She has now returned to the stage, and Nick Carter, who has seen her recently in Paris, declares that she is more wonderful than ever.
He wishes he could have spared her that last humiliating ordeal, but she is wise enough to know that, but for him and Chick, the man she had despised would have made his dreadful vengeance complete.
CHAPTER XXXV.
“MYSTERY 47.”
Nick had just concluded the preceding case, when he received a request to come down to police headquarters at his earliest convenience. The request came from the inspector in charge of the detective bureau, and Nick hastened to comply, as Inspector Ward was an old and tried friend.
The inspector looked worried as he greeted Nick in his private room at headquarters.
“Nick,” said the inspector, getting right down to business, “this is undoubtedly the strangest case that has ever come to the attention of the department, at least while I have been connected with it. We have called it ‘Mystery 47,’ on account of its similarity to the case which startled Paris a few years ago, that, if you will remember, occurred at 47 Rue Boulogne.
“The bodies of six men have been found, one after another, and all of them within ten feet of each other. Another puzzling feature about the murders is that there does not seem to have been any motive for any of them, as the bodies when found did not appear to have been robbed. Still another strange feature is that, so far, the coroner’s office has not been able to determine what has been the cause of death in any of the cases. We have absolutely no clews on which to work. Whoever the assassin is, he has covered his tracks with the hand of a master, he has not left the slightest thing on which we can work. There does not appear to be any reason for the shooting down of the people that have fallen at the hand of the murderer. In all my experience I have never known of a case where murders have been committed without a reason, but in this instance there does not seem to be the slightest reason for the man to have struck down the people that he has, as the murdered men were in different walks of life, and, so far as we can learn, none of them had an enemy in the world.
“Another strange feature of the case is that the bodies all present exactly the same appearance; on each is found a small speck of blood over the heart. No other marks of violence are visible, and the coroner’s physician says that he has not been able to find any trace of poison in any of the bodies.
“So far the papers have not paid much attention to the mystery, but I have concluded that the men whom I have had assigned to the case will not be able to solve it, and so I sent for you, as I know that Nick Carter has never yet failed to get at the bottom of any case.”
“You are very kind to say that, but I am afraid that you overestimate my work,” said Nick modestly. “I will undertake to solve the mystery for you, however.