They denoted that he was on the threshold of an extraordinary case, one shrouded in mystery and involving a great loss, and the scene within seemed to warrant all that he had overheard.
The entrance hall through which he had passed led into a beautifully furnished parlor overlooking Fifth Avenue. It was one of the front rooms of an apartment occupying the entire second floor of the spacious and magnificent old Vanhausen mansion, turned to other than strictly private residential uses since the encroachment of commercial interests upon that part of the fashionable New York thoroughfare.
A slender, strikingly pretty girl of eighteen sat weeping in one of the richly upholstered armchairs. Her fair face was of an artless, winsome type, evincing girlish innocence and that sweet and sensitive nature which none can resist. A light complexion and glistening golden hair, crowning a shapely and perfectly poised head, told plainly that she was of German extraction.
One of her two companions was a man turned sixty. He was pacing to and fro in a state of abject distress and violent agitation. His short, corpulent figure was shaking as if his every nerve had become a writhing, red-hot wire in his palpitating flesh. His round, florid face was streaming with perspiration. His hair, a tawny mop on a large, intellectual head, was in indescribable disorder. He was wringing his hands and moaning as if his heart was broken.
The only other person present when Nick entered with his chief assistant, Chick Carter, was a tall, clean-cut man in the twenties, one Arthur Gordon, a successful broker and popular society man with whom Nick was well acquainted, and to whose urgent telephone request he then was responding.
“Ah, here is Mr. Carter now,” he exclaimed, when the two detectives entered. “Thank goodness, Nick, you could come immediately. We’re up against it good and hard, a terrible robbery.”
“H’m, is that so?”
“You know Mr. Rudolph Strickland by name and reputation, I’m sure. This is his niece, Wilhelmina Strickland, from Boston. Now, do, Mr. Strickland, compose yourself, that Mr. Carter may lose no time in sifting this matter to the bottom.”
There was, indeed, as Gordon had implied, little need of an introduction to Mr. Rudolph Strickland. His name was a familiar one in the best circles of New York society. He numbered among his friends and acquaintances nearly all of the distinguished artists, musicians, and literary people of any note, who were frequent visitors to his spacious apartments to admire his superb collection of art treasures, or hear his master hand manipulate his famous Stradivarius violin.