“Pshaw!” exclaimed Elwell. “You may think yourself a bad man, Lannigan; but you had better keep out of the way of Nick Carter. If he has tracked that case here and got possession of the things within it, the next thing will be that he’ll have the handcuffs on you. He fears no mortal man and he has captured single-handed half a dozen men, each one worse than you. But I don’t think Nick Carter has got those papers.”
“Why?”
“Let me ask you first, whether when you last saw these, they were all in this case and the case locked?”
“Yes; every blessed paper and the models as well.”
“Well, then, if Nick Carter had entered the room in search of that case and had found it, he would not have stopped to take the things out and substitute papers in their place, but would have taken out of the house the case and all.”
“That’s sense,” said Seaman.
“Let me ask you another question,” said Elwell. “Did any one besides Seaman and myself know that you had this case and its contents?”
“No—stop—yes—hold on! It’s not quite that way. There are two men who thought we had it. They thought we had cracked that crib in Thirty-fifth Street and, that being so, they knew that we had the case. But we never let on to them that we did the job. They only thought so.”
“Who are those men?” asked Elwell.
“Never you mind who they are,” said Lannigan, ferociously. “Before the lights go out to-night, I’ll know whether they’ve got that case, or what was in it, or I’ll have their lives.”