Playing with the Ace of Hearts; or, Mentorship, Sportsmanship, and Nick Carter’s Epistemological Dilemmas

Abstract

The opening scene of The fust and the Unjust; or, Nick Carter’s Sudden Resolution (1914) finds Nick Carter and his adopted son/detective apprentice, Chick Carter, discussing a criminal they have recently captured. Their conversation demonstrates the complex moral and epistemological underpinnings of the series:

[Nick]: ‘I am convinced there is some good in the man. He surely has a quick brain, and he probably has a code of honor of his own. I should like to have him for a partner if he’d keep straight. He would be useful on the side of law and order. But I’m afraid such a thing would be impossible with a man of his temperament.’

‘But,’ put in Chick, with dismay, ‘where should I come in if he were your partner? We’ve got along all right so far without any reformed crook to help us. It seems to me——’

‘I know — I know,’ laughed the detective. ‘I wasn’t thinking of it as a possibility — only what a pity it is that such brains should be wasted as they are. He has the detective faculty highly developed. I’d back him against any of the best men at police headquarters in running down a criminal mystery.’

‘He’s been a policeman, hasn’t he?’

‘Yes.’ (6–7)