The Blue Veil

By Nicholas Carter

Has Nick Carter finally met his match? A new master-criminal is on the New York scene—one armed with medical knowledge, a talent for impersonation, and a brazen set of schemes that even use Nick to his advantage. He's pulled off a series of thefts that no one seems able to stop. Not even Nick Carter, Master Detective!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wildside Press
• Release date: Jul 2, 2022
• ISBN: 9781479479016

Nicholas Carter

General Sir Nicholas Carter KCB, CBE, DSO, ADC Gen commissioned into The Royal Green Jackets in 1978. At Regimental Duty he has served in Northern Ireland, Cyprus, Germany, Bosnia, and Kosovo and commanded 2nd Battalion, The Royal Green Jackets, from 1998 to 2000. He attended Army Staff College, the Higher Command and Staff Course and the Royal College of Defence Studies. He was Military Assistant to the Assistant Chief of the General Staff, Colonel Army Personnel Strategy, spent a year at HQ Land Command writing the Collective Training Study, and was Director of Army Resources and Plans. He also served as Director of Plans within the US-led Combined Joint Task Force 180 in Afghanistan and spent three months in the Cross Government Iraq Planning Unit prior to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. General Carter commanded 20th Armoured Brigade in Iraq in 2004 and 6th Division in Afghanistan in 2009/10. He was then the Director General Land Warfare before becoming the Army 2020 Team Leader. He served as DCOM ISAF from October 2012 to August 2013, became Commander Land Forces in November 2013, and was appointed Chief of the General Staff in September 2014.

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Table of Contents

THE BLUE VEIL, by Nicholas Carter

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

THE BLUE VEIL,

by Nicholas Carter

or, Nick Carter’s Torn Trail.

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

Copyright © 2022 by Wildside Press LLC.

Originally published in Nick Carter Stories No. 158, September 18, 1915.

Published by Wildside Press LLC.

wildsidepress.com | bcmystery.com

INTRODUCTION

Nick Carter is a fictional character who began as a dime-novel private detective in 1886 and has appeared in a variety of formats over more than a century. He first appeared in the story paper New York Weekly (Vol. 41 No. 46, September 18, 1886) in a 13-week serial, The Old Detective’s Pupil; or, The Mysterious Crime of Madison Square.

The character was conceived by Ormond G. Smith, the son of one of the founders of Street & Smith, and realized by John R. Coryell. The character proved popular enough to headline its own magazine, Nick Carter Weekly. The serialized stories in Nick Carter Weekly were also reprinted as stand-alone titles under the New Magnet Library imprint.

By 1915, Nick Carter Weekly had ceased publication and Street & Smith had replaced it with Detective Story Magazine, which focused on a more varied cast of characters. There was a brief attempt at reviving Carter in 1924–27 in Detective Story Magazine, but it was not successful.

In the 1930s, due to the success of The Shadow and Doc Savage, Street & Smith revived Nick Carter in a pulp magazine (called Nick Carter Detective Magazine) that ran from 1933 to 1936. Since the Doc Savage character had basically been given Nick’s background, Nick Carter was now recast as a hard-boiled detective. Novels featuring Carter continued to appear through the 1950s, by which time there was also a popular radio show, Nick Carter, Master Detective, which aired on the Mutual Broadcasting System network from 1943 to 1955.

The Blue Veil; or, Nick Carter’s Torn Trail (originally published in 1915) has been lightly edited to modernize language and punctuation.

Enjoy!

—John Betancourt

Cabin John, Maryland

CHAPTER 1

REMARKABLE TRICKERY

Nick Carter listened without interrupting.

The man addressing the famous detective was not one to be wisely interrupted. His strong face, his broad, thin-lipped mouth and square jaw, the glint of his steel-blue eyes, his portly and imposing figure—all denoted that he was the type of man that insists upon having his way, his inning at the bat, as it were, but who then would graciously accord the same privilege to another.

The danger, Mr. Carter, cannot be overestimated, he was forcibly saying. It really is very terrible. We are living in constant peril. That man is a perpetual menace. Unless he can be wiped out of existence, or put behind prison bars, there is no telling what he might accomplish, no possible way to anticipate it and guard against it. I cannot for the life of me understand how he got by a detective as marvelously keen and discerning as you. I cannot, Carter, on my word.

Nick smiled and knocked the ashes from his cigar.

It is not very difficult to understand, he replied, with patience unruffled. There were two reasons for it, Mr. Langham.

Two reasons?

Yes. One, because the likeness between Chester Clayton and David Margate, or Doctor David Guelpa, in which character this exceedingly clever rascal then was posing, is a most extraordinary one. I doubt that two other persons could be found, not excluding the most perfect of twins, who look so precisely alike.

But you already knew of that extraordinary resemblance, Mr. Carter, when Margate eluded you and made his escape.

Very true, Nick admitted. But there were other facts which I did not know, and which I had had no way of learning. That is why there was a second reason for Margate’s escape. Any detective, even one as ‘keen and discerning’ as myself, if I may quote you, would be deceived by a seeming impossibility.

Impossibility?

Seeming impossibility, corrected Nick.

What do you mean?

Bear in mind, Mr. Langham, that Margate rushed from the house in which we secured his confederates and ran to his suite in the Hotel Westgate, of which Clayton still is manager.

I know about that.

I then did not know that a secret electric communication existed between the very room in which we made the arrest and the apartments to which Margate had gone, nor that a signal informing him of the arrest and warning him to flee could be communicated to him by stepping on a concealed button under the carpet. I since have learned all about that. That was done by Scoville, one of the arrested crooks, unknown to me and my assistants.

But, Mr. Carter—

One moment, please, Nick now interrupted. I want you to see how impossible Margate’s exploit must have appeared.

Go on, then.

Only ten minutes elapsed from the time Margate left his confederates, until I entered the Westgate in pursuit of him. The first person I saw in the hotel office was, I supposed, Manager Clayton.

Well?

How could I believe anything else? Nick went on more earnestly. He was in the office inclosure and wearing an entirely different suit from what Margate was wearing ten minutes before. Ten minutes is an incredibly short time in which to have covered the distance between the two houses, to have gone to his suite and changed his outside garments, and then got down to the hotel office.

I admit that, Carter, of course.

"I called to the