CHAPTER VIII.

PLOTTING AGAINST A PLOTTER.

It should be permitted us to look inside the brain of Bare-Faced Jimmy Duryea for a moment, in order that we can see just how he was working out the existing situation. It will help us better to understand the events which followed; although, of course, the one who reads must understand that no such privilege could have been afforded the detective at that time.

He had to form his judgments as to what Jimmy might determine to do next, from his past knowledge of the man, and that, he decided wisely, was to his credit.

We cannot relate here just how it happened that Jimmy appeared at the summer residence of Theodore Remsen in the character of a Southerner named Ledger Dinwiddie, and was prepared to establish that character, and the reputation that went with it, to all comers. That is another story.

But that Jimmy Duryea never entered upon any task without having thoroughly prepared himself to meet all the emergencies that might arise has already been made sufficiently clear.

His presence in that house as an accepted suitor for the hand of Lenore Remsen was the result of careful study and preparation, and the step had been taken with due recognition of all the risks that had to be met and overcome.

The encounter with Nan, in that house, and the manner of it, as related by her to Nick Carter, were, of course, unforeseen; they could not have been anticipated.

When Jimmy met Nan that night in the library, while he was sorting over the jewels he had stolen, it came in the nature of a surprise to him. He was absolutely unprepared for it.

Nevertheless, he had met it with his customary aplomb and coolness. We already know the consequences of that encounter.

Jimmy had no intention of keeping his promise to her, when he agreed to return the jewels to their rightful owners; and that was because he really needed the cash that the jewels would supply, rather than any reluctance he felt to keeping his word with her.

In order to carry out his plans to the end, he did really require more money, and a considerable amount at that; else he would never have gone to the extent of robbing the visitors at the house where he was himself a guest; of actually robbing his expected bride of her necklace.

But, so far as that was concerned, he merely argued to himself that it was only anticipating the future. That he was taking only what he had a right to take—or would have a right to take later on.

But, when he did not keep his word, and Nan threatened him with exposure, he came very near being desperate.

He had arrived at that position where this was the last play out of the pack, so to speak. He had thrown aside every other chance he had in his career, for this one effort—to win a position in the world, a bride, and a fortune, all at one cast.

Jimmy Duryea was never a murderer at heart; never had he been cruelly inclined. He would go out of his way to do a kindness to another, if it in no way interfered with his own successes.

But that same characteristic worked to the opposite extreme, as well.

Woe betide the circumstance or the person who stood in the way of his success. He was thoroughly implacable in that respect. So, when that Friday night came, and he had not returned the jewels, and Nan threatened him—and when, the following morning, he discovered that Nan had gone to the city with Mrs. Remsen, causing him to believe that she would seek out Nick Carter and tell him all before her return—he realized that he was “up against it hard,” and that he was confronting the struggle of his life.

And so, as Nick Carter had just told Nan, the coming of the detective to the house that Monday afternoon was no surprise to Jimmy Duryea. It was only a confirmation of his expectation.

He had decided, long before Nick Carter appeared, just how he would conduct himself when that incident happened; and we have seen how he did it.

Naturally he could not foresee that interview in the summerhouse; he was not entirely prepared for that; but he met it, when it came, with all the cool effrontery that was a part of him.

If Nick Carter knew and understood Jimmy Duryea, no less did Jimmy Duryea know and understand the detective.

At least he knew that Nick Carter could not be bluffed.

Jimmy’s trump card was Nan—and Nan’s position was precarious; and Jimmy knew that the detective would stand for Nan, and protect her, just as far as it was possible to do so.

But, after the interview in the summerhouse, Jimmy was thoughtful. He knew that the truce that had been declared when Nick took the irons off his wrists was only a temporary arrangement, and that the detective would lose no time in drawing the coils about the interloper, and so tightly that there would be no way of escape left open.

Jimmy realized that in order to succeed now he must play what remained of the game with supreme boldness—and that he must rely upon his established position in that house to see him through it to the end.

At dinner, as has been said, he watched his two active enemies, covertly, all the time. He gave very little thought to Chick, although he recognized the fact that the assistant was there, prepared to render aid whenever it should become necessary to do so.

After dinner, Jimmy kept his eyes open and his wits on the alert, and he saw Nick and Nan when they withdrew to one corner of the veranda, and entered upon that intimate interview.

What Jimmy would have been willing to sacrifice could he have overheard that conversation need not be estimated upon; and the longer he watched it from a distance, the more anxious he became concerning what it might portend.

When he could stand it no longer, he drew Lenore aside from the group with which she had mingled, and with her on his arm sauntered toward Nick and Nan, arriving at their secluded corner of the veranda just at the moment when Nan had said to Nick:

“I am afraid, Nick Carter! I am afraid!”

Low as the words had been uttered, they were overheard. Jimmy and Lenore both heard them, although they understood them quite differently.

Jimmy believed that he thoroughly comprehended the meaning that was conveyed; Lenore was only puzzled that Nan Nightingale should be afraid of anything, and should give voice to her fears in exactly that tone. As she stopped before them, she exclaimed:

“Afraid, Nan? Of what are you afraid?”

“Of the consequences of her misdeeds, doubtless,” interjected Jimmy, before Nan could reply; and he added, with deeper meaning than Lenore could understand: “Fear is a wholesome thing, at times, when it conveys a warning of things that are likely to happen, under given conditions. It leads one to avoid those conditions, eh, Mr. Carter?” and he laughed.

“Unless the fear is entirely misplaced, and unnecessary, Mr. Dinwiddie,” replied the detective.

Nick looked across the veranda at that moment, and managed to catch the eyes of Chick, to whom he signaled. A moment later, Chick joined the little party in the corner.

“I’m going to ask you to take my place here for a time, Chick,” said the detective. “Mr. Dinwiddie has begun a discourse on the quality of Fear, used as a proper noun, and I will leave it to you to answer him. Pray, do not let him escape, Chick, without having first given a good reason for his last statement.”

The detective bowed, and withdrew. Nan laughed aloud. Jimmy Duryea scowled. Lenore, unsuspecting the byplay that was contained in the sentence Nick Carter had just uttered, smiled encouragingly upon Chick.

But by those words Chick and Nan both understood that they were to keep Jimmy Duryea under surveillance for a time at least, while Nick Carter should occupy himself elsewhere; but what was more to the point, Jimmy understood them, also.

Nick Carter stepped aside, and passed into the house through one of the open French windows; then he disappeared.

He had been quite sincere when he had expressed a desire to see the inside of the rooms that Nan occupied, and he wished to see them at once. He believed that no better opportunity could offer than the one already at hand, and so he took advantage of it.

He had only a vague idea of the plan of the house, judging it from the outside view he had been able to obtain of the mansion when he approached it in the automobile, and from the few words that Nan had uttered regarding the location of her rooms.

He passed through the library, into the hall, and up the wide stairway to the second floor, and so found his way, with comparatively no difficulty, to Nan’s suite of rooms.

The door was open, and he could see that there was no one inside the room into which he peered; Nan’s maid was evidently taking advantage of the evening hour, to gossip with the other servants of the house.

The detective passed inside and closed the door after him. Then he stopped, and began, from that point of vantage immediately inside the closed door, to make a systematic survey of his surroundings.

Nick Carter’s method under such circumstances has been too often described to need repetition here. He stood in that one spot on the floor, and permitted his eyes to travel slowly from floor to ceiling, and back again to floor, carefully covering every inch of space that was before him, with that searching gaze.

There were just three points upon which Nick Carter was certain since that conversation with Jimmy Duryea in the summerhouse; two of them were dependent upon the first one, but Jimmy had as good as stated the first one for a fact.

First, then, Jimmy had hidden those stolen jewels somewhere within the rooms occupied by Nan Nightingale—had hidden them somewhere, so that when discovered, apparently by accident or otherwise, the conclusion would be self-evident that Nan had, herself, hidden them there.

Second, they would necessarily have to be hidden where searchers would come upon them more by accident than by design.

Third, they could not, therefore, be under lock and key, put away in a drawer or a trunk; but must have been placed in some receptacle into which a stranger might peer, quite naturally, to discover them.

Although Nick Carter, during the half hour that he spent inside those rooms, searched every possible place where the jewels might have been hidden, he turned at last toward the door, profitless from the search.

He had peered into every vase, into every possible receptacle that stood in sight, and had found no trace of them—and so much time had elapsed that he did not dare to remain longer away from the other members of the house party.

So he turned toward the door which opened upon the hall, opened it, and found himself looking into the face of Jimmy Duryea.

But Jimmy did not come within reach. He only laughed, and turned hastily away.

“I thought so,” he said. “I thought so;” and then he ran down the stairs, before Nick could make an effort to detain him.