Surely, if he intended to go back to the methods which had been so unsparingly exposed and condemned, he did not need to choose so shining a mark for his unlawful experiments. On the contrary, it would seem to be to his interest to aim low, and to continue to pick out victims who were comparatively unimportant to the world at large.
Besides, he must have known that a man of Baldwin’s wealth and standing would not place himself in the hands of any one without instituting the most rigid inquiries. His offer could not fail to be discussed by those close to the great financier, and it would be sure to cause a sensation.
Why had he braved all the dangers involved and defied all of the many obstacles which lay between a notorious and discredited surgeon and one of the most carefully guarded of Wall Street’s money kings?
Was it merely because he longed to “come back,” to reëstablish himself by means of one brilliant coup, or did his motive lie far deeper than that, in some dark corner of his cruel nature?
And if the latter was the case, what could that motive possibly be? Was it financial or personal in character?
It was difficult to see how Grantley could hope to benefit, in a financial way, by harming Baldwin. The crooked surgeon might have larger interests in the money world than any one knew of, but to strike at one of the big magnates was to precipitate widespread shrinkage in values, perhaps a panic on the floor of the Stock Exchange.
On the whole, therefore, if Grantley’s motive was an evil one, the chances were that it involved revenge of one kind or another.
It might be private revenge, a desire on Grantley’s part to retaliate for some real or fancied wrong done to him; or it was conceivable that one or more of Baldwin’s rivals in the game of high finance had hired the rascally surgeon to put him out of commission.
As a matter of fact, though, Nick was not inclined to put much faith in the latter theory. If Grantley’s object had to do with revenge of some kind, the chances were that strictly private reasons were involved.
A painstaking examination of Grantley’s record might reveal those reasons, but the detective was not hopeful on that score. The time at his disposal was too short, for one thing. For another, since it was obvious that Baldwin did not know of any particular reason for distrusting the surgeon—aside from his tendency to cut up his East Side patients—the cause of any enmity which might exist seemed to be an obscure one, the whys and wherefores of which were locked in Grantley’s own breast.