“I join you in the hope, Carter,” declared Badger; then he laughingly added: “You’ll observe that I’m out of those red flannel bandages.”
“Yes, so I see.”
“A nasty thing, a cold in the early summer.”
“So it is,” assented Nick. “I congratulate you upon being rid of it.”
He had eyed the man intently while they were speaking, and he saw what he had not seen, heard what he had not heard, when they met at his place in Brookline; for Badger now knew that he was suspected; knew what desperate work must be done that afternoon, and he had dropped those little artifices with which he had aimed to blind Nick during their previous meeting.
In his clear and cutting voice, in every subtle, sinister inflection, in the glowing glint of his dark eyes, in the poise of his supple, muscular figure—in one and all of these Nick now saw or heard again the man of the hold-up—as plainly as when he saw the knave standing with leveled weapons in that sunlit suburban road.
Yet the face of the detective did not change by so much as a shadow, and Vic Clayton now interposed, with a fine display of solicitude:
“We can do Mr. Carter a service, Amos, if you have no plans for the afternoon.”
“How?” demanded Badger, turning quickly to her.