The Blue Veil: Nick Carter's Torn Trail

Nick Carter listened without interrupting.

The man addressing the famous detective was not one to be wisely interrupted. His strong face, his broad, thin-lipped mouth and square jaw, the glint of his steel-blue eyes, his portly and imposing figure—all denoted that he was the type of man that insists upon having his way, his inning at the bat, as it were, but who then would graciously accord the same privilege to another.

“The danger, Mr. Carter, cannot be overestimated,” he was forcibly saying. “It really is very terrible. We are living in constant peril. That man is a perpetual menace. Unless he can be wiped out of existence, or put behind prison bars, there is no telling what he might accomplish, no possible way to anticipate it and guard against it. I cannot for the life of me understand how he got by a detective as marvelously keen and discerning as you. I cannot, Carter, on my word.”

Nick smiled and knocked the ashes from his cigar.

“It is not very difficult to understand,” he replied, with patience unruffled. “There were two reasons for it, Mr. Langham.”

“Two reasons?”

“Yes. One, because the likeness between Chester Clayton and David Margate, or Doctor David Guelpa, in which character this exceedingly clever rascal then was posing, is a most extraordinary one. I doubt that two other persons could be found, not excluding the most perfect of twins, who look so precisely alike.”

“But you already knew of that extraordinary resemblance, Mr. Carter, when Margate eluded you and made his escape.”

“Very true,” Nick admitted. “But there were other facts which I did not know, and which I had had no way of learning. That is why there was a second reason for Margate’s escape. Any detective, even one as ‘keen and discerning’ as myself, if I may quote you, would be deceived by a seeming impossibility.”