The Four-Fingered Glove

OR, THE COST OF A LIE BY NICHOLAS CARTER Author of the celebrated stories of Nick Carter’s adventures, which are published exclusively in the New Magnet Library, conceded to be among the best detective tales ever written. STREET & SMITH CORPORATION PUBLISHERS 79-89 Seventh Avenue, New York

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Printed in the United States of America) Al rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages, including the Scandinavian.

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Bill Cody

At a rough estimate there are 400 million civilized human beings who have heard of Bill Cody, not under his real name, but by the name everybody called him, “Buffalo Bill.”

His character made him an outstanding figure during a period of the development of America when a strong character was a matter of vital necessity.

We doubt, however, whether the man’s work is fully appreciated, or ever has been. In the rush and bustle that followed the introduction of the railroad to the West, the results of Buffalo Bill’s work were more or less overlooked, but a time is coming when this remarkable man’s achievements will be fully appreciated.

This is the character whose adventures are dealt with in Buffalo Bill’s Border Stories.

Read them. You will find them of true historical value.

STREET & SMITH CORPORATION 79 Seventh Avenue New York City

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CHAPTER I. “IF I AM GUILTY, CONVICT ME.”

The hands of the clock pointed at half-past five, one beautiful June morning, when Nick Carter, having just finished with his morning exercise and cold plunge, was told that there was a gentleman in the reception-room who wished to see him on matters of the utmost importance, as soon as he was at liberty to descend, and the servant who brought the message to her master passed a card through the partly opened doorway upon which was engraved in fashionable block lettering:

REGINALD MEADOWS DANTON.

Linden Fells.

“Young Danton, of Linden Fells, eh?” murmured the detective, as he proceeded with his toilet after placing the card on the dresser. “What in the world[Pg 6] can he want at this hour? I should not hesitate to wager a considerable amount that he has never been out of bed at this hour before in all his life, unless it was because he had stayed up all night. Reggie Danton! Humph! Whether he is in trouble or not, it is safe to say that he believes he is, or he wouldn’t be here to see me so early in the morning.”

Ten minutes later Nick entered the room where his caller was awaiting him, only to find him pacing up and down between the window and the door, apparently under the greatest strain of excitement.

Nick Carter’s half-contemptuous, half-humorous remark, “Young Danton, of Linden Fells,” had been peculiarly appropriate, for Reginald Meadows Danton exactly filled one’s ideas of a young man of possibilities—and perhaps probabilities—who hailed from somewhere in the world of society and wealth.

He was neither tall nor short, fat nor lean; nor did there seem to be a distinguishing trait about his appearance or his manner, and yet there was an indefinable something which compelled a stranger to glance at him a second time, and then to wonder why he had done so. He was Reggie Danton to everybody, several times a millionaire in his own right, and the son of a[Pg 7] man who had long since ceased to count his millions by units, having adopted multiples instead.

Linden Fells? Well, it was—and still is, although its name has since been changed—a magnificent estate situated on the bank of the Hudson River within a reasonable distance of New York. A place where once upon a time a very rich and eccentric German had brought his family and lived while he awaited the pardon of his emperor, and who had also brought with him a love for his own Unter den Linden. And as the estate was heavily wooded, he had given it the name of Linden Fells. Later, when the pardon came from his emperor, he had sold out for a song and returned to the fatherland: and so, Horace Danton, the father of Reggie, became possessed of it.

Then Linden Fells became transformed.

From the home of a recluse who used it only as a place of refuge while he awaited permission to return to his own country, it was turned into an open house of entertainment, for the Dantons liked to “sling things.”

Mrs. Danton was a beautiful woman of middle age, who still looked thirty—scarcely older, in fact, than her two children, Reginald and Mercedes, aged respectively, twenty-three and nineteen.

It had happened in the past that Nick Carter had[Pg 8] done some little business for the head of the house of Danton, but it had been of a commercial character, and he had never met the other members of the family, although naturally they were all known to him by sight, as well as by the reputations they had earned for themselves in their own separate ways. Mrs. Danton—or the señora, as she was often called because of her Spanish ancestry—because she was a leader of society and a giver of the most lavish entertainments in New York and Newport; Reggie, because he was a self-confessed high roller who was inevitably getting into some sort of hot water and paying his way out of it with gold—whom everybody talked about, and laughed at, and wondered what he would do next, but who was nevertheless generally well liked, and among those who knew him best, respected, too; and Mercedes!

The reputation of Mercedes Danton can be comprehended in three words. She was beautiful, she was brilliant, and she was, above all, good.

Everybody loved Mercedes. Her father adored her; her mother worshiped her; her brother idolized her; her servitors almost deified her; and she merited it all.

Reference to her upon any occasion was comprehended in the utterance of her first name only. There was but one Mercedes in the world, one queen of[Pg 9] beauty, one fountain of sympathy and goodness—Mercedes.

She was nineteen, with the poise, the repose and the presence of twenty-five. She was tall, regal, as graceful as a fawn; she had unfathomable, gipsy eyes, hair of a dead black, with a faint suggestion of waviness, and when the light struck it just right, a touch of amber somewhere in the depth of the tresses which disappeared as it came and which was inevitably changed to a reflection upon rather than from it; and with all her somber hair and eyes, her long black lashes and brunette presence, she had the complexion of an Irish beauty.

To describe Mercedes as beautiful is inadequate, for she was the standard of beauty.

And now, that we have outlined the chain of thought which flitted through the mind of Nick Carter as he descended the stairs to meet his early caller, we will return to the moment of their greeting.

“Good morning, Mr. Danton,” said Nick, as he entered the room. “You rose early this morning.”

“Yes. That is—fact is—I haven’t been to bed. Thank you. Yes; I will sit down. Are you Mr. Carter? Mr. Nick Carter? Pardon me for asking, but I wish to be sure.[Pg 10]”

“Yes. I am Nick Carter.”

“I have heard my father speak of you several times, Mr. Carter. I suppose you are aware that my governor is abroad just now?”

“I think I noticed in one of the papers, about a month ago, a mention that he had sailed. I did not know that he had or had not returned.”

“No. He’s over there still. I say, Mr. Carter, do I look excited?”

“Well, yes, a little,” replied Nick, smiling. “Has something happened to upset you?”

“Well, rather! Do I talk as if I could tell a connected story? Eh?”

“Why, yes.”

“You’ll pardon me, I know, but you see I wish to be sure. The fact is—— by Jove, old chap, I’m all of a tremble yet. I’ve been trying for the last two hours—all the while, in fact, since I started to come here to see you, to pull myself together so that I could tell you a connected story, and ’pon my life I’m not at all sure of myself yet. It’s awful, you know, Mr. Carter! Horribly awful!”

“What is?”

“The murder.”

“The murder? Do you mean to say that you are[Pg 11] speaking seriously and that you have come here to see me about a murder?”

“Yes. That’s the long and short of it.”

“Who is killed? Where was the crime committed? I hope, Mr. Danton, that this is not a specimen of one of the jokes you are so fond of perpetrating,” said Nick severely.

“Joke! gad! I wish it were a joke! No, Mr. Carter, it is very far from being a joke, I’m sorry to say. It’s a murder of the first water. A regular gem of the blue-stone variety. An out-and-out, dyed-in-the-wool, double-back-action, deliberate murder, carefully planned and scientifically executed, and”—he leaned forward in his chair and looked the detective straight in the eyes—“the joke will be on me, don’t you know.”

“What do you mean, Danton? You will have to be more explicit if you wish me to pretend to understand you.”

“Good Lord, I’m trying to be explicit. I mean that I will be accused of this murder—I mean that there will be developed the best chain of circumstantial evidence you ever heard of to convict me, and I mean that——”

He paused and rose from his chair, crossing the room to the window and then returning.[Pg 12]

“Well?” said Nick. “What were you about to add to your statement?”

“I mean,” he said, slowly and impressively, “that I am not, myself, positive of my own innocence.”

There was half a moment of silence after that extraordinary statement, and it was Danton who spoke first.

“Do you wonder now that I asked you if I looked excited, and if you thought I could tell a connected story?”

“In the light of the statement you have just made, it seems doubtful if you can tell one,” said Nick slowly. “You tell me that there has been a murder committed, that you will be accused of the crime, that there will be circumstantial evidence which will tend to convict you of the crime, and that you are not sure that you are not guilty. Those statements are rather extraordinary, coming from a man who is supposed to be sane, Mr. Danton.”

“Well, all the same, they are God’s truths, every one of them.”

“Then suppose you tell me why you have come to me at five o’clock in the morning?” said Nick severely. “If you are not sure that you have not committed a crime—which is a statement to be taken with a large[Pg 13] proportion of salt—you are more than half convinced that you have committed one. My business, Mr. Danton, is to catch criminals, not to protect them.”

“Well, that’s all right. That’s just what I want you to do. That’s why I came here at five o’clock in the morning.”

“Why?”

“Because I want you to catch and convict the criminal. If I am guilty I want you to convict me of it, just as if I were not here to engage your services. I want you to prove who did commit the crime, and if I did it I want you to prove it to my own satisfaction, as well as to a jury of twelve men. I’ve been asleep ever since I was born, Mr. Carter, but I woke up this morning in earnest, and I’m awake now, to stay awake.[Pg 14]”

CHAPTER II. THE QUARREL IN REGINALD DANTON’S ROOM.

“You seem to be very much in earnest in what you say, Mr. Danton,” said the detective.

“I am very much in earnest, sir.”

“Well, in the first place, suppose you tell me who is dead. Since you say that a murder has been committed and it is not unlikely that you did it, it is well to know something of the corpus dilecti. Who was murdered?”

“Ramon Orizaba; my mother’s guest.”

“Your cousin, is he—or rather, was he not?”

“A kinsman of my mother’s so far removed that the ties of blood are very thin; still, he has passed as our cousin. You know of him. He has been our guest, at intervals of two or three months at a time, for half a dozen seasons.”

“Oh, yes; I know of him. Now where was he killed?”

“In my own room at the Fells.”

“In your room? Where were you?”

“I was there.[Pg 15]”

“There in the room when he was killed?”

“Just that.”

“Then you did it—by accident, perhaps—and that is the reason why you do not——”

“No. You’re wrong.”

“Well, what, then?”

“I was there when he was killed; at least I suppose I was, but I was either unconscious, or asleep, for I did not see it done, and I did not know that he was dead until I awoke, at three o’clock this morning, and found him.”

“Had you quarreled?”

“We always quarreled. There never was a time when we did not quarrel.”

“How was he killed? What killed him?”

Danton left his chair and crossed to the window again, but after a moment he returned and stood facing the detective.

“I was waiting for that question,” he said slowly, “and wondering when it would come, for I had not yet determined how I would reply to it. The fact is, Mr. Carter, I believe that even the coroner and the physicians will find it difficult to determine at first how Orizaba was killed; but nevertheless, although I have not examined the body, save to look at one spot where[Pg 16] I expected to find something, I can tell you what killed him.”

“Then tell me.”

“He was killed with a glass needle, three inches in length, and of the size of a common darning needle. Orizaba’s hair grew very low on the back of his neck, and the weapon I have described was jabbed into the vertebra at that point.”

“So that death was almost instantaneous, I suppose?”

“It must have been.”

“Now, how do you know that he was killed as you describe?”

“Because I looked at that spot to find out.”

“Why did you look there?”

“Because I expected to find what I did find.”

“Why?”

“Because I had meditated killing him in just that way.”

“Good God, Mr. Danton——”

“It’s true.”

“In that case, I do not see what I can do to assist you. A man who will meditate such an infamous thing and then have the effrontery to come here and confess it to me in cold blood expecting me to sympathize with[Pg 17] his troubles, must be beyond the pale of human sympathy.”

“Wait, Mr. Carter. I quite agree with you—in the abstract; but this is different.”

“I cannot determine the nice points of reasoning of that kind, sir.”

“Just listen to me, won’t you? I have been careful to tell you all the worst phases of this case first.”

“There certainly could not be others much worse, unless you are about to confess that you had progressed so far in your meditations that you had actually provided yourself with a needle such as you have described.”

“I had such a needle in my possession,” replied Danton, smiling pathetically; “and moreover, it has disappeared from its accustomed place, so I have no means of knowing that it is not the one now actually imbedded in the neck of my cousin.”

“Danton,” said the detective, “since you have been in this room with me, you have succeeded in giving me several very different impressions concerning you. My first glance at you when I came into the room was that you had been on a spree and that you had done something which had the effect of sobering you suddenly, so that you came to me to get you out of your[Pg 18] trouble. The second impression was that you were in real trouble, but that it concerned another more than yourself. My third was that you were sincere in your statement that you did not know whether you had committed a crime or not, and was willing to take the consequences if you had done so, and my present one is that you are telling me a story in a slipshod fashion which I do not like, and which is not calculated to win my appreciation or my assistance. Now, sir, if you care to prolong this conversation there is only one course for you to pursue, and that is to tell me your story, commencing at the beginning and continuing on to the end—and that you do it in some sort

of connected style, so that I can follow you.”

“Well, sir,” replied Danton, slowly and seriously, “I’ll try. The fact is, I am almost crazy. I scarcely know what I am saying at all. I have tried so hard to pull myself together since I started out to find you, and I have endeavored so strenuously to keep calm since I have been here that I begin to fear that I shall fail in both.”

“Tell me your story,” said Nick shortly.

“Will you permit me to make two beginnings? They seem necessary.”

“Tell me your story.[Pg 19]”

“Well, in the first place, I attended a banquet at the club last night, and while there I drank of everything in sight, from cocktails through the still wines and champagnes to the cordials and cognac. In short, I became very drunk.”

“I can believe that. It was not your first experience.”

“No. Orizaba was with me at the club. We started for home together in the same cab.”

“You did not drive out to the Fells in a cab, did you?”

“Oh, no. We caught a train from the station. I suppose it was the twelve-thirty, since that is the last train out.”

“Well?”

“I remember entering the cab with Orizaba, and I remember leaving the cab with him at the station; but I do not remember riding in the cars with him.”

“That is not surprising. But go on.”

“I know that when the conductor awakened me and told me we were at the Fells, I left the train alone. Orizaba was not with me then, for I remember distinctly that I left the train alone and walked from the station to the Fells alone.”

“How far is it?[Pg 20]”

“About half a mile.”

“Were you still under the influence of the wine you had drank?”

“Undeniably. In plain English, I was very drunk. So full, in fact, that I remember that I stopped and held several serious arguments with myself during that walk of half a mile.”

“You are sure you talked only to yourself?”

“Why, yes; at least, that is my impression. I am quite sure that Orizaba was not with me then.”

“Yet you are positive that you caught the same train?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Well, go on with your story.”

“It was very warm last night, if you remember. I recall that when I arrived at the Fells the combination of wine and half a mile walk had heated me considerably, and I seated myself in one of the piazza chairs to cool off. Now I cannot tell you whether I sat there one minute or half an hour, for I don’t know; I only know that it could not have been more than half an hour, because the train I rode out on is due at the Fells at one-fifteen, my walk from the station to the house must have consumed a quarter of an hour, which would[Pg 21] bring the time up to two o’clock, and my watch is stopped at two-thirty.”

“What has the stopping of your watch got to do with it?”

“Only this: That I cannot start it. Something inside it is broken, and I argue that I must have broken it while winding the watch.”

“Well?”

“Drunk or sober, I have always been in the habit of winding my watch the last thing before removing my waistcoat, and never at any other time.”

“So you think that you stopped your watch by breaking it while winding it the last thing before going to bed?”

“Yes; only I didn’t go to bed. In fact, I didn’t make any preparation to do so, more than to remove my coat and vest. But I am getting ahead of my story.”

“Tell it in your own way.”

“We will say, then, that I went up-stairs at half-past two, after sitting on the piazza for about half an hour.”

“Very good.”