“It was an electric I wanted,” Cray told him, with apparent regret. “Like them quiet.”
“That’s what Mr. Simpson said,” the garage owner vouchsafed. “They may be quiet enough, but I like something a little faster and bigger. I’ve got a dandy Wellington here, sir, as good as new, that I’ll sell you for——”
“Nothing doing,” Cray interrupted. “Wife has set her heart on an electric, and you know what that means. Thanks just the same, though.”
They exchanged meaning glances, and Cray left the garage. As he walked along the main street, he whistled softly, but very cheerfully. The garage man’s hint as to Simpson’s reason for purchasing an electric car had served to strengthen his suspicions. The more he thought about it, the more certain he became that he was right, and the more eager he was to lay his amazing theory before Nick Carter.
He desired the great detective’s approval, and his cooperation in the last dramatic scene, which he hoped would take place that night. But again there would have been a fly in his honey had he known that another had arrived at practically the same conclusion by pure reasoning, and that that other was not Nick Carter, but an impostor and ex-convict, who was posing in Nick’s place.
Perhaps it is just as well that Jack Cray did not know that fact when he proceeded to the combined railroad station and telegraph office, and wrote out the following message:
“Nicholas Carter—Madison Avenue, New York: Come to New Pelham by 7:30 train this evening. Important. Will meet you.”