Lifting the insensible man upon the bed again, and pulling the clothes over him, Nick Carter applied remedies which soon brought him back to consciousness, although his disappointment was pitiful.
“What shall I do?” he wailed. “What shall I do? The scoundrels have beaten me, after all.”
Nick gave him a spoonful of stimulant, and, as the color came back increasingly into his face, Marcos continued:
“I don’t care for myself. But it breaks my heart to see my little country sold into bondage for the benefit of a handful of rascals who would sell their own mothers if they got their price. What can I do, Carter?”
He held out his hot hand appealingly to the strong, cool detective at the side of his bed, and Nick Carter, taking the hand in his, resolved to carry out the audacious purpose already referred to, let the result be what it might.
Nick strode up and down the room for some minutes, turning over in his mind the scheme that had come to him. Once he stopped before the mirror on the dresser and contemplated his own face steadily for several seconds.
As he turned away, there was a confident smile softening his resolute lips, and he nodded as if inwardly assenting to some suggestion unheard by anybody but himself.
“Listen to me, your highness!” he said, stopping at the side of Prince Marcos’ bed.
“Drop ‘your highness,’ Carter,” begged Marcos impatiently. “Call me ‘Mr. Marcos,’ if you like, but leave out the royalty. We are in New York, and I am quite content to be a plain ‘Mr.’ while here. But what were you going to say?”
“Just this,” replied the detective, bending over the bed, so that the trained nurse, who had just come into the room, should not overhear. “There is one way in which we can save your country. It will mean trickery—a fraud, if you will.”