American Sherlocks Nick Rennison (best big ereader txt) 📖

The adventure was well under way, and, technically speaking, they were already housebreakers.

VIII

The house in which Nick and Chick found themselves had been a good one, but it was now badly in need of repair.

The main hall was comparatively wide for so narrow a building, and a heavy balustrade fenced off the stairs on one side.

The detectives paused just inside the door and listened intently. The doors on the first floor were all closed and the rooms behind them appeared to be untenanted. At any rate, all was still on that floor. Subdued noises of various sorts floated down to them from above, however, seemingly from the third floor.

They looked at each other significantly. Evidently, their theory had been correct – to some extent, at least.

They approached each of the doors in turn, but could hear nothing. Under the stairway they found the expected door leading down to the basement, but, as it was locked, and there was no key, they paid no further attention to it.

Instead, they started to mount the front stairs to the second floor. The stairway was old and rather creaky, but the detectives knew how to step in order to make the least noise. Consequently, they gained the next landing without being discovered.

Here they repeated the tactics they had used below, with a like result. The sounds of voices and footfalls were louder now, but they all came from the third floor. The second seemed to be as quiet as the first.

The doors on the second floor, like those on the first, were all closed, but Nick ascertained that at least one of them was unlocked.

That fact might be of great advantage in preventing discovery, in case anyone should start down unexpectedly from the third floor, for the halls and stairs offered no place of concealment.

The detectives noiselessly removed their shoes before attempting the last flight, and placed them inside the unlocked room, which they noiselessly closed again.

They were now ready for the final reconnaissance.

By placing the balls of their stockinged feet on the edges of the steps, they succeeded in mounting to the third floor without making any more noise than that produced by the contact of their clothing.

A slight pause at the top served to satisfy them that the noises all proceeded from one room at the front of the house. They were already close to the door of this room, and they listened breathlessly.

Words were plainly audible now, punctuated at frequent intervals by loud bursts of laughter.

It sounded like a merrymaking of some kind. What was going on behind that closed door? Had they made a mistake in entering the house and wasted precious time in following a will-o’-the-wisp, when Helga Lund might be even then in the greatest danger?

Nick and his assistants feared so, and their hearts sank heavily.

But no. The next words they heard reassured, but, at the same time, startled them. The voice was unmistakably Grantley’s.

‘That’s enough of pantomime,’ it said, with a peculiar note of cruel, triumphant command. ‘Now give us your confession from The Daughters of Men – give it, but remember that you are not a great actress, that you are so bad that you would be hooted from the cheapest stage. Remember that you are ugly and dressed in rags, that you are awkward and ungainly in your movements, that your voice is like a file. Remember it not only now, but always. You will never be able to act. Your acting is a nightmare, and you are a fright – when you aren’t a joke. But show us what you can do in that confession scene.’

Nick and Chick grew tense as they listened to those unbelievable words, and to the heartless chuckles and whisperings with which they were received. Apparently there were several men in the ‘audience’ – probably Chester and some of Grantley’s other former accomplices. .

The meaning was plain – all too plain.

The proud, beautiful Helga Lund was once more under hypnotic influence, and Grantley, with devilish ingenuity, was impressing suggestions upon her poor, tortured brain, suggestions which were designed to rob her of her great ability, not only for the moment, but, unless their baneful effect could be removed, for all the rest of her life.

She, who had earned the plaudits of royalty in most of the countries of Europe, was being made a show of for the amusement of a handful of ruthless scoffers.

It made the detectives’ blood boil in their veins and their hands clench until their knuckles were white, but they managed somehow to keep from betraying themselves.

The employment of hypnotism in such a way was plainly within the scope of the new law against unwarranted operations or experiments on human beings, without their consent; but it was necessary to secure as much evidence as possible before interfering.

To that end Nick Carter took out of a pocket case a curious little instrument, which he was in the habit of calling his ‘keyhole periscope.’

It consisted of a small black tube, about the length and diameter of a lead pencil. There was an eyepiece at one end. At the other a semi-circular lens bulged out.

It was designed to serve the same purpose as the periscope of a submarine torpedo boat – that is, to give a view on all sides of a given area at once. The exposed convex lens, when thrust through a keyhole or other small aperture, received images of objects from every angle in the room beyond, and magnified them, in just the same way as the similarly constructed periscope of a submarine projects above the level of the water and gives those in the submerged vessel below a view of all objects on the surface, within a wide radius.

Nick had noted that there was no key in the lock of the door. Taking advantage of that fact, he crept silently forward, inserted the wonderful little instrument in the round upper portion of the hole, and, stooping, applied his eye to the eyepiece.

He could not resist