Chick thanked him for his information, therefore, then arose and departed. Seeking the street, he hailed the first taxicab he could see, and at once started for the Gordon residence to report to Nick.
Mr. Edgar Hereford Dayton sat for a long time gazing[Pg 18] at his desk. The minutes crept away far more rapidly than he imagined. All the while, too, his eyes had a gleam and glitter doubly intense than before.
He arose, at length, and shook his fist at the closed door.
Then, opening the wardrobe closet, he drew out a suit case, into which, with what it already contained, he crowded—a blue dress, hat, and veil, a woman’s underskirt, and smaller articles that scarce need mention.
CHAPTER V.
THE MAN WITH A DOG.
Nick Carter had a keen eye for faces, remarkably keen, and that of the man encountered while he was returning to the Gordon residence did not appeal favorably to the discerning detective.
It was an angular, swarthy face, with a sinister expression accentuated by several days’ growth of stubby beard, and a certain sly, shifty light in the fellow’s eyes aroused in Nick a feeling of suspicion.
Suppressing any betrayal of it, nevertheless, he exhibited an immediate interest in the bloodstained articles the man was displaying, asking earnestly, while he subdued Patsy Garvan with a significant nudge:
“When did you find these, my man?”
“’Twasn’t me as found them,” was the quick reply. “Ginger found them. He nosed them out. He’s got a scent like a bull moose in the hunting season. I pulled them out from under a log and some underbrush, after Ginger found them.”