“You were splendid, aunt. If Miguel had ever found out that this was really Marcos, he would have known that the person representing him who has gone to Joyalita could not be he. That would have meant all kinds of trouble for Marcos and Joyalita, too.”
But before she had finished, the mother was upstairs again, bending over her son and asking him what it all meant.
CHAPTER IV.
ON THE ROAD TO JOYALITA.
Four days had passed since Nick Carter, in the character of Prince Marcos, had glided out of the Grand Central Terminal in New York City. He and his three companions were traveling through a mountainous region in Central America. The soft breath of the Caribbean Sea tempered the tropical heat and made the atmosphere ideal.
Nick had purchased a high-powered motor car before leaving the United States. So when he found it desirable to leave the lines of railroads and depend upon the highways, he brought his car into use, and traveled almost as fast—and much more comfortably—than he had in his Pullman car.
Nick Carter drove and Patsy was by his side. As the sun went down behind a range of rugged mountains in the west, and the road became suddenly gloomy, Patsy looked about curiously.
“Gee! Where do we tear off our sleep to-night, chief?” he asked. “Ain’t there some town on the map that we can get to before pajama and nightie time? And supper? What about that?”
“Not hungry, are you?” asked Nick, smiling behind his mustache.
“Hungry?” ejaculated Patsy sarcastically. “Why, no, chief! Whatever put that in your head? Didn’t I have breakfast, at eight o’clock this morning, and didn’t I get rye bread, fossilized beans, and boiled mud that they called coffee? I had almost as much breakfast as I would give to a three-year-old girl. The coffee—gee! that coffee!—fixed me up right away.”
“Let’s see! What did we do about lunch?” asked Nick, a merry twinkle still in his eye. “Did we have much lunch?”