“The package still all right, professor?” he asked.
“Yes. I looked a few minutes ago, to make sure. Somehow, I hate to leave it in the house when I am away. It is something I never have done before. Still, I am not afraid it will be found—even if my burglar should come while I am away. He may do that, if he is keeping as close a watch on me as I think he must. I have too much faith in my hiding place.”
Nothing more was said, for just then Clarice knocked at the library door, and, on her father telling her to come in, she stood before them.
Clarice was a beautiful girl, who looked enough like her father for any one to recognize the relationship. She had something of the intellectual gravity of the professor, and Nick set her down at once as a very bright young woman. He put her age at not more than twenty. Later her father told him she lacked two months of that age.
With Mrs. Morrison—a middle-aged, dignified matron, richly attired and bejeweled—on one side of him, and Clarice on the other, in the tonneau, Nick Carter kept up his character of a learned doctor by talking authoritatively on tuberculosis, typhus, and similar cheerful subjects brought up by Mrs. Morrison, but always with one eye on Clarice. He wanted to hear the girl talk, so[Pg 7] that he could judge whether she would be careful in guarding her father’s house against strangers.
But Mrs. Morrison—who was a good woman in her way, and devoted much time to the poor and sick of New York—would not let him off. They got to the house of Ched Ramar without Clarice getting an opportunity to throw in more than a few words here and there, and he did not see her again until they were in the handsomely furnished reception rooms of the Indian scholar, and were looking at the curiosities on all sides.
Nick Carter got an opportunity soon to stand back and look steadily at Ched Ramar. He saw a tall man, with the dark skin and black eyes of the East Indian, and wearing the white turban of his race, who talked good English and was the essence of suave courtesy.
“I don’t know how it is,” thought Nick Carter. “His face seems familiar and yet I know I never saw Ched Ramar before.”
As the detective moved about with the others, looking at the many curious idols of various metals that were disposed about the great rooms, and answering readily to his assumed name of Doctor Hodgson, he seemed not to have any interest outside of what he was inspecting with the other guests. But his gaze never left the swarthy face of Ched Ramar for more than a few seconds at a time.
“Where have I seen him before?”