NICK CARTER STORIES _Issued Weekly. Entered as Second-class Matter at the New York Post Office, by_ STREET & SMITH, _79-89 Seventh Ave., New York_. _Copyright, 1915, by_ STREET & SMITH. _O. G. Smith and G. C. Smith, Proprietors._ Terms to NICK CARTER STORIES Mail Subscribers. (_Postage Free._) Single Copies or Back Numbers, 5c. Each. 3 months 65c. 4 months 85c. 6 months $1.25 One year 2.50 2 copies one year 4.00 1 copy two years 4.00 =How to Send Money=--By post-office or express money order, registered letter, bank check or draft, at our risk. At your own risk if sent by currency, coin, or postage stamps in ordinary letter. =Receipts=--Receipt of your remittance is acknowledged by proper change of number on your label. If not correct you have not been properly credited, and should let us know at once. =No. 124.= NEW YORK, January 23, 1915. =Price Five Cents.= [The cover names the book The Girl Kidnapper. The words kidnaped, kidnaper and kidnaping are spelled with one p through out the eBook.--Ebook transcriber's note.] THE GIRL KIDNAPER; Or, NICK CARTER’S UP-TO-DATE CLEW. Edited by CHICKERING CARTER. CHAPTER I. THROUGH LOCKED DOORS. “The thing seems impossible!” “Yet it’s true.” “You mean to tell me that----” “I mean to tell you that Mrs. de Puyster van Dietrich, who retired to her room in this hotel last night at eleven o’clock, was not there this morning when her maid went to call her, and that her doors were all bolted and locked, with the keys inside.” “What about the windows?” “Mrs. van Dietrich’s rooms are on the fourth floor.” “Well?” “She did not jump out, Mallory, if that’s what you mean. They overlook the sea, and there are jagged rocks immediately beneath her windows. She would surely have been killed if she had gone that way. Anyhow, she is a well-balanced woman, who enjoys life, and a multimillionaire. Why should she commit suicide?” “I don’t know why she should, Savage. That’s nothing. Seventy-five out of a hundred suicides seem to have no good reason behind them--until investigation is made afterward.” “She did not jump out of the window, I tell you.” “Perhaps she fell out,” suggested Mallory, sticking to his guns. “She neither jumped nor fell out,” snapped the other. “The rocks would tell the story if she had.” James Mallory and Paul Savage, proprietors of the new summer hotel, the Amsterdam--situated on a picturesque promontory on the Delaware coast, with the broad Atlantic stretching away from its very foundation walls--faced each other blankly in their private office.