“By the way, I have your watch, the Seal of Gijon,” said Nick. “I have never had an opportunity to give it to you till now.”
He brought out the precious diamond-incrusted watch and jeweled fob which had been the subject of his close inspection, and about whose secret spring he was still puzzled, and handed it to Marcos.
As the prince took the watch, he pressed it to his lips. Then he put it to his forehead, with a gesture of reverence. At the same time he murmured a few words in a strange tongue, that Nick Carter did not understand.
Even when Marcos had hidden the watch in an inner pocket of his waistcoat, he did not speak for a minute, at least.
It seemed as if there were a sacred significance attached to the Seal of Gijon which made it sacrilege to talk on outside matters for a short period after handling the precious emblem.
It was more than an hour before a street car came bowling along the lonely road which ran through the meadows, and which might have been a thousand miles from a city, judging by its desolate appearance, instead of only a few miles from the metropolis itself.
The conductor was a stolid individual, and when he saw that there were three handcuffed men pushed into the car ahead of four other men—for Chick had recovered sufficiently to go along with his friends—he only wondered what the trio had been pinched for, and let it go at that.
There were three heavy sacks lifted upon the back platform, and Patsy stood out there with them, his hand close to the butt of a revolver in his coat pocket.
All the notice the conductor took of this was to grumble, sotto voce, as conductors often do, in similar cases:
“Why don’t youse guys hire an express wagon?”