“You’re deucedly well right. I’d be a blooming idiot, Mr. Carter, if I couldn’t see that. Come into the house, sir, and I’ll tell you the whole beastly business. Your word is as good as a Bank of England note, sir, and I’ll keep nothing from you.”
“You have decided wisely,” said Nick, while they mounted the steps. “In so far as the circumstances permit, I shall consider your disclosure strictly confidential.”
“That’s mighty kind, sir, and I’ll pay you handsomely.”
“Payment is an afterconsideration. I will accept no more than my services warrant.”
“You’re deucedly clever, old top, and I’m proud to know you. Some jolly good fairy must have sent you my way in an hour of need. Come up to my room, sir.”
The Englishman had opened the door with a latchkey, and he now led the way to an attractively furnished room on the second floor.
Among the first articles to catch Nick’s eye, amid other evidence of feminine taste and sentiment, were two artistic photographs on the mantel. One was a likeness of his companion.
The other was that of a very beautiful girl still under twenty, a face that reflected culture and vivacity, and the winsome features and expression of which, with the finely poised head and shapely shoulders, might have been the ideal of a Raphael or Correggio.
Nick at once inferred rightly that this was the girl who apparently had been spirited away so boldly, as well as mysteriously, in so far as a motive had yet appeared.
The young Englishman looked disappointed when Nick’s prediction was verified, his wife not being found there, and he at once waved the detective to a chair, saying with nervous haste and in his own peculiar fashion, which was much less frivolous than appears: