New Nick Carter Weekly, No. 40 — page 26: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

him not to 7 Mi i ah After puzzling in this fashion for a full half hour, in the course of which he used every cipher test that Nick had taught him, he gave it up. He tried to think what the letter should mean if taken just as it stood. Kemp had certainly found it behind the mop-board. How did it come there? Suddenly Dan remembered a portion of the conversation between Kemp and Bar- ber when they stood onthe sidewalk, just in front of him. ‘*Poor Tom,’’ one of them had said. At that time Dan had supposed that they were referring to some partner of theirs and had wondered who it could be. ‘*Tom Kelly,’’ he said to himself now as he looked at the address on the en- velope. | he glanced at the postmark. It he ppened to be a plain one and he saw that the letter had been mailed in Breokly nonthe same day that it was written. said to himself. | “This girl, Nell, whoever she is, knew that her lover, Tom Kelly, was in iob to burn the Johnson house. aps she knew it was a_ scheme to hunt for treasure there” after the house had been reduced to ruins. “Anyhow, she writes to Tom begging go into the scheme. “Tom carries the letter a couple of days and maybe he was thinking that he would not do the job. Maybe he and Kemp and Barber drew “et to > decide ‘wahiee one should set it “one ¢ ‘who did the wae a =.3,. . q : . : : = | 1] a 1 » | a i i = ‘ —— -s — . Ng a _ . . " ‘pi rs 4 | n that = ‘Sania “The letter is straight enough,’’ he “Anyhow, it Takes as ‘if he were the ) | : NICK CARTER WEEKLY. ; for a professional crook to go through the house-and get what he could lay hands on before burning it down ‘There was only one man in it and that one too old to bea very dangerous foe if he should wake up. ‘*So I’m _ satisfied that Tom in the course of his- going through the house came to that room where I saw Kemp at work, ‘‘Something may have happened just then to remind him of the letter that his sweetheart had sent him. ‘*Perhaps he was filling his pockets full of plunder, but no matter—he thought of the letter and decided that he would not keep it by him any mee ‘*He was going to set fire to that par of the house which was under this room. ‘‘It would have been easy enough for him to burn the letter when he touched a match to the kindlings that he had stacked up by the back stairs, but the professional criminal, as Nick says, is all the time doing queer things that give him away. “I. remember that the mop-board, where Kemp worked last and where he found this letter, was already a little loose. aye = ‘“Tom saw that, too, so he just shoved his letter down into that crack between | the mop-board and the wall. ‘“He believed that when the house burned up the letter would be destroyed. ‘‘Now, then, how’s that for a theory : "dg Vhen Dan asked himself this question, he held the letter out before him at arm’s length and read itagain. _ He had to admit that his — these and probably was a wrong many details. The: “main point must be right, | $6 Hu =a in his thoug ee e one in a ec Cc a 7 {st ‘fully wre ‘om Kelly Bo was ey entire] ly burned down. ’ _~ ' 4 ; : Sy ‘O1 ossibie tT ( ¢ 4 5 | ' - * * - & i. ‘ = Pa ‘ | y was | mostly guess-work, and that it might be, * | would, with the result. that the ‘ The Sealer tiat in Spat” room y where ' j tee . a _ rt = me a A Bes