“Of course you would,” assented Chick, and he knew it was the exact truth. “But now that you have found Leslie, and he’s all right, do you think it is worth while to go any farther?”
“Why not?” asked Nick dryly.
“Because, as you know, your desk in New York must be piled up with business by this time,” returned Chick, with some warmth. “It is a question whether such a man as you, on whom so many persons depend when they are in trouble, has the right to stay away longer than he is absolutely obliged.”
“Legal right—or moral?” smiled the famous detective.
“Moral, of course,” was Chick’s quick response. “And that has always had as much weight with you as the other kind. Therefore, I say that we ought to let Pike go. The Arnolds can find him without you. That is, if he can be found at all.”
“Think so?”
“Anyhow, if they can’t, it’s none of our business. We are a long way from Madison Avenue, remember. It will take us many weeks to get home, even if we were to start to-night. We shall have to travel nearly half around the world.”
Nick Carter was amused at his companion’s earnestness. He knew that Chick’s advice was given with the very best motives. His assistant would follow him into the very jaws of death—had done so on many occasions. But it seemed to Chick, now that they had finished the job they had come for, that it would be better to get home as quickly as possible.
It was quite true, as he had said, that there would most likely be piles of business on his chief’s desk in his Madison Avenue home by this time, and that scores of people would be anxiously awaiting his return.
But Nick Carter believed that he owed it to Jefferson Arnold to help him bring the rascally William Pike to justice, whether the money he had stolen from the Arnold Company’s Calcutta office—a hundred thousand dollars—were recovered or not.