Chapter IV: A Dinner with Nick Carter

The Baroness Latour sat at a little writing table behind the lace curtains in her sitting room, making notes in a dainty memorandum book. Occasionally she peered through the fine web of the curtain at the handsome white yacht gently rising and falling on the swell in the bay.

A knock at the door, and her maid took a note from a bell boy and handed it to the baroness.

“The boy is waiting for an answer,” said the maid.

“Very well, Florine. I’ll see what it is.”

The baroness started with uncontrollable astonishment when she found that the letter was a respectful request from Colonel Pearson that she would give him the pleasure of dining at his table that evening.

“Well, who would have thought this?” she murmured. “Colonel Pearson, eh? Indeed, I’ll dine with him.”

She wrote a note of acceptance in a firm, but entirely feminine hand, and sealed the envelope with golden wax, stamped with a large “L.”

“I rather think that ‘L’ is convincing,” she said to herself, with a smile, as she handed the letter to Florine, to give to the waiting bell boy.

“Keep the doors closed, Florine,” she ordered. “You can stay in the room. Give me that telephone instrument.”

With Florine’s assistance, she placed the wireless-telephone apparatus again on the sill, and, after a few moments of ineffective endeavor, got a ticking that told her she was in communication with the yacht which had awakened so much curiosity in Nick Carter.

Her conversation was very brief, but she contrived to give orders in a few words, which, under certain conditions, would carry out some very important work.

“There, Mr. Nicholas Carter!” she murmured, as she motioned to Florine to help her in removing the apparatus from the window. “I don’t know how you have grown suspicious. But I can’t explain your invitation on any other supposition. If you are not suspicious, nothing will happen. If you are--well, we shall see.”

Among the well-dressed women who dined in the brilliantly lighted restaurant of the Hotel Amsterdam that evening, there was none more strikingly beautiful or aristocratic than the Baroness Latour.

Her costume was the last word in fashion and costly material, and she wore it like a queen. Her jewelry was dazzling.

Sitting opposite, at the small table set for two, was Nick Carter. His strong, grave face, lighted up by those wonderful dark eyes of his, made him, in his correct evening dress, an effective foil to the radiant beauty of the fair young woman who was his guest.

As a thorough man of the world, Nick Carter knew how to order a dinner, and the waiter looked at him in profound respect when he had the list of dishes on his slip.

It will have been gathered that the Baroness Latour was not exactly what she appeared to be. In fact, she had considered it necessary to change her personal aspect long before she came to the Amsterdam and found that Nick Carter, under the name and title of Colonel Pearson, was a guest.

The name she had assumed was not that by which the detective had known her a year or so before.

For weeks she had been slowly and systematically disguising herself, and she had done it more effectively than would be thought possible by a person who did not appreciate what can be done with cosmetics, instruments, and lotions in these days.

A “beauty doctor” would have gone into transports over her artistic achievements in this way.

Paraffin injections had changed the contour of her whole face, and the shape of her hands had been modified by the same means. Her heavy coils of bronze hair had become dark brown, and she had even practiced speaking in a different cadence, to hide her ordinary tones.

The perfection of the disguise can be understood when it is said that Nick Carter had known the baroness very well under a different name, and would have recognized her instantly had not her real personality been absolutely concealed.

He had learned from Mallory that the baroness had engaged her rooms by telegraph from New Orleans, and that she had particularly stipulated that they should overlook the ocean.

Why had she been so insistent on this, and what had she been doing with that wireless telephone on the window sill?

The dinner over, Nick asked if she would accept a cigarette, at the same time offering his cigarette case.

“Thank you,” she replied sweetly. “I will smoke, but I prefer my own cigarettes, if you will permit me.”

Nick bowed, and drawing forth a cigarette for himself, looked for a match.

“Confound that waiter!” he exclaimed. “There are no matches on the table, and I don’t believe I have one in my pocket.”

“I have some,” smiled the baroness, who had been taking a costly, gold-tipped Turkish cigarette from a gold case. “Here!”

She took from her chatelaine a small gold match box--a companion piece to the cigarette case--and pressing open the cover, offered it to the detective.

He saw, as he took one of the wax matches in his fingers, that it was an exact duplicate of the burned match he had picked up in the bedroom of Mrs. de Puyster van Dietrich that morning.

Wax matches generally are more or less alike, but these were much thicker than most of them.

He was obliged to drop his eyes to veil the gleam of excitement in them. Then, coolly striking the match, he held it until the baroness’ cigarette was going.

When he lighted his own, he blew out the match and dropped it carelessly to the floor at his feet.

“May I take a match or two from your box, in case of emergency, until I get some,” he asked, smiling. Then, as she nodded assent, he continued: “When am I to have the pleasure of another round with you on the links?”

The baroness laughed gleefully, and she answered his questions by asking another:

“Do you do everything as seriously as you play golf, Colonel Pearson?”

“I suppose so,” smiled Nick. “It always seems to me that anything worth doing at all should be taken up earnestly.”

“I believe that, too,” she returned, still laughing. “I was only thinking that it was not unusual for you to find yourself pitted against women. Judging by the way you played this morning, I should say you respect the prowess of my sex, no matter how poorly they may play.”

“You are right, baroness,” admitted the detective. “I have played the game very often against women.”

“And do you always win?”

“Is that a fair question?”

“I was curious to know.”

“I did not win this morning.”

“But you didn’t lose,” she rejoined quickly. “So there is neither decided so far.”

“Perhaps we’d better leave it to the next game we shall play against each other,” suggested Nick, with a peculiar smile.

“Yes,” she assented gayly. “The next game we shall play. Do you think you will win that game, Colonel Pearson?”

“If I do, it won’t be for lack of a worthy adversary,” he replied, with a deep bow.

They chatted about golf and other things for another half hour. Then the baroness, after thanking “the colonel” for the pleasant evening he had afforded her, arose to go to her room.

Nick Carter accompanied her to the elevator. When the car had shot upward, he hurried back to the table where they had been sitting in the restaurant and picked up the half-burned wax match he had dropped after lighting his cigarette.

As he slipped the match into his waistcoat pocket, to keep company with the other two whole matches he had borrowed from Baroness Latour’s gold match box, he ran against James Mallory in the lobby.

“Can I have your head porter for an hour or two this evening, Mr. Mallory?” asked the detective, in a low tone. “I’ve noticed him around here. He’s the kind of husky chap I may need.”

“Why, what----”

“Never mind about talking it over, Mr. Mallory,” interrupted the detective, with a protesting smile. “Can I have the man?”

“Certainly! His name is Mike Corrigan. He is a good, dependable fellow, and strong enough for anything you are likely to ask of him. Moreover, he is not afraid of anything. If you will come to my office, I will have him come there.”

Mike Corrigan was quite willing to accompany Colonel Pearson anywhere, and after a few minutes’ conversation, it was arranged that Mike was to meet the detective in the lobby in fifteen minutes.

“Put a coat on,” directed Nick. “Have you such a thing as a revolver?”

“Never owned a gun in my life,” was Mike’s reply.

“Never mind. I’ll bring one down for you. You can fire it off, I suppose, if it should become necessary?”

“I can that,” laughed Mike. “And swing a club, too.”

At this moment two telegrams were handed to Nick Carter. One was from his assistant, Chick, saying he was on his way to Delaware, with the bloodhound, Captain, and the other came from Joseph, Nick Carter’s head man-servant in his Madison Avenue home. This latter message read:

“According your instructions, have sent black steel box labeled
number four on third shelf to left of door in laboratory.”

The detective went up to his room and put on a serviceable business suit in place of his evening clothes, with a warm cap that he could pull well down over his eyes. He kicked off his light patent-leather pumps and substituted a pair of heavy waterproof shoes.

Finally he covered himself up in a long overcoat, in the pockets of which he dropped two automatic pistols, fully charged.

Before leaving his room he compared the wax matches he had got from the baroness in the restaurant with the burned match he had picked up in Mrs. van Dietrich’s room. They were the same kind exactly.

“I see you’re there, all right, Mike,” he remarked cheerily, as the head porter walked up to him in the lobby. “Wait a moment, while I go in to see Mr. Mallory and Mr. Savage.”

He found both partners in their office, and bringing out the burned wax match, he said, in a businesslike, brief manner:

“I should like you, please, to examine the baggage of Mrs. van Dietrich and find out whether there are in it any wax matches like this. Also ask her maid, Mary Cook, if she or Mrs. van D. ever used such matches.”

“Very well,” answered Savage, picking up the burned match. “We will do it, of course. But I don’t see the point.”

“That makes no difference,” retorted Nick. “The point is important. Did you find out anything at the railroad station this afternoon--whether anybody from the hotel went away?”

“Nobody has gone all day, except two people who live in the village, and whom the station agent knows quite well. You see, this is only a branch, which the railroad company ran up here for the benefit of our hotel, so it is not used much except by patrons of our house.”

“I see,” nodded Nick Carter. “Well, you may not see either Mike or me until two or three o’clock in the morning. Good night!”

“I hope you will find out something,” called out Mallory, as he went out.

“With ordinary luck, I hope to do so,” were Nick Carter’s parting words.