“I know better,” returned the other. “I know the symptoms, unfortunately, too well. That is why I am not smoking this evening. All I want to ask of you is that you will see Howard gets his birthright.”
“You have made all proper, legal arrangements, have you not? Your will is in a safe place, I suppose?”
“Yes. That is not it. One copy of my will is in my safe-deposit box in my New York bank, and another is in the possession of my attorneys, Johnson, Robertson & Judkins, of New York. What has always troubled me is that Howard is a little wild, and that he might do something which would give enemies an opportunity to rob him of his inheritance.”
“How could anybody do that?” queried Nick, smoking steadily. “Even if you had not made a will, Howard is your only child, and he would succeed as heir at law.”
“But, suppose he were not to claim his inheritance? Suppose, for some reason, he could not be found?”
“What do you mean?” asked the detective. “Don’t you know where he is now? If he went to New York, we could hear of him at the Hotel Supremacy, I have no doubt. That is where he generally goes when he’s in the city. Of course, he may have gone to one of his clubs. But, even then, it would not be hard to find him.”
Nick Carter smoked in silence for a full minute before he spoke again. Then he asked, more earnestly than he had spoken hitherto:
“Do you think Howard has gone farther than New York—that he has sailed to some foreign country, for instance?”
“I don’t know where he is,” replied the millionaire. “What I do know,” he continued slowly, and with his breath coming fast between his words, “is that I am not well to-night, and that a presentiment hangs over me that I should have taken better care of my boy.”