“You don’t want me to tell the chief of police why we want the Apache, do you?” whispered Chick in Nick Carter’s ear.
“No. Let him think it is a smuggling case. Anyhow, he won’t ask too many questions if you tell him it is my case. He knows me.”
“What’s his name? Douglas, isn’t it?”
“Yes. He knows you as well as me.”
By this time Captain Lawton had come to the conclusion that it was the real Nick Carter who stood before him, and he desired to give so eminent a crime detector all the aid he could. But it never entered his head that this well-groomed man could be the sloppy-looking Joe Sykes, who had sailed in the Cherokee as a boatswain.
“This man who took the jewelry was about the same height as yourself, Mr. Carter,” he volunteered. “He wore a blue suit of clothes, that didn’t fit any too well, and his cap had a gold band around it, as if he might be an officer of some kind.”
“Thank you,” responded Nick. “I dare say we shall get him before we are much older. But we’ll talk more about that after I’ve got my men here away.”
“All right, Mr. Carter! Anything you say.”
“Look here, Chick!”
“Well, chief?”