The Yellow Label

In this 1915 Nick Carter adventure, The Yellow Label; or, Nick Carter and the Society Looters, a polished club waiter named Max Berne secretly lives by wit, nerve, and ambition. At the exclusive Marmawell Club, he spies on wealthy Alfred Knox Atherton and fashionable Jack Frost, using skeleton keys, hidden passages, and a fire escape to overhear a suspicious private meeting. Convinced he has uncovered a major scheme, Max returns home to tell his wife, Elaine, a chorus girl who shares his restless hunger for a better life. Max is determined not merely to blackmail the men, but to bargain his way into their criminal world and profit from it. Though wary of Nick Carter's reputation for exposing conspiracies, he rides into the night on his motorcycle to Meadowview, a grand country estate near Freehold, where he expects a burglary to unfold. Instead, he finds the plan complicated by the unexpected return of the Massey family from the opera. As he watches the household settle and sees a safe opened to store the jewels, the danger—and the temptation—grow sharper, setting the stage for a tense battle of observation, greed, and detective skill. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.