“Genuine?”
“That’s the word.”
“You think he is not a reporter.”
“I would stake my reputation on that,” said Nick, with ominous intonation. “I eyed the man more closely than when I first saw him, Chick, and it was then that I vaguely felt that we had met before to-day. It came over me all of a sudden, a short time ago, just who he is and where we met him.”
“A crook?”
“The worst of crooks,” Nick grimly nodded. “The very man to have devised such a job as this and to have pulled it off successfully, most likely with the sanction of Jack Madison. His disguise was perfect, however, or so nearly that it blinded me for a time. I refer to the rascal who twice has committed crimes involving Arthur Gordon, and who——”
“Gee whiz!” exclaimed Patsy, interrupting. “I’m on to your curves, chief. You mean Mortimer Deland.”
“None other,” said Nick.
“By Jove, that alone would clinch the theory you have formed,” said Chick. “If Deland is in this job, if you really are right——”
“I know I am right,” Nick interposed. “I ought to have instantly recalled the eyes of that rascal, at least, as I since have done. It is nearly a year, however, since we last run him down and sent him to prison, from which he was afterward brought into court on a habeas-corpus writ and contrived to escape from the two officers in charge of him.”