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Issued Weekly. Entered as Second-class Matter at the New York PostOffice, by Street & Smith, 79-89 Seventh Ave., New York. Copyright,1915, by Street & Smith. O. G. Smith and G. C. Smith, Proprietors.
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No. 148. NEW YORK, July 10, 1915. Price Five Cents.
THE MARK OF CAIN;
Or, NICK CARTER’S AIR-LINE CASE.
Edited by CHICKERING CARTER.
CHAPTER I.
WHAT THE GIRL DID.
The girl at the switchboard held her breath. The detective waiting inthe business office saw her. The girl at the switchboard was HelenBailey. The waiting detective was Nick Carter.
No man was ever more quick than he to rightly interpret a facialexpression. The partition through which he saw her was of glass, or aportion of it, dividing the general manager’s office in the centraltelephone exchange from the room in which the great switchboards werestationed.
There were other girls, half a score of them, seated in front of theinnumerably perforated boards. They were too busy to notice one another.Their eyes were intent upon their work. Their deft hands flew from plugto plug, withdrawing some, inserting others. Their frequent, monotonouscalls, the noise of the buzzers and the snapping of the rubber-coveredplugs were the only sounds to be heard in that busy room.
“Hello! hello!”
“Number, please.”
“The line is busy.”
They were like machines, those switchboard girls, human, living,palpitating machines, each a connecting link for others in every phaseof life, every calling and vocation, from the gilded mansions ofexclusive society to the smoke-begrimed dives of the underworld. Theyare the servants of all, and, in a measure, the confidantes of all.
The girl who had caught Nick Carter’s eye was striking not alone becauseof her facial expression at that moment, but because of her rema