“That is enough,” said Nick Carter. “The packet will again be placed in your hands. Take it, as you were commanded, and put it where you got it—in the table leg.”
A gleam of understanding came into her eyes, that had in it more of memory than she had shown before. Nick Carter knew then that this girl, under the fiendish influence of Ched Ramar, had indeed robbed her father without knowing that she had done so. A half-repressed ejaculation dangerously near an oath broke from the detective’s lips, as he came down the ladder.
Hurriedly he took the packet from his pocket, where he had slipped it before ascending the ladder, and looked through it under the red lamp in front of the idol.
The girl had already descended, and was walking, like a somnambulist, toward her chair.
Nick Carter ran through the half dozen large sheets of manuscript, and saw that none of them bore reference to the Yellow Tong. All were of a character that would be valuable to the scientific world, but not one was concerned with the secret, far-reaching organization whose methods and intentions Washington was so eager to know something about.
“The cunning wretches,” he murmured. “They have taken what they want, and are returning these, so that they shall not furnish a clew to the others. Well, I think I shall beat their game. I’m going to find out where those other papers are before I leave this house.”
He walked over to the girl and gave her the packet. Then he said to her, in the quiet, even accents which seemed to penetrate easiest to her beclouded brain:
“Take the packet back and put it into the hands of your father. You understand that. Father.”
“Father!” she repeated dully.
“Look out, chief!” whispered Patsy. “I hear the elevator.”