The History of Matthew Wald: John

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The History of
Matthew Wald
 The Edinburgh Critical Edition of the Works of
John Gibson Lockhart
The Edinburgh Critical Edition of the Works of
SeriesJohn Gibson
Editor: Lockhart
Thomas C. Richardson
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Series Editor: Edition
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Dr Ian Campbell C.ofRichardson
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Dr Peter Garside (University of Edinburgh)
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Gillian Hughes (University
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Dr Robert
Dr Caroline Morrison (Bath(University
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Dr Kirsteen McCue (University of of
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2989 eup Lockhart & Richardson–new page 2.indd 1 14/08/2022 13:37

The History of Matthew Wald

JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART

WE TALKED WITH OPEN HEART, AND TONGUE

AFFECTIONATE AND TRUE;
A PAIR OF FRIENDS, THOUGH I WAS YOUNG,
AND MATTHEW SEVENTY-TWO.
WORDSWORTH

Edited by
Thomas C. Richardson

EDINBURGH
University Press
Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK.
We publish academic books and journals in our selected subject areas across
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© The Text, Edinburgh University Press 2022

The Tun – Holyrood Road, 12 Jackson’s Entry, Edinburgh EH8 8PJ
© Editorial matter and organisation, Thomas C. Richardson 2022

Typeset at Mississippi University for Women, Columbus, Mississippi,

and printed and bound in Great Britain on acid-free paper at
TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall

ISBN 978 1 3995 0668 7 (hardback)

ISBN 978 1 3995 0669 4 (webready)
ISBN 978 1 3995 0670 0 (epub)

The right of Thomas C. Richardson to be identified as the Editor of this work

has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act
1988, and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498).

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or

by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording
or any information storage or retrieval system, without the prior permission
in writing from the publisher.
 Contents

Aims of the Edition vi

Volume Editor’s Acknowledgements viii
Introduction ix
1. Genesis of the Novel ix
2. Critical Reception xxxv
3. A Note on the Text xlv
The History of Matthew Wald 1
Emendation List 183
Hyphenation List 185
Explanatory Notes 186
Textual Notes 218
Glossary 225
 Aims of the Edition
John Gibson Lockhart (1794-1854) has been understudied and
undervalued by critics and literary historians in large measure because
his obsessive insistence on anonymity means that the full extent of his
literary work and influence is not generally known. Lockhart’s works
have never been collected, and there have been no critical editions of
individual works. The extent and significance of his literary
accomplishments have been eclipsed by his role in the attacks on Leigh
Hunt, John Keats, and William Hazlitt in Blackwood’s Edinburgh
Magazine, and by his authorship of the biography of his father-in-law,
Sir Walter Scott.
Lockhart had a career in literature that spanned nearly four decades,
serving for much of that time (1826-1853) as editor of what was perhaps
the premier journal of his age, The Quarterly Review, published in
London by John Murray. Lockhart began his literary career in 1817 with
the Edinburgh publisher, William Blackwood, who sent Lockhart to
Germany on a literary tour where he met Goethe and other German
literati. Lockhart’s first book-length publication was a two-volume
translation of Frederick Schlegel’s Lectures on the History of
Literature, Ancient and Modern (1818). Lockhart was also a major
contributor to Blackwood’s new publishing venture, Blackwood’s
Edinburgh Magazine, and over his lifetime wrote or had a hand in more
than two hundred works in Blackwood’s. There was biting satire,
certainly, but those works are small in number. The vast majority of his
Blackwood’s works are significant, incisive works of literary criticism
covering a broad range of topics from Greek tragedy and poetry to early
Spanish literature to works of contemporary American, British, and
German authors. His Blackwood’s works also include serious and
satirical verse, as well as essays on important political and social topics
of his day. He published four novels during his time with Blackwood,
as well as a fictitious account of the Edinburgh and Glasgow literary,
cultural, legal, political, and religious scenes, Peter’s Letters to his
Kinsfolk. Other works during this period include a collection of Spanish
translations, Ancient Spanish Ballads; an edition of Don Quixote, with
his annotations and a biographical essay on Cervantes; and a lengthy
biographical essay on Daniel Defoe to preface an edition of Robinson
Crusoe.
 vii

In December 1825 Lockhart left Scotland for London to become

editor of the Quarterly Review. Lockhart wrote nearly 120 articles for
the Quarterly in addition to directing the literary, political, and social
focus of the review as an active editor. Over the next few years Lockhart
also wrote biographies of Robert Burns, Napoleon, and Sir Walter Scott.
He served as editor of John Murray’s Family Library, edited Scott’s
poetry and prose works, and contributed significantly to the notes for
editions of Byron’s works and to the revisions of John Wilson Croker’s
edition of Boswell’s Life of Johnson. He also contributed original
poetry, translations, and essays to various other periodicals and annuals.
Lockhart, as an author and an editor, influenced a wide range of
nineteenth-century life. The Edinburgh Critical Edition of the Works of
John Gibson Lockhart aims to identify and collect the full range of
Lockhart’s works and to provide the appropriate critical apparatus to
enable readers for the first time to assess fully Lockhart’s achievement
and his significance for nineteenth-century studies.
 Volume Editor’s Acknowledgements
The completion of the present edition would not have been possible
without the gracious assistance and support of many people. I am
indebted to administrators, faculty, and staff at Mississippi Uni-
versity for Women (MUW) for their generous support of and
appreciation for my research: President Nora Miller, Provost Scott
Tollison, Dean Brian Anderson, Dean Amanda Clay Powers, and
Department Chair Kendall Dunkelberg. A special note of thanks is
due to Andrea Stevens, Director of Development, and the MUW
Foundation for financial support through the Eudora Welty Chair
Fund.
I am very grateful to the Trustees of the National Library of
Scotland and Dr Ralph McLean for permission to quote from
manuscripts held by that library. I also appreciate the members of
staff of the National Library of Scotland for their helpful and friendly
assistance with my research. I wish to thank Ms Ruth Rogers and the
Wellesley College Library Special Collections for permission to
quote from manuscripts in the Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Collection.
I would also like to thank the following scholars for answering
questions and providing advice: Ian Campbell, Peter Garside,
Cameron B. R. Howard, Gillian Hughes, Caroline McCracken-
Flesher, Kirsteen McCue, Robert Morrison, Hillary A. H. Richard-
son, and Thomas B. Richardson. A special thanks, too, to Michelle
Houston and Susannah Butler at Edinburgh University Press for their
patience and assistance.
Finally, I am deeply grateful to my wife, Emma, who has always
encouraged my research and who has championed the idea of a
critical edition of Lockhart’s works. Emma is a wise adviser and a
careful reader, and her suggestions always improve my work.
Thomas C. Richardson
Mississippi University for Women
 Introduction

1. Genesis of the Novel

The History of Matthew Wald was first published anonymously late
in March 1824 by William Blackwood in Edinburgh and T. Cadell
in London, the last of John Gibson Lockhart’s four novels in as many
years and, according to early reviews, ‘superior in point of writing’
to, and at the same time, ‘rich with the highest merits’ of, his other
novels: Valerius, A Roman Story (1821), Some Passages in the Life
of Mr Adam Blair, Minister of the Gospel at Cross-Meikle (1822;
2nd edn 1824), and Reginald Dalton (1823). 1 Matthew Wald was
republished in 1843 together with Adam Blair in the Blackwood’s
Standard Novels series and was reprinted multiple times in that
series. Lockhart did not revise Matthew Wald for the Blackwood’s
Standard Novels edition beyond, perhaps, a very small number of
words, but the edition also includes minor changes to spelling and
punctuation that can be attributed largely to the printer’s preferences.
The first edition of 1824, then, serves as the copy text for the present
edition with minor emendations to correct printing errors, to provide
textual consistency, and to include the word changes of the 1843
edition. 2
Lockhart had an early interest in novel writing, and in 1814, at age
twenty, he wrote to his friend Jonathan Christie of his intention to
write a Scottish novel that would be ‘a receptacle of an immense
quantity of anecdotes and observations I have made concerning the
state of the Scotch, chiefly their clergy and elders. It is to me
wonderful how the Scotch character has been neglected’. 3 By
November 1814 he had made sufficient progress to think of
contacting the London publisher, John Murray, about publishing
‘two volumes of nonsense’, as he explained to Christie:

My novel comes on wondrously—I mean as to bulk. My fears

are many—first, of false taste creeping in from the want of any
censor; secondly, of too much Scotch—from the circumstance of
x INTRODUCTION

my writing in the midst of the ‘low Lanerickshire’—&c., &c.,

&c. But I think I have written a great many graphical scenes [...].
Once again let me ask you for any little odd tags, rags, and
bobtails of good incidents, &c., for which you have no
immediate use. They may do me great service. 4

In December Lockhart wrote to the Edinburgh publisher, Archibald

Constable, instead of Murray, as perhaps more likely to be interested
in Lockhart’s ‘observations’ on Scottish society:

I am sensible that much has been done of late years in the

description of our national manners, but there are still, I
apprehend, many important classes of Scotch society quite
untouched. The Hero is one John Todd, a true-blue who under-
takes a journey to London in a Berwick Smack, & is present in
the metropolis at the same time w. the Emperor of Russia & other
illustrious visitors in June last. I think “The Romance of the
Thistle” might do for a Title’. 5

However, after reading Walter Scott’s Waverley, which had been

published in July 1814, Lockhart put aside his work in progress,
undoubtedly recognising that his ‘odd tags, rags, and bobtails’ did
not rise to the standard set by ‘the author of Waverley’. He wrote to
Christie again in February 1815: ‘Most of my novel was written
before I read “Waverley,” but I fear the rush upon Scotland con-
sequent to that popular work is such that mine is likely to be crushed
among the row. I intend letting it sleep a year or two and making use
of it as a drawable for some more extensive thing’. 6
Lockhart’s letters to Christie suggest that his novel-in-progress
was a work of loose structure and unsophisticated plot—not at all
like the novels he would come to write. Lockhart’s manuscripts for
his first attempts at novel writing have not been preserved, and it is
not known if Lockhart actually saved any of that early material or if
he used any of it in his later published novels or even in the earlier
Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk (1819) which, while not a novel, uses
a fictional structure with fictional narrator to convey his character
sketches and descriptions of Scottish culture. 7 However, Lockhart
learned much about the art of the novel—from his experience both
 INTRODUCTION xi

as a reader and as a literary critic—in the six years between his

reading of Waverley, which alerted him to his own immaturity as a
writer, and the publication of his first novel, Valerius, the year after
he became Walter Scott’s son-in-law.8 Lockhart read the fiction of
Scott, but he also read widely in the works of British, European, and
American authors. He travelled in Germany for the publisher
William Blackwood and translated (then reviewed) Frederick
Schlegel’s History of Literature, Ancient and Modern. 9 He read
Goethe, whom he regarded as having ‘indisputably exerted more
influence upon the literature of his age, than any other author of our
time’. 10 He met Walter Scott and had the benefit of his encourage-
ment and direction in writing Peter’s Letters. For Blackwood’s
Edinburgh Magazine he reviewed writings of Madame de Staël, the
Americans Charles Brockden Brown and Washington Irving, and
especially important for Matthew Wald, reviewed William Godwin’s
novel Mandeville. 11 By the time he published Valerius he had come
to understand, as he later wrote in a review of Robert Ward’s novel
De Vere; or, the Man of Independence, that ‘A note-book of
reminiscences and anecdotes, however rich, will no more enable a
man of feeble imagination to make a novel, than a collection of state-
papers and annual registers will enable a man who has no philo-
sophical grasp and scope of intellect, to produce a history’. 12
Over this period of literary maturity Lockhart’s focus in his fiction
also properly shifted from ‘anecdotes and observations’ to
‘character’; he embraced the novel as the literary genre most suited
to character portrayal. Lockhart, a Classics scholar, in a later essay
argues that the novel provided for modern, educated readers what the
drama had provided for previous ages—the ‘exhibition of human
character under every light and shade which could result from the
conflicting influence of principle and passion on every possible
variety of temperament and constitution’. 13 The purpose of a novel,
he continues, is above all to excel in the ‘conception and delineation
of character’. 14 As the titles of Lockhart’s novels suggest, each
focuses on a specific—and fresh—character, each of whom in its
own way is struggling with the ‘conflicting influence of principle and
passion’. Lockhart’s efforts to shape a philosophy of fiction, then,
clearly underpinned his approach to novel writing.
xii INTRODUCTION

Additionally, by the time he wrote Matthew Wald, Lockhart had

the experience of three published novels and, importantly, the benefit
of Henry Mackenzie’s guidance on matters of style. Mackenzie
published an essay of stylistic advice, addressed to the author of
Adam Blair, in the April 1822 number of Blackwood’s Edinburgh
Magazine: ‘Hints to a Young Author, from a Very Old One’.
Mackenzie called Adam Blair ‘a work of real genius’ by a talented
writer, but he went on to add that ‘it is not enough to possess genius
or invention, without cultivating the one, or regulating the other’.
Mackenzie addresses specific areas of stylistic concerns, such as
inconsistency of verisimilitude, wordiness, the obtrusiveness of the
narrator, and the relevance of descriptions, including those of natural
scenery: ‘In description, whether of natural scenery, or of other
objects, let him be aware, that though particularity is highly
pleasing, yet prolixity fatigues the reader’. 15 Lockhart revised Adam
Blair following Mackenzie’s ‘Hints’ and published a second edition
in 1824. There can be little doubt that Mackenzie’s advice also
affected Lockhart’s stylistic success with Matthew Wald.
Matthew Wald appeared about two months after the second edition
of Adam Blair, so Lockhart must have written Matthew Wald while
revising Adam Blair, or if he did not work on the two novels
simultaneously, then certainly he did so in close proximity. In
Matthew Wald Lockhart avoids the stylistic weaknesses of the first
edition of Adam Blair, and he seems to acknowledge Matthew
Wald’s indebtedness to Mackenzie in his own review of the novel in
Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine. Lockhart emphasises the unity
of the story and how the action of the novel is tied together through
the focus on the character of Wald: ‘It is indeed a story not only
abounding in, but overflowing with, variety of highly interesting
incident and adventure; but throughout the whole of its tenor,
everything is decidedly and entirely subordinate to the minute and
anxious, although easy and unaffected, anatomy of one man’s
mind’. 16 Furthermore, Lockhart addresses specifically the language
of Mackenzie’s review of Adam Blair, as if to say that he has learned
from his earlier mistakes: ‘The style of Matthew Wald exhibits
prodigious improvement as to harmony of tone: it is quite free from
the faults of prolixity and turgidity, and bears the impress not merely
of great but of uniform power’. 17
 INTRODUCTION xiii

The History of Matthew Wald is structured in two parts. The first

part (372 pages in the first edition) is Matthew’s own narrative,
addressed internally to John, the grandson of Matthew’s aunt, the
sister of Matthew’s father. The second part (ten pages in the first
edition) is a brief account of the end of Wald’s life in the form of a
letter from ‘J. W. R.’ (presumably the ‘John’ to whom Matthew’s
memoir is addressed), to ‘P. R.’, enclosing Wald’s narrative. Like
the title character of Valerius, Matthew writes his own history. It is
written late in Matthew’s life, and not only narrates the family
background and the events of his life to a particular point, but also
throughout the memoir Matthew reflects on his own character,
commenting on his behavioral flaws and personal failings, as well as
the strengths of his character and his achievements, resulting in a
tragic but sympathetic character. John Galt wrote to William
Blackwood on 14 March 1822 after having finished reading Adam
Blair, praising Lockhart for his ‘extraordinary power’ but
questioning the author for not writing in the first person: ‘why did
the author not write in the character of Adam Blair himself? Why did
he make those vivid sketches of passion, instead of doing what would
have been infinitely more striking, express the actions of the passions
themselves?’ 18 Galt was wrong about the narrative voice of Adam
Blair: the voices of the other characters and the narrator’s com-
munity voice were essential to understanding Blair’s character, and
the significance and impact of Blair’s behaviour could not have been
so effectively represented solely by his own point of view. But the
circumstances are different for Matthew Wald. It is likely that
Blackwood communicated Galt’s comments to Lockhart, although it
is unlikely that Galt’s view influenced Lockhart’s approach to
Matthew Wald; however, Lockhart clearly believed that the most
effective way to develop the character of Wald was to have Wald tell
his own story. Lockhart explains his theory of first-person narration
and its application to Matthew Wald in his Blackwood’s review of
his novel.
Lockhart argues that while ‘a great variety of long-winded
discussions have been written’ about the merits of first-person and
third-person narration, the choice of the point of view from which to
write is relatively simple: when the focus of the narration is primarily
on ‘the incidents themselves’, the third person is the better
xiv INTRODUCTION

perspective; when the ‘chief object is the developement of

character’, the first person provides the more-effective option,
especially ‘where the writer’s purpose is to bind the reader’s
attention and sympathy on the progress of thought and feeling in one
human mind’. Lockhart goes on to suggest that the ‘autobiographic
tone’ is the most effective method ‘even when the operation of
external events’ is a significant focus of the novel, provided the
reader is asked ‘to sympathize solely or chiefly with one human
being’. 19 And just as Lockhart’s review offers what seems to be an
acknowledgement of Mackenzie’s advice, Lockhart also includes
what might be seen as a subtle, if mildly derogatory, response to
Galt’s criticism of Adam Blair, referencing the first-person narrative
voices of Galt’s Annals of the Parish and The Provost, respectively:

But whenever the depths of the heart and the soul are to be laid
bare, let us have the knife of the self-anatomist—nay, without
saying anything about depths, since many human minds may be
very shallow things, and yet highly amusing as well as instructive
in their display, whenever the secret peculiarities of one man are
the principal object, let that man tell his own story—yea, even if
that man be a Reverend Mr Balquhidder, or a Provost Pawkie.20

Following the general comments about first-person narration,

Lockhart specifically addresses the point of view of Matthew Wald,
while at the same time offering insights into what he believes he
achieves in the characterisation of Wald. Lockhart calls the novel a
‘remarkable volume’ and argues that ‘every person who reads it must
admit that it is a story eminently unfit for being told by any one but
its hero’. Lockhart underscores the significance of the ‘great variety
of adventures’ with which Wald is involved and that offer the reader
‘glimpses into a great many widely different fields of human life and
action’, but he emphasises that ‘everything is decidedly and entirely
subordinate to the minute and anxious, although easy and unaffected,
anatomy of one man’s mind’. Lockhart describes the ‘main
elements’ of Wald’s ‘mind’ as a ‘haughty, scornful, sarcastic,
shrewd, bitter spirit, blended with some tempestuous passions, and
softened by a few feelings of the purest and most tender depth’.
Wald’s character ‘command[s] our sympathies’ because he is ‘a
 INTRODUCTION xv

strong-minded, independent, and self-relying human being’. Lock-

hart suggests that the achievement and significance of the novel lie
in the fact that it is ‘both interesting and instructive’, ‘the more
interesting because it is written in the first person, where we are
reminded at every step […] that he, of whose fortunes we are
reading, possessed not only a powerful intellect, but a high and
imaginative genius’. The novel’s ‘instructiveness’ importantly
reminds the reader ‘how incapable are even the highest powers and
accomplishments of intellect of atoning for the want of that moral
equilibrium in which the true happiness of man consists,—in the
absence of which the noblest gifts of our Creator serve not more
surely to embellish the narrative, than to deepen the substance of
human misery’. 21
The language of Lockhart’s review of Matthew Wald in many
respects echoes Lockhart’s reviews of William Godwin’s
Mandeville and the fiction of Charles Brockden Brown and
Washington Irving and suggests that Lockhart was trying to achieve
a Godwinian character—although uniquely Scottish—in Matthew
Wald. Lockhart compares the character of Mandeville to earlier
Godwin characters, Caleb Williams and St Leon:

Like them he possesses a lofty intellect and many natural

capacities for enjoyment. Like them his heart is originally
filled with kindly and benignant feelings; and, like them, by
a strange perverseness of circumstances and temper, he is
afflicted with intolerable sufferings, in which we can
scarcely fear that we ourselves ever shall partake, and which
nevertheless command the most powerful of our human
sympathies. He is more essentially and entirely a madman
than either of his brethren. 22

Lockhart admired ‘the energy of the language’ with which

Mandeville tells his story so that the readers become ‘partakers in the
very follies whereof we feel and pity the existence in the narrator’.
He also praised the art of the storytelling that took ‘no ordinary
degree of management in the author to produce this mixture of
apparently irreconcileable effects, to make us sympathize in the
emotions without being deceived by the speciousness of his hero’.23
xvi INTRODUCTION

Lockhart later argues that Charles Brockden Brown, although

admired by Godwin, ‘was not indeed a Godwin’ in terms of artistic
achievement but that like Godwin’s works, Brown’s novels are
characterised by ‘dark, mysterious power of imagination,’ ‘deep and
pathetic knowledge of the human heart’, and ‘bold sweeping flood
of impassioned eloquence’ 24—terms that could also describe
Lockhart’s achievements in Matthew Wald. There is little doubt that
Lockhart was influenced by Godwin, especially Mandeville, and in
the characterisation of Matthew Wald Lockhart succeeded in
achieving a Godwinian character, effectively capturing the fragility,
mystery, complexity, and competing passions of the human mind.
His depiction of Wald is sympathetic and much less intensely
dramatic than Godwin’s Mandeville, however, and although Wald
experiences a breakdown, a temporary bout of ‘madness’ from which
he recovers, he is not the ‘complete madman’ that Lockhart sees in
Mandeville. Lockhart attempts to depict a character whose
experience is more representative of humanity at large; Lockhart’s
novel is grounded in realism, presenting a personal story set firmly
within the context of, and reflecting the complexities of, Scottish
history, culture, and traditions.
Lockhart also suggests a Wordsworthian influence on the
characterisation of Wald. Lockhart includes on the title page as an
epigraph to the novel the opening stanza of William Wordsworth’s
poem ‘The Fountain, A Conversation’, which was first published in
the 1800 edition of Lyrical Ballads. Three more stanzas, the tenth
through the twelfth of the poem’s eighteen stanzas, are quoted as an
epigraph to J. W. R.’s ‘Letter to P. R. Esq (Enclosing the Foregoing
Memoirs)’. 25 J. W. R.’s ‘Letter’ also refers to Wald as the ‘grey-
haired man of glee’ (p. 180), quoting the poem’s ‘young’ speaker’s
description of the character Matthew in ‘The Fountain’ (l. 20). ‘The
Fountain’ is structured as a dialogue between ‘Matthew’, age
seventy-two, and the poem’s younger persona; the ages of the
poem’s characters are comparable to those of Wald and J. W. R.
Lockhart’s strategic selection and placement of quotations from ‘The
Fountain’ invite the reader of Matthew Wald to consider possible
thematic connections with Wordsworth’s work. Lockhart also seems
to suggest that the reader should pay careful attention to the novel’s
second narrative, that J. W. R.’s ‘Letter’ is more important than for
 INTRODUCTION xvii

just wrapping up details of Wald’s later life and his death, and that
the reader should consider the seriousness of what is perhaps taken
too lightly by J. W. R.’s and P. R.’s efforts to understand Wald’s
character and conflicting images and assessments of his identity.
Sources for Lockhart’s characters extend beyond the literary,
however; they are also derived from or modelled after Lockhart’s
acquaintances, especially from his practice as a lawyer, as well as
fictionalised representations of historical figures. Lockhart’s
experience as an Advocate for the Circuit Court also provided
inspiration and sources for some of his characters. Mammy Baird,
one of the most endearing characters of the novel, seems to have been
based on a woman Lockhart met at Arndilly House while serving as
a lawyer for the Circuit Court. Lockhart wrote to his wife, Sophia:

I wish you had come hither if it were but for the sake of the old
Highland Nurse of the house. She is about 94 years old—is
privileged completely—drinks tea & punch every night in the
Drawing Room—& tells stories & sings ballads that rival your
own & Miss Anna James in length if not in melody. The old girl
dances everything from reel to Quadrille and is indeed a very
charming person—& much need she has to be so for we were all
obliged to kiss her as well as to dance w her. How your papa wd
delight in such a specimen. 26

Arndilly House, on the River Spey in Moray, was the seat of the
Macdowall Grants, and William Macdowall Grant (1796-1849) was
an acquaintance of Lockhart’s. It is likely that the character of judge
Thirleton is based on George Fergusson, Lord Hermand (1743-
1827), judge and a Lord of Justiciary. Lockhart knew Lord Hermand
from his time on the Circuit Court, and Sir Walter Scott had served
as Clerk of the Court of Session under Judge Hermand. Lockhart
devoted several pages of Peter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk to
descriptions and anecdotes of the judge. 27 In the letter to Sophia in
which he describes the ‘Mammy Baird’ figure, he also mentions his
connection to Lord Hermand: ‘I spent three days gaily at Aberdeen
and have now spent two very pleasantly at this fine place—for it
really is one of the finest I have ever seen—The young Laird is my
xviii INTRODUCTION

acquaintance Macdowall Grant a nephew to Mrs Hermand who is

here with her old Lord’. 28
Wald’s description of the ‘Justice-ayre march’ at the conclusion
of a session of the Circuit Court at Stirling, presided over by Judge
Thirleton, also comes from Lockhart’s experience with the Court.
Wald, while waiting to meet with Judge Thirleton, observes the
traditional parade that concludes the day’s session:

my ears were at length gratified with the well-known “Justice-ayre

march,” performed upon a couple of cracked trumpets in the street
below me, and accompanied with a sufficient buzz of “the
Lords!!!—the Lords!!!” and, throwing up my window, I could
soon distinguish the principal feature of the advancing procession.
His lordship held in his right hand an umbrella, for the protection
of his wig and cocked hat; and his left being, with equal propriety,
occupied in tucking up the skirts of his robe, his short bandy-legs
were seen stumping vigorously through the mud—the bailies and
trumpeters in advance, on each side a waiter or two with tallow-
candles in paper-lanterns, and the usual rabble in the rear. (p. 144)

This scene in the novel is probably based on Lockhart’s own

experience in the Court in Glasgow in 1820, although David
Monypenny, Lord Pitmilly (1769-1850), was presiding rather than
Lord Hermand. Lockhart sketched a caricature of the scene, which
fellow lawyer Henry Cockburn, Lord Cockburn (1779-1854),
recorded in his journal: ‘It was a wet day, and I have a view which
John Lockhart, a master in the art of caricature, drew of Lord
Pitmilly, with his umbrella over his wig, and his gown tucked up out
of the mud, to the exposure of his Lordship’s odd and well-known
legs. It is the very man. Lockhart and I were behind him. I forget who
his colleague was’.29
Lockhart turns to a traditional Border story for the character of
Joanne Barr. Lockhart imagines Joanne as the illegitimate child of
Jean (or Jeanne), the lover of Sir Robert Stuart (1643-1707), first
Baronet of Allanbank in Berwickshire. Jean, or ‘Pearling Jean’ as
she came to be known, was ultimately rejected by Sir Robert and
died tragically in his presence and perhaps at his direction. In the
novel Joanne is the daughter of Sir Claud Barr and a beautiful young
 INTRODUCTION xix

woman he had met in Flanders and persuaded to run away with him
to Scotland. Sir Claud’s lover is referred to by the servants as
‘Perling Joan’ because of the lace decorations on her dress—like
‘Pearling Jean’. The story, or stories, of ‘Pearling Jean’ seem to have
been widely known, and several versions of the tradition have
survived. The antiquarian Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe recounts his
terror as a child at stories of the ghost of Jean—stories that he heard
from his nurse, who had been a servant at Allanbank. In Sharpe’s
version, Jean had been deliberately run over by Stuart’s carriage on
Stuart’s order to drive on, and this took place in Paris, not Scotland.30
The Reverend John Marriott turned the story into a ballad, dated
September 1805, which he sent to Sharpe in a letter of 7 March 1807.
Marriott’s version is similar to Sharpe’s, although embellished with
details appropriate to a traditional Scottish ballad. In Marriott’s
ballad ‘Sir John’ meets with justice; on returning to his estate, the
ghost of Jean greets him and ‘Old Nick’s own coach-and-six’ grinds
the bones of Sir John ‘to powder.’ 31 Marriott claims that ‘the present
Sir John of Allanbank’ had seen Marriott’s ballad and ‘bears witness
to its authenticity in all important respects’. 32
The version of the ‘Pearling Jean’ story that Lockhart follows, as
told by Mammy Baird to Matthew, apparently was the version
subscribed to by Sir Walter Scott. Scott thought Lockhart’s source
for the story must have been either himself or his daughter, Sophia,
who was Lockhart’s wife. Scott is defensive about Lockhart’s use of
the story in the novel, and he wrote to Sir James Stuart (1779-1849),
fifth Baronet of Allanbank, on 7 July 1827 with an implied apology:

I do not remember having told Lockhart the story of your Castle

[?] Spectre pearling Jean but he must have heard it from me or his
wife for it is decidedly the same legend but in my opinion spoild
by his way of telling it. I dont think we ever spoke about that
curious tradition or whether I ever askd you whether there was any
foundation for the common report. If I recollect there was a picture
which hung on the Staircase at Allanbank supposed to represent
Pearlin’ Jane—a ghostly looking personage—I have further some
idea that the picture was said to be a prepotention [?] of the restless
spirit. 33
xx INTRODUCTION

Of the extant versions, Lockhart’s telling most closely aligns with

that recorded by Andrew and John Lang in Highways and Byways of
the Border, and presumably this is the version with which Scott was
most familiar. While travelling in Europe, Sir Robert met Jeanne, the
beautiful young daughter of a Flemish Jew, and he persuaded her to
return with him to Scotland. When Sir Robert arrived home with
Jeanne, ‘a vision all in lace and ribbons’, the servants were told to
regard Jeanne as their mistress. After a time Jeanne gave birth to a
daughter, and Sir Robert became more distant in the relationship. Sir
Robert went away for several months on ‘business’, but before
returning sent word that he was marrying someone appropriate to his
social rank. Jeanne left home and did not return until the day Sir
Robert brought his bride to Allanbank. As the carriage arrived at the
estate, Jeanne ‘darted from a clump of shrubbery’ in front of the
carriage and was trampled to death. The infant remained at Allan-
bank, as did a portrait of Jeanne. However, the ghost of Jeanne was
also said to roam the house, and no one would enter what had been
her room, especially after Sir Robert’s distressing encounter with the
spirit of his betrayed mistress. 34
While there is little effort by Lockhart to disguise the source of
Joanne Barr, in the character of George Whitefield he introduces the
historical figure under his real name. George Whitefield (1714-1770)
was an itinerant Methodist minister and evangelist. In the novel
Matthew sees Whitefield as a negative influence on Joanne, who by
the time she encounters the evangelist had become Matthew’s wife.
The historical Whitefield visited Scotland for services fourteen times
between 1741 and 1768. He was known for his ‘impassioned
oratory’, and his services were often attended by several thousand.35
J. H. S. Burleigh notes that in 1742 Whitefield preached to an
estimated 30,000 people during the revival known as the
‘Cambuslang Wark’. 36 Whitefield was a controversial figure in the
Church of Scotland parishes. As a Calvinist and a man of gracious
personality, he was favourably received by the masses, but as a
‘prelatic priest of the Church of England’ his work was considered
by the stricter Presbyterians as ‘a delusion of the devil’. 37 Joanne was
drawn to Whitefield’s preaching, but Matthew was disturbed by what
he considered the damaging effects of Whitefield’s emotional
appeal. Wald describes Whitefield’s skills as an orator in terms that
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Nick Carter Stories
No. 151, July 31, 1915: The Mystery of the Crossed
Needles; or Nick Carter and the Yellow Tong
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States
and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
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Title: Nick Carter Stories No. 151, July 31, 1915: The Mystery of the
Crossed Needles; or Nick Carter and the Yellow Tong

Author: Nicholas Carter

Ralph Boston

Release date: May 15, 2022 [eBook #68089]

Language: English

Original publication: United States: Street & Smaith, 1914

Credits: David Edwards, Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed

Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (Northern Illinois
University Digital Library)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NICK

CARTER STORIES NO. 151, JULY 31, 1915: THE MYSTERY OF
THE CROSSED NEEDLES; OR NICK CARTER AND THE YELLOW
TONG ***
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.)
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and should let us know at once.
No. 151. NEW YORK, July 31, 1915. Price Five Cents.
The Mystery of the Crossed Needles;

Or, NICK CARTER AND THE YELLOW TONG.

Edited by CHICKERING CARTER.

 CHAPTER I.

TWICE IN THE HEART.

The electric bell from Andrew Anderton’s study rang sharply. It was close
to the ear of the butler dozing in his little room off the hall at the back of the
main staircase, and he awoke with a start.
“Lord love ’im!” exclaimed that functionary, stalking to the door with as
much haste as his dignity would permit. “Why doesn’t ’e stop ringing? I
’eard ’im the first time, without ’im keeping the blooming bell going all the
time.” Then, as he reached the door and made for the stairs, he continued
grumblingly: “All right, Mr. Anderton. I ’ear you. You certainly are a most
impatient gentleman. I never seed anything like you for ’urrying a man, not
even in the old country. Though the Marquis of Silsby—my last master
before I left England—was a ’asty sort of gentleman, too. This was the way
’e always acted. Wanted me to be right on the spot as soon as he touched the
bell, although ’e knew very well I was two floors below ’im. My word! That
bell’s still ringing. I can ’ear it from up ’ere.”
The butler, by this time, was on the second floor of the handsome house
in upper Fifth Avenue, where Andrew Anderton, the millionaire traveler and
Oriental student, lived. He pushed open the door of the study.
“Did you ring, sir?”
He had these words out, from force of habit, before he even looked
around the room. When he did, he gave utterance to a shout that brought a
maid, who had been passing along the hallway, surging in, white-faced and
round-eyed, to see what was the matter.
Andrew Anderton, in the handsome, velvet, embroidered dressing gown
he generally wore when alone in his study, was lying across the floor, face
down. His body, pressed on the electric foot button, kept the bell below
ringing continuously.
“What’s the matter with him, Ruggins?” whispered the maid.
The butler knelt by the side of the still figure and gently turned it over.
The face of the student was white—the awful gray white of a corpse—and
the eyes were closed. The expression was peaceful. There was nothing in it
to suggest that he had died a violent death, or even that he had suffered as he
passed away.
“Heart disease, I should say,” murmured Ruggins. “Telephone for Doctor
Miles, Amelia.”
The girl took up the desk telephone on the large, heavy table that Andrew
Anderton had been writing at when stricken, and called up Doctor
Theophilus Miles, who had been a lifelong friend of the dead man, as well as
his physician.
As she telephoned she pointed mutely to a pen that evidently had dropped
from the fingers of the master at the moment of his collapse, for it was still
wet with black ink, and there was a smudge of it on the white paper of the
letter he had been inditing.
“Yes, I see,” nodded Ruggins. “It was awfully sudden. ’E must ’ave been
took all at once. I wonder whether it was ’eart disease, after all.”
He opened the front of the velvet dressing gown—which was not
fastened, but had fallen together—and gave vent to a mumbled ejaculation,
as he saw that the waistcoat was open.
“And ’is shirt is the same way,” he went on. “You can see ’is bare flesh.
’Ello! What’s this?”
Something glittering had caught his eye. A closer look revealed two long
needles, crossed and welded together in the center, where they were in
contact with each other.
“Save us!” muttered the butler. “This is murder!”
The points of both needles were deeply embedded in the flesh on the left
side, and Ruggins knew at once that they pierced the heart!
His first impulse was to pull the needles away. Then some vague
recollection of something he had heard about the illegality of touching a
body until it had been viewed by a coroner held his hand.
“I’ll wait till the doctor comes, anyhow. My poor master’s dead. It
wouldn’t do ’im any good to take out the needles. ’Ave you got the doctor,
Amelia?”
“Yes. He will be here in five minutes. His automobile is all ready at his
door, and he will come right along.”
It was less than five minutes when Doctor Theophilus Miles—a rather
gruff, although good-natured, man of sixty—came into the room, and, with a
nod to Ruggins, knelt by the side of the stiffened form upon the floor. He
opened one of the eyes with a calm, professional finger, felt for a pulse, and
then pulled aside the dressing gown to put his hand over the heart.
He started as he saw the needles. Carefully he pulled them out, gazed at
them in silence for nearly a minute. Then he told Ruggins and the maid to go
out of the room.
“And don’t say anything about what has happened in this room to the
other people in the house until I tell you. If they have found out anything,
tell them Mr. Anderton is sick. Understand? And, whatever you do, don’t
mention these needles.”
“Don’t you want any ’elp, sir?” asked Ruggins, who did not like to be
thus dismissed.
“I’ll get all the help I want in a few minutes. I’m going to telephone for it.
A gentleman will come here soon—probably in less than a quarter of an
hour. If he says his name is Carter—Mr. Nicholas Carter—bring him up at
once. That’s all.”
He waved them both from the room. Then he shut the door and took up
the telephone. Soon he had a response to the number he had called, and he
asked whether Mr. Carter was on the wire. A reply came, and he went on:
“Oh, all right, Carter! This is Andrew Anderton’s house. You know where
it is. Can you come at once?... Yes, very important.... You will? Ten
minutes? All right! I’ll wait for you.”
As he hung up the receiver, he soliloquized: “That’s one good thing about
Carter. He doesn’t bother you with a lot of questions over the telephone. He
knew that if I had anything to tell I would have said it. I wish everybody I
have to deal with was like that. I’d have a much easier life. So they got him!
The Yellow Tong! This is the second time I’ve seen their work. I believe
some of those people on the Yellow Sea must get their devilish ingenuity
from the Evil One himself.”
He had placed the crossed needles on the white letter paper, which had
only the date line written upon it, and covered the face of Anderton with a
newspaper. Now he sat down in the big swing chair from which the stricken
man had fallen, to stare at the needles.
Soon he dropped into a doze, for he was a busy man, with a practice that
kept him out a large part of his time, and his sleep was a thing he had to take
when he could get it. He had acquired the ability to drop off anywhere so
long as he could sit down, and a short nap always did him good.
He was brought to himself by the announcement of Ruggins, at the door,
as he ushered in a visitor:
“Mr. Carter!”
The great detective looked at the doctor—who jumped from his chair,
wide awake, at the first sound of the butler’s voice—and then glanced at the
figure stretched across the floor, with a newspaper over the face. A frown
drew his heavy brows together. He stooped and removed the newspaper.
“Poor Anderton!” he murmured. “Ah, well! I’m not surprised. How was
it, doctor?”
For answer, Doctor Miles pointed to the white paper on the table.
“The crossed needles!” whispered the detective, in an awed tone. Then,
sternly: “The Yellow Tong is at it again. This is the second.”
“Yes, Carter. The other one was that poor hobo they got in a Bowery
lodging house. It was the same thing, you remember. But I was coroner at
that time, and I believed the ends of justice would be served by not letting
any one know what I found inside his shirt. I have those crossed needles
locked up in my laboratory now.”
“You’ve examined them, haven’t you?” asked Nick Carter.
“Of course. They are poisoned. Not that that is necessary,” replied the
doctor. “When an inch of steel pierces the heart in two places, it is quite
likely to prove fatal, without introducing poison. Still, the poison hurries the
crime. Of course, when a victim dies on the instant, as he does with these
needles, it may save the murderer some inconvenience. Poor Anderton! This
is the penalty he pays for falling foul of the tong.”
“Will there be an inquest?” asked Nick quietly. “Or can you avoid it by
certifying that he died of natural causes? I suppose you couldn’t do that—
although, in one sense, he did die that way. It is quite natural for a human
being to pass away when two poisoned needles are in his heart,” he added, in
a thoughtful tone.
“That’s good logic, Nick,” admitted the doctor, with a slight smile. “But it
wouldn’t do. In cases of sudden death, there must be an inquiry by the
proper officer. But I can keep the crossed needles out of sight. I will cause
the inquest to be entirely perfunctory, by certifying that poor Anderton came
to his death at the hands of some person or persons unknown, without going
too much into details. It will be passed up to the police, of course, and I shall
have to show the weapon to the man in charge of the case from headquarters.
But I can prevent its going any further.”
“That’s what I want,” answered Carter. “You know, as well as I, that this
rascally gang from China, who call themselves the Yellow Tong, intend to
fairly honeycomb this country with secret avenues for bringing in their
people, if they can, and that, when they are ready, they will commence a
series of crimes that will give the government, as well as the police of all the
big cities, more trouble than the average citizen dreams of as possible.”
“Yes, I know that,” agreed Miles.
“Poor Anderton was a warm, personal friend of mine,” said Nick Carter,
with a sobbing catch in his voice, “just as he was of yours. If I haven’t
expressed much grief since coming into this room, it is because I feel that it
is more important to avenge him than to mourn over his remains.”
Doctor Miles put out his hand and grasped the firm, strong fingers of the
detective.
“I know you, Carter,” he returned. “You need not explain.”
“There is more than that,” went on Nick. “This is the first serious blow
they have struck. I don’t count the poor fellow in the Bowery so much,
because he was an unimportant person. If he had never accidentally come
across some of their secrets in China, when he was a seaman on board that
tramp steamer, they never would have troubled to wipe him out. But Andrew
Anderton is different.
“Yes, of course. He is a member of several scientific associations, a
wealthy New Yorker, and he has the confidence of the United States
government. He has done notable work in China for Washington, and I have
no doubt he has submitted a valuable report to the department of state, with
papers to verify it, that no other man could have given to it. It is because he
is so well informed a man that he has been cut off by the Yellow Tong. There
can be no doubt about that.”
“Not the slightest,” assented Nick Carter. “By the way, can you have this
room fastened up, so that there is no danger of anybody disturbing it? I
should like to go through it alone after the coroner has been here.”
“I’ll fix that, of course,” was the doctor’s ready promise. “The coroner is
Doctor Farrell. I’ll call him up and get him to make his preliminary
investigation right away. When do you want to come back?”
 “Let me see,” answered Nick, consulting his watch. “It is now nearly
nine. I’ll come back at ten. The coroner will be through by that time?”
“Long before,” replied Miles confidently. “I will be here with him, to tell
him all he wants to know. He’ll bring a jury with him in the morning, and
they’ll reach a verdict very soon. Do you want me here when you get back at
ten?”
“Not unless it is convenient to you. I should like to have you present, of
course. But, if you——”
“I’ve got half a dozen calls I ought to make to-night. I shall try to cover
some by telephone. But, anyhow, I have enough to keep me out of bed till
one in the morning, and I’m rather tired.”
“Don’t say a word,” interrupted Nick. “I’ll look through the room by
myself. I shan’t even bring my assistant with me. Good night, if you are not
here when I come back.”
They shook hands again—for each respected the ability and sterling
qualities of the other—and Nick Carter went out.
The detective was sharp-eyed, and it was seldom that any detail escaped
him. But he did not see an ugly yellow face, with black, oblique-set eyes, in
the narrow slit between the heavy brocaded curtains that covered one of the
windows. Yet that yellow face had been there from the first—even when
Ruggins was involuntarily summoned by the murdered man when he fell
from his chair with the crossed needles in his heart.
 CHAPTER II.

THE MAN WITH THE SCARS.

When Nick Carter went out of the home of Andrew Anderton, he stood
for a moment in the shadow of the front entrance, looking sharply about him.
Particularly his gaze rested upon the blackness of the park on the opposite
side of the avenue, and he tried to make out whether anybody might be
lurking in the deep obscurity of the shade trees.
It was his experience, as a detective, that where there had been an unusual
crime committed, some of those concerned were pretty sure to linger in the
vicinity. Always they were anxious to know what direction suspicion would
take.
“I believe I see something moving over there,” muttered Nick.
With an abrupt turn to the left, as he walked off the stone steps of the
mansion, it seemed as if he were going to make his way on foot down the
avenue, notwithstanding that a taxicab was waiting for him half a block up
the thoroughfare. But this was only a ruse. As he got to a dark spot, where
big trees overshadowed the roadway, he suddenly darted across to the other
side.
“I thought so,” he remarked, behind his closed teeth. “But he’s inside the
park railings. By the time I got to a gate he’d be far away, and the fence is
too high to climb over—unless there were an absolute necessity. Even if I
were to climb, it would take me too long to get that fellow.”
Nick Carter continued his stroll toward downtown, in the hope of
deceiving the watcher, whoever he might be. Then, swinging around, he ran
back. So sudden was this move, that he actually got to the railings and found
himself close to the eavesdropper before the latter had time to get away.
As the detective reached the spot, he turned on a strong white light from
his electric flash lamp, full on the lurking figure inside the park.
He saw a man in the blue blouse, loose trousers, and felt-soled slippers of
an ordinary Chinese laundryman. But he could not see the man’s face. It was
obscured by the shrubbery, and the fellow was cunning enough to keep it
there while the light was turned on him.
“Who are you?” demanded the detective sharply, in the Chinese tongue.
 The man was taken aback at hearing a Caucasian address him in his own
language, and he blurted out a Mongolian oath of dismay.
Nick Carter took no notice of this—although he understood its purport
well enough. Instead, he asked the Chinaman if his name wasn’t Pon Gee.
This was the first name that came to his tongue, and he merely wanted to get
the fellow into conversation.
But the wiles of the Chinese coolie have been proverbial ever since—and
before—Bret Harte wrote his famous poem. The man did not reply. He put
up one arm, so that the long, hanging sleeve of his blouse completely
covered his face, and ran away into the blackness.
Nick Carter could not follow him with the light, and he knew it would be
waste of time to hunt in the park for such an elusive object as a Chinese
laundryman. So he shut off his flash and walked thoughtfully across the road
to his waiting taxi.
“I knew it was the work of the crossed-needles gang, anyhow,” he
reflected. “That fellow was only a look-out. The Yellow Tong has hundreds
of such men in New York—fellows who do not understand what they are
doing for the organization, or why. He was told to watch Anderton’s house,
of course, and to report if the murderers of my poor friend were interfered
with. Poor Anderton! He was too good a man to be done to death in that
ghastly fashion.”
Andrew Anderton was a bachelor. He never had had time for marriage, he
said. His explorations in foreign countries would not have fitted well into
married life, either. So he had lived his own life in his own way, and, being a
wealthy man, had been able to go where he would, and study with every
advantage at his finger ends.
“I waited for you, Mr. Carter,” remarked the driver of the taxi, as the
detective stepped in. “I knowed you’d want to go home some time. Where
to, now?”
“Home!” replied the detective laconically.
This taxi driver was a man who often was employed by Nick Carter, and
who never made any comment on what he might see or hear. The detective
had many such assistants about New York. More than once this particular
driver had helped him out of a tight place, by putting on speed, without
asking questions, and without delay. Incidentally, it may be explained that he
was always well paid for his services.
 Once in his own comfortable library on the second floor of his Madison
Avenue home, Carter told his principal assistant, Chick, to give him volume
ten of the “International Records.”
“Anything on, chief?” asked Chick, as he brought out the book from the
steel-lined, fireproof closet. “I heard what you said at this end of the
telephone, you know.”
Chick was an alert young man, and was so thoroughly in the confidence
of the great detective that he was privileged to ask this kind of question.
“I was called to Andrew Anderton’s house by Doctor Miles,” replied
Nick, opening the book and turning to a certain page. “Mr. Anderton is
dead.”
Chick started and an expression of mingled sorrow and horror came into
his face. But he said nothing, and Nick Carter continued:
“He was killed by the Yellow Tong.”
“The crossed needles?” gasped Chick.
“Exactly. He was found dead just as that man was in the lodging house.
What was his name? Brand—something or other.”
“Brand Jamieson,” supplied Chick. “He had been a deck hand on a tramp
steamer in the China trade, and found out too much about the tong. But Mr.
Anderton? How did they get at him? He never goes out without somebody
with him, and he has enough people in his house to keep strangers away
from him.”
“All that is true enough, Chick,” returned Carter. “But the men in the
Yellow Tong are not ordinary rascals. They have some of the brightest minds
in the world among them. You know something about the Chinese, Chick.
You have been with me on more than one case among those people. They are
not fools, whatever else may be said against some of them.”
“Fools?” ejaculated Chick. “I should say not! I’d back a chink—
especially an educated one—against any other citizen on this round earth,
when it comes to plain, natural smartness—and cussedness.”
“Here it is,” broke in Nick Carter, running his finger down the close
typewriting on the page he had picked out in the large volume. “ ‘Yellow
Tong. Death method—crossed needles. Poisoned. Poison a secret mineral,
brought from the country bordering on the Yellow Sea. Very deadly. Object
of tong—to establish gigantic criminal and political organization in United
States, which may eventually even terrorize American government.’ ”
 “Gee!” broke in another voice. “That’s great hokum. As if chinks had any
show to pull off such a scheme as that.”
“Never mind, Patsy!” said Nick. “We won’t question whether they can do
it. We’ll only take care they don’t.”
It was Patsy Garvan, Nick Carter’s second assistant, whom he addressed.
Patsy had been in the room all the time, but he had been busy at his
particular desk, and the detective had not disturbed him. The young man was
entirely in the confidence of his chief, however, and Nick was quite ready to
answer any questions he might put.
“Andrew Anderton killed,” murmured Chick. “It seems impossible. Why,
it was only two days ago that I went up there to see him about this Yellow
Tong, and he laughed at the bare idea that he was in danger from the
organization.”
“Anderton was a brave man,” commented Nick Carter.
“Three parts grit, and the rest of him nerve,” added Patsy.
“If we could only get our hands on Sang Tu,” mused Chick, half aloud.
“That fellow is as slippery as a greased pigtail.”
“He is in New York, I know,” declared Nick. “I have no doubt he was
close behind this murder of Anderton. But nobody has seen him here. The
last glimpse of him I had was at Shanghai, and then only for a moment. He
was coming to America then, I feel sure, but I never was able to trace him.”
“That’s proof enough that he’s a smooth guy,” interjected Patsy soberly.
“If he hadn’t been slicker than most men, he wouldn’t have got away from
you then.”
“Well, there’s nothing more to be said just now. “But I want you two to
get to work on this case.”
“Good enough,” ejaculated Patsy, grinning his delight. “What am I to do,
chief?”
“Find me a laundryman with a burned finger on his right hand and a
white scar on his right ear. Looks as if he had been burned at some time.
That is all the help I can give you, except that the man is middle size, and I
should judge him to be about thirty years old, from his shape and
movements. I did not see his face.”
“You’ve told me enough,” responded Patsy. “I reckon I’d better put on
some clothes that will make the chinks think I’m all right. I don’t know
whether I can make a good Chinaman of myself.”
“It isn’t necessary,” answered Nick Carter. “A Chinese disguise is always
difficult, especially when you want to deceive Chinamen with it. They are
very likely to see through it, unless you are in a rather dark place. You can
put on a rather shabby suit of clothes of a sporting cut, and wear a soft hat
pulled well down—the sort of hat most young men are wearing just now.
The idea is that you are a gangster, and are used to going among Chinamen.”
“I get you,” interrupted Patsy. “I’ll show up some time in the morning,
and I hope I’ll know where this chink is that you want. Got his name?”
“No. If I had, he would be easy to find, and I might not have to send you
at all.”
“That’s so,” acknowledged Patsy, as he left the room.
“Now, Chick,” went on Nick, when the door had been closed, “I’m going
to look through Andrew Anderton’s room. You come with me to the house,
talk to the butler, and tell him he is to show you all about the premises. At
least—no, you needn’t do that. I’ll tell him. His name is Ruggins. He was the
person who found Mr. Anderton dead. Come on.”
The taxicab in which Nick had come home was waiting in front of the
house. In less than fifteen minutes it had carried Nick Carter and Chick to
Andrew Anderton’s house, and both were inside. The taxicab went away.
“Is Doctor Miles here?” was the detective’s first question, when Ruggins
met him at the door.
“No, sir. ’E waited till the coroner came, and then the doctor went, after
showing ’im the body of Mr. Anderton.”
“You mean, after showing the coroner?”
“Yes, sir. Mr. Anderton ’as been taken out of the study, sir, and ’e’s lying
on his own bed. The coroner ’ad that done. The inquest will be ’eld in the
morning, sir.”
“Very well. I’m going to the study. See that I’m not disturbed.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Oh, yes. Wait a moment. You know me, don’t you?”
“Certainly, sir. You’re Mr. Carter, the detective—one of those gentlemen
from Scotland Yard. I mean, the New York Scotland Yard.”
“Well,” continued Nick, smiling slightly at Ruggins’ explanation. “This is
Mr. Chickering Carter, my assistant. You will let him go where he wants to
in the house, and you will show him anything he may ask to see. Also,
answer his questions. We are trying to find the murderer of Mr. Anderton.”
“I ’opes you’ll do it, sir,” was Ruggins’ fervent response, as Nick Carter
went upstairs to the study.
 CHAPTER III.

TRACING THE CRIME.

When Nick Carter had closed and locked the door of the study, he went to
the table and turned up the green-shaded student lamp on the table. There
were electric-light fixtures in the room, but Anderton had always preferred
the softer light of an oil lamp when he was at work, or to read by.
The green shade kept the room in gloom except for the round space on
the table illuminated by the lamp, and Nick switched on one of the
incandescent lights.
“I’m not surprised that nothing seems to have been disturbed,” he
murmured. “The men who were smart enough to get in here and put
Anderton to death by the crossed needles would not be likely to leave
obvious traces of their presence. Well, I’ll look into that later. First of all,
let’s see whom poor Anderton was writing to when he was killed.”
Passing over the blank sheet, with only the date line, which lay
immediately in front of the chair, Nick picked up another letter, sealed,
addressed, and stamped. Evidently it had been finished just before the
deceased had begun the other.
“ ‘Matthew Bentham, esquire,’ ” read Carter, with the envelope in his
hand. “Ah! That’s the scientist and Orientalist. I did not know that he was a
friend of Anderton’s. But it is quite natural that men having the same
interests should be acquainted. I see Bentham lives in Brooklyn. I’ll take
down that address.”
It was in an avenue near Prospect Park, and Nick carefully copied the
superscription into his notebook. Then he opened the door of the study and
called down the staircase to the butler Ruggins.
“Ask Mr. Chickering Carter to come here,” requested Nick.
In a moment Chick was bounding up the stairs. His chief handed him the
letter addressed to Bentham.
“Mail this at once, Chick. You’d better take it to the nearest branch post
office. I wouldn’t trust it to a mail box outside. I want to make sure it will be
delivered in the morning.”
 When Chick had departed with the letter, Nick again closed and locked
the door and began his investigations in earnest. Turning on all the electric
lights, and with his flash lamp in his hand, he examined the floor, in the hope
of finding marks of feet on the polished floor or the costly rugs that would
give him a clew.
“Ah, here is something!” he exclaimed, in a low tone. “But it only
confirms what I already knew—that a Chinaman killed Anderton. Still, I did
not know until now that the fellow wore the regular Chinese felt-soled
slippers. This proves it, however.”
He was holding the light of his flash upon a certain spot on one of the
dark-green rugs, and he could trace the shape of a broad foot—perfectly flat,
without any gap for the instep that would be made by an ordinary heeled
shoe—outlined in a gray dust. The dust was very indistinct, and if the
detective had not had such a strong light to help him, he might have
overlooked it altogether.
“Wood ash, I think.”
He wetted a finger, pressed it into the gray footprint, and put the finger
into his mouth. It was salty.
“That’s what it is,” he muttered. “Ah, of course! From the fireplace.
Anderton always would have a wood fire burning in his room, no matter
what the weather might be.”
Indeed, there was a large, handsome fireplace, wide and high, with two
great brass andirons, or firedogs, at one side of the spacious room. On the
andirons were two logs of wood, half burned through, and the gray ash from
them was scattered over the tiled hearth.
Nick Carter inspected the hearth carefully, and at last found a slight
impression of a foot which was apparently that which had made the mark on
the rug.
“He couldn’t have come down the chimney to get into the room,” he
decided, after a glance upward. “It would be too hot. This fire is not as large
as it was when Anderton was sitting here. No one could come down this
way. But the foot? Why?”
He made a closer inspection, and then laughed at himself, as if ashamed
of his own want of perspicuity.
“This foot is straight across the hearth, parallel with the fire. I see how it
was. The man was walking past the fireplace, and accidentally one of his