“I don’t know.”
“Tell the truth, Lampton.”
“I am telling it. Potter has vanished, and there isn’t any of the gang know where he is exactly.”
“Well, come on. We’ll walk across. You don’t mind the exercise, do you?”
Nick asked this question as politely as if he had been addressing some intimate friend. Lampton grinned, as he answered, with equal courtesy:
“Not at all, I assure you. It will give me pleasure, especially with an agreeable companion.”
They strolled out of the café together, and any person who observed them might have said they were on the best of terms. Nobody would have suspected that Carter was keeping a sharp eye on the smiling man at his side, and that he would have used his pistol if that had been necessary to prevent his running away.
But nothing of the kind happened. Andrew Lampton chatted on the topics of the day—the theaters, politics, literature, and so forth. He did not mention criminal matters, nor speak of anything that might have the slightest bearing on his own favorite occupation, “shoving the queer.” And yet the roll of phony notes was still in his pocket, waiting to be burned as soon as they should be in Nick’s home.
Once seated in the library, in an easy-chair, Lampton handed the bills to the detective. The latter placed them in a small brazier, and, with the aid of a certain chemical, reduced them to ashes in an infinitesimal space of time—much quicker than he could have done it with simple fire.
“Rather a pity to see such good stuff burned up,” remarked Andrew Lampton, with a wry smile, as he began to puff on the perfecto Nick had passed to him. “I don’t think better hundreds and fifties were ever turned out, even in Washington.”