“He wishes to visit the place where Claudia and I were held up and robbed, and he came here to ask me to go with him. Now, if you have no particular trip you wish to make to-day——”
“None whatever!” cried Badger, quickly interrupting. “We are out for an airing only, and I’d as soon go that way as any. The road to Canton—can you locate the precise place, Vic?”
“Surely.”
“Then we’ll take him out there at once, if he wishes,” said Badger, quickly reverting to Nick. “What do you say, Carter? There’s a seat in my auto, if you care to go.”
Nick had foreseen what was coming, and had decided what course to take.
“Yes, I’ll go,” he said briefly.
“Good enough!” cried Badger. “Get into your wraps, Vic, and we’ll start at once.”
Nick had seen, in fact, no wise alternative to accepting the offer. To have declined it, after the request he had made Vic Clayton, might have aroused suspicions which he had no reason to believe already existed. He would take no chance of that before positive evidence against these knaves had been secured.
That he had been betrayed from police headquarters, that his suspicions and designs were already partly known, that he was now up against a plot hurriedly arranged by telephone, that he was the victim of an admirably played game, that his life itself was in jeopardy from that moment—only a clairvoyant could have seen all this.
Nick Carter was not a clairvoyant, however, nor had he any reasonable cause for suspecting the real gravity of his situation.