“Garland is about my height and build,” Nick cut in. “His cast of features resembles mine. It will require but very little artistic work with grease paints and powders[{30}] to turn me into a likeness of him that will pass muster under ordinary conditions.”
“And you——”
“I mean that Garland will not keep the appointment,” said Nick, with ominous intonation. “He is to come here this evening in disguise, but only to serve me as a model. He then will return to the Willard. I shall go in his place—to meet Andy Margate.”
CHAPTER VII.
NICK CARTER’S VENTURE.
Nick Carter’s project was a daring one, even though ventured against crooks of ordinary caliber. Against as lawless, determined, and desperate a knave as Andy Margate, who, if Nick’s deductions and suspicions were correct, had not shrunk for an instant from killing a priest and abducting a girl to prevent the perversion of his knavish designs—against a man of that type, such a project was doubly bold and hazardous.
Nick Carter realized from the outset that he would carry his life in his hand. He realized, too, that it would be utterly vain to attempt to pursue the man and the motor car described by Garland.
That they would guard against anything of that kind not only was obvious to Nick, but he further reasoned that any attempt to do so would surely be detected, and result only in perverting his own more promising designs. He preferred to take his own chance, therefore, and to rely upon the other work about to be done by Chick Carter and Patsy.
Shortly before eight o’clock that evening, a tall man clad in black, wearing gold-bowed spectacles and a pointed beard, issued from the Grayling as if he were a resident in the house, and sauntered away through Vermont Avenue.
This man was Harold Garland, wearing the garments and disguise of the detective, the same worn by Nick when he visited the office of the government engineer the previous day.
Nearly an hour later, or close upon nine o’clock, the light in Garland’s apartments suddenly vanished. Half a minute later, wearing a soft felt hat, a long frieze overcoat, and a suit of plaid woolen, precisely the same garments worn by Garland when he visited Margate, Nick Carter emerged from the apartment house and strode toward the first corner east.