“Even if they have to dope me?” smiled Nick Carter. “Well, I assure you I had no intention of drinking that coffee. It is not my habit to eat or drink anything that comes to me with so much mystery.”
“There is no mystery in it to me,” she rejoined. “I know those men, and so ought you, Marcos—I mean, your highness.”
Nick Carter laughed softly, as he put his hand to his mask.
“You will insist that I am somebody else,” he said. “The best thing I can do is to let you see my face.”
The black satin mask was off with one twitch, and the girl gazed at him steadily for several moments. It seemed as if she could hardly believe the evidence of her own vision.
“Well?” queried Nick.
“You are not Prince Marcos. But you are wonderfully like him. You might be twin brothers, except that your eyes are a little darker than his, and your mouth is firmer. But the shape of your face, your expression, and even your voice are almost identical. It’s marvelous!”
She said this in a low voice, as she inspected Nick Carter’s countenance in a way that might have been embarrassing to a less self-possessed person. To him it was only amusing.
“What I can’t understand,” she continued, “is how you come to be in this box, number thirty-six, and why you are in the costume that the other gentleman ordered this afternoon. I know he asked for a Mexican dress, and that the clerk showed him this one—or one like it, for I was with him at the store.”
“I believe I can explain part of the mystery,” returned Nick. “As a matter of fact, this is not my costume. I ordered an entirely different one from Corliston’s——”