“You mean——”
“I mean that the price shall be paid—but Andy Margate is the man who shall pay it,” Nick forcibly de[{25}]clared. “I’ll bring that rat up with a round turn, Garland, or I’ll chuck my vocation.”
“But how——”
“Don’t ask me how,” Nick interrupted. “Let me see your portfolio and the photograph you received by mail.”
Garland hastened to get them from his safe.
Nick examined them carefully, inspecting the photograph with a powerful convex lens, particularly the address mentioned. He saw plainly that the photograph was a genuine one, that the writing could not otherwise have been so perfectly imitated, and he then returned them to his waiting companion.
“Lock them up again,” he directed. “Now, Garland, answer me a few questions. Why have you recently been talking with Lottie Trent?”
“For only one reason, Nick. She has repeatedly stopped me in the corridors, or on the stairs, to beg me to use my influence to have her brother pardoned and liberated from prison. I have told her it would be useless, but she still persisted. She is a good girl, mind you, honest and industrious, with none of her brother’s characteristics.”
“There was no other occasion for your interviews with her?”
“Absolutely none.”