Never in the experience of Nick Carter had he known of a clear case of murder like this one, where the murderer had left absolutely nothing undone to demonstrate a suicide; but Nick Carter, because of those tracks in the snow, because he had arrived upon the scene at precisely the psychological moment to understand them, and because he had read the other signs that we have described, knew it to be a deliberately planned and executed crime.
There was not the slightest doubt of that in his mind, and, therefore, he did not hesitate to break the seal of that letter which otherwise would have been sacred.
But there was no time to be lost in getting a trace of that man who had accompanied the young woman to the house.
One who could plan and execute a crime in such a masterly manner would have planned much farther ahead of him than that, also, and would have arranged to cover his tracks so that if the accident of Nick Carter’s passing that way at the moment he did so had not happened, it is doubtful if the crime and criminal would ever have been discovered, and the young woman who died that night in all the glory of her young womanhood would have been remembered only as a suicide.
Therefore, the detective broke the seal and read the letter—after which he returned it to the envelope and put it carefully away in one of his pockets, already determined that no eyes but his own and his assistants should see it until he had run down the man who had committed the awful outrage.
The contents of that letter are not important save to demonstrate the cleverness of the murderer; but we will give them as the detective found them:
“Darling Papa: I will not ask you to forgive me for this act, for I know you will do that. I also know that I will have made you suffer deeply by it. Yet I do it with deliberation—because I feel that I must do it. The reasons why I have decided that there is no other way, you will discover soon enough, and you will feel deep regret because I did not go to you and tell you all about it, instead of doing this thing. Yet there are some things which one cannot face, and the one thing that I cannot face is your sorrow when you come to know what I have done. I would never have believed it possible that I could be brought to this pass, but here I am, and soon I shall be only a memory. I hope you will cherish only the tenderest parts of that memory, and that you will always believe that even in taking my own life, I love you.
Edythe.�
Such was the letter that the detective read and then hid away in his pocket; but there was one sentence of the letter that burned itself upon his memory, one sentence that must be the explanation of the crime itself. It was:
“The reasons why I have decided that there is no other way, you will discover soon enough, and you will feel deep regret because I did not go to you and tell you all about it, instead of doing this thing.�