“And this other citizen in the handcuffs, Don Solado—where does he come in?”
“He is prime minister, and he is on the side of Miguel.”
“It’s all clear enough to me now,” remarked Chick. “Don Solado and Miguel are trying to hold Marcos here till it will be too late for him to stop this big grafting annexation?”
“Exactly! We shall have to work like Trojans now to enable Marcos to win. I’ve pledged myself to do it, however, and we shall have to manage it, somehow,” was Nick Carter’s steady conclusion, as he turned the launch downstream. “We have Larry Dugan and his crowd against us, as well as Solado and Miguel. That will make it harder. But we can beat the gang if we stick to it.”
“We’ll stick to it, all right!” responded Chick, with that determined note in his voice which his chief knew meant business.
“That’s what I like to hear, Chick. It won’t be an easy task, but we have simply got to get Prince Marcos to Joyalita by the eighteenth of this month.”
“You bet!” added Chick.
CHAPTER II.
SECRET FOES AT WORK.
In spite of the sharp lookout maintained by Nick Carter and his assistant for the launch with the five rascals in it all the way down to that upper part of Manhattan Island where New York City has reached only to give certain favored persons semirural homes, they saw nothing of the evil-faced Larry Dugan and his companions.
“There’s Crownledge,” pointed out Chick, as they came opposite the handsome house, in its own grounds, which Marcos and his mother had taken for a temporary residence.