And she was only twenty-five years old two months before the time the jury pronounced for her benefit those two magic words, “not guilty.�
The lawyers who had managed the affairs of J. Cephas Lynne had in their possession his last will and testament, which left everything that he died owning to his daughter Edythe; and, as she had actually been alive some months after her father’s death, she had inherited the immense wealth without being aware of it.
But she had died leaving no will, and now the lawyers were vainly trying to find an orphaned nephew of J. Cephas Lynne, of whom they had some faint knowledge, but who had long ago disappeared from sight and from the knowledge of his uncle, somewhere in the West.
And Nick Carter had been waiting only for the end of the trial of Madge Babbington to take up the search for the lost nephew for the lawyers.
It was necessary that Carleton Lynne should be found without delay, or that proof of his death also should be established, in order that the great estate of the dead millionaire might be administered, and so, when the verdict was pronounced, it being only three o’clock in the afternoon, the detective turned his steps in the direction of the lawyers’ offices, to tell them that he was ready to go ahead.
When he ascended in the elevator of the building where the lawyers were located, he noticed a young man who left it at the same floor he did, and who walked ahead of him to the same door he was seeking, and that young man announced himself, once he was inside the offices, as Carleton Lynne, from Idaho, just arrived, having seen one of the advertisements in a newspaper he had picked up by chance.
And possibly this story might better have been entitled “The Mystery of Carleton Lynne,� for at that moment when the young man announced himself began the birth of a new mystery.
CHAPTER XVI.
NICK GIVES A WARNING.
The clerk in the law office who received the rather startling announcement of the identity of the stranger, also perceived and recognized Nick Carter, who entered the office immediately behind the man.
His impulsive assumption was, of course, that the two had come there together, and that in some manner the detective had found trace of the man for whom advertisements had been spread broadcast through the country.