Chapter I: The Duplicate Night

It was a fateful moment--one to be remembered.

A fateful moment in the lives and fortunes of some to whom there then came no premonition of evil, no dread of the terrible sword that hung by a hair above their heads, upon whom was cast no shadow through the glare and glitter around them, amid the gay festivities in which each played a part.

It was a fateful moment, one brought only by chance to the notice of Nick Carter.

It was remembered by the celebrated detective, moreover, only because of two incidents that would have been entirely unnoticed by a less keen and discerning man.

One was the single stroke of a tall, old-fashioned clock in the main hall of the great mansion.

It struck the half after ten.

The hall in which it struck, and in which Nick Carter then was standing, was that of the magnificent Carrington mansion on Washington Heights, the home of the wealthy railway magnate, Horace K. Carrington, a millionaire fifty times over, and prominent with his handsome wife in the most fashionable and exclusive circles of New York society.

It was the night of the fifteenth of January, memorable for an unusual warm spell of more than a week, which had melted the last vestige of snow and drawn the last sign of frost from the ground.

It was also memorable as the night of a private masked ball in the Carrington mansion, in which something like three hundred of their most intimate friends had gathered.

The avenue and streets adjoining the extensive estate were thronged with conveyances of the most expensive kinds, limousines, and costly motor cars predominating.

The elegant grounds, covering nearly an entire square, were almost as bright as day under the glare of a myriad of electric lights suspended among the trees of the surrounding park.

The superb mansion itself was ablaze from basement to roof. Its broad halls and spacious, sumptuously furnished rooms were thronged with masked guests, many in elaborate fancy and historic costumes, and some in nondescript attire.

Courtiers and princes rubbed elbows with clowns and jesters. Queens in regal raiment hobnobbed in corners and alcoves with country bumpkins, while the whirl of the dance presented a kaleidoscopic picture, the details of which would require a volume. It was a weird, yet dazzling picture, with the gleam and glitter of jewels of inestimable worth.

Aside from the numerous officers and guardians in and about the extensive grounds, guardians of diamonds and gems that would have aggregated millions, two men in evening dress and of refined and unofficial bearing mingled with the servants and other house functionaries in various parts of the mansion, apparently having only an eye to the general conduct of affairs.

These two men were Nick Carter and his chief assistant, Chick Carter, both carefully disguised, the balmasque feature of the gathering and the unusual opportunity for knavery that it presented, in view of costly jewels worn by his guests, having led their host to secretly employ the two famous detectives as safeguards against designing intruders and possible crime.

At precisely half past ten, the fateful moment mentioned, Nick Carter was standing in the main hall and near the front door of the house. He could see the entire length of the hall, the broad stairway to the second floor, and through several open doors the throng of dancers in the adjoining rooms. All of them still wore masks, eleven o’clock having been the hour stipulated for their removal.

Mingled with the strains of orchestral music the single stroke of the clock reached the detective’s ear. There was no mistaking the sweet and mellow resonance of its bell.

At the same moment a woman, threading her way between numerous other persons in the hall caught the detective’s eye.

She was one of the guests, and her costume spoke for itself. She was clad completely in black, from her dainty ties to the mask that hid her face and the veil that partly concealed her hair and fell in picturesque folds over her shapely neck and shoulders. But this ebon costume was bespangled with countless glittering stars and radiant diamonds.

Plainly enough, she was a personification of--Night.

Nick thought it a striking costume, one that set off to advantage the fine, graceful form of the woman. He watched her furtively while she came through the hall and went up the stairs to the second floor. He could see the gleam and glitter of her eyes, but no other feature of her face, yet he felt sure she was comparatively young and beautiful.

“She appears to be a bit nervous and in a hurry,” he said to himself, while she mounted the stairs. “She may be seeking some one, or possibly has lost her partner for this dance. That would irritate most young women.”

Nick turned upon hearing the voice of his chief assistant. Chick had just entered through the open front door and paused at Nick’s elbow.

“A penny for your thoughts,” he said quietly.

“They are not worth it,” Nick dryly answered. “I was thinking of a woman who just went upstairs. She is clad all in black and sprinkled with stars. She evidently represents Night, and I----”

“There she is, now,” said Chick, with a glance toward the rear part of the hall.

Nick gazed in that direction.

“By Jove, that’s quite remarkable,” he muttered audibly.

“It is a striking costume, Nick, for fair.”

“I don’t mean the costume.”

“No? What do you mean?”

“That two women have costumes precisely alike,” said Nick. “This one appears to be an exact duplicate of the other. She is, so to speak, a duplicate Night.”

“She probably is the same one,” said Chick.

“Impossible!”

“Why so?”

“The other just went upstairs. She cannot be in two places at once.”

“She may have come down. There is a side stairway.”

“She would not have had time when you called my attention to her. She had only disappeared at the head of these stairs.”

“There can be only one explanation,” said Chick. “There are two women wearing similar costumes. There evidently is, as you put it, a duplicate Night.”

Nick had been watching this second woman while they were talking, and his brows had knit perceptibly.

“She appears a bit nervous and in a hurry, like the other,” he muttered, after the masked woman had gazed into two of the rooms in which the dance was in progress. “She evidently is searching for some one.”

“Some one she knows, then, or with whom she came here,” said Chick. “She could not identify any one else, unless informed of the wearer’s costume.”

“True.”

“She appears to be----”

“Wait!” Nick interrupted. “Ah, she has found him. He was dancing in the rear parlor.”

The music had ceased and the dance ended.

A man in the costume of a Mexican toreador had just emerged from the room mentioned.

The woman in starry black hastened to approach and speak to him.

He bowed and listened to her, while she slipped one hand around his arm and strove to draw him away. He hesitated for a few seconds, then bowed again and accompanied her.

They disappeared into a diverging hall, one leading to a side door of the palatial residence.

“We’ll go out this way,” Nick muttered, turning toward the front door.

“Out after them?” questioned Chick, a bit surprised.

“Yes. I’m something more than curious. I want to know where they are going.”

“After a breath of fresh air, most likely, and one cannot blame them,” said Chick. “It’s like a melting pot indoors.”

“No hotter than that melting pot from which we saved the Waldmere plate a few months ago,” Nick replied, as they picked their way out through the throng and descended the front steps.

“That’s right, too.”

“This is an ice box, Chick, compared with that room in which we rounded up Stuart Floyd and his gang when engaged in that infernal work. It’s a pity that that rascal gave the prison-hospital guardians the slip and is again at large. The community would be more safe if your bullet had killed him, instead of only wounding him. He was a bad egg and is likely to break out again.”

“Quite likely,” Chick admitted. “But his escape was no fault of ours.”

“That’s very true, but it’s no less deplorable.”

“Are the Waldmeres here to-night?”

“I don’t know. I imagine they are, however, for they are friends of the Carringtons, and travel with the swell set. Ah, there they go,” Nick abruptly digressed, upon turning a front corner of the great house.

It brought a side driveway, the porte-cochère, and the side door into view, also the grounds south of the house and the side and rear streets, then brightly lighted and in which numerous motor cars and carriages were waiting.

The couple in whose movements Nick Carter had become interested had left the house and were walking quite briskly toward a broad driveway gate in the rear, one entered from the back street and leading to the garage and stable. Both of these were brightly lighted, also, and contained many waiting conveyances, with their liveried chauffeurs, drivers, and footmen.

The Spanish cavalier and woman in starry black paid no attention to others, however, nor appeared to have any occasion for secrecy. They still wore their masks, nevertheless, and they walked briskly out through the rear gate and entered a limousine waiting near by.

The door was closed with a bang and the chauffeur drove quickly away, so quickly that Nick was unable to get a glimpse of his face, or to learn the number of the car.

“They evidently are going home,” Chick remarked, while they paused in the driveway some thirty feet from the gate, which was as near as they had come to overtaking the couple. “The woman may be ill, or overcome with the heat in the house.”

Nick shook his head.

“Nothing of the kind,” he replied. “She walked too briskly for one in that condition.”

“There is something in that,” Chick allowed.

“Furthermore, if they are going home, why did they wear their masks after leaving the house? They either are coming back, or there is something under the surface.”

“A secret love affair, perhaps,” suggested Chick. “They may have stolen out for a brief flirtation, intending to return before the festivities end. I don’t see, Nick, as it’s anything for us to butt into.”

“Not at present, Chick, at all events,” Nick replied. “We’ll return to the house.”

They did so without further comment upon the circumstances, and they separated again after rejoining the throng in the house.

Nearly two hours later, or considerably after midnight, Nick Carter felt a hand on his arm and heard the subdued voice of Mr. Horace Carrington, the host, a portly man in the fifties, then wearing an elaborate courtier’s costume.

“I want you for a few moments, Carter,” he said quietly. “Come with me.”

“Anything wrong?” questioned Nick, noting his gravity.

“I fear so,” said Carrington. “A lady, one of my guests, wants to talk with you. She is waiting in my private library. This way.”

Nick followed him with further questions and entered the room, where the lady at once arose to meet him.

She was a woman in starry black--the duplicate Night.

She no longer wore a mask, however, and Nick found himself face to face with an old acquaintance, one for whom he already had done double service. She was none other than the whilom beautiful chorus girl for love of whom Lord Archie Waldmere had sacrificed his heritage and English birthrights and become estranged from home and family--now Lady Mollie Waldmere.

“Good gracious!” Nick quietly exclaimed. “Is it you, Mrs. Waldmere? What has happened?”

She extended a trembling hand and gazed at him with apprehensive and glistening eyes.

“I don’t know,” she replied. “I cannot even imagine. I have told Mr. Carrington, and he said you were here incognito and in disguise, so I asked him to call you. I have not forgotten what you have done for Archie and me, Mr. Carter.”

“Don’t mention that, Mrs. Waldmere,” said Nick. “What now is the trouble?”

“I don’t know,” Mollie tremulously repeated. “I only know that I--I cannot find my husband.”