“Go ahead, then, and good luck. I’ll look after things here while you get in your work.”
“Good enough, Phelan,” said Nick, shaking hands with him. “I’ll reciprocate in some way when——”
“Cut that!” Phelan interrupted. “You know I am always at your service. Go ahead and get in your work.”
Nick did not delay his departure. He left the house with Chick and returned to his touring car.
“Home, Danny,” he directed. “I’ll let him drop me there, Chick, and then take you to headquarters. I want Gordon’s garments and that bloodstained jimmie. Tell the commissioner I will be responsible for their safe return. Bring them to the library.”
CHAPTER V.
NICK CARTER’S ANALYSIS.
“Yes, it is human blood. There is no question about it. It is human blood—but not from the veins of Matilda Lancey.”
These declarations came from Nick Carter about three o’clock that afternoon. They were addressed to Chick and his junior assistant, Patsy Garvan.
All three detectives then were seated at a broad zinc-covered table in Nick’s finely equipped laboratory, a large rear room in his Madison Avenue residence.
Lying on the table were the bloodstained articles belonging to Arthur Gordon, the disjointed jimmy, and also[Pg 18] the handkerchief which Nick had dipped in the blood of the murdered woman.