On Death's Trail: Nick Carter's Strangest Case

The solitary ray of light that found its way into the dismal room seemed to shrink from entering.

Silence reigned supreme within.

Outside, even the stillness of the night was hardly broken.

It was a ray of moonlight, as feeble through the misty air as “the glowworm’s ineffectual fire.”

It found its way in, nevertheless, under one broken slat of a closed blind, and then it seemed to hesitate, losing life and shrinking from going farther.

Was there a lost life within?

The ray of light came farther and fell upon only one object in the room. All else was gloom and silence.

It stood near the partly open window and the closed blinds. It was as motionless as a block of stone, as white as a figure of marble, as cold as a form of clay.

Its covering of white hid it entirely from view, had there been eyes to see. It hung in flimsy folds on either side of the narrow, unpillowed bed. Now and then a breath of the night air stirred it, but only as if in mockery, and an observer would have shrunk and shuddered—lest its motion had been imparted by what it covered.

It was the only sign of life amid the gloom and silence.

Suddenly the stillness was broken, but only faintly. It was as if a bell tolled too soon the funeral knell. In some quarter remote from the dismal room, a clock struck the hour—three slow, mellow strokes of the bell.

Three o’clock in the morning.

Five hours afterward, when the November sun had risen into the heavens and dispelled the night mists that had hung over the slow-winding Potomac and the nation’s Capitol, a telephone communication sped from the office of the Washington chief of police to a suite in the Willard, in which three persons then were completing their toilets for breakfast.

One was the celebrated New York detective, Nick Carter, and his two companions were his two chief assistants, Chickering Carter and Patsy Garvan.

“I’ll answer it, chief,” said Patsy, who happened to be the nearest to the room telephone.

“Go ahead,” Nick nodded. “Who can want me at this hour? Harold Garland, perhaps, or Senator Barclay, though I can’t imagine for what.”

“It’s Captain Hadley, the chief of police,” said Patsy. “He wants to talk with you.”

Nick took the receiver and called:

“Hello! What’s wanted, Hadley?”

“That you, Nick?”

“Yes.”

“How soon can you leave to meet me?”

“Immediately, Hadley, if necessary.”

“Do so, then. Meet me as soon as possible, at Herman Fink’s undertaking rooms. You know the place. It’s where that crook, Andy Margate, who committed suicide when you cornered him last night, was laid out to remain until this morning.”

“I know, Hadley, of course,” Nick replied. “But what about him?”

“His body is missing.”

“Missing!” Nick echoed, amazed.

“Yes. It was stolen in the night. Fink just telephoned me that he cannot find——”

“Enough said, Hadley,” Nick interrupted. “We’ll see what we can find. I will join you there as soon as possible. I will leave at once.”

“Great guns!” Chick exclaimed, after Nick had told him what had occurred. “Margate’s body stolen! What’s the meaning of that? Are we up against another job in which that miscreant figures?”

“Gee! he’ll not cut much of a figure in any kind of a job,” said Patsy. “He was dead as a doornail when he was lugged into Fink’s back room. I can swear to that, chief, for I saw him stripped, and saw Doctor Nolan view the body. He’s the district coroner and ought to know his business. Say, chief, you don’t think that that rat has put anything over on us, do you?”

The last came from Patsy when he noticed the serious expression that had settled on Nick’s face.

“I hardly think so, though the bare possibility of it occurred to me,” Nick replied, hastening to finish his toilet.

“Holy smoke! it don’t seem possible.”

“Margate was a crafty dog,” Nick added. “He knew more than a wooden Indian. No, I don’t think, of course, that he can have fooled us.”

“Gee! that would be the last straw. I can’t believe it.”

“The theft of his body, nevertheless, unless it can be traced and proved to have been disposed of in some way is a serious matter.”

“Why so, Nick?”

“Because Margate was a dangerous crook. The disappearance of his remains is a thousand times more serious, in view of all of the possibilities involved, than would be that of an ordinary person. If Margate is still alive, incredible though it seems, he again becomes a dangerous menace to society.”