It was remembered by the celebrated detective, moreover, only because of two incidents that would have been entirely unnoticed by a less keen and discerning man.
One was the single stroke of a tall, old-fashioned clock in the main hall of the great mansion.
It struck the half after ten.
The hall in which it struck, and in which Nick Carter then was standing, was that of the magnificent Carrington mansion on Washington Heights, the home of the wealthy railway magnate, Horace K. Carrington, a millionaire fifty times over, and prominent with his handsome wife in the most fashionable and exclusive circles of New York society.
It was the night of the fifteenth of January, memorable for an unusual warm spell of more than a week, which had melted the last vestige of snow and drawn the last sign of frost from the ground.
It was also memorable as the night of a private masked ball in the Carrington mansion, in which something like three hundred of their most intimate friends had gathered.
The avenue and streets adjoining the extensive estate were thronged with conveyances of the most expensive kinds, limousines, and costly motor cars predominating.
The elegant grounds, covering nearly an entire square, were almost as bright as day under the glare of a myriad of electric lights suspended among the trees of the surrounding park.
The superb mansion itself was ablaze from basement to roof. Its broad halls and spacious, sumptuously furnished rooms were thronged with masked guests, many in elaborate fancy and historic costumes, and some in nondescript attire.