Beadle's New York Dime Library, No. 288 — page 6: what you’re looking at

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

6 Electro Pete, the Man of Fire. said, encouragingly. ‘‘ Meantime, let me be of you to keep as quiet as possible about it. shall try and bait this fellow.” “Try what?” “Try a bait first. If that fails, then we must o to work indeed, It is no common thief we ave to deal with. Listen to some instructions I wish to give you.” A whispered conversation ensued. Sieerin s both went out, having extinguished the gas. About an hour later, Dimble came back, car- rying in his hand a new valise. And when he had once more lighted the gas, he opened the valise and spread out on the round table in the center of the room, a dazzling display of jew- olry, with which he toyed as if examining it in the keenness of a business cAlculation. Then he undressed and climbed into bed in a most natural manner, having put out the gas, and the jewelry was allowed to remain exposed on the table. A second later, the door of Dimble’s room opened and a man in stocking-feet glided in, Dimble gaped. The visitant hissed warning- This visitant was Daniels. The detective locked the door after him noise- lessly and then glided toward a cupboard-like closet which he had noticed at one side of the room on his former examinations, Stillness reigned, Hours passed. Dimble was snoring loudly. Wide awake and on the alert, however, was the detective. He experienced some disgust, that a man who professed to be so alarmed at the loss he had sustained should so easily enjoy a sound slumber while steps were taking to catch the mysterious thief. But Dimble was surely slumbering soundly. And for a moment, a thought seemed to pass in the detective’s mind that nema Timothy Dimble did know more about the mystery than he had cared to betray. If a vast deal of trouble and fuss was creat- ed, it might serve to cover up some complicity on the part of the drummer in the robbery. Motionless as a carved image stood the sleuth in the dark confinement of the closet. Keen were his ears for the slightest unusual sound, There was the occasional tramp of lodgers seeking their rooms along the hall without; but at last the silence of death fell upon the hotel. Then his steady vigil was rewarded. _ With the door of the closet shut entire save a small crack to permit of a breath of fresh air, and the room being in total darkness, it was impossible for him to distinguish anything that might transpire in the room. But bis alert ears caught a faint noise that could not have been made by the slumbering Dimble. Just the slightest perceptible rattle in the direction of the round table, as of some hand cautiously gathering up the jewelry which had been purposely left there by the drummer. Slowly the detective pushed open the closet oor. But keen as were his eyes, he could not dis- ee anything in the arkness of the room. nd still the sound—the faint, scrapy sound —as of a hand that was either picking up or collecting into a pile the jewelry on the table. Further opened the door of the closet. Stealthy as a cat the detective crept toward the gas-burner, a patent, never-miss-fire fuse in his hand. | Then, quick as a flash, the burner was lighted. As the room was thus illumined, Dimble awoke. He started up in bed, exclaiming: ** What’s the matter?” ' Mark Daniels’s eyes were fastened ina gaze upon the round table, and his face was the pic- ture of intensest astonishment. ‘‘ Look there,” he said, leveling a forefiner. Dimble stared, The surface of the table was almost entirely cleared of the jewelry that had been there so shortly before. If ever a man felt himself utterly baffled, that man was Baltimore’s famous detective, Mark Daniels, What manner of thief could this possibly be? The door was still locked; the window was tight down; no one could have been in the room, unless of a supernatural presence—yet a greater weber of the jewelry was gone, The plan to bait the thief bad failed. And by the remarkable circumstance, Daniels knew that the drummer was not concerned in the robbery as be had for a moment suspected while hidden in the closet. ‘*Mr. Dimble, you have been robbed again. It is my own loss this time, however. And I will unearth this mystery if it absorbs both a lifetime and my life.” . “*T ar afraid I was asleep,” ‘You were.” ‘*And while I slept, and while you were watching, do you tell me that there bas ,been another robbery committed in this room?’ ** That is about the size of it.” Daniels became very thoughtful. — _—— He was sure that some one must have been within the room. For the third time he examined every foot of wall surface and the edges of the carpeting. He half-suspected that there might be some secret mode of access, But the search revealed nothing. While this was transpiring in the room of the drummer, a young and handsome man entered the hotel office and advanced to the counter with the inquiry: ‘‘Ts Miss St. Dyer stopping here?” He appeared to be a traveler just arrived in the city, and there was that about him which indicated a true gentleman beyond all ques- tion. ‘* She is.” **T must see her.” “Tt is rather late, sir. I am afraid she has retired by this time, and we hardly like to dis- turb—” ‘It is imperative,” interrupted the young man. ‘*Andif you will convey word to her that Robert {Rathwaite is here, she will see me at once, I am sure.” The clerk tapped the bell obligingly. A waiter was dispatched to the room of Miss St. Dyer. He presently returned with a scared look upon his sable face, and announced: ‘* Not dar, sah.” It was noticeable that he was laboring under a nervousness of some kind. The clerk eyed him sharply. CHAPTER VII. MYSTERY UPON MYSTERY. Is anything the matter at Miss Dyer’s room?” asked the clerk, apprehensively, as he gazed sharply at the ae ot sah, I didn’t go in—” “Goin! Why, is her door open?” ‘“Yes, sah, An’—an’ pears to me dere’s a smell o’ brimstone roun’ de place up dere.” At that juncture the proprietor himself ap- peared, coming from the rear room, as was his custom, after a brief nap, every night at about the hour of midnight. “What is it?’ he interrogated. “Something wrong up in Miss St. Dyer’s room,” replied the clerk, uneasily. Instantly the proprietor ascended to the room. The darky and the young man who had just arrived accompanied bim. At No. — the door was found to be ajar. Several raps failing to elicit any response, the roprietor entered and groped forward in the bartinets toward the gas-burner, striking a match as he went. When the jet shed its light on the surround- ing, a universal exclamation of amazement that contained some horror filled the room, The bedding was disordered and strewn on the floor, and on some of the linen there were red stains that surely looked like blood. Oriele St, Dyer had vanished. An examination of the bureau-drawers, where the proprietor knew she was accustomed to keep her jewelry, showed that the valuable baubles had been extracted. It was a scene that suggested both robbery and murder. But if a murder, where was the body of the victim? While they stood aghast, there was another little scene in the corridor near the room of the drummer, Dimble. Daniels had emerged to seek his senior to con- sult upon the remarkable robbery that had been committed, under bis very nose, as it were, when, to his surprise, he met that personage almost at the door. “T was coming after you,” said the senior. ‘ And I was about to do the same,” rejoined Daniels. ‘‘Wirst, what have you to communicate?” The remarkable occurrence of the robbery was related. The chief was as much puzzled as his partner. ‘* And I,” said the former, “was coming to te bn with the strange fact that the Italian, Pietro Idello, is not in his room, though I saw him enter there, left him there, know that he could bardly have passed out of the hotel by the entrance without my seeing him; and what is strangest of all, his gas is burnin low, still bright enough for me to make ou through the spy-hole, that the door is both locked and bolted.” ‘‘There is more mystery here than I think we will be able to solve,” remarked Daniels, who was, to tell the truth, somewhat discouraged at the condition of affairs. For there seemed to be not the slightest clew for him to commence work bf et anythin was accomplished, it must by a stroke o mere chance and the usual wide-awake faculties for which he had been hitherto noted. While they thus stood, a footstep sounded along the corridor and in a few seconds they were joined by the hotel proprietor. He wasa to the plot of the detective to bait the thief who was robbing the room of the drummer, He knew that the detective was in Dimble’s room, The recent discoveries in the apartment oc- cupied by Miss St. Dyer was bringing him now to introduce this new mystery to Daniels’s notice. Without pausing to describe what he had dis- covered in the young lady’s room, he said: ‘Mr. Daniels, please step this way with me— your friend will excuse you—” Daniels interrupted. ‘* Let me introduce to you a brother detective. Smith is his name. We are working together on this diamond business.” ‘*Glad to know you, Mr. Smith.” He had no idea that the man with whom he shook bands was one well known to him as the senior of the firm of West & Co. “Come this way, please. I am very much worried, and I think there has been a murder committed under this roof.” ‘* A murder?” The two sleuths exchanged glances. What next was to be developed in this as yet uncertain trail they were upon? And West, like bis partner, was working then—having a spell of leisure on his hands— more for the sake of unraveling a mystery than an yebing else. t the rdom of Oriele St. Dyer, they glanced at one another again. The sight that was pre- sented was certainly startlingly suggestive ofa red tragedy. But the same idea possessed both at once. If a murder had been committed, where was the body? It would be an almost impossible matter to take a dead body from the hotel. After an examination of the stains, the sup- posed Smith said: ** Blood!” And Daniels echoed, as he bent over the dis- ordered linen: ‘“* Blood!” The proprietor was really alarmed for the reputation of his house. Never in all his hotel experience had anything of this character tran- spired under his management. Daniels said: ‘* Blood, sure enough. But I do not think there has been a murder committed.” There was a modest tug at his sleeve. He turned to face the young man who had come to the hotel to see Miss St, Dyer and who gave his name as Robert Rathwaite. ‘*'You are a detective?” he asked. ‘*That is my business,” “Do you think that Miss St. Dyer has been killed?” ‘Why are you so interested?” ‘* Because she was my promised wife. I have come from Chicago to make her my wife by her own ye Aen We were to meet on this very night at this hotel. But for an accident to the enginé between here and Point of Rocks, I would have reached the city before dark. It is not a pleasant thing for an expectant husband ~ find—this—” and he pointed to thestained inen. The voice of the senior was then saying—and it attracted the young man: ‘*Tt looks very much like foul play, sir. But there are certain evidences which, to a detec- tive, warrant my saying that I do not believe there has been any murder committed. And until that point is definitely settled, I would ask that you have this room absolutely excluded from use.—Ha!” He suddenly advanced and griped the darky by the collar, dragging him into the room and closing the door. ‘* Look you, you black rascal!” he said, stern- ly. ‘If you'so much as breathe a word about what you have seen in this room, I will have you sent ‘over the falls’ fora period so long that it won’t be pleasant—” ‘‘De Lor’, boss, I ain’t done noffin’.” ‘‘No, but we'll retain you as a witness and I have known witnesses to be confined in jail so long that they wished they never had known anything about a case.” ‘Pore de Lor’, boss, I won’t say noffin’!” Robert Rathwaite took a room at the hotel, after some conversation with the detectives. And these two sleuths departed for their office to hold a conference. Before dawn, the whole force of that private Agency was set eee one of the st st of complicated cases that had ever come under the notice of the Baltimore detective force. The matter of the diamond robbery; the dis- appearance of the beautiful girl, Oriele St. Dyer, for whose discovery Robert Rathwaite the young Chicago grain merchant, had offered a large reward, and the mixed evidence of the Italian, Pietro Idello, whose story, as related to the senior detective, had thrown upon this young girl the suspicion that she was a patri- cide for whom the Italian authorities had a standing reward, For Mr. West had visited the consul and as- certained that such a criminal.was really want- et long been wanted—in the Italian capi- Early next day, and after but the slightest apology for a snatched nap of repose, Daniels EOMmIGcbDooks GOlr i 4