“What else could it be?” demanded the other sharply.
Nick Carter shrugged his shoulders.
“Well, Mr. Arnold, you are known here—by name, at least—as owner of several ships, including the Marathon, and your agent, William Pike, has vanished, in a rather mysterious way, from your office in Calcutta. Perhaps the telegram may be from somebody who has seen Pike up in Nepal.”
“It may be, although I don’t know what Pike could want up in the back country, away from civilization. He isn’t that kind of man, from what I know of him. He is more likely to go over to Europe, or, if not, to get to some other big city in India—Rangoon, Lucknow, Cawnpur, or Hyderabad—where he can spend his money and be moderately out of the way of arrest.”
“At all events, this message agrees with our own ideas of the direction taken by Leslie,” said Nick Carter.
Jefferson Arnold did not speak for a few moments. He was not a demonstrative man, and although his heart was wrung by the strange disappearance of his only son, his face was as impassive as it generally was when putting through some great business deal in New York, with perhaps millions of dollars involved.
Here, on the deck of the finest steamer of his fleet of merchant vessels, with the gently rolling waters of the Bay of Bengal scuffing up under the prow, and the engines, at half speed, gradually bringing the ship nearer and nearer to the wharves of Calcutta, he might have seemed to strangers to be a man to be envied.
Yet, tearing at his heart was the greatest anxiety he ever had known—the question whether his boy, whom he loved better than himself, was dead or living.
The scene was as beautiful a one as nature can produce in her most happy mood. The blue waves, with their lacy-white crests, the panorama of mountain and forest in the distance—still hazy, as the mists of early morning hung before them—and the big city of Calcutta in the foreground, its white buildings glistening fairylike in the glorious sunlight, all combined to make the approach to this famous Asiatic port one of the most fascinating in the world.
“What’s that boat coming out?” suddenly exclaimed Jefferson Arnold. “Couldn’t wait for us to get alongside the wharf, eh! We’re five miles from shore, if not more. What do you make of it, captain?” he added, in a louder tone to the skipper of the Marathon, who stood on the bridge just over their heads.