“That was very good of you, Mr. Carter, to be sure,” bowed the other.
“I was pleased, of course, to be present at the marriage of Clayton and your daughter, and both assured me that they would feel easier if I was here,” Nick added. “Clayton apprehended that Margate, despite that he has not been seen or heard from save once since his jewel robbery, might attempt knavery at this time. I attribute that, however, to Clayton’s somewhat nervous temperament. I don’t take very much stock in the threats of crooks, you know, for I long have been accustomed to them. Very few of them ever make good. I doubt that David Margate ever will.”
“Well, I hope not, I’m sure.”
“It is nearly time, I think, for Clayton and his bride to depart,” Nick now said, glancing at his watch. “You will wish to see them leave, I suppose.”
It then was ten o’clock in the evening, that of a bright day in June—a fit day, indeed, for the marriage of as beautiful a girl as charming Clara Langham, the only daughter of the multimillionaire president of the Century Trust Company, with whom Nick Carter had been talking.
More than six months had passed since the extraordinary case they had been discussing, that involving the theft and recovery of the world-famous jewels of Mademoiselle Falloni, the celebrated prima donna, a case resulting also in the arrest and conviction of all of the crooks save their ringleader, whose unparalleled elusion of Nick Carter at the last moment they had been reviewing.
Nick never had confided, not even to his trusty assistants, the terrible secret intrusted to his keeping by Clayton’s cultured and attractive mother; that his extraordinary personal resemblance to the notorious crook was due to his twin relationship; that he bore his mother’s maiden[Pg 6] name, and David Margate that of the criminal father of both, who had deserted his wife in England while the children were infants, taking with him this son, who afterward fell naturally into the evil footsteps of his vicious father, who since had died under sentence in a German prison.
Nick would not have thought of betraying such a secret, of which Clayton was entirely ignorant, and the disclosure of which would serve only to mar his happiness and in a measure wreck his subsequent life.
The secret then was known, in fact, only by Nick and the sad-hearted mother, Mrs. Julia Clayton, who had confided it to him only in order that the detective might prove Clayton innocent of the great jewel robbery mentioned. It was a secret that could be safely trusted to a man of Nick Carter’s sterling integrity.
The room in which he then was seated was the private library of Mr. Gustavus Langham, in the money magnate’s great stone mansion, occupied only as a summer residence. It had been built several years before at an enormous expense, before the death of his gay and fashionable wife.