“If you succeed, you will have convinced me that you are capable of guarding yourself from the fate I have threatened.
“If you fail—you should be wise enough to realize your peril and take my advice. I repeat it. Lose not a moment in leaving Madison—or you will return to New York in a coffin.”
Nick Carter’s brows knitted closer while he read this threatening letter. He had turned so that Chick might also read it, and the latter muttered, when both had finished:
“Great guns! Who the devil wrote that?”
“It comes suspiciously soon after my call on Doctor Devoll,” Nick said pointedly.
“Do you think he sent it?”
“I don’t know, of course, nor do I care.”
“It’s an infernal bluff.”
“Less a bluff than you suppose,” corrected Carter, a bit grimly. “The writer means what he says.”
“That he will kill you?”