“Quite,” he said. “And now, if you will give that to Chick and then return here, I have two or three more questions I would like to ask you. Remember that in two hours my substitute will be here, and that thereafter I will have no further opportunity for consultation with you.”
The note which Mercedes delivered to Chick, and which took him at once into the city, directed him simply to go there and make himself up according to directions given, and then to return and take Nick’s place as butler, and it explained that Nick himself would, after he was relieved from duty as butler, assume the disguise that Chick had worn and return in his place as valet. So the reader will see that Nick Carter had no intention of leaving the house at all, but determined merely to change places with Chick.
When Mercedes returned to the room where Nick was awaiting her, he pointed to a chair, and then, with slow emphasis, he said:
“Miss Danton, there is a question which I have long wished to ask you and which will seem impertinent. Nevertheless, I assure you that it is important that you should answer it, because since I have been familiar with the incidents connected with this family, many things not on the surface have come to my notice.”
“What is the question, Mr. Carter?”
“It is a question which I might ask of your brother, or father, or mother, if I chose to ask it in another way; but I have thought best to ask it of you, because I think, in your heart, you, of all the family, will best understand my motives.”
“I will understand at least, that you deal without impertinence or idle curiosity, even if your question should appear so,” she replied, in a low tone. “I think I understand your motives, Mr. Carter, and if, in sending you away I have seemed to lack appreciation of them, I assure you that I have not——”
“Hush! I, too, understand. Now listen, for this is the question. Since our acquaintance began, I have taken occasion to look up, rather carefully, the history of your immediate family, and I find that you had an elder brother, six years older than Reginald, to whose memory a small monument has been erected in Woodlawn. That monument was placed there when you were ten years old. The question itself is this: Have you any reason to believe that the brother, to whose memory that monument was raised, is still alive?”
CHAPTER XXX.
PAUL ROGERS’ BLOW FOR MILLIONS.
For a moment after the detective asked the question, Mercedes stared in open-eyed amazement into his face. Then she slowly lowered her eyes until their gaze had settled upon a figure in the carpet, and she replied with the one word: