“John Garrison Rayne,” replied Nick Carter shortly.
“Wha-at?”
His two assistants delivered themselves of this interrogative monosyllable together, and with enough astonishment to make it seem ten times as strong a word as it was.
“Get after him!” replied Nick, as he hustled along the dark thoroughfare. “He can’t have got far.”
But if Rayne had not got far, at least he had managed to elude his pursuers on this occasion.
He laughed silently, as, standing in the shadow of a tree, he saw Nick Carter and his two men go past. He watched them till they were out of sight.
“That settles it,” he muttered. “I’ve got to get this coat of chocolate off my face and hands, and tackle something else. It will be a bold thing, but I guess I can put it over. It seems to be about my only chance, for that cursed Carter has every part of the wharf and all the roads guarded. He thinks I don’t know, perhaps—but I do.”
He walked slowly on until he stood in front of the handsome “palace,” which was at one time the residence of the Spanish captain general, but is now the home of the governor.
This building is one of the finest in a city of imposing edifices, and as John Garrison Rayne gazed at it, his busy brain worked with a scheme that, as he had confessed to himself, was decidedly bold, to say the least.
“It is the one best bet for me,” he muttered. “It is something that Carter never would suspect, and for that reason I feel sure I can carry it out as smoothly as anything of that kind could be done.”