Without the slightest faith in this woman’s alleged powers, however, Nick was approaching one of the most strange and startling experiences of his checkered career.
CHAPTER VI.
MADAME VICTORIA.
It was nearly noon when Nick Carter, after dismissing Grady, entered the handsome granite building on Tremont Street in which the rooms of Madame Victoria were located.
In so far as her pretentions to foretelling the future were concerned, as well as her other alleged powers, Nick felt morally sure that the woman was a fraud. Yet he decided to take no chances that she possibly had seen him before, and would remember his face, and in the corridor of the building he carefully adjusted a simple but effective disguise.
In so doing, he had a double object, however; that of first getting an insight into Madame Victoria’s business and her alleged occult endowments, merely to satisfy his own curiosity; and, second, that of afterward being able to return and question her about the robbery without her suspecting his first visit.
“I’ll have this much the best of her, at all events,” he said to himself, while adjusting his disguise. “If she is as clever as she claims to be, however, she should be able to see right through it. Yet I wager that she does nothing of the kind.”
In the corridor of the second floor was a door bearing Madame Victoria’s name in gilt letters, and Nick unceremoniously entered.
He found himself in an elaborately furnished waiting-room, with windows overlooking the Boston Common. The carpet was velvet. The furniture was upholstered with richly figured plush. There were fine lace draperies at the windows, and the walls were hung with choice paintings, while various ornaments of one kind or another added to the adornment of the place.