“All right, Patsy,” laughed Nick. “Don’t say anything.”
“Don’t say anything?” repeated Patsy, when at last he could get his breath. “No, I won’t say anything. I want to see the man that gets in front of me to-night and looks crooked. Gee! I’ll mash his face through his back hair. That’s what I’ll do!”
It was not till nine that night that Patsy knew what he was to do, however. That was when Chick led Swagara, the Japanese servant of Matthew Bentham, into Nick Carter’s library, and gave him a chair in front of the detective’s table.
Swagara was a polite young man, of about Patsy Garvan’s size and build, who seemed to be rather anxious to get away as soon as possible.
“I have an engagement to-night,” he announced, in the precise English of one who has not always known the language. “But Mr. Chickering told me that I should hear of something very much to my advantage if I came here, and, of course, I came. I am ambitious, Mr. Carter, and I never neglect anything that seems likely to help me along.”
Swagara made this admission quite freely. He seemed to be frankness itself. He smiled widely, and then waited for Nick Carter to say something else, blinking amiably through rather large spectacles.
“Your engagement is with Professor Ched Ramar,” remarked Nick Carter casually. “How long have you been employed by him, Mr. Swagara?”
“Six weeks,” blurted out Swagara, evidently before he realized what he was saying. “That is—I have been told not to say anything about it,” he added lamely.
“I know that. Ched Ramar doesn’t like his affairs talked about. But you are quite safe here. I know Ched Ramar, and he has no secrets from me—I mean, of an ordinary nature. You have been with him ever since he took that house in which he lives at present—on Brooklyn Heights. You never met him until you were recommended to him by somebody whom you do not know. Ched Ramar has never told you how he came to know of you.”
This was all shooting in the dark for Nick Carter.[Pg 26] But he knew the ways of Ched Ramar. He had not been idle all day, and he had found out from a friend of his at police headquarters considerably about Ched Ramar’s methods. It is a way the police have—that of making a few secret inquiries about mysterious foreigners in New York who have plenty of money and no particular apparent business.