“Never mind about that,� laughed Nick. “That wouldn’t help me to trace him. What I want to get at is how he came to be kidnaped in broad daylight. This is as queer as the Mrs. van Dietrich case. I’ll go down to lunch, and take up the whole matter afterward.�
He slipped a pair of powerful field glasses into a pocket, and went down with Mallory.
Paul Savage was at the foot of the elevator, but the detective put him off as he was beginning to whisper a long story of woe into his ears, by telling him that he knew all about it.
“I’ll tell you when I learn something,� he added, turning away to enter the ornate restaurant.
His luncheon over—and the detective disposed of a good one, as a matter of principle—Nick strode out to the golf links and got hold of the caddie who had been with Drago.
The links were a mile from the hotel.
Nothing more was to be learned from the caddie than the detective already knew. So he took a pathway which ran through a wood, coming out on the sandy beach, edged by rocks.
Coming to a bit of rising ground, Nick stood there and surveyed the prospect. He was thinking all the time. Much as he admired beautiful scenery for its own sake, he would not have stopped now to look around had he not had some ulterior object.
The really fine links stretched behind him, the clubhouse showing above trees in the distance. On the right were the woods, with the hotel towering on the edge of the cliff, three-quarters of a mile away. To the left were other woods, and in front rolled the blue waters, with the white-capped surf, of the Atlantic Ocean.
In the great curving bay, immediately in front of the hotel, but some distance out, was a steam yacht, her white hull and plentiful brasswork gleaming in the bright sunshine.