“Dugan has a place where he will be safe—in New York. It is a tenement somewhere. He would not give me the address, but he will take us all there.”
“I think the yacht would be the best plan. Let it go away, down the coast somewhere. Then perhaps we could lose Marcos in Mexico. You know there is a lot of promiscuous shooting in that region at present. It would need only a bare hint to make some of those officious Mexicans take a man as a spy and shoot him before he could explain.”
Miguel was a savage-looking fellow at best. When he made this deliberately cold-blooded proposition he looked positively fiendish.
“Very well,” returned Solado. “I’m willing. But we will leave the other fellow in the cellar.”
“You mean Carter’s man?”
“Yes.”
For a few seconds the two plotters looked directly into each other’s eyes. Then, slowly, each reached a hand across the table, and the two shook hands upon it.
“The scoundrels!” muttered Nick Carter. “I’m glad I got here in time. Actually they are going to kill Chick right in this building. They can’t mean anything else. Well, I’ll——”
He turned quickly, determined to get out, go down the chute, and, with Patsy, make his way to the basement in another way.
It would not be difficult to effect an entrance, for all the doors were of old and weather-rotted wood, and he could break through any of them, he was sure.