The Adventures of Ethel King, the Female Nick Carter

by Jean Petithuguenin

  “Now, Charley, watch carefully!” she said. “I’ll bet there’s someone who’s waiting to see the effect of the bouquet of explosive roses. If I’m not mistaken, it’s the man who’s hanging about there on the other side of the street.”

  In fact, in the place she pointed out, there was seen a poorly dressed individual with a hangdog expression who seemed to be drunk. He staggered a few steps from time to time, and after two or three zigzags, he braced himself against the wrought iron fence of the garden he was in front of.

  “Watch how he’s going to become worried as soon as the half hour has passed and nothing has happened,” she continued.

  There were still ten minutes left before the expected moment of the explosion. Staggering, the man came even closer to No. 77. He arrived directly across the street and leaned against an iron fence, his legs spread apart, his drunken eyes looking in every direction. Then he took a bottle out of his pocket and drank from it as if he was very drunk. From this moment he never stopped consulting his watch.

  “Time has run out,” said Ethel after a silence. “Now look at the man.”

  In fact, he looked worried. He stood up straight, looking anxiously at his watch. Then he stamped nervously. His drunkenness had disappeared, or at least he had forgotten about it.

  “It would be cruel to leave this poor man any longer in suspense,” said Ethel in a calm voice.

  She put on her hat and left quickly. Crossing the street, she went straight to the man. He trembled slightly on seeing her, and suddenly remembered he was drunk. He leaned heavily on the garden grillwork and took his whiskey flask from his pocket. Ethel King stopped very near him and looked him in the face. She laughed softly.

  “You’re admiring the beautiful bouquet of roses over there on my window sill,” she said, jeeringly. “They are, in fact, very beautiful and the bouquet pleased me very much. If by any chance you know the noble and generous gentleman who sent it to me, please be kind enough to give him all Ethel King’s thanks. And tell him that I took the liberty of removing from this delightful bouquet a little clock with its accessory. I will take it today right to my good friend, Police Inspector Golding.”

  While she was talking, the man, laughing derisively, pretended to be looking in the distance in front of him. The fact was that he was torn between fear and rage. Nevertheless, he controlled himself and answered, stammering:

  “What…what do you want with me? I…I don’t understand. Leave me alone!”

  And he stumbled off.

  Ethel King went into the house where Charley and Sara had been watching her.

  “Quick, Charley,” she said, “follow that man and leave a trail behind you. I’ll soon be on your tracks.”

  The young man immediately left the house, not by the front, but through a passage he knew at the back. He first went across several neighboring fences and reached the street by way of another private house rather far from his own. The man was still in sight, and he began to shadow him with an art he learned from Ethel King.

  Shadowing

  About ten minutes after Charley Lux’s departure, the detective in her turn left just as secretly, but without going through the same acrobatic exercises as her young helper. The courtyard and the small garden which extended behind her house had a rather narrow, and almost always deserted, side alley. She left through there, pulling shut behind her the door whose well-oiled hinges made no noise.

  She had dressed up in rags, which gave her the pitiful look of someone dying of hunger. No one would have recognized Miss Ethel King wearing those. At the end of the street, she discovered the first traces left by Charley. They were little pieces of chalk which the young man had thrown down in front of him from time to time and crushed with his foot so as to press a light white mark into the ground. Following that trail, the detective came to the center of the city. There the signs continued in a maze of streets and alleys where they were often difficult to make out. Finally they led her down a narrow and obscure path beside a house. In the middle, Ethel King, who was advancing with the utmost caution, thought she heard a slight noise and stopped to listen. In front of her, at the end of the passage, she saw a little courtyard littered with boxes and all kinds of rubbish where daylight hardly entered. It was one of those courtyards called, in slang, a sink hole.

  Listening, she had just stopped when she heard a little, barely distinct, whistle. A human form in black immediately took shape in the door frame and in an instant Charley Lux was beside his teacher.

  “Where is he?” she asked very low.

  “He went down this passageway and entered the courtyard where I followed him. I didn’t see anything. The house has several exits onto that courtyard, but I didn’t risk going inside. There’s also a shed full of packing cases and junk, like the courtyard.”

  “Go stand watch at the front of the house,” whispered Ethel King. “If you hear a whistle or a loud noise, call the policeman at the corner. But I don’t think that will be necessary. I’m just going to look around a little.”

  Charley then went back to the street and Ethel went calmly into the courtyard. She had a brazen and carefree attitude which matched her costume perfectly. She looked at the stacks of boxes, sized up the stacks of debris accumulated in that narrow space and discovered nothing.

  In the shed, where it was darker and the air was thick and humid, she noticed other boxes, sacks piled up, and similar things, but the man they had shadowed was no more visible there than in the courtyard. She had already noted that in the enclosure of the courtyard there was no opening or break which a man might slip through. She didn’t believe the person had taken refuge in the house. It was occupied by working people and everything there appeared very calm. She then returned to the shed and searched it very carefully a long time without result. She finally went back out, promising herself to return the next day with the police.

  She met Charley in the street and told him to return to the house while she, in her tramp rags, went to the Central Police Bureau. The policeman on duty at the entry there wanted to turn away that tramp, but a few words were enough for the man to stand aside respectfully.

  Inspector Golding, Chief of Police, heard his office door open and was more than a little astonished to see enter, alone and unconcerned, a ragged bum.

  “What is this?” he exclaimed. “How did that person get in here? Is there nobody on duty at his post?”

  “I don’t have any bad intentions, inspector. I just want to murder you a little,” said the intruder.

  Golding jumped out of his chair, shouting: “This is a bit much. Now riff-raff come and slip in here and insult you to your face!”

  The fake tramp broke out laughing and held out her hand to the astonished inspector.

  “I’m really not flattered that you don’t recognize your old friend Ethel King,” said a clear and pleasant voice.

  The Chief of Police, wide-eyed, asked:

  “Ethel King? Ah! Yes, it really is Ethel King!”

  He shook hands with her cordially and continued:

  “You are truly remarkably disguised. I certainly would not have recognized you. When I see ability like yours used in our interest, I’m cheered by it and I’m very grateful. And I’m glad every time I see you, Miss King, because you always bring something new.”

  “Yes, well, here’s something completely new,” Ethel repeated, taking a small package from her pocket. She opened it to place the bomb and the clock mechanism on the inspector’s table.

  “You have here, Mr. Golding, a pretty little bomb sent to me at my house in a superb bouquet of roses.”

  She then told him what had happened.

  “That’s a scoundrel that should be arrested,” exclaimed the inspector, indignant at such an attack. “Didn’t you arrest the person watching outside your house?”

  “That would have been a very big mistake. I was immediately convinced that this scoundrel wasn’t the principal author, but simply a spy. If I had arrested him, it would probably
have been impossible to make him say a word. And since he couldn’t have been charged with any precise act, he would have had to be released.”

  The inspector had to recognize that she was right. He called a policeman, to whom he gave the bomb to explode in a courtyard with the necessary precautions set up to do just that. Then, turning to the detective:

  “And now, what do you intend to do?” he asked.

  “Pick up the criminal, and, if need be, ask you to put some men at my disposal.”

  “As many as you like. Do you really think you can catch this person?”

  “I’m convinced of it, Mr. Golding. In any case, he’ll try again. He’ll want to make up for his failure today. And I may be able to take advantage of that to lay my hands on him.”

  As Ethel King was leaving the police building, a terrifying clap of thunder coming from one of the courtyards, told her the bomb had been exploded.

  Ethel went back home very persuaded that there would shortly be a new attempt against her. She foresaw that the vexation the criminal must have felt at his failed first attempt would incite him to make another attempt very quickly, probably that same night.

  She resolved, therefore, to take her precautions, to stay alert, taking turns with Charley Lux, while Pluto, her big dog stayed in her office. The dog was an excellent guard-dog. The least noise approaching him, even completely silently, of a man coming through the garden in front of the house, was enough to make him give the alarm. Charley’s bedroom was at the back. He would be on careful watch from that direction and would let nothing suspicious pass by so that Ethel King, whose bedroom occupied the middle of the ground floor, could go to bed and sleep peacefully.

  She was an extremely light sleeper and woke at the least noise. She knew too well what cunning and perverse beings she was dealing with not to be constantly on her guard. She fell asleep immediately and slept deeply for two hours. She then woke with a start and sat up on her bed. There was absolute silence around her. Moonlight coming through the window cast a large ray of light through the room right to a curtained doorway leading to the stairway.

  Ethel King didn’t hear anything, but she felt a foreign presence. She looked around her in vain. She saw nothing suspicious, but the suspicion didn’t leave her mind. She got up, took a revolver in one hand and a little electric torch in the other. She went toward the front room, which was her office.

  “Pluto,” she called in a low voice.

  The dog jumped off his bearskin rug and bounded toward her, wagging his tail. She stroked him with her hand, showing him the window and saying to him:

  “Watch there!”

  The dog understood what his mistress wanted and crouched under the window. She then returned to her bedroom and went back to bed. She hadn’t gotten completely undressed because she knew she had to be ready that night for any situation. She was just closing her eyes to go to sleep when she felt the same vague feeling, which had worried her before, return stronger. She had often experienced that her premonitions did not deceive her and she was sure she was in imminent danger.

  She mechanically picked up the revolver that she had before placed on the night stand. She then raised her head and looked around the room. The moon was still spreading a large band of light on the floor. The curtains on the door were especially inundated with light. Ethel could clearly see the designs as well as the folds of the fabric. The hanging didn’t completely reach to the floor and the detective soon made out a sort of white spot in the interstice. What could that be? She stared at that spot so intensity that her eyes smarted, and suddenly she saw what it was. That vague white something was nothing other than the end of a naked foot.

  At the first moment of that discovery, Ethel King thought her heart had stopped beating. It was a shock of surprise and not of fear. She was most of all startled that a man had succeeded in gaining entrance right up to her bedroom without being noticed. How easily she would have been his victim if she had been asleep! Fortunately he hadn’t come when she had first fallen asleep. If he had, she would no longer be alive.

  All of these thoughts went through her head like a flash of lightning. Then, a few seconds after that troubling discovery, she moved her hand softly to the electric button placed near her bed. She had never been calmer and more self-possessed. The bedroom was inundated with light. She ran to her office door, and called out:

  “Pluto! Here!”

  The powerful animal immediately rushed into the bedroom to the side of his mistress. Ethel was already near the door curtain. She pushed it aside with her left hand, raising a revolver ready to fire with her right.

  She recognized the man standing in front of her as the counterfeit drunk who, earlier in the day, had been loitering about waiting for the effect of the bomb. He was struck with mortal fear; his ugly, puffy face was livid. And the fright caused by the dog, whose open mouth showed his fangs, was visibly still greater than his fear of the revolver pointed at him.

  “We’ve already met,” the detective began, with a jeering calm. “I wouldn’t have believed that my modest little house could hold such charm for you.”

  The man didn’t have anything to reply. He was pressing against the door, fixing frightened eyes on the ironic and haughty detective. But the dog was growling more and more and preparing to jump on the miserable man.

  “Get back, Pluto,” said Ethel.

  The dog obeyed unwillingly, since he evidently understood that the individual hadn’t come animated with good intentions.

  The man didn’t lack weapons. He held a revolver in his left hand and a very sharp knife in his right. But he had been so surprised that he hadn’t been able to use either one. And when he wanted to raise his hands, Ethel King told him in a commanding tone:

  “Don’t move or I’ll put a bullet in your head! And at one word from me, Pluto is ready to rip out your throat. Characters of your kind don’t deserve anything better.”

  The man remained silent. It was evident that fear was choking him.

  He didn’t budge. Then the dry and menacing sound of a revolver being armed was heard.

  “Let me go!” the man said in a hoarse and surly voice. “It’ll be too bad for you if you decide to keep me here. But nothing will happen to you if you let me go.”

  “Do you know Ethel King?” she asked with a disdainful laugh. “No, you don’t seem to know her very well. Obey right now! Pluto, attack!”

  The man had just thrown himself with his full weight against the door, which opened, and he darted away to escape through the stairs and the basement. But he had hardly turned halfway around when he let out a stifled cry. The dog had jumped on the criminal, planting his fangs on the side of his neck and throwing him to the ground.

  While the muffled, hoarse cries of the half strangled man followed one another, someone dashed into the bedroom, shouting:

  “Great God! What’s going on?”

  It was Charley Lux, who was immediately reassured on seeing before him his mistress unhurt. The stranger, Pluto still holding him by the neck, already had his hands delicately tied together by the steel bracelets called handcuffs.

  “I’ve caught a beautiful bird,” Ethel declared. “You probably recognize him, Charley?”

  Charley leaned over the prisoner’s face and, very astonished, exclaimed: “Well, that’s our friend I trailed a while ago. He’s got himself nicely pinched.”

  “Now, Charley, go find two policemen to take charge of this fellow.”

  Charley didn’t have to be told twice. While he was accomplishing his mission, Ethel, having called off her dog, ordered the dazed criminal, the blood flowing from two deep wounds in his neck, to get up. The scoundrel obeyed painfully and sat down on the chair the detective pushed toward him.

  “You’re a female devil, a dangerous and dreadful female devil,” he growled, furious.

  “Thank you. Coming from you, that’s a flattering compliment,” she answered. “Maybe now you’ll tell me if the attempt made against me with the bouquet o
f roses and this new attempt against me are due to your own initiative—which I don’t believe. In the opposite case, I could perhaps find out from you who charged you with this double mission.”

  The man glanced slyly at the woman who had vanquished him and said nothing.

  “Well, since you aren’t answering, I’ll myself look for the instigator of these two excellent farces,” Ethel King continued, without being upset. “He’s probably still in the back courtyard of No. 14 Dark Street.”

  That was the name of the street where in the daytime she had fruitlessly looked for the man she now held prisoner. At that name the criminal trembled as if he couldn’t believe his ears.

  “You…you know that too?” he asked, grinding his teeth. “Bitch! Just wait a while. You’ll be repaid for everything…and with interest.”

  “The good thing is that I know from now on how to go about it. You have very nicely completely betrayed yourself. But your last so pious and so charitable a wish will only be granted with great difficulty.”

  Charley Lux reappeared in the midst of all this with two policemen who took possession of the prisoner.

  “Oh!” said one of the policemen. “It seems to me we’ve made a good catch. I already know this fellow from his description, which was distributed to us a long time ago.”

  Ethel advised them to pay close attention to their prisoner, so that he wouldn’t slip through their hands. They left in the direction of Police Headquarters.

  “We can now rest peacefully, my dear Charley,” Ethel King then said. “I believe we won’t be bothered any more tonight.”

  Jack the Ripper

  The next morning the post brought Miss Ethel King a letter. The address seemed to be in familiar handwriting. It had the same thick up and down strokes she had already seen on the gilt-edged card sent to her with the bouquet of roses. This letter said the following:

  My Ethel King, oh ardently loved woman!