The House of Fear, or Nick Carter's Counterstroke

Excerpt: I say, shir! Can you let me have a match? I think so. The last speaker was Nick Carter, the famous detective. The first was an erect, well-built, fashionably clad man, apparently in the forties and somewhat the worse for liquor. His crush hat had a rakish cant. His Inverness hung awry over his shoulders. His cravat had a disorderly twist, and his brown, Vandyke beard had lost its carefull...