American Sherlocks by Nick Rennison (reading like a writer .TXT) 📕

he gone to another hotel, in disguise or otherwise? Had he returned to his former house in the Bronx, which had been closed up since his removal to Sing Sing? Had he left town, or – well, done any one of a number of things?

There was room only for shrewd guesswork, for the most part.

An exhaustive search of the hotels failed to reveal his presence at any of them that night or later. The closed house in the Bronx was inspected, with a similar result.

That was about as far as the detective got along that line. Nick had a feeling that the fellow was still in New York. He had once tried to slip away in an unusually clever fashion, and had come to grief. It was fair to assume, therefore, that he would not make a second attempt, especially in view of the fact that the metropolis offers countless hiding places and countless multitudes to shield a fugitive.

If he was still in the city, though, he was almost unquestionably in disguise; and he could be counted on to see that that disguise was an exceptionally good one.

Certainly, the prospect was not an encouraging one. The proverbial needle in a haystack would have been easy to find in comparison.

And, meanwhile, Helga Lund would not know what real peace of mind was until she was informed that her vindictive persecutor had been captured.

Three days was spent in this fruitless tracking, and then, in the absence of tangible clues, the great detective turned to something which had often met with surprising success in the past.

He banished everything else from his mind and tried to put himself, in imagination, in Doctor Grantley’s place.

What would this brilliant, erratic, but misguided genius, with all of his unbridled enmities and his criminal propensities, have done that night, after having escaped from prison and brought Helga Lund’s performance to such an untimely and harrowing close?

It was clear that much depended on the depth of his hatred for the actress who had repulsed him five years before. Undoubtedly his enmity for the beautiful Swede was great, else he would not have timed his escape as he had done, or put the first hours of his liberty to such a use.

But would he have been content with what he had done that first night? If he had considered his end accomplished, he might have shaken the dust of New York from his feet at once. On the other hand, if his thirst for revenge had not yet been slaked, it was probable that he was still lurking near, ready to follow up his first blow with others.

The more Nick thought about it the more certain he became that the latter supposition was nearer the truth than the former. Grantley had caused Helga Lund to break down completely before one of the most important and critical audiences that had ever been assembled in New York, to be sure, but, with a man of his type, was that likely to be anything more than the first step? He had threatened to ruin her career, and he was nothing if not thorough in whatever he attempted. Therefore – so Nick reasoned – further trouble might be looked for in that quarter.

The thought was an unwelcome one. The detective had taken every practicable precaution to shield Helga from further molestation, but he knew only too well that Grantley’s attacks were of a sort which usually defied ordinary safeguards.

The possibility of new danger to the actress spurred Nick on to added concentration.

Assuming that Grantley was still in New York, in disguise, and bent upon inflicting additional injury on the woman he had once loved, where would he be likely to hide himself, and what would be the probable nature of his next move?

The detective answered his last question first after much weighing of possibilities.

Grantley was one of the most dangerous of criminals, simply because his methods were about as far removed as possible from the ordinary methods of criminals. He had confined himself, thus far, to crimes in which he had made use of his immense scientific knowledge, surgical and hypnotic.

Accordingly, the chances were that he would work along one of those two lines in the future, or else along some other, in which his special knowledge would be the determining factor.

Moreover, since his escape, he had repeatedly called his mastery of hypnotism to his aid. That being so, Nick was inclined to believe that he would continue to use it, especially since Helga had shown herself so susceptible to hypnotic influence.

Could the detective guard against that?

He vowed to do his best, notwithstanding the many difficulties involved.

But it was not until he had carefully balanced the probabilities in regard to Grantley’s whereabouts that Nick became seriously alarmed.

As a consequence of his study of the problem, an overwhelming conviction came to him that it would be just like the rascally surgeon to have gone to Helga’s own hotel, under another name.

The luxurious Wentworth-Belding would be as safe for the fugitive as any other place, providing his disguise was adequate – safer, in fact, for it was the very last place which would ordinarily fall under suspicion.

In addition to that great advantage, it offered the best opportunity to keep in touch with developments in connection with the actress’s condition, and residence there promised comparatively easy access to Helga when the time should come for the next act in the drama of revenge.

This astounding suspicion had sprung up, full-fledged, in Nick’s brain in the space of a second. The detective knew that his preliminary reasoning had been sound, however, and based upon a thorough knowledge of Grantley’s characteristic methods.

It was staggering, but his keen intuition told him that it was true. He was now certain that Grantley would be found housed under the same huge roof as his latest victim, and that meant that Helga’s danger was greater than ever.

The next blow might fall at any minute.

It was very surprising, in fact, that Grantley had remained inactive