Nick rather pitied the misguided fellow, yet his pity did not deter him from playing his shrewd game to a finish. He leaned nearer over the table, saying with unabated severity:
“Hark you, then! You’ve not forgotten your threats made in my place last night. I heard them, and knew of what a drunken fool is capable. So I hastened out to Fordham to head you off from any crime. God forgive me, I arrived too late. I arrived only to see you——”
“You did not see me do it, Mose, so help me Heaven!” Royal hoarsely interrupted.
“I saw enough,” cried Nick, with terrible significance. “Miserable young man that you are, you have left me but one course. Don’t you see what I am doing? Don’t you see where I stand?”
“Where you stand?” echoed Royal, white and staring.
“Have you no brains?” continued Nick, with augmented feeling. “You know that I revere your father, that I love your sister. Don’t you see, misguided boy, that, for their sake, to spare them the awful shame and sorrow of beholding you a criminal, I have taken your guilt on my own shoulders? Don’t you see it, blind man, that for the sake of their peace and happiness, not for yours, I am inviting suspicion and taking even the hazard of the electric chair?”
Nick Carter, incomparably shrewd in his discernment and deductions, was indeed impersonating Moses Flood to the very letter. That the motives just expressed were the real motives actuating Moses Flood in his recent conduct, Nick had not a doubt.
For a moment Royal stared at him like one who could not speak. Then the meaning of what he had heard, and the overwhelming self-sacrifice so vividly pictured, seemed to dawn upon him with full force. It did even more, just as Nick had expected. It brought to the lips of the unhappy young man the words of gratitude and the much more important disclosure of the whole truth, which Nick Carter from the first had but aimed to evoke.
With countenance changing, with eyes lighting perceptibly, Royal presently said, more calmly:
“Can I believe my ears? Do you mean, Moses Flood, that you had no hand in that crime, and that your present conduct is inspired by the sentiments you have expressed?”