Nick felt it his duty to communicate the little he had learned to the blind magnate, and did so, but without result. Baldwin’s hope had been aroused, and he was pathetically eager to undergo the operation. He sent word to Nick that he could not see how the latter’s information affected the situation. Many men had burned their fingers in blind speculation, he declared, and added his conviction that a detective, with the best intentions in the world, was “making a mountain out of a child’s sand pile.”
Still Nick did not despair, and the probe went on. The next day passed without bringing anything more definite to light, and the morning of the operation dawned.
The blind millionaire was already in Grantley’s hands, having gone to the private hospital the evening before, in order to become settled in his new environment and to have a chance to quiet down before the fateful hour arrived.
He had no immediate relatives, and would allow no one else to dictate to him. Against Doctor Vanderpool’s advice, and in spite of the physician’s anxious pleadings, he insisted upon trusting Grantley implicitly.
“It’s all or nothing with me,” he persisted in saying. “This operation is altogether too important to me to allow its success to be threatened in any way. Grantley knows he is under suspicion, but I do not suspect him in the least, and I shall consent to nothing that would lead him to think so. He doesn’t want you or any other hostile personality present, and I don’t blame him. Besides, it might affect his nerves disastrously. And any nurse you would be likely to introduce would be bound to reflect the same antagonistic attitude toward him and his staff. I won’t have my chances jeopardized by any such childish jealousies.”
Doctor Vanderpool threw up his hands at that, but Baldwin laid down the law still further. He made it plain that he not only meant to place himself in Grantley’s hands for the operation itself, but that he did not wish any interference afterward, until such time as the surgeon should pronounce him ready to receive visitors.
The financier’s stubborn attitude caused Nick Carter many misgivings, but the detective saw that his own hands were tied. He could not force his way into the house, in the face of Grantley’s enmity toward him, at such a critical time. What was more, he could not even keep an effective watch over the premises, although that would have been small comfort at best.
The house immediately adjoining Grantley’s, which Nick had previously occupied for a time, had been regularly rented since then, so that that vantage point was no longer available.
The blind master of millions had, by his own act, completely isolated himself from his friends for an indefinite period, and put himself unreservedly in the power of the rascally Grantley, his no less unscrupulous assistant, Doctor Siebold, and the hard-faced nurse, Kate Rawlinson.
Moreover, even the protection of publicity was denied to Baldwin’s anxious well-wishers. They would have preferred, for the sake of the effect upon Grantley, to have all the papers publish the fact. They would have liked to see reporters calling at the private hospital at frequent intervals, in the hope that public knowledge and interest would deter the surgeon from crime, if he contemplated anything of the sort.