“But I’m not a thief—nor are you.”
“Is that so?”
“Not of the ordinary type. I’m hit with the truth.”
“That beats being hit with a club. What’s the big idea?”
“I know, now, why you are here.”
“Solomon had nothing on you, then.”
“Not much.”
“Come on with it. What’s the brainy hunch?”
“You are one of the gang that killed Gaston Todd,” Chick again said sternly, and the shot was not entirely a random one. “You have come here to search his rooms, and to see whether he has left evidence that might expose you. You are here to find it and get away with it.”
“You’re a real Willie Wisewinker,” the masked man said with a sneer, and a threatening hiss crept into his voice. “But you have got nothing on me. I know you, too, all right. You are one of the Nick Carter bunch, out to cut a wide swath in Madison, if your tools don’t go dull. You state only your own mission. You are here to search for evidence, hoping to find and get away with it unsuspected—but you have slipped a cog. You’ll not search for it, much less get it.”