Chapter XIX: Scenting a Plot

When Nick Carter left the Wall Street office of the great lawyer he walked up Broadway to the Western Union Building, where he wrote and forwarded several telegrams, all of which were addressed to different localities in the State of Idaho.

That done he took the subway uptown and went directly to his own home, where, after entering his study, he summoned Chick and Patsy to him.

“Patsy,” he said, “you start for Idaho on the Twentieth Century at four this afternoon; and you, Chick, will take the trail of Mr. Carleton Lynne, now at the Mammoth, and you will report to me every move that he makes, no matter how unimportant it may appear to be.”

Each of the assistants nodded in reply, but neither of them made any audible remark.

“Now,” said the detective, “give me your close attention, both of you. What I shall tell you will be the only instructions you will receive--will be all, in fact, that I can give you.”

Again they nodded in comprehension.

“I don’t know whether this is a case or not,” the detective continued. “I am acting, just now, as I have done many times in the past--upon that kind of an impulse which I call a ‘hunch.’”

“The Lynne inheritance, of course?” Chick asked.

“Yes; the Lynne inheritance, and the Babbington case, as well. If I am anywhere near to being correct in my conjectures, the two matters just about dovetail, right here.”

“To start with,” suggested Patsy, “you don’t believe that the Carleton Lynne you saw yesterday, and again to-day, is the real article. This is the size of it, isn’t it?”

“To begin with,” replied Nick Carter, “I do not believe that the Carleton Lynne I saw yesterday, and again to-day, is the real article, and I have the least logical reason for that lack of faith. Put that down in your minds and think it over.”

“Just a hunch, eh?” said Chick.

“Just a hunch in the beginning--yesterday when I walked into the office of Ben Oaks directly behind this chap from the West. Since then that hunch has been strengthened by a few unimportant incidents which I will relate to you.

“Incident number one, and it really should take third or fourth place in the list, because I paid no attention to it at the time: When I entered the private office, before Carleton Lynne was admitted, Oaks sent his stenographer, whom he calls his secretary, out of the room. She went into the library, which adjoins the private office, and she left the communicating door ajar. Whether that was accident or design, I know that she listened intently to our conversation. I could see her doing that, by means of a mirror that hangs in the library, and which I could see through the half-open door.

“Incident number two: While I was there it developed that Oaks had been to the Tombs, before the trial, to see Mrs. Babbington, at her request--at her second request--and I assumed, from what was told to me about it, that she had also asked him to take his stenographer with him; at least he did so.”

“Why?” asked Patsy.

“Wait and ask that question again after I have finished, Patsy--unless, perhaps, you should find an answer to it that suits you.”

“All right, chief.”

“Incident number three: Oaks came away from the Tombs, leaving Miss McQueen there, alone with Mrs. Babbington. The incident happened two weeks ago. Miss McQueen remained about an hour with the prisoner.”

“Do you mean that she took dictation from her?” asked Chick.

“Yes; a few short letters to former social friends and acquaintances, all of which were read by the district attorney and by Oaks.”

“Are you sure that all of them were treated in that manner?” asked Patsy.

“That is the presumption, Patsy. I am not saying that I am sure about it, or that there was not another notebook which Oaks did not see; or that there were no oral instructions given to Miss McQueen, which were not taken down in shorthand.”

The two assistants nodded in unison.

“Remember that happened more than two weeks ago. Letters and telegrams have had ample time to reach Idaho, and to bring Carleton Lynne to New York, since then.”

“Sure,” commented Chick.

“Incident number four: When I came away from the office of Ben Oaks yesterday afternoon, Carleton Lynne was admitted to the private office. He produced his papers and credentials to establish himself. They appeared satisfactory. But he lied to Oaks about the time of his arrival in the city, and without any apparent reason. Later, he found out that his deception would be discovered, and so he made a clean breast of it to-day, giving an excuse which I do not for a moment believe.

“Incident number five: When I arrived home late yesterday afternoon, after leaving the office of Benjamin Oaks, I found that Madge Babbington was here awaiting me.”

“Just what has that got to do with the case in hand?” Patsy interrupted.

“Possibly nothing at all, but if I am at all on the right track, it has much to do with it.”

“How so?”

“She came here, ostensibly, to offer to supply the address of the missing heir, Carleton Lynne, which she claims to have known for a considerable time. I would not gratify her enough to ask her for particulars about it, for I judged that she was lying to me from the beginning.”

“If that was the ostensible reason, what was the real one?” asked Chick.

“I think it was to endeavor to convince me in the roundabout way she used, that she had never seen this Carleton Lynne; but she only succeeded in convincing me that she had seen him, probably knows him well, and that she had already been informed that I was at the Oaks office when he arrived there.”

“Let us return for a moment to the two incidents you have mentioned in which the stenographer is concerned,” said Chick.

“Well?”

“How do you associate her with the others? I mean, aside from the possible sending of messages from the Tombs, for the Babbington woman.”

“In this way: I have known Ben Oaks more or less familiarly for twelve years. He has had a secretary named Miss Hunt who was with him until about the time of the beginning of the advertising effort to find Carleton Lynne--eight or nine weeks ago; and I know of my own knowledge that Miss Hunt was his secretary for four or five consecutive years. Miss Hunt is not there now; this Miss McQueen is.”

“Well, what of that?” asked Patsy. “A lawyer often changes his stenographers.”

“But this change appears to have been so coincidental with other things that I use it here as incident number six.”

“Do you mean that she was sent there by--by the Babbington woman, for instance?”

“Possibly.”

“But, Miss Hunt----”

“Miss Hunt, or any other stenographer of my knowledge would readily enough give up a position if there was sufficient inducement offered.”

“Oh; you mean that she was bought off?”

“That is the possibility.”

“Then,” said Chick, “I would suggest that Miss Hunt be found without delay.”

“That is a duty that I have reserved for myself,” replied the detective.

“But what would be the object of it all?”

“To have a competent spy in the office of the man who must decide upon the credentials of the claimant, for one thing; to arrange for an easy method of getting a person into the Tombs and to the prisoner at the opportune moment for sending out an important message, for another.”

“I see. What are your conclusions, Nick?” It was Chick who asked the question.

“I don’t know that I have arrived at any conclusions; at least, definite ones.”

“What then?”

“I am only convinced of the determination of Madge Babbington to possess herself of those millions, and that she will stop at nothing to attain her ends.”

“Have you any more incidents to recount?”

“Yes. Incident number seven is the fact that when Madge Babbington was here yesterday, she took particular pains to give me warning that she intended to make the acquaintance of Carleton Lynne, to fascinate him, and finally to marry him.”

“Did she say that?”

“Yes; in the form of a warning.”

“But you read a different meaning in her words?”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“Chick, I believe that her real purpose in coming here to see me was to pronounce that very warning, and thus to open the way for an acquaintance with this Carleton Lynne which would not suggest the suspicion to me that the two had known each other before now.”

“I see.”

“The man is supposed to have come here out of the West--as he doubtless has done. He has the marks of the West upon him, all right. But he is supposed to know nobody here; he went to the length of informing me that he had not seen New York since he was a kid, to use his own expression. A sudden acquaintance between him and the woman lately acquitted of murder would attract my attention, so she comes here and deliberately tells me, with an assumption of bravado, that she intends to make his acquaintance at the first possible moment.”

“She’s got her gall with her, all right--to come here at all,” said Patsy.

“She has got her brains with her, too; don’t forget that, either of you,” said Nick.

“Well, what do you suspect the game to be, Nick?” asked Chick.

“I only suspect a game. What it is, I don’t pretend to guess,” was the reply. “Only, there is one thing which I cannot believe--which I cannot bring myself to accept.”

“The identity of this man who has appeared here as a claimant?”

“Yes.”

“You think that he is an impostor?”

“I suspect that he is; that is all.”

“And that there is perhaps another murder back of it all; the murder of the real Carleton Lynne?”

“I don’t know about that. That is going at it rather strong. It may be that the real Carleton Lynne has been dead a long time; or that he has been lost sight of for a long time. He may have gone to the Klondike with the rush and never have reappeared. There are a thousand and one things that may have happened to him, any one of which would give a clever impostor who had known him well in the past the opportunity; particularly if he were spurred to it by such a woman as Madge Babbington.”

“Or he may be lying now in a newly made grave somewhere, his papers and his birthright stolen by another,” suggested Patsy.

“Well, lad,” replied the detective, “that is what you are going to Idaho to ascertain. You are going there to trace every trail you can find of Carleton Lynne, and to follow one of them till it brings you here, if he is here; to wherever he is now, if he is not here.”