Chapter XXXVI: A Detective’s Deductions

Here are some of the obstacles which Nick Carter and Patsy encountered almost at once in their search for Carleton Lynne and his abductors.

The stolen car was found within an hour, abandoned in front of the Hotel Plaza, at Fifth Avenue and Fifty-ninth Street. Cab drivers and taxi chauffeurs had seen a veiled woman drive it to the spot, leave it, and enter the hotel. She had not been seen since.

“She simply walked into the hotel by one entrance, and out at another one, and went to meet another conveyance in which Mike and Lynne were already passengers,” was Nick Carter’s comment upon this incident.

He drove his own car, with Patsy and Chick for company, to Pleasantglades that night.

The gate was padlocked. When the house was searched it was found that nobody had been there. Evidently Lynne had been misinformed as to the destination of his captors, or they had changed their minds after the escape from the city house.

Nick sought the local chief of police, who was known to him, and had a watch placed upon the house at Pleasantglades; then he returned to the city.

It was midnight when he got back, but nevertheless he went at once to the Creotoria apartment house, where Madge Babbington lived--and went there to find her goods and chattels had been sent to a storage warehouse that day, and that nothing was known as to where she had gone.

Well, there the chase ended for the moment.

We need not go into the details, save to say that not a further trace of Carleton Lynne or of Red Mike, or of Madge Babbington could be found after three days of painstaking and insistent search.

The abductors of the millionaire had left no trail whatever behind them.

It was evident that they had planned every move they made that afternoon and evening, many days in advance, and had prepared for every emergency.

It was certain that they had covered their tracks so expertly that even Nick Carter, aided by his two assistants, could not find them.

The evening of the third day after the related incidents, Nick, with his two assistants, was seated in the study.

All had been silent for a time, each evidently thinking upon the same problem, when Patsy broke the spell by asking suddenly:

“I wonder what Madge intends to do with him, now that she has got him?”

“Marry him,” said Chick laconically.

“Do you think she’ll have the gall to attempt that?” Patsy asked.

“Sure.”

“Why? It looks risky to me.”

“How so? She hasn’t done anything but abduct him, and if she becomes his wife--well, that would do away with that charge, wouldn’t it?”

“I suppose it would, Chick,” Patsy agreed.

“Besides,” Chick continued, “that has been her game from the start. She doesn’t seem to know any other one.”

“Uh huh!”

“She tried, long ago, to marry J. Cephas Lynne--and I’m inclined to think she would have done it, too, if his cousin Thomas hadn’t murdered him.”

“I think you are right about that, Chick,” Nick Carter interposed.

“Then,” Chick went on, “she had it all fixed up to marry Thomas Lynne, the murderer of Cephas and Edythe. She’d have done that, too, if Nick hadn’t found those tracks in the snow in front of the gate at Pleasantglades.”

“Uh huh!” commented Patsy again.

“The next on the carpet is Mr. Henry Carroll.”

“There isn’t any proof that she tried to marry him.”

“I think,” Chick replied, “that the proof of it exists in the fact that Carroll learned to fear her as well as to love and hate her at the same time; that he tried to shoot her at the time he killed her two women companions at the Creotoria, and that now he is only awaiting the day of execution to pay the penalty for it all.”

“Uh huh!” said Patsy once more.

“When, by keeping still and playing on the quiet he might still be living the part of Carleton Lynne, and enjoying all the millions.”

“Not much he wouldn’t,” said Patsy, waking up. “Didn’t I find the real Carleton Lynne out there in Idaho?”

“Yes; but you’d had a fine time proving his identity, wouldn’t you, if Carroll had kept still and hung on? He had the documentary evidence and the photographs. He had possession, which is said to be nine points in the law.”

“What is the argument about, anyway?” asked the detective, with a quiet smile.

“I don’t think it amounts to much one way or another,” replied Patsy. “I guess it is more to the purpose if we bend our energies to a solution of the present problem.”

“I think so, too,” agreed Nick. “It began, didn’t it, by Chick expressing the belief that Madge has stolen Lynne away to marry him?”

“Yes.”

“Has it occurred to you, to either of you or to both of you, that that is the only thing she can do now to win that fortune, or to get hold of any considerable portion of it?” the detective asked.

Chick nodded. Patsy made no reply; but he asked:

“What’s the matter with the two of them--Mike and Madge--forcing him to disgorge a goodly portion of his wealth?”

“It wouldn’t work, Patsy.”

“Why not?”

“Well, for one thing, he isn’t the sort of a man to give up.”

“It strikes me that he’d be giving up a heap more if he married her.”

“You forget what you said three days ago about her eyes--in case Adelina wasn’t around to keep tabs on you,” smiled the detective.

“Well, if Lynne isn’t the sort of a man to give up, I don’t see where your argument is any good. He certainly wouldn’t give up to a woman like that, when he knows----”

“In the first place, Patsy, I have not advanced any argument. I have merely said that it is the only way--her only way, now.”

“Well, he doesn’t have to marry her, does he?”

“I don’t know. She is a fascinating woman. There is a witchery about her that is almost beyond belief. Lynne is a sick man; he has been a sick man for a long time.”

“His mind is strong enough.”

“I know that; but he is physically weak, just now; and physical weakness renders mental opposition in a thing of this kind less strong--more easily assailed. My fear is that she will break down his opposition in the end, if she has time enough.”

“Well, maybe so; only she won’t do it by threats, if I am any judge of character.”

“No, she will do it by her witchery; she will do it with her eyes, which are hypnotic--and please understand that in using that term I do not mean to imply that she will actually hypnotize him. She will merely influence him.”

“Against his will, do you mean?”

“Against his will at first, yes. Against his better judgment. But she will labor to overcome all that. She will succeed, too, if she has sufficient opportunity. I know men of his type. They are impressionable, especially in the presence of a lovely woman, and she can be that, you know.”

“Yes, I know.”

“I think I partly understand a woman of her type, also, although I have never encountered another one like her.”

“Nor anybody else, I imagine.”

“She will probably begin by playing the pathetic, the wronged woman, the one who suffers and is misunderstood. She will tell him the story of her life. She will have spells of heartbreaking sorrow and weeping. She will make him try to comfort her, and she will decline to let him do so when he first offers. Perhaps--I shouldn’t be surprised--if she found herself hooked by her own bait.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Lynne is a lovable chap--a fascinating fellow in many ways.”

“Oh, you mean that, in trying to make him in love with her, she will actually fall in love with him?”

“Such a thing is quite possible, Patsy.”

“Not in her case. She is too calculating; too cold-blooded in her plots and plans.”

“But you will admit that a woman like her can be cold-blooded in nothing else that she does, won’t you?”

“Yes. What of that?”

“Madge Babbington is still young--almost a girl, although she has been twice married. I doubt if she ever has found the man who really attracted her; I think she can, and probably will, find that man in Lynne. He is every inch a man. I would have liked to have known him when he was well and strong.”

“Perhaps you will have an opportunity to do that later on, chief.”

“Perhaps,” replied Nick, shrugging his shoulders.

“All of this,” commented Chick, who had been a close listener to what had been said, “does not bring us any closer to the solution of the present problem.”

“Perhaps it does,” smiled Nick. “That was why I have been talking in that strain.”

“How so?”

“The problem is, where have they hidden Lynne away? Isn’t it?”

“Sure thing.”

“We must agree, then, that wherever that hiding place may be, it is large enough to accommodate four persons.”

“Four! How do you make that out?”

“Two men--Lynne and Red Mike, who will stick closer than a leech; you can bet on that.”

“Sure.”

“Then there is Madge--who must have the opportunity in time and place to play her best cards--and a servant. They could not get along without somebody to serve them.”

“I see.”

“Well, they must hide themselves in a place where there is little opportunity for being seen by others; by chance passers-by. If we can search our minds for the most likely sort of a place of that description, we would be pretty near to part of the solution, Chick.”

“A desert island,” said Patsy, grinning.

“Or the place where desert islands grow; on the water,” said Chick.

“Not bad ideas, either one of them,” said Nick. “And now, there is one more element that is bound to assist us before this game comes to an end. It is jealousy; and that is what I am most afraid of, just now. Red Mike cannot be very long in the society of Madge Babbington without being fascinated by her to the point of desperation. He will look on at her attempts to make Lynne in love with her with growing anger; and if the right sort of a climax should happen at the psychological moment, Red Mike would kill Lynne on the instant; and that is what I most greatly fear, just now. We must find a way to rescue him before such a thing as that can happen.”