“When I lay on the couch in the rooms of the syndicate,” replied Nick, “I saw some peculiar jewelry lying on the chief’s desk. Well, Mantelle wore that identical jewelry at the café. I could not believe it at first, for I did not remember seeing the chief take the stuff away in the hurry of his departure.”
“But it was the same?”
“It certainly was. I saw that when I took the pin and the ring from Mantelle to-night. Well, you see how that connected him with the syndicate? And there never was any doubt that the syndicate was at the bottom of the murder.”
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE DEN OF THE SYNDICATE.
“And now what is the layout, Nick?” asked Chick when the prisoners had been disposed of and the detectives had returned to Nick’s house.
“To clean out the den of the syndicate.”
“I thought the fire did that.”
“But there is another, where the smaller fry hang out, as this record shows,” replied Nick again, referring to the paper. “To be sure, there are only the little fellows left; but great oaks from little acorns grow, Chick, and I think we had better make a clean round-up while we are about it.”