The Best American Mystery Stories of the Nineteenth Century

by Penzler, Otto

  “Joe’s a real hero, you know; he did the most splendid thing you ever heard of. I think I began to tell you about it, but I didn’t finish. I’ll tell you now. It happened just after we were married; I was mad with him at the time, I’m afraid, but now I see how splendid he was. He’d been telegraph operator at Hinksville for four years and was hoping that he’d get promoted to a bigger place; but he was afraid to ask for a raise. Well, I was very sick with a bad attack of pneumonia and one night the doctor said he wasn’t sure whether he could pull me through. When they sent word to Joe at the telegraph office he couldn’t stand being away from me another minute. There was a poor consumptive boy always hanging round the station; Joe had taught him how to operate, just to help him along; so he left him in the office and tore home for half an hour, knowing he could get back before the eastern express came along.

  “He hadn’t been gone five minutes when a freight-train ran off the rails about a mile up the track. It was a very still night, and the boy heard the smash and shouting, and knew something had happened. He couldn’t tell what it was, but the minute he heard it he sent a message over the wires like a flash, and caught the eastern express just as it was pulling out of the station above Hinksville. If he’d hesitated a second, or made any mistake, the express would have come on, and the loss of life would have been fearful. The next day the Hinksville papers were full of Operator Glenn’s presence of mind; they all said he’d be promoted. That was early in November and Joe didn’t hear anything from the company till the first of January. Meanwhile the boy had gone home to his father’s farm out in the country, and before Christmas he was dead. Well, on New Year’s day Joe got a notice from the company saying that his pay was to be raised, and that he was to be promoted to a big junction near Detroit, in recognition of his presence of mind in stopping the eastern express. It was just what we’d both been pining for and I was nearly wild with joy; but I noticed Joe didn’t say much. He just telegraphed for leave, and the next day he went right up to Detroit and told the directors there what had really happened. When he came back he told us they’d suspended him; I cried every night for a week, and even his mother said he was a fool. After that we just lived on at Hinksville, and six months later the company took him back; but I don’t suppose they’ll ever promote him now.”

  Her voice again trembled with facile emotion.

  “Wasn’t it beautiful of him? Ain’t he a real hero?” she said. “And I’m sure you’d behave just like him; you’d be just as gentle about little things, and you’d never move an inch about big ones. You’d never do a mean action, but you’d be sorry for people who did; I can see it in your face; that’s why I trusted you right off.”

  Woburn’s eyes were fixed on the window; he hardly seemed to hear her. At length he walked across the room and pulled up the shade. The electric lights were dissolving in the gray alembic of the dawn. A milk-cart rattled down the street and, like a witch returning late from the Sabbath, a stray cat whisked into an area. So rose the appointed day.

  Woburn turned back, drawing from his pocket the roll of bills which he had thrust there with so different a purpose. He counted them out, and handed her fifteen dollars.

  “That will pay for your board, including your breakfast this morning,” he said. “We’ll breakfast together presently if you like; and meanwhile suppose we sit down and watch the sunrise. I haven’t seen it for years.”

  He pushed two chairs toward the window, and they sat down side by side. The light came gradually, with the icy reluctance of winter; at last a red disk pushed itself above the opposite house-tops and a long cold gleam slanted across their window. They did not talk much; there was a silencing awe in the spectacle.

  Presently Woburn rose and looked again at his watch.

  “I must go and cover up my dress-coat,” he said, “and you had better put on your hat and jacket. We shall have to be starting in half an hour.”

  As he turned away she laid her hand on his arm.

  “You haven’t even told me your name,” she said.

  “No,” he answered; “but if you get safely back to Joe you can call me Providence.”

  “But how am I to send you the money?”

  “Oh—well, I’ll write you a line in a day or two and give you my address; I don’t know myself what it will be; I’m a wanderer on the face of the earth.”

  “But you must have my name if you mean to write to me.”

  “Well, what is your name?”

  “Ruby Glenn. And I think—I almost think you might send the letter right to Joe’s—send it to the Hinksville station.”

  “Very well.”

  “You promise?”

  “Of course I promise.”

  He went back into his room, thinking how appropriate it was that she should have an absurd name like Ruby. As he re-entered the room, where the gas sickened in the daylight, it seemed to him that he was returning to some forgotten land; he had passed, with the last few hours, into a wholly new phase of consciousness. He put on his fur coat, turning up the collar and crossing the lapels to hide his white tie. Then he put his cigar-case in his pocket, turned out the gas, and, picking up his hat and stick, walked back through the open doorway.

  Ruby Glenn had obediently prepared herself for departure and was standing before the mirror, patting her curls into place. Her eyes were still red, but she had the happy look of a child that has outslept its grief. On the floor he noticed the tattered fragments of the letter which, a few hours earlier, he had seen her place before the mirror.

  “Shall we go down now?” he asked.

  “Very well,” she assented; then, with a quick movement, she stepped close to him, and putting her hands on his shoulders lifted her face to his.

  “I believe you’re the best man I ever knew,” she said, “the very best—except Joe.”

  She drew back blushing deeply, and unlocked the door which led into the passage-way. Woburn picked up her bag, which she had forgotten, and followed her out of the room. They passed a frowzy chambermaid, who stared at them with a yawn. Before the doors the row of boots still waited; there was a faint new aroma of coffee mingling with the smell of vanished dinners, and a fresh blast of heat had begun to tingle through the radiators.

  In the unventilated coffee-room they found a waiter who had the melancholy air of being the last survivor of an exterminated race, and who reluctantly brought them some tea made with water which had not boiled, and a supply of stale rolls and staler butter. On this meager diet they fared in silence, Woburn occasionally glancing at his watch; at length he rose, telling his companion to go and pay her bill while he called a hansom. After all, there was no use in economizing his remaining dollars.

  In a few moments she joined him under the portico of the hotel. The hansom stood waiting and he sprang in after her, calling to the driver to take them to the Forty-second Street station.

  When they reached the station he found a seat for her and went to buy her ticket. There were several people ahead of him at the window, and when he had bought the ticket he found that it was time to put her in the train. She rose in answer to his glance, and together they walked down the long platform in the murky chill of the roofed-in air. He followed her into the railway carriage, making sure that she had her bag, and that the ticket was safe inside it; then he held out his hand, in its pearl-colored evening glove: he felt that the people in the other seats were staring at them.

  “Good-bye,” he said.

  “Good-bye,” she answered, flushing gratefully. “I’ll never forget—never. And you will write, won’t you? Promise!”

  “Of course, of course,” he said, hastening from the carriage.

  He retraced his way along the platform, passed through the dismal waiting-room and stepped out into the early sunshine. On the sidewalk outside the station he hesitated awhile; then he strolled slowly down Forty-second Street and, skirting the melancholy flank of the Reservoir, walked across Bryant Park. Finally he sat down on one of the benches nea
r the Sixth Avenue and lit a cigar.

  The signs of life were multiplying around him; he watched the cars roll by with their increasing freight of dingy toilers, the shop-girls hurrying to their work, the children trudging schoolward, their small vague noses red with cold, their satchels clasped in woolen-gloved hands. There is nothing very imposing in the first stirring of a great city’s activities; it is a slow reluctant process, like the waking of a heavy sleeper; but to Woburn’s mood the sight of that obscure renewal of humble duties was more moving than the spectacle of an army with banners.

  He sat for a long time, smoking the last cigar in his case, and murmuring to himself a line from Hamlet—the saddest, he thought, in the play—

  For every man hath business and desire.

  Suddenly an unpremeditated movement made him feel the pressure of Ruby Glenn’s revolver in his pocket; it was like a devil’s touch on his arm, and he sprang up hastily. In his other pocket there were just four dollars and fifty cents; but that didn’t matter now. He had no thought of flight.

  For a few minutes he loitered vaguely about the park; then the cold drove him on again, and with the rapidity born of a sudden resolve he began to walk down the Fifth Avenue towards his lodgings. He brushed past a maid-servant who was washing the vestibule and ran up stairs to his room. A fire was burning in the grate and his books and photographs greeted him cheerfully from the walls; the tranquil air of the whole room seemed to take it for granted that he meant to have his bath and breakfast and go down town as usual.

  He threw off his coat and pulled the revolver out of his pocket; for some moments he held it curiously in his hand, bending over to examine it as Ruby Glenn had done; then he laid it in the top drawer of a small cabinet, and locking the drawer threw the key into the fire.

  After that he went quietly about the usual business of his toilet. In taking off his dress-coat he noticed the Legion of Honor which Miss Talcott had given him at the ball. He pulled it out of his buttonhole and tossed it into the fire-place. When he had finished dressing he saw with surprise that it was nearly ten o’clock. Ruby Glenn was already two hours nearer home.

  Woburn stood looking about the room of which he had thought to take final leave the night before; among the ashes beneath the grate he caught sight of a little white heap which symbolized to his fancy the remains of his brief correspondence with Miss Talcott. He roused himself from this unseasonable musing and with a final glance at the familiar setting of his past, turned to face the future which the last hours had prepared for him.

  He went down stairs and stepped out of doors, hastening down the street towards Broadway as though he were late for an appointment. Every now and then he encountered an acquaintance, whom he greeted with a nod and smile; he carried his head high, and shunned no man’s recognition.

  At length he reached the doors of a tall granite building honey-combed with windows. He mounted the steps of the portico, and passing through the double doors of plate-glass, crossed a vestibule floored with mosaic to another glass door on which was emblazoned the name of the firm.

  This door he also opened, entering a large room with wainscoted subdivisions, behind which appeared the stooping shoulders of a row of clerks.

  As Woburn crossed the threshold a gray-haired man emerged from an inner office at the opposite end of the room.

  At sight of Woburn he stopped short.

  “Mr. Woburn!” he exclaimed; then he stepped nearer and added in a low tone: “I was requested to tell you when you came that the members of the firm are waiting; will you step into the private office?”

  1899

  NICHOLAS CARTER

  The Detective’s Pretty Neighbor

  The ever-young NICK CARTER has appeared in more detective novels than any other character in American literature, with more than 1,500 books devoted to his adventures, beginning with The Old Detective’s Star Pupil; or, The Mysterious Crime of Madison Square in the September 18, 1886, issue of the New York Weekly. The creator of the private detective was Ormond G. Smith, the son of one of the founders of the publishing company Street & Smith. He provided the outline to John Russell Coryell, who wrote the story and two others, after which the series was continued by a score of writers, the most prolific of whom was Frederick Van Rensselaer Dey, who wrote more than 1,000 novels.

  In an early story, the All-American detective was described this way:

  Giants were like children in his grasp. He could fell an ox with one blow of his small, compact fist. Old Slim Carter had made the physical development of his son one of the studies of his life. Only one of his studies, however. Young Nick’s mind was stored with knowledge—knowledge of a peculiar sort. His gray eyes, had, like an Indian’s, been trained to take in minutest details fresh for use. His rich, full voice could run the gamut of sounds, from an old woman’s broken, querulous squeak to the deep, hoarse notes of a burly ruffian. And his handsome face could, in an instant, be transformed into any one of a hundred types of unrecognizable ugliness. He was a master of disguise, and could so transform himself that even old Slim could not recognize him. And his intellect, naturally keen as a razor blade, had been incredibly sharpened by the judicious cultivation of the astute old man.

  Carter remained popular as a radio hero in the 1940s, had several films made of his adventures (three of which starred Walter Pidgeon), and moved from dime novels to pulp magazines to a paperback series of more than 260 adventures of a grown-up espionage agent known as the Killmaster.

  “The Detective’s Pretty Neighbor” was first published in The Detective’s Pretty Neighbor and Other Stories, Magnet Detective Library No. 89 (New York: Street & Smith, Publishers, 1899.

  ***

  CHAPTER I: A GLASSFUL OF PRUSSIC ACID

  IT IS OFTEN said of Nick Carter that he knows in advance just how a case is coming out.

  Headquarters men who have no other superstitions will declare their belief that some mysterious instinct supplies Nick with the criminal’s name at the start, and that he really has nothing to do but arrest his man and prepare his evidence.

  They have long ceased to be jealous of Nick’s infallibility, and now they are trying to account for it.

  Nothing amuses the famous detective so much as to be told of these queer fancies.

  Quite recently the present writer repeated one of these fairy stories to Nick, and then asked him flatly if there was anything at all in it.

  “Nothing whatever,” he replied, laughing. “I follow a train of reasoning, and am often astonished to find where it leads me. This talk of a mysterious instinct is all nonsense. Why, only a few days ago I got hold of a case which fooled me completely. No countryman, opening a packet of sawdust after a visit to the city, was ever more surprised than I was by the outcome of the Keane poisoning case.”

  The great detective then proceeded to relate the facts in this strange affair. Although it was an occurrence absolutely unique in criminal records, it did not get over five lines in any newspaper, and no mention whatever was made of poison.

  It appears that the little, old-fashioned house two doors east of Nick’s, on the same side of the street, had been vacant for some years, up to October 1, 1893.

  Then it was rented by Dr. Elisha Keane, a thin and withered old fellow, with a young and very pretty wife.

  It was rumored in the neighborhood that Dr. Keane had left a large and lucrative practice in St. Paul solely to please his wife, who did not like the cold climate.

  He was said to be rich, but a good deal of a miser, as was shown by his renting so poor and mean a house.

  How these stories got about it would puzzle even Nick himself to tell, but they were circulated, and they acted as an advertisement.

  The result was that Dr. Keane picked up a fair practice in a few months. Those who employed him invariably spoke well of him.

  In the course of the winter Dr. Keane was so unfortunate as to have himself for a patient. He fell on his own doorstep and broke his ankle.

  In spi
te of his medical skill he could not make the ankle strong again; and he was thereafter obliged to wear an artificial support cunningly devised by himself.

  Such are the important facts about Dr. Keane. Nick paid little attention to his new neighbors, and their life was so quiet that the detective was very far from supposing that they would ever furnish him with a criminal case.

  One morning, however, there was a loud ring at Nick’s doorbell. It was a little before five o’clock and the detective was wrapped in a profound slumber.

  The sound of the bell aroused him, and a few seconds later there was a sharp rap on his bedroom door.

  Nick called, “Come in,” and springing from the bed, enveloped himself in a great bathrobe.

  Instantly there entered Dr. Keane, pallid, haggard, a pitiable spectacle. He sank into a chair. The attendant who had shown him to Nick’s room, obeying a sign from the detective, withdrew.

  “Dr. Keane!” exclaimed Nick. “What has happened?”

  The miserable man buried his face in his hands. Tears ran between his bony fingers.

  Age looks never so old as in the fresh light of morning, and Dr. Keane’s emaciated form, lying limp in the chair, looked like a worn-out garment which his spirit had flung down there.

  “Come, sir,” said Nick kindly; “let me hear what has happened.”

  “My wife!” groaned the wretched man.

  “What of her?”

  “Dead! dead!”

  “I knew that she was ill,” said Nick; “but did not suppose that there was any danger.”

  “Murdered!” whispered Dr. Keane, as if he was afraid to hear the word.

  Now, if any person supposes that because Nick Carter is always outwardly calm, he has no-heart in his bosom, that person is very much mistaken.

  When the detective heard that this lovely, golden-haired creature, whom he had often seen tripping along the street as merrily as a schoolgirl, had been stricken down by violence, he was deeply moved by pity and anger.