Nick Carter Stories No. 120, December 26, 1914: An uncanny revenge; or, Nick Carter and the mind murderer. — John Shaqi
Nick Carter Stories No. 120, December 26, 1914: An uncanny revenge; or, Nick Carter and the mind murderer.Carter, Nicholas (House name)
General
Nick Carter Stories No. 120, December 26, 1914: An uncanny revenge; or, Nick Carter and the mind murderer.
Carter, Nicholas (House name)
Detective and mystery stories, American -- Periodicals; Popular literature -- Periodicals
He set to work at once to revive her and succeeded in doing so, after
some little delay. As soon as she was in a condition to question, he
pressed her for all the details she could give.
They were meager enough, but sufficiently disquieting. According to her
story, a man whom she had supposed to be Lightfoot himself had gained
entrance to the suite between nine and ten o’clock at night.
He had sent up Doctor Lightfoot’s name, and his appearance, when she saw
him, had coincided with that of the attending physician. He had acted
rather strangely, to be sure, and the nurse had been surprised at his
presence at that hour, owing to the fact that Lightfoot had already made
his two regular calls that day.
Before her surprise had had time to become full-fledged suspicion,
however, the intruder had fixed her commandingly with his eyes and she
had found herself powerless to resist the weakness of will which had
frightened her.
She dimly remembered that he had approached her slowly, nearer and
nearer, and that his gleaming eyes had seemed to be two coals of fire in
his head.
That was all she recalled, except that she had felt her senses reeling
and leaving her. She had known no more until Doctor Lightfoot broke the
dread spell, almost twelve hours afterward.
She had met the bogus Lightfoot in one of the outer rooms of the suite,
not in the presence of the actress. Miss Lund had been in her bedroom
at the time, but had not yet retired.
The nurse was horror-stricken to learn that her patient was missing, and
equally at a loss to explain how she herself came to be without her
uniform.
But Doctor Lightfoot possessed a sufficiently analytical mind to enable
him to solve the puzzle, after a fashion, even before Nick arrived.
The detective had told him that the sight of an enemy of the actress’
had caused her seizure, and it was easy to put two and two together.
This enemy had doubtless made himself up to represent the attending
physician, had hypnotized the nurse, and then passed on, unhindered, to
the actress’ room.
He had obviously subdued her in the same fashion, after which he had
removed the unconscious nurse’s uniform and compelled Helga to don it.
The doctor remembered now that the two women were nearly alike in height
and build. The nurse had dark-brown hair, in sharp contrast to Helga’s
golden glory; but a wig could have remedied that. Neither was there any
similarity in features, but veils can be counted on to hide such
differences.
Doctor Lightfoot, despite his alarm, was rather proud of his ability to
reason the thing out alone. He had no doubt that Helga Lund, under
hypnotic influence, had accompanied the strange man from the hotel,
against her will.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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