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Nick Carter Nick Carter is the most widely published detective in the world, and survived from the 19th century well into the 1930s in print. According to Jess Nevins, Nick Carter first appeared in the September 18, 1886 New York Weekly, and from there appeared in numerous stories, dime dreadfuls, and so on. Some of the stories are good, and some are dreadful. This character appears as it was written in 1903, before the death of Nick's wife and subsequent relationships (he never remarried, and it's a bit unclear what happened to his son). The dialog is very loosely taken from "The Great Spy System, or, Nick Carter's Promise to the President," however it is rewritten with a very specific President in mind. The bear incident was probably still receiving newspaper play when the sheet was penned, and someone with a sharp eye must have noted that if Nick Carter had any loyalty to his former boss, Thomas Byrnes, he wouldn't care much for the current President, who put Mr. Byrnes out of a job during his tenure as Chief of Police in New York nine years before. The sheet is attributed to Marsden, but it's not unlikely that Walker wrote the ending. It resembles some characters they would jointly write forty years later for "The Film Noir Game." Nick Carter You are an all-American detective. You have a great visual similarity to Eugen Sandow, the famed strongman of the early 1900's. Giants are like children in your grasp. You can fell an ox with one blow of your small, compact fist. Your papa, Old Sim Carter, made the physical development of his son one of the studies of his life. That was only one aspect, however. Your young mind was stored with knowledge--knowledge of a peculiar sort. Your eyes have, like an Indian's, been trained to take in minutest details fresh for use. Your voice can run the gamut of sounds, from an old woman's broken, querulous squack to the deep, hoarse notes of a burly ruffian. And your handsome (if you say so yourself) face can, in an instant, be distorted into any one of a hundred types of unrecognizable ugliness. You are a master of disguise, and can so transform yourself that even your own mother can't recognize you. And your intellect, naturally keen as a razor blade, was incredibly sharpened by the judicious cultivation of your father. You're strong--strong enough to lift a horse with ease while a heavy man is seated in the saddle. You can place four packs of playing cards together, and tear them in halves between your thumbs and fingers. You're schooled in every possible area of knowledge that might conceivably have to do with solving crime, including the sciences, various languages, art and physiology. You use of all the latest technology, including cars, monoplanes, and your own yacht, The Gull. You use gadgets, as with the coat of chain mail, a gift of the Mikado of Japan, and the two small pistols held in spring-loaded holsters up each sleeve of your coat. You're an ace detective, righting wrongs--sometimes for pay,
sometimes out of a desire to see justice triumph and evil thwarted.
Your goal is to "aim for the right and for righting wrongs."
You live on Madison Avenue and works out of New York City, under
the command of Thomas Byrnes but travel around the country and
the world. You are resolutely honest, and never ever ever give
in to temptation. You live a very clean life, with your only vices
being the occasional cigar and beer. You never even swear. You work in disguise in a few different identities, your favorites being Joshua Juniper and especially Thomas "Old Thunderbolt" Bolt, a "shaggy and unkempt" country detective who has his own office entirely separate from yours. You are assisted by Patsy Murphy… or maybe it's Patrick Garvan… you forget. Patsy is a bootblack (or, was that a newsboy?) who proved his mettle as a fighter and detective in a number of cases. Patsy eventually met a beautiful South American, Adelina de Mendoza, who would become his wife, and a very valuable agent for you. She was a born actress and quite skilled at disguise. You adopted Chickering Valentine, a good-looking teenaged Nevada ranch hand who greatly resembles you. Chick helps you solve crimes and has begun to compile a book on the value of evidence. Chick's cousin, Cora Chickering, also assisted you on a few cases. You are also helped by the brilliant schoolgirl, Ida Jones (whose cousin, Rita, an Ida-lookalike, had turned to crime years previously). Later on Pop-eye, a street waif, assisted you, as did Jack Wise, a sometime-replacement for Chick and Patsy. Sometimes government agent Conroy "Con" Conners loaned a hand. On occasion your cousins Nellie and Warwick "Wick" Carter also pitch in, as do your butler Peter (and later Joseph) and his chauffeur Danny Maloney. Early on you were helped by Ah Toon, private bodyguard and royal detective to the Emperor of China. On international cases you are helped by Yvonne, the Countess of Tierney, an adventuress. While in France you are helped by M. Gereaux, the "acting chief of the Paris secret police." In Japan you are helped by "Talika, the Geisha Girl," who is also a detective. You also rely on Demetrius Rackapolo, a Turkish secret service agent. You are married to Ethel Dalton, and have a baby boy named Ralph. Ralph was once kidnapped by an enemy out to ruin your reputation as a detective, and you were forced to cross Asia and go to the kingdom of Kurm to retrieve the child. You founded a detective school for boys six years ago. The school was meant to teach boys how to be detectives, so they could go out and be like you. Among its students were Bob Ferret, the youngest of the school's students, Jack Burton, Roxy the Flowergirl (a spunky tomboy who came to the school from a circus and who was the equal of any two boys), and Buff. All of the graduates are earnest and energetic and physically strong and, of course, willing to help you as much as possible. After a year you went back to investigations, the Detective School students going off to Riverdale Academy. Of course you have your enemies. How could you not, when you foiled their villainous plans so many times? Foremost among them, of course, was Dr. Jack Quartz, a terrible and fiendish arch-villain. The second best of the villains was Dazaar the Arch Fiend, the beautiful criminal mastermind, who was capable of throwing a jack-knife across a street and having it land point first in a door lock; she was an expert of disguise and had trained six other people to assume the identity of Dazaar while she went on her merry villainous way, killing people by inserting radium into the sweatbands of men's hats or by using the Maiden of Steel (a deadlier version of the Venetian Iron Maiden) or by throwing hand-made knives at them from hundreds of yards away. Sometimes Dazaar claimed to be a Tibetan lama from "that mysterious country lying north of India." Other times she claimed to be a Russian princess named Irma Plavatski. At all times she was dangerous. Some of your enemies appear repeatedly, among them Burton Quintard, your recurring adversary-come to think of it, many of your foes have names beginning with Q--and the gambler Dan Derrington, although few recur as often as Quartz or Dazaar. Some only appear once or twice, although this does not stop them from making their mark. There were the aforementioned Queen Zaidee and Zanabayah, dangerous inhabitants of Lost Worlds. There were the six Dalney brothers, natives of upstate New York who were all much stronger than Nick; they were given to vivisection and to the uncouth habit of collecting people's skeletons by ripping them straight from their bodies. There were the six Bulwer sisters, three sets of identical twins who were all possessed of a quite unnatural speed, skill, and accuracy with handguns; they worked in a Washington, D.C. circus as the masked "Ace of Hearts" and used identical looks and skill with guns to carry out crimes as well as perform feats at the circus. There was Scylla the Sea Robber, the Queen of the Sirens, a female pirate who helmed a yacht staffed by an all-female crew; Scylla was more beautiful and deadlier than Anne Bonney and was one of only two women ever to penetrate one of your disguises. And there was the "Baroness Latour," aka the adventuress Mademoiselle Valeria, who owned her own yacht (the Idaline), indulged in kidnapping and other crimes, and was a formidable foe for you. Zanoni the Woman Wizard was beautiful, all extremely capable,
homicidal, and amoral. When warned her not to try to "make
love" to you, to get her out of jail, Zanoni responded with:
There are many more villains out there. You can hardly remember them all. Livingston Carruthers, who trapped you in a burning house and teamed up with Inez Navarro; Morris and Maitland Carruthers. Tony the Strangler, who always kept a pet cobra on his person and whose twelve-foot-long giant anaconda accidentally strangled Tony's sister, Eugenie La Verdes, and nearly got you, before eating Tony himself. It's a haze. But you've survived them all! Now you've been assigned to a caper more terrible than any other save your eighteenth, and thirty sixth. It started when you were called in to meet the President. "My term of office will be over soon, and I am looking forward
to retirement." "I can imagine that you would, sir," replied Nick Carter
for the words were directed to him, and the speaker was the President
of the United States, who had sent for the detective to come to
Washington at once. "Soon another will take this office. I am almost certain
that he shall meet with the same fate as my predecessor." "A single shot from a cheap Iver-Johnston pistol?" "Nothing so specific. But an assassin nonetheless. Likely
an anarchist." "Always bad news those anarchists. Causing unrest. Not that
you've done too badly by that. By God my old boss Byrnes wishes
it had been you that caught that bullet. Many times he's urged
me to finish the job." "I've got a nickel plated, ivory handled Smith and Wesson Special right here in my desk drawer Carter. I could drill you three times before you stood up, so help me God." "Indeed. Well, you come across as soft-hearted sir. If you ask me you should have shot the bear." "No doubt you would have Mr. Carter. That's where we differ." "Well said sir." With that Detective Nick Carter headed out onto the streets to
save the American Republic. You are armed with two facts: 1) The likely assassin is an anarchist, and may have attempted
such deeds before. 2) He has stolen a phial of a powerful new drug called "The
Accelerator" which may allow him to move at superhuman speeds
so fast that effectively, time stands still for him. |