conclusion, Jimmy.”

“I’ll tell you this: If anybody has got to ‘drop it,’ as you suggested just now, you are the one to do it. You have bitten off more than you can chew. You just now said that Mr. James Duryea is dead. Let him lie. Mr. Ledger Dinwiddie stands before you, and Mr. Ledger Dinwiddie can prove his descent for generations back, and that without the slightest trouble. If Jimmy Duryea’s ghost walks, Nick Carter won’t be the man to lay it. You can bet your last dollar on that.”

“All the same, I think he will; and to prove it to you, I’ll just clap the irons upon you right now, Jimmy, and as soon as this storm is past I’ll take you where you belong.”

As the detective spoke he produced a pair of handcuffs from one of his pockets, and he held them, jingling before Duryea’s eyes, looking straight at the man.

But Duryea only laughed.

“Put ’em away, Carter,” he said. “You won’t use them; not on me; not to-day, at least.”

“Why not?”

“Because you won’t. That’s reason enough. What do you think would happen, if you should be ass enough to do what you threaten?”

“I think it would be Sing Sing for yours, Jimmy.”

“Not on your life; not much.”

“Why not?”

“Oh, I’ll admit, for the sake of argument, that you may have enough against the aforesaid James Duryea to send him up for the rest of his life; but—you know the old receipt for roasting a hare, don’t you?”

“Well?”

“First catch your hare, Carter. In this case, first catch the man—or shall I say the ghost?”

“Say what you please; it does not alter the circumstance.”

“Doesn’t it? You would find that it did. Admitting that the ghost of Jimmy Duryea is now standing before you, you have already agreed that a ghost was never caught. Do you suppose—you who claim to know me—that I would be fool enough, if I were the man you believe me to be, to stand here and defy you unless I knew exactly what I was doing?”

“You’ve got cheek enough to do almost anything, Jimmy.”

“Yes, and I have got brains enough to have prepared for all the emergencies that might arise, too. I asked you a moment ago if you realized what would happen if you should clap those irons onto me and take me away. You haven’t replied to that question, yet.”

“You answer it, then.”

“You would make a charge against me—as James Duryea. I would establish the fact that I am not James Duryea. All the pictures in the world, no matter whether they are in a rogues’ gallery or not, would have any effect upon the proof that I would be able to offer. I have a long line of ancestry to fall back upon. Ledger Dinwiddie is a personality, widely known in a certain locality where his home is—now. Jimmy Duryea is dead, and buried, and his bones can be dug up, if necessary. Nick Carter, the great detective, would make himself the laughingstock of the whole country.”

“Nick Carter isn’t a bit afraid of doing that, Jimmy.”

“And then, again, you heard my opinion—the one I gave out there on the lawn—about the personality of the thief who stole the jewels. I need only suggest to you that if you should enter that house now, and make a search, you might find the jewels, and you might not; but if you did find them, you would find that everything would point to the identity of the thief as I named it out there.”

“You scoundrel! Do you mean to say——”

“I mean what I have said—no more, no less. You cannot crush me, Carter; you haven’t got it in your power to do so, just now. I would rise, like a phœnix from the ashes, and laugh at you.”

“You think so.”

“No; I know so. I know exactly how thoroughly I have builded this edifice in which I am now living. And so, Mr. Nicholas Carter, the ghost of Bare-Faced Jimmy defies you!”

He stopped and then laughed mockingly.