"Well, then, I'm game for the whole layout, and I will see it through to the end, but I don't want you to forget, Carter, that, if anything ever comes of it so that my part in this business is found out by any one of that crowd down there now, male or female, I wouldn't give a snap for my chances of being alive twenty-four hours afterward."
"They won't find it out through me," said the detective. "If they find it out at all it will be through you. And there's one thing more you must remember, Phil, and that is if you betray me you will be in a whole lot worse fix than you would be if your friends downstairs discover your treachery. For if you do betray me, I will never let up on you, Phil, until I see you behind the bars for a term of years that will make you an old man before you come out again."
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE GLARE OF A MATCH.
When the bartender had taken his departure, Nick found a cigar in one of his pockets, and seated himself to smoke quietly until Phil should return. But when more than half an hour later the cigar was consumed, and he had thrown it aside, he began to feel a sense of uneasiness that the man should be gone so long a time.
However, he realized that it was no easy task that Phil had undertaken, and that he might well occupy an hour or more in accomplishing it.
He had no more cigars to smoke, but he seated himself resolutely in a chair, determined to wait with patience until his messenger should return.
There was a small clock, ticking away merrily on the mantel, at the far end of the room, and the detective watched it while the minute hand worked its way slowly around the dial, until an hour, then an hour and a quarter, and, finally, an hour and twenty minutes had elapsed since the departure of the bartender.
His impatience was now so great, and his natural distrust of the confederate he had employed was so prominent in his mind that he left his chair, having first extinguished the light, and, going to the door, opened it softly and peered outside.