Chapter III: Long-Distance Observations

Accepting the cigar that Nick Carter offered by pushing the box toward him on the table, James Mallory bit off the end in a distracted way, but did not light it. Instead, he used the unlighted cigar to emphasize the points of his narration by waving it about as he talked.

“Mr. Drago is one of the most influential men we have,” he began. “He is very wealthy, and he is a free spender. Then he is not old, and he is the sort of man who starts things in a social way and keeps them going afterward. You know how I mean, Mr. Carter?”

“Yes. Go on.”

“He went out to the golf links early this morning, saying he would be back for luncheon about twelve. He did not come, and we sent a boy over to the links to see why. The caddie says Mr. Drago left the links about eleven. He was going to walk back to the hotel by way of the beach. That is two hours ago. We can’t find the slightest trace of him.”

“Strange!” murmured Nick.

“It will be ruin for us, Mr. Carter,” declared Mallory. “Can’t you do something?”

“You have told me all you know? Isn’t there anything else you’ve discovered which might serve as a clew?”

“Not a thing. Mr. Drago walked through the lobby this morning, pleasant, as usual. He spoke to two or three people as he went along. I was one of them, as a matter of fact. He seemed to be in good spirits, and he said he intended to play the whole eighteen holes.”

“And that’s the last you saw of him? Was any one else playing this morning?”

“Several. They saw him make the whole round, and the caddie says he was in good form, and played a fine game. I don’t know what his score was, exactly. I believe the caddie said he did it in----”

“Never mind about that,” laughed Nick. “That wouldn’t help me to trace him. What I want to get at is how he came to be kidnaped in broad daylight. This is as queer as the Mrs. van Dietrich case. I’ll go down to lunch, and take up the whole matter afterward.”

He slipped a pair of powerful field glasses into a pocket, and went down with Mallory.

Paul Savage was at the foot of the elevator, but the detective put him off as he was beginning to whisper a long story of woe into his ears, by telling him that he knew all about it.

“I’ll tell you when I learn something,” he added, turning away to enter the ornate restaurant.

His luncheon over--and the detective disposed of a good one, as a matter of principle--Nick strode out to the golf links and got hold of the caddie who had been with Drago.

The links were a mile from the hotel.

Nothing more was to be learned from the caddie than the detective already knew. So he took a pathway which ran through a wood, coming out on the sandy beach, edged by rocks.

Coming to a bit of rising ground, Nick stood there and surveyed the prospect. He was thinking all the time. Much as he admired beautiful scenery for its own sake, he would not have stopped now to look around had he not had some ulterior object.

The really fine links stretched behind him, the clubhouse showing above trees in the distance. On the right were the woods, with the hotel towering on the edge of the cliff, three-quarters of a mile away. To the left were other woods, and in front rolled the blue waters, with the white-capped surf, of the Atlantic Ocean.

In the great curving bay, immediately in front of the hotel, but some distance out, was a steam yacht, her white hull and plentiful brasswork gleaming in the bright sunshine.

Nick Carter stood in deep thought for several minutes. After discarding the possibility of Drago having been spirited away in a motor car, for the simple reason that the only approach to the sea path, which the missing man had taken, was by way of the links, where a machine must have been seen, the detective sought another explanation.

“There are two ways in which it might be done,” he mused. “A man might be waylaid in the shelter of the woods and carried through them to the main road. Another way--and perhaps the most likely--would be by the sea. You can’t see the beach from here on account of the rocks. A boat could sneak up and get away without being seen by any one on shore.”

It seemed to Nick that either of these two methods must have been employed, and he was trying to settle in his own mind which one was the more likely, when his gaze fell upon the yacht out in the bay.

He had noticed it many times before. But now it took on a new significance in the light of the theory he had formed with regard to Harvey L. Drago’s disappearance.

“What’s that yacht doing out there?” he muttered. “Who is her owner? Any one living in the hotel? That seems likely, although she was there when I came here, day before yesterday. I don’t remember to have seen any communication with her from the shore. She may only have put in there for shelter, or repairs.”

The detective was a yachtsman himself, and took a deep interest in all kinds of craft. Dropping behind a bush and lying almost at full length, he trained his field glasses on the yacht.

With the eye of a sailor, as well as of a keen investigator, he studied the graceful vessel thoroughly from bow to stern, and from water line to the tops of tapering masts and white smokestack.

“She looks familiar to me in a general way,” he reflected. “There is something about her general lines that I seem to recognize. But I can’t identify her as any boat I know. I’ll ask at the hotel. Somebody there may know something about her. Of course, it is not remarkable for a pleasure boat to be anchored in a beautiful bay like this. Still, no harm will be done by my asking.”

He got up and climbed slowly to the little eminence whereon he had stood before, as a new idea came to him. Having reached the top of the small, spreading hill, he dropped flat upon the ground, the field glasses in his fingers.

“If I am not mistaken,” was his inward remark, “I can see the hotel well from here with the glasses. I’ll take a squint at that little cove under the windows of the room occupied by the baroness. From here it looks as if they must be nearly in line with the yacht. That may not mean anything--but then, again, it may.”

Nick Carter swept the glasses over the cove. Then he gradually brought them to bear on the windows of the rooms occupied by Mrs. de Puyster van Dietrich until she departed into the unknown so strangely.

He allowed his glasses to wander from room to room and from floor to floor, until they finally came to rest on the window of the sitting room belonging to the dashing young lady with whom he had played golf that morning--the Baroness Latour.

Nothing at this window interested him, and he was just about to return to his scrutiny of the cove, when he saw a woman come forward in the room and throw up the sash. It was the baroness.

“I don’t blame her for opening her window on such a beautiful afternoon,” thought Carter. “The peculiar thing is that she should have had it closed at all. Hello! What’s she doing now?”

Baroness Latour--looking more charming than ever, Nick thought, in her afternoon gown--had disappeared from the window. Now she returned with a peculiar-looking box in her hands.

She settled it firmly on the window sill, and as she did so, the puzzled frown that had wrinkled up the forehead of the detective passed away. He saw what the box really was.

“Great Scott!” came from his lips, in an excited whisper. “What does the Baroness Latour want with a wireless telephone? Who is she talking to? The only thing I can see in line with her is the yacht. Is it possible that she is having a conversation with somebody on board? If so, why? That’s the question--why?”

He settled himself to gaze through his glasses more at his ease, as well as to make sure he was right as to the nature of the box on the baroness’ window sill.

“It strikes me, my charming friend, that you may be here for some other purpose than to play golf and take part in the evening ‘hops’ in the hotel. Your actions at the window are unusual enough to make me curious, at all events. I’ll telegraph to New York for my own wireless telephone. Signor Marconi may be just as useful to me as to you, with this new and wonderful invention of his. Meanwhile, since we have already made acquaintance with each other, I shall venture to ask you to dine with me this evening. If you decline--well, I must hit on something else.”

The baroness removed the machine from her window at this instant, and pulled down the sash.

Nick Carter got to his feet, and strolled thoughtfully back to the hotel.