“Nick Carter,” he muttered, in a somewhat muffled, but perfectly distinct voice.
“He has been repeating that name at intervals for hours,” the young doctor remarked. “It must be the detective, don’t you suppose?”
Griswold was under the impression that Mrs. Simpson had withdrawn, but even that did not entirely explain the slip that followed. He who had desired secrecy above all things must have forgotten himself for the time being.
“Yes, it’s the detective,” he answered in a matter-of-fact tone. “This man is himself a detective, and they were working together on——”
He stopped abruptly as a cry from the doorway reached him. Mrs. Simpson had heard what he said.
CHAPTER XXXI.
THE MILLIONAIRE PLAYS SLEUTH.
As we have seen, the missing man’s wife had always had an uncomfortable feeling that all was not as it should be. Her husband had not been himself for some time before his disappearance, and the sudden fit of extravagance which had led him to take the new house on such short notice, and to talk about buying a car, had aroused suspicions, which she had loyally tried to tread under foot.
Naturally, therefore, his actual flight, and the strange attitude of those connected with the newspaper—their unwillingness to have her go to the police, for instance—had worried her greatly, although she had succeeded again and again in arguing herself into a belief that there was some other explanation.