The Adventures of Ethel King, the Female Nick Carter

by Jean Petithuguenin

  “12456.”

  “I’m going to telephone that number. If the telephone is in your bedroom and your wife is at home, she’ll answer, won’t she?”

  “The telephone isn’t exactly in the bedroom, but in a booth which is separated from it by a little glass door. Sometimes my wife is a very light sleeper. The ring of the telephone always wakes her.”

  Ethel King went to the club telephone and asked for telephone number 12456. But she listened in vain; she received no answer.

  “Give me the telephone,” said Wallis, trembling all over. “I don’t understand this at all. She must be there.”

  He had no more success than Ethel King.

  “Something has happened!” he exclaimed in a hoarse voice. “Let’s hurry, Miss King!”

  He was deathly pale; all his features showed anxiety.

  “We don’t have a minute to lose,” Ethel replied. “Where do you live? Mr. Wallis?”

  “478 Walnut Street, on the right bank of the Schuylkill River, at the other end of the city.”

  “Let’s take a cab.”

  Wallis went out first, in a very understandable state of excitement. With Ethel he reached the closest cab station.

  “A five dollar tip! Burn up the pavement!” he shouted to the cabman and jumped into the carriage.

  The cabman whipped up his horse, which left at full speed. While the vehicle was rolling along, Ethel King advised:

  “I beg you, Mr. Wallis. Get hold of yourself. It won’t do any good for the coachman to urge his horse to go faster. It will take us a good 30 minutes to reach your house. And in that length of time you can furnish me a lot of important information.”

  “Ask me. I have entire confidence in you, Miss King. I have often talked about you with my dear wife. That’s probably why Irma thought about calling you.”

  “You’ve been married six months?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have any enemies?”

  “I don’t know of any.”

  “Is that really true?” the detective insisted.

  “Yes, yes, I assure you.”

  “I had at first thought that a burglar had gotten into your house and that your wife had been awakened by the noise. But you made a remark that modified my opinion.”

  “What remark?”

  “When I repeated to you what your wife had said to me over the telephone, you exclaimed: ‘The odious letter!’ Would you explain that letter to me?”

  There was a moment of silence. The man hesitated. Finally he replied in a strangled voice.

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I don’t want to tarnish in your eyes my dear wife, who is purity itself.”

  “I am asking from a completely objective point of view. Besides, you may believe that you won’t have to reproach me for indiscretion. If a crime has been committed and you want to help me find its author, you must be entirely frank with me.”

  “That’s not possible!” the young man stammered.

  “You must, however,” the detective insisted.

  “Let’s wait, Miss King. If a crime has really been committed, I won’t hide anything from you. But if we’re alarmed by mistake, I prefer to be silent.”

  Ethel was content with the response and, dropping that subject, asked: “You’re in business?”

  “I own a little ceramic manufacturing business on Brown Street.”

  “Do you go there every day?

  “Yes, I’m there every morning from 9 a.m. I go home at 1 p.m., and return to the factory at 4 p.m. I always stay there until 7 or 8 p.m. When I go to the club, I go straight there without first going home. It rarely happens that I stay at the club as late as today. It was bad luck. If I had gone back earlier, I would probably have prevented a catastrophe.”

  “Has your wife seemed to you to be upset, worried?”

  “No…However, to be frank, I must say that for a month or two, she has seemed less happy than usual. I questioned her several times on that subject, and she blamed this change in mood on neuralgia. I called in a doctor who put her on a diet and her condition seemed to improve.”

  “Did you establish some connection between that change in mood and the letter to which you referred?”

  The young man trembled.

  “I never thought about that,” Wallis murmured, more troubled than ever. “My God! Could it be possible? But no! A thousand times no! Irma is so pure, so good; her love for me is so deep! She is incapable of such a thing!”

  Ethel King thought she had guessed the content of the letter that Wallis refused to show her.

  “Irma seemed so happy again today,” the young man said despondently. “I had brought her a beautiful bouquet of sweet smelling white roses, and she was as happy as a child; she thanked me effusively; she hugged me. And now! Mercy! When I think…that I’m perhaps going to find her bathing in her blood...”

  He didn’t finish. And he covered his face with his hands, trembling throughout his whole body. The trip finished in silence. The cab finally reached Walnut Street and soon halted in front of No. 478, a small three-story town house. The raised first floor was reached by stone steps. The door was closed and there were no lights anywhere.

  As the cab went away, Harold Wallis looked at the door a moment, trembling.

  “Great God! What are we going to see?” he murmured. “Will I find my wife alive, or is my happiness destroyed?”

  Ethel King took the unhappy man’s arm.

  “Courage, Mr. Wallis. Whatever happens, stand firm!”

  She climbed the steps with Wallis, who opened the door.

  The Bloody Roses

  “Where is the bedroom?” Ethel King asked.

  “On the second floor. Irma must be there. I can’t believe something bad has happened to her.”

  Harold made an effort to master his emotion.

  “Come, Miss King.”

  He climbed the steps four at a time to the second floor. Ethel King had trouble keeping up with him. She heard him open a door violently and saw him switch on the electricity.

  A piercing cry rang throughout the house, then the sound of a fall. When the detective crossed the threshold of the bedroom, a terrifying spectacle met her eyes. Harold Wallis had fainted beside the bed. The one he loved so much had disappeared. There was no longer anything on the sheets but a bouquet of white roses stained with blood.

  Ethel King took a carafe of water which was on the bedside table and splashed Wallis’ face. He wasn’t long in coming around. The young man opened his eyes and at first looked around him with amazement; then his memory returned and he got up with a stifled cry.

  “She’s not here, Miss King. She’s been murdered. That blood on the roses; it’s my wife’s…”

  The detective made the unhappy man sit down.

  “Get hold of yourself. I don’t believe that Mrs. Wallis is dead!”

  “What! You still have hope, Miss King?”

  “Yes, I tell you again, your wife is alive. My job now is to find her and bring her back to you. As for the scoundrel who took her from you, I’ll deliver him to justice.”

  “But how can you be so positive?” Wallis asked incredulously.

  “If the criminal had killed the young woman, he wouldn’t have taken the trouble to carry away the body. No, in my opinion, he wanted to hold Mrs. Wallis alive in his power.”

  “Why? Is it for a ransom? Oh! I’ll gladly pay whatever they ask of me, provided my dear Irma is returned to me.”

  “It’s possible that someone wants to extort money from you. But it’s equally possible that a man has become madly in love with Mrs. Wallis and has kidnapped her.”

  Wallis pressed both hands on his chest.

  “My God! You’re right! The letter! That miserable letter…”

  “Well! Don’t wait any longer! Show it to me.”

  “Here it is!” The young man took his billfold from his pocket and drew out a crumpled paper. “This is an anonymous
letter that I received two weeks ago. I didn’t attach any importance to it at the time.”

  Ethel King unfolded the sheet of paper and read the following:

  Mr. Harold Wallis

  Industrialist, 56 Brown Street

  Philadelphia

  A friend is giving you this advice in your interest. Your wife no longer merits your confidence. She is deceiving you. She has already received someone at night. She has been seen. Don’t let yourself be ridiculed.

  X.Y.

  “Did you show this letter to your wife?” Ethel King asked. “Or did you speak to her about it?”

  “No, I considered it an infamous calumny against an irreproachable creature. In my eyes, to attach the least importance to such a letter would have been to insult Irma. My dear wife is incapable of doing what she’s accused of.”

  “I believe you, Mr. Wallis. I am persuaded that your wife has been taken against her will. If that were not true, she wouldn’t have telephoned me to come help her. Nevertheless, circumstances oblige us to take into account that letter which might have some bearing on the case.”

  “I understand, Miss King.”

  “Do you perfectly understand Mrs. Wallis’ past?”

  “Absolutely! Nine months ago she still lived with her mother at Wayne Junction. I became engaged to her a year ago.”

  “Where did you meet your wife?”

  “She was the cashier in my factory. Her beauty, her sweetness, charmed me. I asked her mother, a very respectable old lady, for her hand. The family had been rich in the past, but the father, before his death, had made unfortunate investments and lost almost all his fortune. Irma’s mother died nine months ago, and, as my fiancé would be alone after that, we decided to marry as soon as possible. The private ceremony took place last July. We were both infinitely happy. I know Irma’s heart was totally mine.”

  “The young girl hadn’t had any attachment before knowing you?”

  “No, I’m certain of it.”

  Ethel King proceeded to an investigation. She first entered the little telephone booth. She couldn’t hold back an exclamation of surprise.

  “Look, Mr. Wallis. This door has been broken down. The glass is in pieces. The young girl probably took refuge here and locked the door. That was when she telephoned me. But the criminal broke down the door with his shoulder.”

  Ethel King then turned up traces of blood on the floor. A curtain had been snatched down. There was a piece missing from it. Not having turned up any other clues, Ethel King telephoned the police. She then went back into the bedroom and picked up the bouquet of roses.

  “This is unusual,” she murmured. “There is no trace of blood on the sheets. Only the flowers are stained with it. It has to be deduced that the scoundrel dipped them on purpose in the blood and then placed them on the bed.”

  Fifteen minutes later the police arrived with a young Commissioner who began investigations. Seeing the bloody roses, he stated the opinion that Mrs. Wallis had been murdered, and that her corpse had been removed. Ethel King let him continue as he liked and consoled as well as she could the poor husband who had been again plunged into despair by the Commissioner’s declarations.

  After having gone through, with no result, the rooms on the second floor, Ethel went down to the first floor. She wanted, first of all, to establish how the criminal had left the house with his victim. The door opening onto the little garden was open. Ethel King took advantage of the fact that the Commissioner and the policemen were busy in the bedroom to go on with investigations. She went into the garden, her flashlight in her hand. The ground was soft and wet because it had thawed after a heavy snow fall. Ethel King had no trouble in discovering the criminal’s footprints, leading in two directions, coming and going. Those he had left when departing were deeper, and the detective concluded that he must have been carrying a heavy burden.

  The man had obviously crossed the fence at the bottom of the garden. He must have had a great deal of trouble scaling it with his victim on his shoulders. Ethel King examined the planks of the enclosure one by one and discovered some strings of gray wool which had gotten stuck on a rusty nail. The detective put these bits of wool in her purse. Then she took the exact dimensions of one of the footprints. That done, she jumped the fence with the agility of a professional athlete and landed in the neighboring garden, which had large, well cared for gravel paths where the steps were hardly visible. In all, the young woman succeeded in following the criminal’s trail only as far as Samson Street.

  “If the scoundrel carried his victim any further, he had to have used a vehicle,” the detective was thinking.

  The abductor had regained the street by going through the grounds of a little villa at No. 291 Samson Street. Following her investigations, Ethel discovered that the scoundrel, by going through the center of the city, had arrived at the garden of a little townhouse situated to the left of Wallis’ house. The trail suddenly stopped under a portico, to which a trapeze was suspended.

  “This is unusual,” Ethel King murmured. “It would seem that the criminal took his precautions to throw off searches.”

  The first steps of the trail had been imprinted very deeply. They were even marked better than those the kidnapper had left in leaving with his human burden. Neither were they exactly under the portico.

  Ethel King directed her flashlight onto the footprints.

  “It would seem that the criminal got here by jumping,” she mused.

  Her glance fell on the trapeze, then was carried to the wall of the townhouse, which was three yards from there. She noticed that one window on the second floor was open.

  She went across the garden, scaled the wrought iron fence, to come down again on Walnut Street. She was now in front of No. 477, the house next to that of Harold Wallis. She rang at the door. Moments later, a window on the second floor opened.

  “What do you want at such an hour?” a man’s voice demanded.

  “Let me in,” Ethel King answered. “It’s a matter on which a human life depends. I absolutely must talk to you.”

  “Who are you?” the man, suspicious, continued.

  “I’ll explain myself when you’ve let me in. In the name of Heaven, hurry!”

  There was something in the detective’s voice which decided the man to obey.

  “All right, be patient a moment. I’m coming down.”

  The door to the steps opened in a few moments. The man first stopped at the threshold of the door and threw the light from his lamp on his visitor’s face. Ethel King saw that he was holding a revolver.

  “Don’t be afraid,” she told him. “I’m Ethel King.”

  “Really! Then come in. You’re welcome. Tell me the reason for your visit.”

  He conducted the young woman into a luxurious drawing room where he turned on the electric lights.

  “I know you by reputation, Miss King, and I’m ready to help you any way I can. Has a burglary been committed in a neighboring house, or even in mine?”

  The man questioning Ethel King was an old gentleman with a white beard and a very likeable face.

  “No, Mr...”

  “Oh! Pardon me, Miss King. I forgot to introduce myself. I’m James Green, the owner of this house.”

  The young woman bowed, smiling.

  “No, Mr. Green, there hasn’t been a burglary in your house, but a criminal has broken into No. 478.”

  The old man exclaimed in horror.

  “At Mr. Harold Wallis’ house?”

  “Yes, a kidnapping took place at midnight. Mrs. Wallis has been forcibly abducted.”

  “That’s not possible! That charming young woman! Oh! How I pity that poor Harold. We see each other frequently; they are such likeable people! But how can I help you?”

  “I believe the abductor passed through your house before committing his crime.”

  James Green made a movement of surprise.

  “Through my house?” he exclaimed with amazement. “Excuse me, Miss King, I take that to be
inadmissible.”

  “We’re going to see. I would like to ask you some questions. Your answers will show me if my suspicions are justified.”

  “Ask away, Miss King. I myself am impatient to know if you’re right.”

  He lit a cigarette and sank back into his armchair.

  Important Revelations

  “The façade of your house has six windows facing the garden on each story, doesn’t it?”

  “That’s correct. However, two of the windows on the first floor are replaced by doors. One leads into the vestibule, the other into the laundry room.”

  “I’m talking about the second floor. Into what bedroom does the second window open, counting from Wallis’ house?”

  “Into the bedroom of my renter, Mr. Rooding.”

  “Ah! You have a renter! What sort of man is this Rooding?”

  “You don’t suspect him, do you?”

  “Please, Mr. Green. Answer my question. I can’t talk about suspicions yet.”

  “Well, John Rooding made an excellent impression on me, although I know very little about him.”

  “What’s his profession?”

  “I have no idea. I believe he is very rich.”

  “Then why is he renting this bedroom? Couldn’t he rent an entire house?”

  “It’s only a temporary lodging, he told me.”

  “How much is his rent?”

  “Eight dollars a week.”

  “What’s he like?”

  “He’s a handsome man. He has very dark, curly hair. He wears a black, well-trimmed moustache, which goes very well with his olive complexion. He has a rather long face with brilliant black eyes.”

  “Does he seem to be a passionate man?”

  “Oh, yes,” Green answered. “He gives that impression.”

  “Do you know the address of his real home?”

  “No, I’ve never asked him for it. I had no interest in that.”

  “How long have you rented that bedroom to him?”

  “For about a month. He sends me the money punctually by mail every Monday.”

  “Does he often sleep here?”

  “Two or three times a week.”