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Issued Weekly. Entered as Second-class Matter at the New York PostOffice, by Street & Smith, 79-89 Seventh Ave., New York. Copyright,1915, by Street & Smith. O. G. Smith and G. C. Smith, Proprietors.
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No. 147. NEW YORK, July 3, 1915. Price Five Cents.
ON DEATH’S TRAIL;
Or, NICK CARTER’S STRANGEST CASE.
Edited by CHICKERING CARTER.
CHAPTER I.
AN OPEN QUESTION.
The solitary ray of light that found its way into the dismal room seemedto shrink from entering.
Silence reigned supreme within.
Outside, even the stillness of the night was hardly broken.
It was a ray of moonlight, as feeble through the misty air as “theglowworm’s ineffectual fire.”
It found its way in, nevertheless, under one broken slat of a closedblind, and then it seemed to hesitate, losing life and shrinking fromgoing farther.
Was there a lost life within?
The ray of light came farther and fell upon only one object in the room.All else was gloom and silence.
It stood near the partly open window and the closed blinds. It was asmotionless as a block of stone, as white as a figure of marble, as coldas a form of clay.
Its covering of white hid it entirely from view, had there been eyes tosee. It hung in flimsy folds on either side of the narrow, unpillowedbed. Now and then a breath of the night air stirred it, but only as ifin mockery, and an observer would have shrunk and shuddered—lest itsmotion had been imparted by what it covered.
It was the only sign of life amid the gloom and silence.
Suddenly the stillness was broken, but only faintly. It was as if a belltolled too soon the funeral knell. In some quarter remote from thedismal room, a clock struck the hour—three slow, mellow strokes of thebell.
Three o’clock in the morning.
Five hou