American Sherlocks Nick Rennison (best big ereader txt) 📖

for him to catch Bradley’s eye. The rest was as easy as rolling off a log. When he got our friend inside, he put him to sleep, took his keys and his outer clothing, and then – goodbye, Sing Sing! It’s rather strange that he succeeded in getting away without discovery of the deception, but he evidently did; or else he bribed somebody. You might look into that possibility, if you think best. The supposition isn’t essential, however, for accident, or good luck, might easily have aided him. As for the means he used to cover his trail after leaving the vicinity of the prison, we need not waste any time over that question. Fortunately, we have hit upon his trail down the river, and all that remains to do is to keep on it, in the right direction, until we come up with him. It may be a matter of hours or days or months, but Grantley is going to be brought back here before we’re through. You can bank on that, gentlemen. And when I return him to you it will be up to you to take some extraordinary precautions to see that he doesn’t hypnotize any more keepers.’

‘I guess that’s right, Carter,’ agreed Warden Kennedy tugging at his big moustache. ‘Bolts and bars are no good to keep in a man like that, who can make anybody let him out just by looking at him and telling him to hand over the keys. I suppose I’d have done it, too, if I’d been in Bradley’s place.’

‘Exactly!’ the detective responded, with a laugh. ‘You couldn’t have helped yourself. Don’t worry, though. I think we can keep him from trying any more tricks of that sort, when we turn him over to you again.’

‘Hanged if I see how, unless we give him a dose of solitary confinement, in a dark cell, and have the men blindfold themselves when they poke his food in through the grating.’

‘That won’t be necessary,’ Nick assured the warden as he prepared to leave. ‘We can get around it easier than that.’

Half an hour later Nick was on his way back to New York City.

He was not as light-hearted or confident as he had allowed Warden Kennedy to suppose, however.

The fact that Grantley had turned to that mysterious and terrifying agency, hypnotism, with all of its many evil possibilities, caused him profound disquiet.

Already the fugitive had used his mastery of the uncanny force in two widely different ways. He had escaped from prison with startling ease by means of it, and then, not content with that, he had hypnotized a famous actress in the midst of one of her greatest triumphs – for Nick had known all along that Helga Lund had yielded to hypnotic influence.

If the escaped convict kept on in the way he had begun, there was no means of foretelling the character or extent of his future crimes, in case he was not speedily brought to bay.

V

Grantley’s trail vanished into thin air – or seemed to – very quickly.

Nick Carter and his assistants had comparatively little trouble in finding the hotel which the fugitive had patronized the night before, but their success amounted to little.

Grantley had arrived there at almost one o’clock in the morning and signed an assumed name on the register. He brought a couple of heavy suitcases with him.

He had not been in prison long enough to acquire the characteristic prison pallor to an unmistakable degree, and a wig had evidently concealed his closely cropped hair.

He was assigned to an expensive room, but left his newly acquired key at the desk a few minutes later, and sallied forth on foot.

The night clerk thought nothing of his departure at the time, owing to the fact that the Times Square hotel section is quite accustomed to the keeping of untimely hours.

That was the last any of the hotel staff had seen of him, however. His baggage was still in his room, but, upon investigation, it was found to contain an array of useless and valueless odds and ends, obviously thrown in merely to give weight and bulk. In other words, the suit cases had been packed in anticipation of their abandonment.

It seemed likely that the doctor had had at least one accomplice in his flight, for the purpose of aiding him in his arrangements. But not necessarily so.

If he had received such assistance, it was quite possible that one of the six young physicians, who had formerly been associated with him in his unlawful experiments, had lent the helping hand.

Nick had kept track of them for some time, and now he determined to look them up again.

It was significant, however, that Grantley had, apparently, made no provision for the escape of Doctor Siebold, his assistant, who had been in Sing Sing with him.

In the flight which had followed their ghastly crime against the blind financier, Siebold had shown the white feather, and it was easy to believe that the stern, implacable Grantley had no further use for his erstwhile associate.

There was no reason to doubt that the escaped convict had gone directly to the theater after leaving the hotel. But why had he gone to the latter at all, and what had become of him after he had broken up Helga Lund’s play?

There was no reasonable doubt that Grantley had disguised himself pretty effectually for his flight from Ossining to New York, and yet the night clerk’s description was that of Grantley himself.

It followed, therefore, that the fugitive had already shed his disguise somewhere in the big city. But why not have gone directly from that stopping place, wherever it was, to the theater?

Nick gave it up as unimportant. The hotel episode did not seem to have served any desirable purpose, from Grantley’s standpoint, unless on the theory that it was simply meant to confuse the detectives.

However that might be, it would be much more worthwhile to know what the surgeon’s movements had been after his dastardly attack on the actress.

Had