DETECTIVE NICK CARTER'S CASES - 7 Book Collection: The Great Spy System, The Mystery of St. Agnes' Hospital, The Crime of the French Café, With Links of Steel, Nick Carter's Ghost Story…. John R. Coryell

      “Did you say anything about what you had heard?”

      “Not that night.”

      “When did you first speak of it?”

      “This morning.”

      “To whom?”

      “To Mr. Deever. He was in the saloon, and he told me that his brother was missing.”

      “Well,” cried Deever, who could keep silence no longer, “what do you think of that?”

      “It is important evidence.”

      “You remember,” Deever continued, “that when I went to ask Jarvis where my brother was, he admitted having quarreled with him, but said that it ended in words. Now we know that it ended in blows.”

      “What time was it when you heard that blow?” asked Nick of Klein.

      “Must have been about half-past seven,” Klein replied.

      “How do you know?”

      “When I walked up the avenue I saw the clock on the church up by One Hundred and Fiftieth street. It was a quarter of eight.”

      “That fits the case exactly,” Deever exclaimed. “It was a little after half-past seven when Burns saw Jarvis coming in from the garden.”

      “That is true.”

      “Will you arrest Jarvis now?”

      “I will not,” said Nick. “The evidence is not yet sufficient.”

      Deever made an impatient gesture.

      “Remember,” said Nick, “that an accusation of murder leaves an indelible stain. We cannot move too carefully.”

      “You will let him escape.”

      “His escape is utterly impossible,” said Nick. “He is watched.”

      “A good many men have been watched and have got away.”

      “Nobody ever got away from the man who is watching Jarvis,” said Nick, quietly; and that praise was not too high, for the person in question was Nick’s famous assistant, Chick.

      “And now,” said Deever, “may I ask what more you need in the way of evidence?”

      “I need proof of your brother’s death.”

      “In short, we must find the body.”

      “Exactly.”

      “Very well,” sneered Deever, “I suppose I must do it myself. I’ve got nearly all the evidence thus far.”

      “By all means do it,” said Nick, with his calm smile, “if you can.”

      Deever stared at him for more than a minute without speaking. Then he said:

      “Colton, why do you treat this case as you do?”

      “What do you mean?”

      “You don’t seem to want to go ahead with it.”

      “I don’t want to go ahead with it any faster than the facts will justify. If you had had more experience in such matters you would know the folly of arresting a man first and getting facts to warrant the arrest afterward. As I say, I want more facts, and you must help me to get them.”

      The last part of this conversation was held as Nick, Deever and Klein passed out upon the street.

      A ragged young man who was leaning against a tree heard it, and was much surprised.

      For the ragged young man was Patsy, and he had never heard Nick Carter ask anybody except his regular assistants to help him in that way before.

Chapter II.

       The Dead Man’s Head

       Table of Contents

      Dr. Jarvis, chief of the staff of St. Agnes’ Hospital, was well known as a peculiar man.

      He was rich enough to take his leisure, but he worked like a slave. He had an elegant house on St. Nicholas avenue, but he spent all his days and more than half his nights at the hospital.

      A rude cot in a little room adjoining his laboratory in the hospital was his bed four nights in seven on the average. His only recreation was found in the care of a little garden in the hospital grounds; and it was the common talk of the younger physicians that Dr. Jarvis enjoyed finding fault with the gardener more than he did cultivating the flowers.

      He had a wife and a young, unmarried daughter, whom he loved devotedly, but to whom he gave only a few hours of his time in the course of a week.

      A negro named Caesar Augustus Cleary was the doctor’s assistant in the laboratory.

      The other physicians in the hospital said that Cleary had become so accustomed to Jarvis’ ways that, like a Mississippi mule, he had to be cursed before he could be made to understand anything.

      Cleary slept in a little closet similar to the doctor’s, and on the opposite side of the laboratory. He was asleep there, about twelve o’clock on the night after Nick’s visit to Lawrence Deever, when Nick crept softly through the window.

      All these rooms were on the ground floor and entrance was easy.

      Nick had spent a part of the evening in the garden. He had watched till the light went out in the laboratory and another appeared in the doctor’s bed-room. Then he was ready for a search of the premises.

      If, in a moment of anger, Dr. Jarvis had struck Patrick Deever and killed him, it was likely that the laboratory would hold some trace of the secret.

      The best way to hide a human body is to utterly destroy it. This is no easy task for an ordinary man, but to a scientist, like Dr. Jarvis, it would be comparatively easy.

      However, it would take time. Patrick Deever had disappeared on Monday night. Forty-eight hours had elapsed, but yet Nick hoped to find a trace, if the work of destruction had been attempted in the laboratory.

      Nick had entered Cleary’s room with the purpose of guarding against any interruption from the negro. He found Cleary sleeping heavily; but when Nick left the room and glided into the laboratory, Cleary’s sleep was even deeper than it had been before.

      An adept in chemistry, Nick knew how to produce a slumber from which no ordinary means could arouse the sleeper. His drug was sure and it left no bad effects.

      The laboratory was unlighted, except by the moon, which shone in over the shutters, which covered the lower parts of the windows, preventing observation from without.

      The first object which attracted Nick’s attention was a corpse which lay upon a stone table in the middle of the room.

      Nick had made a hasty search of the laboratory some hours before, while the doctor had been at dinner. He had then seen this corpse, and had assured himself that it was not Patrick Deever’s; but he had been unable to do much more before the doctor returned. Therefore, he had made this late visit.

      He first examined some instruments which lay near the dissecting-table. They revealed nothing. Then for perhaps half an hour, he searched various parts of the room without result.

      Beneath the laboratory was a cellar in which, as Nick knew, were electric apparatus and a furnace which the doctor used for his experiments.

      Nick was about to descend into this cellar when a noise in the direction of the doctor’s room attracted his attention.

      He turned and beheld Dr. Jarvis entering the laboratory.

      Realizing the possibility of such an event, Nick had disguised himself as Cleary, yet he wished to avoid being seen