Chapter I: Through Locked Doors

“The thing seems impossible!”

“Yet it’s true.”

“You mean to tell me that----”

“I mean to tell you that Mrs. de Puyster van Dietrich, who retired to her room in this hotel last night at eleven o’clock, was not there this morning when her maid went to call her, and that her doors were all bolted and locked, with the keys inside.”

“What about the windows?”

“Mrs. van Dietrich’s rooms are on the fourth floor.”

“Well?”

“She did not jump out, Mallory, if that’s what you mean. They overlook the sea, and there are jagged rocks immediately beneath her windows. She would surely have been killed if she had gone that way. Anyhow, she is a well-balanced woman, who enjoys life, and a multimillionaire. Why should she commit suicide?”

“I don’t know why she should, Savage. That’s nothing. Seventy-five out of a hundred suicides seem to have no good reason behind them--until investigation is made afterward.”

“She did not jump out of the window, I tell you.”

“Perhaps she fell out,” suggested Mallory, sticking to his guns.

“She neither jumped nor fell out,” snapped the other. “The rocks would tell the story if she had.”

James Mallory and Paul Savage, proprietors of the new summer hotel, the Amsterdam--situated on a picturesque promontory on the Delaware coast, with the broad Atlantic stretching away from its very foundation walls--faced each other blankly in their private office.

It was well on in the morning, and two weeks after the opening of the hotel, and judicious advertising had resulted in the house being comfortably full already. The rooms--some single, but mostly en suite--had been engaged largely in advance, and the guests were practically all of the well-to-do class, with a fair sprinkling of very wealthy.

Mrs. de Puyster van Dietrich was not the only multimillionaire, for there were several others.

Mallory was a stout, imposing-looking man, always immaculately attired, and with a suave manner that had perhaps led in the first place to his becoming a “promoter.” Assuredly it had helped him when fairly launched in that interesting occupation. His very appearance was a guarantee that the company he represented was sound and certain to pay healthy dividends to the stockholders.

Paul Savage, his partner, was a cadaverous individual, with many lines about his lank jaw and the hunted look in his deep-set eyes which one often sees in the hard-working business man, whose talent is mainly for detail.

The two men had been associated in various schemes for years. Some of them had turned out well, while others had not. Now they had plunged on this hotel scheme, got a company behind them, and were hoping that, when the time came for them to “unload,” they would find themselves with enough money to rest on their oars while selecting some new enterprise, which would promise even better than this.

On this morning, Mallory had been sitting behind his desk, swelling with satisfaction as he figured on the profits that would result from the guests who already were in the house, if they stayed a week or two longer, without counting others that might come.

He had just been reading a letter he had received a week ago from a certain Baroness Latour, who had engaged a suite of rooms, insisting that they must look out over the sea. The price was not so much an object, as her having pleasant rooms, with a clear ocean view.

“Well,” Mallory had muttered, “the baroness has rooms right over the cliff. That ought to suit her. I hope she slept well last night. There is a clear drop from her window of forty-five feet to the water, at least. The waves wash against the wall of the house on that side.”

He had got to this stage of his musings when Paul Savage burst in with the news that Mrs. van Dietrich had disappeared in so inexplicable a way from her apartments.

How a rather large lady, of dignified aspect and deliberate movement, could have been spirited from her bed and carried out of the house, without anybody being aware of it, was something that neither of the partners could comprehend.

“If her doors had been unfastened,” grunted Savage, “there might have been some explanation. But all of them are locked and bolted within.”

“She’d gone to bed, you say?”

“So her maid says. But she had dressed herself before she went away.”

“That shows she wasn’t kidnaped,” remarked Mallory.

“It doesn’t show anything,” rejoined Savage. “How do you account for the doors being fastened inside, with the keys left in the locks in the rooms? You don’t suppose a lady leaving her rooms would have somebody inside to bolt and lock the doors and then get out of the window in a flying machine, do you?”

“Where is the maid?” asked Mallory.

“In hysterics in the housekeeper’s room,” was the disgusted reply. “She and the housekeeper got in with the housekeeper’s master key, and after one look at Mrs. van Dietrich’s bed, the girl darted at her employer’s trunks, of which she had the keys, and searched through them. All the jewelry was gone.”

“H’m! Perhaps the maid----”

“She had never left her own room from the time she went there, after putting her mistress to bed, until she went to call Mrs. van Dietrich this morning. We have the testimony of the maid who shares the room with her for that. This maid was awake with the toothache, practically all night, and she knows the other one never left the room.”

“Have you done anything about it?” asked Mallory.

“Yes,” was the reply. “I heard about this thing two hours ago.”

“You did? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“What would have been the use? I thought I might find out, by quiet investigation, before I came to you. Only the housekeeper and the maid, Mary Cook, know Mrs. van Dietrich is gone. After ten minutes’ inquiry and examination, I decided it was too much for us alone, and I wired to New York for Nicholas Carter.”

“The big detective, eh? That was a good move, Paul. I only hope he’ll come. What did you say in the message?”

“Told him an important case was here for him, and that we would pay any fee. He could name his own figure. But it was urgent, and would he come at once?”

“Two hours since you sent that to him in New York?”

“A little more than two hours. But I’ve had no answer. If he’d start at once, he could be here by evening.”

“Perhaps he isn’t at home.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of. He’s the only man I can think of who would be likely to make anything of this. It’s too much for the average policeman. Indeed----”

A rap at the door of the office made Paul Savage step to the door with an irritable wrinkling upon his lean face of a score of lines which had not been there before, while James Mallory growled from behind his desk.

“Oh, Colonel Pearson?” ejaculated Savage, with forced toleration, as he found himself face to face with one of the house’s guests. “Is there anything----”

Colonel Pearson was a cleanly built, soldierly looking man, with broad shoulders and a remarkably keen face. The dark eyes had a way of looking through anybody on whom they rested. At least, that was the conclusion to which Paul Savage had come. He was in summer attire, and had the calm insouciance of the wealthy man of leisure.

“I have received a telegram,” remarked the colonel, holding up a crumpled yellow paper. “It has only just got to me. I came at once to see what it was all about.”

“Telegram? I have only sent one since I have been here, and that was to a person in New York.”

The colonel smiled.

“Exactly. You sent it to a person who was supposed to be in New York. But it happens that he was much nearer.”

“I don’t understand,” faltered Savage.

“I don’t, either,” added Mallory, who had been sitting behind his desk, listening in bewilderment. “Do you know anything about that person, Colonel Pearson?”

“If you will permit me to close the door,” was the response, “I will tell you.”

He shut the door and slipped the bolt into place. Then, as he approached the desk to which Paul Savage had retreated, as if seeking the moral support of his partner, he said quietly:

“You telegraphed Nicholas Carter, at his home in Madison Avenue, New York, to come here quickly, on an important case. That is how this telegram reads,” he adds, as he smoothed out the yellow paper and looked at it. “I have only to say that, though I chose to be known here as Colonel Pearson, since I came to enjoy a short vacation, my real name is Nicholas Carter, and I live in Madison Avenue, New York.”

“You Nicholas Carter?” gasped Savage. “Why, I thought Carter was an altogether different sort of man.”

“I understand,” laughed Nick. “You did not bargain for my being here, in light clothes and white canvas shoes, with a golf club in my hand. It did not occur to you that I might be an everyday man. You thought that, as a detective, I should wear a lowering look and salute you with a mysterious ‘Hist!’ when you opened the door just now.”

“Not exactly, but----”

“Yet a detective must be allowed his play time, like any other man,” continued Nick. “I have just been playing golf with the Baroness Latour. She is an early riser, as I am, and when I chanced to meet her on the links, we agreed to play together, instead of singly. So we have done nine holes. It was a drawn game. Here is your telegram. It was redirected to me, in my assumed name of Colonel Pearson, to this hotel, as you see, by my assistant.”

Paul Savage continued to look steadily at the calm face of the detective, as if not quite satisfied. But Mallory broke in, with an impatient grunt:

“Of course, you have no idea what induced us to send for you, Mr. Carter?”

“It has to do with the disappearance of Mrs. de Puyster van Dietrich, has it not?”

“Why, how did you know?” demanded Savage. “Not a word has been said about it outside of this office and the housekeeper’s room. We have been very careful to keep any inkling of the affair from our guests.”

The detective glanced at him quickly, and there was a narrowing of the dark eyes which told of swift thinking.

“Indeed? Are you sure nothing has got out about it?” he asked.

“Quite. There are four persons who know about Mrs. van Dietrich’s disappearance: My partner, Mr. Mallory, the housekeeper, and Mrs. van Dietrich’s maid. That is all. Well, there is one more--yourself, of course. We did not know that you had found it out. We don’t understand how you did it, either.”

“Well, I prefer not to tell you that just now,” answered Nick Carter. “That is, if you desire me to take this case.”

“We most certainly do,” declared Paul Savage earnestly.