Читать книгу The Four-Fingered Glove; Or, The Cost of a Lie - Carter Nicholas - Страница 3

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The hands of the clock pointed at half-past five, one beautiful June morning, when Nick Carter, having just finished with his morning exercise and cold plunge, was told that there was a gentleman in the reception-room who wished to see him on matters of the utmost importance, as soon as he was at liberty to descend, and the servant who brought the message to her master passed a card through the partly opened doorway upon which was engraved in fashionable block lettering:

REGINALD MEADOWS DANTON.

Linden Fells.

“Young Danton, of Linden Fells, eh?” murmured the detective, as he proceeded with his toilet after placing the card on the dresser. “What in the world can he want at this hour? I should not hesitate to wager a considerable amount that he has never been out of bed at this hour before in all his life, unless it was because he had stayed up all night. Reggie Danton! Humph! Whether he is in trouble or not, it is safe to say that he believes he is, or he wouldn’t be here to see me so early in the morning.”

Ten minutes later Nick entered the room where his caller was awaiting him, only to find him pacing up and down between the window and the door, apparently under the greatest strain of excitement.

Nick Carter’s half-contemptuous, half-humorous remark, “Young Danton, of Linden Fells,” had been peculiarly appropriate, for Reginald Meadows Danton exactly filled one’s ideas of a young man of possibilities—and perhaps probabilities—who hailed from somewhere in the world of society and wealth.

He was neither tall nor short, fat nor lean; nor did there seem to be a distinguishing trait about his appearance or his manner, and yet there was an indefinable something which compelled a stranger to glance at him a second time, and then to wonder why he had done so. He was Reggie Danton to everybody, several times a millionaire in his own right, and the son of a man who had long since ceased to count his millions by units, having adopted multiples instead.

Linden Fells? Well, it was—and still is, although its name has since been changed—a magnificent estate situated on the bank of the Hudson River within a reasonable distance of New York. A place where once upon a time a very rich and eccentric German had brought his family and lived while he awaited the pardon of his emperor, and who had also brought with him a love for his own Unter den Linden. And as the estate was heavily wooded, he had given it the name of Linden Fells. Later, when the pardon came from his emperor, he had sold out for a song and returned to the fatherland: and so, Horace Danton, the father of Reggie, became possessed of it.

Then Linden Fells became transformed.

From the home of a recluse who used it only as a place of refuge while he awaited permission to return to his own country, it was turned into an open house of entertainment, for the Dantons liked to “sling things.”

Mrs. Danton was a beautiful woman of middle age, who still looked thirty—scarcely older, in fact, than her two children, Reginald and Mercedes, aged respectively, twenty-three and nineteen.

It had happened in the past that Nick Carter had done some little business for the head of the house of Danton, but it had been of a commercial character, and he had never met the other members of the family, although naturally they were all known to him by sight, as well as by the reputations they had earned for themselves in their own separate ways. Mrs. Danton—or the señora, as she was often called because of her Spanish ancestry—because she was a leader of society and a giver of the most lavish entertainments in New York and Newport; Reggie, because he was a self-confessed high roller who was inevitably getting into some sort of hot water and paying his way out of it with gold—whom everybody talked about, and laughed at, and wondered what he would do next, but who was nevertheless generally well liked, and among those who knew him best, respected, too; and Mercedes!

The reputation of Mercedes Danton can be comprehended in three words. She was beautiful, she was brilliant, and she was, above all, good.

Everybody loved Mercedes. Her father adored her; her mother worshiped her; her brother idolized her; her servitors almost deified her; and she merited it all.

Reference to her upon any occasion was comprehended in the utterance of her first name only. There was but one Mercedes in the world, one queen of beauty, one fountain of sympathy and goodness—Mercedes.

She was nineteen, with the poise, the repose and the presence of twenty-five. She was tall, regal, as graceful as a fawn; she had unfathomable, gipsy eyes, hair of a dead black, with a faint suggestion of waviness, and when the light struck it just right, a touch of amber somewhere in the depth of the tresses which disappeared as it came and which was inevitably changed to a reflection upon rather than from it; and with all her somber hair and eyes, her long black lashes and brunette presence, she had the complexion of an Irish beauty.

To describe Mercedes as beautiful is inadequate, for she was the standard of beauty.

And now, that we have outlined the chain of thought which flitted through the mind of Nick Carter as he descended the stairs to meet his early caller, we will return to the moment of their greeting.

“Good morning, Mr. Danton,” said Nick, as he entered the room. “You rose early this morning.”

“Yes. That is—fact is—I haven’t been to bed. Thank you. Yes; I will sit down. Are you Mr. Carter? Mr. Nick Carter? Pardon me for asking, but I wish to be sure.”

“Yes. I am Nick Carter.”

“I have heard my father speak of you several times, Mr. Carter. I suppose you are aware that my governor is abroad just now?”

“I think I noticed in one of the papers, about a month ago, a mention that he had sailed. I did not know that he had or had not returned.”

“No. He’s over there still. I say, Mr. Carter, do I look excited?”

“Well, yes, a little,” replied Nick, smiling. “Has something happened to upset you?”

“Well, rather! Do I talk as if I could tell a connected story? Eh?”

“Why, yes.”

“You’ll pardon me, I know, but you see I wish to be sure. The fact is—— by Jove, old chap, I’m all of a tremble yet. I’ve been trying for the last two hours—all the while, in fact, since I started to come here to see you, to pull myself together so that I could tell you a connected story, and ’pon my life I’m not at all sure of myself yet. It’s awful, you know, Mr. Carter! Horribly awful!”

“What is?”

“The murder.”

“The murder? Do you mean to say that you are speaking seriously and that you have come here to see me about a murder?”

“Yes. That’s the long and short of it.”

“Who is killed? Where was the crime committed? I hope, Mr. Danton, that this is not a specimen of one of the jokes you are so fond of perpetrating,” said Nick severely.

“Joke! gad! I wish it were a joke! No, Mr. Carter, it is very far from being a joke, I’m sorry to say. It’s a murder of the first water. A regular gem of the blue-stone variety. An out-and-out, dyed-in-the-wool, double-back-action, deliberate murder, carefully planned and scientifically executed, and”—he leaned forward in his chair and looked the detective straight in the eyes—“the joke will be on me, don’t you know.”

“What do you mean, Danton? You will have to be more explicit if you wish me to pretend to understand you.”

“Good Lord, I’m trying to be explicit. I mean that I will be accused of this murder—I mean that there will be developed the best chain of circumstantial evidence you ever heard of to convict me, and I mean that——”

He paused and rose from his chair, crossing the room to the window and then returning.

“Well?” said Nick. “What were you about to add to your statement?”

“I mean,” he said, slowly and impressively, “that I am not, myself, positive of my own innocence.”

There was half a moment of silence after that extraordinary statement, and it was Danton who spoke first.

“Do you wonder now that I asked you if I looked excited, and if you thought I could tell a connected story?”

“In the light of the statement you have just made, it seems doubtful if you can tell one,” said Nick slowly. “You tell me that there has been a murder committed, that you will be accused of the crime, that there will be circumstantial evidence which will tend to convict you of the crime, and that you are not sure that you are not guilty. Those statements are rather extraordinary, coming from a man who is supposed to be sane, Mr. Danton.”

“Well, all the same, they are God’s truths, every one of them.”

“Then suppose you tell me why you have come to me at five o’clock in the morning?” said Nick severely. “If you are not sure that you have not committed a crime—which is a statement to be taken with a large proportion of salt—you are more than half convinced that you have committed one. My business, Mr. Danton, is to catch criminals, not to protect them.”

“Well, that’s all right. That’s just what I want you to do. That’s why I came here at five o’clock in the morning.”

“Why?”

“Because I want you to catch and convict the criminal. If I am guilty I want you to convict me of it, just as if I were not here to engage your services. I want you to prove who did commit the crime, and if I did it I want you to prove it to my own satisfaction, as well as to a jury of twelve men. I’ve been asleep ever since I was born, Mr. Carter, but I woke up this morning in earnest, and I’m awake now, to stay awake.”