CHAPTER XXX.
BARE-FACED JIMMY’S DOUBLE.
Nick Carter, after he escaped from his pursuers that night, and could take it more easily for the remainder of the distance he wished to go, had thought deeply. Even before he had the interview which followed with the ambassador, he had determined upon his future course of action.
Since Turnieff had been murdered, evidently in cold blood, and merely to get rid of him, the detective was convinced that the Russian colonel had been the real instrument in the theft of the tin cylinder and its contents.
Whether Juno had engineered and directed the affair or not was a mere incident in the matter. There was no longer any doubt in the mind of Nick Carter that Turnieff had been the really guilty one.
And that Turnieff had had it in his power to betray those whom he had served in performing the act—and might have done so, if driven to it—was sufficient cause for his untimely taking off, from the standpoint of those who had ordered his assassination.
Again Turnieff was really the only person who could have had access to the sleeping room of the ambassador, and who could have gone through the corridors of the house toward it, or have returned through them from it, without exciting suspicion. After all, the ambassador had been wiser than he realized in directing the detective to study the man thoroughly and well.
But Juno, “The Leopard,” where was she in the matter?
During that conversation with Nick in the conservatory, she had said enough to make it plain to him that she was really in the service of that country which they had agreed to call Siam.
Practically she had admitted as much when she charged him with being in the employ of Russia.