A tap at the door, and the butler entered, to announce “Mr. Andrew Lampton!”
“Show him in.”
Lampton came in with rather a jaunty step, bowed to Carter and glanced questioningly in the direction of his companion.
“You can say what you have to say, Lampton,” was Nick’s reply to this silent query. “This is Chick Carter, and he is my confidential assistant. Take a chair.”
Andrew Lampton seated himself slowly, at the same time keeping his eyes fixed on the detective, while a cynical smile played about his lips.
“Where is T. Burton Potter?” asked Nick, handing a cigar box to his visitor. “You have not brought him with you?”
Andrew Lampton took a perfecto from the box, and accepted a light before he answered. Then he said calmly:
“I have not brought him with me, because he is in the Universal Hospital. He was badly hurt at a fire last night, I have been told, and has been removed to the hospital, where it is expected he will not recover.”
It was with difficulty that Nick maintained his usual calm exterior. Here was an assertion that he could not disprove while the patient at the Universal Hospital was unable to speak for himself. True, the girl, Bessie Silvius, had called him Howard Milmarsh. But if T. Burton Potter were slick enough to deceive others, why should he not have fooled the girl also?
These thoughts ran like lightning through the detective’s brain, as he and Andrew Lampton both smoked steadily. The former was staring at a picture on the opposite side of the room, as if his mind were quite occupied with it, to the exclusion of everything else.