“I’ll explain matters to my people here as I go out,” he said. “Come this way and I’ll show you the room you may occupy in my absence. I hope you’ll find it comfortable. Don’t hesitate to ask for anything you want, and I’ll let you know as soon as there’s anything to report.”
After conducting his guest to one of the spare bedrooms, the detective parted with Gillespie, and ascended the stairs. Five minutes later he stepped into the waiting car as if he owned it.
“Home!” he ordered, and the machine whirled away in the direction of upper Fifth Avenue.
Meanwhile, from behind one of the curtains at the front of the detective’s house, the young man had seen the car drive off, and as it passed out of sight, a remarkable change came over him. He threw back his head and laughed in a curiously noiseless way that many an ex-convict has.
He laughed until the tears rolled down his cheeks, and at last flung himself into a chair and fairly panted for breath. At length, he recovered himself and wiped his eyes. Simultaneously, his face took on harsher lines.
The fresh complexion of youth seemed singularly out of place now, for age and experience—and evil—peered through the veneer.
Had there ever been any doubt about Green-eye Gordon’s daring, there could be none any longer, for this was the criminal himself.
In some manner best known to himself, he had managed to learn of Nick’s return, and had taken this extraordinary means of fooling the detective—an example of supreme audacity, in which he was manifestly taking the greatest delight.
He expected to kill more than two birds with the one stone.
“Oh, what a sell!” he thought. “How are the mighty fallen! You don’t happen to know, my dear Carter, that the real Chester Gillespie is still abroad, and that while you are waiting for your bird in that gloomy old mansion across from the park, your enterprising little friend Ernest will be tapping the various other sources of income as rapidly as he can.”