Won by Magic: On a Dark Stage
9781465664938
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
“Message for Mr. Carter!” The wireless operator of the steamship Marathon, in the linen clothes and pith helmet ordinarily worn by white people in the tropics, came along the steamer deck with a slip of paper in his hand and stopped in front of a row of steamer chairs under an awning. “Where’s it from?” asked the occupant of one of the chairs, springing to his feet. “From shore, sir—Calcutta.” Nick Carter, who was holding out his hand even as he got up from his chair, took the paper quickly and glanced at the few words it contained: “Get up to Nepal quickly.” That was all. There was no signature, and the operator could not say who had sent it. “It came from the main office of the telegraph company in Calcutta,” he explained. “The operator told me a native man brought it in and paid for it. He said there would be no answer, and his own name did not matter.” “It is many years since I was in Calcutta last,” observed Nick Carter, to his companions, as the operator went back to the wireless room. “Then it was only for a few days, and I did not make many acquaintances.” A tall, middle-aged man, whose square face and straight-seeing dark eyes, as well as his decided manner of speech, were all suggestive of the successful American business man, got up from one of the chairs and looked over Nick Carter’s shoulder at the telegram he still held open in one hand. “Get up to Nepal quickly,” he read. “Does that mean that my boy is there, do you think, Carter?” “We don’t know that the telegram has anything to do with what has brought us to India,” replied the detective. “What else could it be?” demanded the other sharply. Nick Carter shrugged his shoulders.“Well, Mr. Arnold, you are known here—by name, at least—as owner of several ships, including theMarathon, and your agent, William Pike, has vanished, in a rather mysterious way, from your office in Calcutta. Perhaps the telegram may be from somebody who has seen Pike up in Nepal.” “It may be, although I don’t know what Pike could want up in the back country, away from civilization. He isn’t that kind of man, from what I know of him. He is more likely to go over to Europe, or, if not, to get to some other big city in India—Rangoon, Lucknow, Cawnpur, or Hyderabad—where he can spend his money and be moderately out of the way of arrest.” “At all events, this message agrees with our own ideas of the direction taken by Leslie,” said Nick Carter. Jefferson Arnold did not speak for a few moments. He was not a demonstrative man, and although his heart was wrung by the strange disappearance of his only son, his face was as impassive as it generally was when putting through some great business deal in New York, with perhaps millions of dollars involved. Here, on the deck of the finest steamer of his fleet of merchant vessels, with the gently rolling waters of the Bay of Bengal scuffing up under the prow, and the engines, at half speed, gradually bringing the ship nearer and nearer to the wharves of Calcutta, he might have seemed to strangers to be a man to be envied.
