“‘I’ve thought a good deal about Nick Carter since I’ve been recuperating up the river,’ I said to him, ‘and I’m not going to put you wise about those thinks. Nit. I know the game,’ I said, ‘and all I want is to be left alone to play my hand in my own fashion. If I should want any help, I’ll call on you, but I don’t think I shall need any.’
“Well, he was satisfied. That ended our conversation on that topic, so you see I don’t really know so darn much after all—only by implication.”
“And by implication, will you tell me just what you make out the whole game to be?” asked Nick.
“Sure thing. By implication I make out this: That old Peter Danton will begin, before long, to act sort of queer. His friends and relatives won’t know what is the matter with him until it suddenly dawns upon them that he has a sort of softening of the brain. I suppose there is a drug that will produce that effect; anyhow, that is the racket. After he has had softening of the brain for a while, he’ll die—quite sudden. In the meantime, of course, the youngster will have succeeded his father. Now, the youngster has a decided weakness for good-looking women, and he is to be lured into a place where a row will be started and in the mêlée he will get a rap on the head, which will settle his hash. In the meantime the old lady is to be cared for by a trained nurse, or a maid, or somebody who is to be introduced into the house through the instrumentality of Rogers. She has got a year or two, perhaps more, to live. In short, she can live as long as she is of any use to the conspirators, for Rogers proposes to force the world to recognize the substituted heiress for the real one, through the mother. Catch on?”
“Not quite. State it.”
“Well, if the old lady is kept alive, but in the meantime her brain is sufficiently clouded so that she does not know the difference between Isabel Benton and her own daughter, and if it is Isabel Benton instead of her own daughter who lives with her the last two or three years of her life, it will be pretty hard to convince the world after that that the young woman is not the real daughter of the house; don’t you think so?”
“Yes; I do think so.”
“Well, that’s the game. By implication, remember, I’ve built all this up by the operation which you detective chaps call deduction.”
The burglar stopped abruptly and rose to his feet.
“That, Mr. Carter,” he said, “is all that I have got to say; and now, if you don’t mind, I will slip back into my own world again.”