NICK CARTER
STORIES

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No. 138. NEW YORK, May 1, 1915. Price Five Cents.

THE TRAITORS OF THE TROPICS;
Or, NICK CARTER’S ROYAL FLUSH.

Edited by CHICKERING CARTER.

CHAPTER I.
A BOLD PROPOSAL.

“You say he cannot travel to-day, doctor?”

“Impossible, Mr. Carter!”

“He would be in a drawing-room on the Pullman, and every care would be taken to make the journey easy for him.”

The surgeon shook his head.

“He would have his own servant, Phillips, to attend him,” persisted Nick Carter. “This is Prince Marcos, you know, Doctor Sloane. You’ve heard of him, and I’ve explained that it is essential for him to be in the country of which he is the ruler by the eighteenth of this month. He has only five days now.”

“I am sorry, but——”

“He could make it in the five days, by continuous traveling,” still pressed the detective. “I realize that he would be taking some risk. But when it is considered that the very existence of his country depends on his getting there by a certain date, I doubt whether any one has the moral right to stop him.”

Doctor Sloane shrugged his shoulders. He was one of the distinguished surgeons in New York, and he was accustomed to being obeyed. Even a prince was not important enough in his eyes to dispute his professional commands.

“As to the moral right, Mr. Carter,” intoned the doctor, in his most impressive manner, “that, it seems to me, is beside the matter. I tell you, as a surgeon, that a man who has just been shot in the chest, and has narrowly escaped a puncture of the pericardium, must lie still for a more or less protracted period, if he intends ever to get up at all.”

“I feel quite well,” suddenly interposed the man in the bed. “I can travel easily, Mr. Carter. Make the doctor understand that.”

“Very well, Mr. Marcos,” answered Nick Carter, as he held up a hand of warning to the patient not to talk. “I think the doctor does understand our position.”

“I understand that if you let this Mr. Marcos get up to-day, or this week, or next, I will not be responsible for his life,” interrupted Doctor Sloane. “His temperature is nearly a hundred and rising, and he is too weak to talk, to say nothing of his getting up.”

There could be no doubt that the surgeon spoke the truth. Prince Marcos, ruler of Joyalita, the Caribbean principality, was in bad physical condition.

He had been preparing to go home, to take part in an important gathering of the officers of his government, when somebody had fired a shot at him from ambush as he strolled in the grounds of his temporary home, Crownledge, on the Hudson River, and had brought him down.

If there had been anybody with Prince Marcos when his hidden enemy tried to kill him, the miscreant might have been captured. But the prince was alone. Naturally, nothing could be found of the would-be assassin when the grounds were searched, for it was then half an hour after the shooting, and Marcos was in bed.

Phillips, his valet, had heard the shot, and knowing that the prince’s cousin, Prince Miguel, with Don Solado, prime minister of Joyalita, had made attempts on his life before, in New York, he had suspected these men again.

Nicholas Carter, the famous detective, had been telephoned for. He had come racing up in his high-powered motor car soon after the eminent surgeon—with the aid of one of much less note, as well as a trained nurse—had extracted the bullet.

Doctor Sloane had just given his decision now that the patient must stay in bed for two weeks at least—perhaps much longer.

To the surgeon’s disgust, the patient insisted that he must get up at once. He had to take a long journey into Central America, he said.

Strangely enough, Nicholas Carter, the famous detective—whose knowledge of medicine and surgery was great enough to have made him a successful practitioner if he had cared to follow a doctor’s career—had backed up Prince Marcos in his wild purpose.

“I’ve no doubt that, according to all precedent, a man in my condition should stay in bed,” conceded Marcos. “But I shall have to go down to Joyalita at once, nevertheless.”

The surgeon turned away, with his favorite shrug.

“Well, I can say no more,” he declared, in an offended tone. “I’ve given you my honest professional opinion. It is more than an opinion—it is a conviction. If you choose to commit suicide, it is no affair of mine.”

Doctor Sloane was not accustomed to people flying in his face. So he vouchsafed Prince Marcos merely a curt nod of farewell, and stalked out of the bedchamber.

Nick Carter followed him to the hall and closed the door.

“Really, doctor, I know it is important for Mr. Marcos to go down to Central America at once. He should have started already, and would have done so but for this unfortunate accident.”

“Accident?” ejaculated Doctor Sloane, with a smile.

“We will call it that for the present,” returned Nick Carter. “Anyhow, the fact that he has enemies who would shoot him down in cold blood in his own home indicates that it is imperative for him to go. If it were not, men would not be trying to kill him to keep him back.”

“That may all be,” conceded the doctor. “No doubt it is, when you say so, Mr. Carter. But that is entirely outside of my province. I came here to save his life, and I have told you what will happen if he gets up now.”

“He has a strong constitution,” pleaded Nick Carter.

“Of course he has, or he wouldn’t be alive now,” snapped Sloane. “But if he moves before next week, at the earliest—well, the consequences be on his own head.”

Without waiting for a reply, Doctor Sloane marched out of the house to his motor car, and was gone.

Nick Carter went back to the sick room and gazed thoughtfully at the flushed face and tossing head on the pillow. As he looked, a thought revolved in his mind which he admitted to be audacious, but which would not be banished, no matter how outrageous it might seem.

“What do doctors know about affairs of state?” suddenly burst from the injured man’s impatient lips, as he turned his eyes, bright with fever, upon the detective. “If I start on that nine-o’clock train to-night, I can make good connections, and get down to Joyalita in time to beat those wretches. You will help me, Carter, won’t you?”

“I will certainly try to bring to justice the men who tried to murder you,” replied Nick Carter. “Don Solado, your prime minister of state——”

“A treacherous old rascal!” put in Marcos.

“Of course he is,” assented Nick. “And your cousin, Prince Miguel, who would like to step into your shoes as ruler of your country. He and Solado are both interested in preventing your reaching Joyalita. Whether they would kill you to keep you away remains to be seen.”

“I am convinced they would. I feel sure that one of them fired that shot at me. Or, if he did not actually do it himself, he hired one of those thugs, who can be procured in any large city, to do it for him.”

“It comes to the same thing,” remarked Nick Carter.

“But that is nothing, after all,” went on Marcos hurriedly. “The thing is that the revolutionary party in Joyalita are to hold a meeting on the eighteenth of this month, at which they will practically give the country into the hands of our neighbor, Carita. That is the scheme. If I am there, I must sign the reply to Carita’s proposition, and, of course, it will be in the negative.”

“And if you are not there?”

“Then the president of the council, who is a secret enemy of mine—as I have just found out—will sign it for me, and he will accept the other side’s proposal.”

“It is a difficult situation,” murmured Nick.

“Difficult or not, it must be solved,” broke in Marcos. “I intend to go. The capital of Joyalita is Penza, and I must be there at twelve noon on the eighteenth.”

He forced himself to a sitting posture and threw aside the bedclothes.

“Mr. Marcos!” protested Nick.

“Don’t try to stop me, Carter! My mind is made up!”

But Marcos’ body was not as strong as his will.

As he swung himself out of bed and put his feet to the floor, the pallor of faintness came over his face, and he would have pitched forward in a heap had not the detective caught him.

Lifting the insensible man upon the bed again, and pulling the clothes over him, Nick Carter applied remedies which soon brought him back to consciousness, although his disappointment was pitiful.

“What shall I do?” he wailed. “What shall I do? The scoundrels have beaten me, after all.”

Nick gave him a spoonful of stimulant, and, as the color came back increasingly into his face, Marcos continued:

“I don’t care for myself. But it breaks my heart to see my little country sold into bondage for the benefit of a handful of rascals who would sell their own mothers if they got their price. What can I do, Carter?”

He held out his hot hand appealingly to the strong, cool detective at the side of his bed, and Nick Carter, taking the hand in his, resolved to carry out the audacious purpose already referred to, let the result be what it might.

Nick strode up and down the room for some minutes, turning over in his mind the scheme that had come to him. Once he stopped before the mirror on the dresser and contemplated his own face steadily for several seconds.

As he turned away, there was a confident smile softening his resolute lips, and he nodded as if inwardly assenting to some suggestion unheard by anybody but himself.

“Listen to me, your highness!” he said, stopping at the side of Prince Marcos’ bed.

“Drop ‘your highness,’ Carter,” begged Marcos impatiently. “Call me ‘Mr. Marcos,’ if you like, but leave out the royalty. We are in New York, and I am quite content to be a plain ‘Mr.’ while here. But what were you going to say?”

“Just this,” replied the detective, bending over the bed, so that the trained nurse, who had just come into the room, should not overhear. “There is one way in which we can save your country. It will mean trickery—a fraud, if you will.”

The trained nurse left the room, and Nick Carter quietly turned the key in the lock.

“What is it?” asked Marcos.

“Look at me. Don’t you think many people would say I was Prince Marcos if I declared that to be my name?”

“Of course they would. No one could tell the difference, and——”

Marcos stopped, and a wild expression of hope came into his fever-brightened eyes.

“You mean that you would——” he went on, and stopped again.

“I would go in your place to Penza, in Joyalita, and do for Prince Marcos what his enemies have prevented his doing for himself,” declared Nick Carter firmly.

CHAPTER II.
THE DEPARTURE FOR PENZA.

There was no other word spoken for an appreciable space of time. Prince Marcos could hardly comprehend the possibility of the plan, and was silent. Nick waited for him to say something.

“I should think it could not be done if it were any one but you, Carter,” were the broken words that came from Marcos at last. “But I can see only success if you undertake the thing.”

“There must be success,” returned Nick gravely.

“Of course. Now let me tell you what you must do. When I left Joyalita I wore a small mustache. I shaved it off before I got to New York. Will you kindly hand me my coat—or take the small packet of letters, fastened by a band, in the inside pocket? That will be better.”

Nick obeyed, and Marcos took from one of the envelopes a photograph of himself as he had appeared before taking off the mustache.

“You see, Carter,” he said, “I looked a little different when wearing that. Could you not put one on like that? It would make your disguise absolutely perfect.”

“I will do that, of course,” answered the detective. “Will you lend me this photograph? I will get a mustache, and make up my face with the photo as a guide. That is a common method with professional actors when they are to represent some well-known personage—such as President Lincoln, Disraeli, or Taffy, in ‘Trilby.’ They generally ‘make-up’ from a portrait of the original. I can get myself exact, I know.”

“You can have the photo. And you’d better take Phillips with you. He will be a great help, because he knows Joyalita and its people as well as I do.”

“Certainly. I could hardly undertake it without Phillips,” answered the detective. “I intended to ask you for him.”

“Who else will you have with you?”

“I shall take my principal assistant, Chick, in the guise of a medical attendant, and my second man, Patrick Garvan, in place of your late servant, Jason, who managed to get burned to death during the last attempt of the gentle Miguel to keep you away from Joyalita.”

“So you will have three people with you,” observed Marcos. “That will make four in the party, and it ought to be strong enough to throw off Solado and Miguel, if they should try any tricks on you as you go along.”

“Which they are likely to do,” said Nick.

Marcos fumbled under his pillow and brought out a chamois leather bag which he had worn around his neck under his clothing, but had taken off when his valet had undressed him.

Phillips knew that his employer always had this bag under his pillow. He often had assisted him to remove the cord from his neck without making any comment. Any well-trained valet would do that.

“Here is something you must take, Carter,” said Marcos.

He fumbled in the bag, and took out a richly jeweled watch and diamond fob. Laying them on the counterpane, he regarded the fire and luster of the precious stones admiringly.

“This watch is known as the Seal of Gijon,” he remarked quietly. “It has been handed down in my family through a dozen generations, and is the insignia of the reigning house of Joyalita. You see that it is old-fashioned in design. But it is an accurate timekeeper, and its value, merely as gold and gems, is several thousand dollars.”

“I know that,” nodded the detective. “I’ve seen the watch before, you will remember.”

“Yes, I remember. But here is something that perhaps you have not seen,” continued Marcos, as he pressed a spring. “This is the great seal of Joyalita, and it must be used on all official documents. You will perceive that it is in the form of a double-headed dragon, with the letter ‘J’ twisted about it like a rope.”

Nick Carter bent over the watch and admired the ingenuity with which the seal—almost as large around as the watch case itself, but fitting just inside—would stand forth when the spring was pressed, so that it could be used on sealing wax.

He put the Seal of Gijon carefully in an inside waist-coat pocket, and went away, after promising to come back before he started on his long journey to Penza, in Joyalita.

It was a quarter to nine that night when two taxicabs arrived at the Grand Central Terminal in New York. Five persons left the cabs and crossed the great concourse, on their way to the express train ready to leave.

Three of the four men in the party carried hand baggage of various descriptions. The fourth was wrapped in a large overcoat, and only his eyes, nose, and mustache could be easily distinguished between the two points of the large upturned collar as he walked along.

He was conversing with a very pretty, dark-eyed girl, expensively dressed and bearing all the marks of good breeding so easily to be distinguished when present, and quickly missed otherwise.

The man in the big overcoat was Nick Carter; the young lady, Miss Claudia Solado, niece of the villainous prime minister of Joyalita, Don Solado, and cousin of Prince Marcos.

Claudia was a warm champion of her Cousin Marcos, and her greatest regret was that Don Solado was the brother of her dead father.

“I am sure you will get there safely, Mr. Carter,” she was saying, as they crossed over to the train gate. “Poor Marcos! He would be lost if it were not for you.”

“Not a bit of it,” laughed the detective. “So long as he has such an earnest and faithful cousin as Miss Claudia, he could not fail to win out at last. Will you see me into the train, so that you can report to him?”

“Yes. If they will let me pass the gate,” she answered.

“I’ll attend to that,” returned the detective confidently. “They will let you through.”

So they did. She walked up the platform to the Pullman car by the side of him, talking in low, earnest tones all the way.

Immediately behind came Chick, with a pointed beard, dark spectacles, and carrying a black leather medical case in his gloved hand. In his dark clothing and high hat, he was the very picture of a well-to-do physician, and, when he coughed a sonorous “Hem!” as he passed the gate, was as impressive as Doctor Sloane himself.

Patsy Garvan wore a light check suit and leather leggings, with a cap of the same material as his suit. In his pockets were a pair of handcuffs and the automatic revolver which he always carried when out on business.

Incidentally, it may be said that both Nick Carter and Chick were provided with similar useful implements.

The drawing-room which had been reserved for Mr. Marcos and his physician, “Doctor Fordham,” was ready, and Nick Carter and Chick went in at once, accompanied by Claudia.

Patsy Garvan and Phillips were to ride in the Pullman in ordinary seats, and they busied themselves in placing the baggage that had not been stowed in the drawing-room. Everything was done in the regulation manner, and no one could doubt that the wealthy gentleman in the drawing-room was all he appeared to be, with his two servants in attendance.

“You have not seen anything of our friends the enemy, have you, Miss Solado?” asked Nick, when they were shut in.

“I cannot be sure,” she answered. “I did not see Miguel or my uncle, Don Solado, anywhere about the station. But I saw one face I thought I recognized—only I know he is dead.”

“Whom do you mean?”

“Jason, who used to be Marcos’ undervalet.”

“Do you think you saw his face?” asked Nick Carter thoughtfully.

“I saw a face like his. But, as you know he is dead, of course I must have been mistaken.”

“Of course,” agreed Nick. “Did you see what became of this man who looks like Jason?”

“I missed him near the gate. He may be on this train.”

“That’s possible,” put in Chick. “It’s a long train, and there might be a score of people on it whom we know without our ever seeing one of them.”

“I wish I could come with you, Mr. Carter,” said the girl. “But my mother does not want to leave New York just yet. She does not go out much, but she likes to be near the bustle of this big city. It is just a notion, but it is insistent, too. I do not care to leave her, although she would not mind, for both she and I are used to traveling alone.”

“You will be safer here, with your mother,” returned the detective. “So long as I have Phillips to give me a hint now and then, I shall be able to act the part of your cousin satisfactorily, I am sure. Then, if I need any other kind of help, I have my two assistants, and——”

The cry of “All aboard!” came echoing along the platform at this moment.

With a hasty “good-by, and thank you, Mr. Carter!” Claudia Solado left the drawing-room and was helped down to the platform by Chick.

In another minute the train was softly gliding away, without noise or fuss, as the electric motor got to work. Claudia was left on the platform watching the red tail lights as they glimmered smaller and smaller, and finally disappeared.

As she walked slowly from the station and entered the taxicab which had been waiting for her, she did not perceive a slim, ratlike-looking young man, hardly out of his teens, who had been watching her, and who was close behind her as she told the driver to take her to Crownledge.

“Seen the prince guy off,” muttered the young fellow. “That is all I wanted to know. I’ll get up to the boss and hand it to him.”

It was a small, subdued-looking sort of hotel, in a side street to which the spy made his way, and asked for Mr. Miguel.

“There he is, on the other side of the lobby,” replied the clerk at the desk. “Do you know him when you see him?”

“Sure I know him,” was the reply, as the fellow slouched over to Prince Miguel.

“Well, Collins?” was Miguel’s greeting. “Did you see Prince Marcos go away?”

“Yes. He’s gone, with three other fellows. One of them was the man I’d seen before—his valet, Phillips. I don’t know the other two.”

“Ah! How did the prince look? Was he sick?”

“Didn’t seem so.”

“Couldn’t you tell?”

“No. He was muffled up in a big overcoat, and you could see only his nose and mustache.”

“Mustache? Did he wear a mustache?”

“Yes. It was a little one, but I lamped it all right. He walked along steadily, talking to the girl.”

“What girl? Who are you talking about?”

“Miss Solado. At least, that’s who you said she was, when you was showing me the people I had to pick up later. She was with this here prince, and she went into the train with him. Afterward she came out, called a taxi, and told the driver to take her to a place in upper Broadway. She said she would show him the house she wanted when she got there.”

Collins delivered all this information with the smoothness of one accustomed to making detailed reports, and Miguel knew he had heard all that his spy could tell him.

“You are quite sure Prince Marcos was not seriously hurt?”

“I’ll bet on that. He swung his arms as he walked, and you could tell, from the move of him, that he felt pretty good all around. I know how a guy acts when he’s been plugged. There ain’t nothing wrong with this prince, and you can bet on it.”

“That will do, Collins,” said Miguel, after a pause, during which he finished the cigarette he had been smoking and lighted another. “Be at your home, so that I can call you up when I want you.”

“I’ll be there right along as soon as I can get there. It’s a regular hotel, even if it does look like a saloon, and we have a telephone and everything to make a fellow comfortable. So why shouldn’t I stay there?”

When Collins had gone, Prince Miguel got up, stretched himself, and walked up and down the lobby, cigarette in mouth, and deeply cogitating.

“Solado was right!” he muttered, between his teeth. “He’s a sharp man, is Solado. He knew Marcos was too badly shot to go to Penza just now. Yet a man supposed to be Marcos has gone. I guess I’ll call up Marcos’ mother from Newport on the long distance, and tell her Marcos has met with an accident. She’ll come rushing up to Crownledge to see her son, and if he’s still there, in bed, as I believe, why, I shall know what to wire to Solado.”

He chuckled as he lighted another cigarette and strolled over to the telephone desk to tell the operator to call up Newport.

CHAPTER III.
A PUZZLE FOR MIGUEL.

There was no train from Newport that night by the time the Princess Laura Marcos, mother of the wounded prince, got the telephone message from Miguel, and she did not feel equal to motoring the distance at night.

By eleven o’clock the next morning, however, she stood in the library at Crownledge, talking to Miguel. He had met her at the station, and though he had not been a welcome visitor at Crownledge heretofore, he had brought her to her home now as a matter of course.

Claudia had met her Aunt Laura at the door, and had said that she was staying at Crownledge to help take care of the gentleman who had been hurt in the grounds at Crownledge.

The princess had wondered why Claudia spoke of her cousin in such a peculiar way. “The gentleman who has been hurt” did not sound as if there were much cousinly affection.

But, then, Claudia Solado had quarreled with Marcos several times, and probably they had had a tiff now. That would accent for it.

“Of course,” murmured his mother to herself. “I never knew two young people who liked each other who were not always quarreling. That does not mean anything. Still, considering the poor boy is sick——”

Claudia had slipped out of the room, saying she wanted to tell the trained nurse that her patient’s mother was coming up.

The nurse had never been told the name of her patient. She had heard him vaguely spoken of as ‘Marcos,’ but she had caught it as ‘Marsh.’ Indeed, she had asked Claudia, after the departure of Nick Carter, if that was the name, to which the girl, inspired by a sudden idea, had replied in the affirmative.

Claudia went into the bedchamber, and telling the nurse that a lady had come to visit the patient, went to the bed and bent over her cousin.

“Marcos!”

“Yes?”

“Your mother is here.”

“Who sent for her?”

“I don’t know. But Miguel is downstairs.”

Marcus started up in bed, but, catching the reproving eye of the nurse, he fell back again, and permitting that cool-handed, nerveless person to rearrange the covers. Then he turned to Claudia and whispered:

“How dare that scoundrel come into my home?”

“I’ll find that out for you later. But listen to me.”

“Go on.”

“When your mother comes in, don’t recognize her. You are a Mr. Marsh, and you were coming to see Mr. Marcos, who went out of town last night. Do you understand all that?”

“Of course I do. Now that Miguel is here, I know that all kinds of deceit has to be practiced to get the better of him. Well, I’d do anything for the sake of my beloved country. Better get that nurse out of the room.”

“She’s gone. She won’t come back till after the interview. I’ll take care of that,” the girl assured him.

Now that Claudia had attended to one side of the affair, she had to look after the other. She must find an opportunity to whisper a warning to her Aunt Laura.

She went back to the library and beckoned to her aunt. Miguel was about to walk forward with the princess, but something in Claudia’s eye warned her. So she coolly stepped away from him and stood alone by a window, with the girl.

The hint that they wanted to speak to each other confidentially was too positive for Miguel to pretend to misunderstand, although he would have given a great deal to know what they intended to talk about.

So short was the conference, however, that he felt sure nothing of importance had passed between them.

“Do not recognize Marcos, aunt,” whispered Claudia. “Beware of Miguel. I’ll tell you about it later.”

“Who is it in bed, then?”

“It is Marcos. But pretend you don’t know him. He is supposed to be a Mr. Marsh.”

“I understand.”

The Princess Marcos, mother of the ruler of Joyalita, did understand. She was an able, quick-thinking woman of the world, and she had seen enough of diplomacy and statesmanship to make her much more sophisticated than the average woman of mere society.

Claudia led the way up the broad, old-fashioned staircase, followed by Miguel and the princess.

Claudia softly opened the door of the bedchamber, and stood aside to let her Aunt Laura enter.

Miguel followed the princess, and Claudia went in last, closing the door after her.

The only occupants of the room were the three persons who had just entered and the quiet figure in the bed. He held a hand over his face, as if he could not bear even the dim light of the chamber. A white bandage was around his forehead.

“Remember, aunt!” whispered Claudia, in her ear. “Mr. Marsh! You do not know him. Miguel would not believe me, so I have not told him.”

The princess walked over to the bed, saying “Marcos! My boy!” As she reached the bedside, she stopped in well-simulated astonishment, and, looking around, asked: “Why, Claudia, who is this gentleman?”

“It is Mr. Marsh. He is a friend of Marcos’. Who did you expect to see?”

“I thought it was Marcos,” was the answer.

“Marcos, aunt? Why, how could that be? Marcos went to Joyalita yesterday. He was sorry to go, because he would have liked to stay with Mr. Marsh. As it was, he gave orders that Mr. Marsh should be carefully attended until able to get up safely.”

“I am very sorry, sir,” said Marcos’ mother, turning again to the bed. “I thought it was my son. But I should not possess natural humanity, if I did not sympathize very heartily with you, even though I have never met you before. I trust you will soon be restored to health.”

“Thank you, madam!” returned Marcos quietly.

She gave him a graceful bow and walked toward the door, without even looking back.

What it cost her to do this only she knew. But she had a part to play for the benefit of her beloved son, even though she did not understand why, and she nerved herself to go through it to the end.

As she went out, Miguel looked at the bed. Disheveled, with the water-soaked bandage around his brow to allay the fever and relieve his aching head, Marcos did not look like himself.

“Confound him! I can’t swear to him!” muttered Miguel. “Did Marcos go to Joyalita? Did he, or didn’t he?”

Outside the sick room the three walked down to the library, where Prince Miguel bowed, and expressed his sorrow to have brought the princess from Newport on a misunderstanding. Then he walked out to his taxicab and told the driver to speed downtown as fast as he could.

When Miguel had gone, Laura turned to her aunt with admiration and pleasure shining in her eyes.

“You were splendid, aunt. If Miguel had ever found out that this was really Marcos, he would have known that the person representing him who has gone to Joyalita could not be he. That would have meant all kinds of trouble for Marcos and Joyalita, too.”

But before she had finished, the mother was upstairs again, bending over her son and asking him what it all meant.

CHAPTER IV.
ON THE ROAD TO JOYALITA.

Four days had passed since Nick Carter, in the character of Prince Marcos, had glided out of the Grand Central Terminal in New York City. He and his three companions were traveling through a mountainous region in Central America. The soft breath of the Caribbean Sea tempered the tropical heat and made the atmosphere ideal.

Nick had purchased a high-powered motor car before leaving the United States. So when he found it desirable to leave the lines of railroads and depend upon the highways, he brought his car into use, and traveled almost as fast—and much more comfortably—than he had in his Pullman car.

Nick Carter drove and Patsy was by his side. As the sun went down behind a range of rugged mountains in the west, and the road became suddenly gloomy, Patsy looked about curiously.

“Gee! Where do we tear off our sleep to-night, chief?” he asked. “Ain’t there some town on the map that we can get to before pajama and nightie time? And supper? What about that?”

“Not hungry, are you?” asked Nick, smiling behind his mustache.

“Hungry?” ejaculated Patsy sarcastically. “Why, no, chief! Whatever put that in your head? Didn’t I have breakfast, at eight o’clock this morning, and didn’t I get rye bread, fossilized beans, and boiled mud that they called coffee? I had almost as much breakfast as I would give to a three-year-old girl. The coffee—gee! that coffee!—fixed me up right away.”

“Let’s see! What did we do about lunch?” asked Nick, a merry twinkle still in his eye. “Did we have much lunch?”

Patsy actually stood up in the car before he could express his disgust. The occasion called for oratory.

“Lunch!” he howled. “We had a puncture for lunch, and we fed ourselves putting on a new tire and then fixing a stripped gear. Altogether we were three hours hung up on the road. When we got a start at last there was no time to think of eating anything. Where do you think we are now?”

“About thirty miles from a little town I have been in before,” was Nick Carter’s reply. “We’ll get supper and bedrooms there.”

“Thirty miles? We ought to make that in half an hour,” observed Patsy.

“Not on these roads,” corrected Nick. “Sixty miles an hour isn’t much when you’ve got a smooth surface. But along this trail I guess twenty miles will be enough.”

“Gee! That means an hour and a half!” grumbled Patsy. “Well, I’ll chew on my left boot. It looks a little softer than the other. Unless you’ll pull up a minute or two and let me scoop up a handful of sand from the side of the road. With some gasoline to wash it down, that ought to go all right.”

Nick Carter did not reply. He knew Patsy Garvan too well to take any notice of his complaints. No doubt the young man was hungry. But let any occasion arise for him to become active, and he would forget his inner wants at once. Having nothing else to do, he grumbled.

Chick laughed in the back of the car at Patsy’s comical distress, but sympathized with him, nevertheless.

It was true, as Patsy had intimated, that they had had nothing to eat since breakfast, and it certainly had been an unsatisfactory meal.

They were passing through a region where the population had too little work to do to keep them in health. Like Patsy, they grumbled, in consequence. They cultivated a little corn and a few beans, and lived on the fruits that grew ready to their hands for the remainder. But always they were dissatisfied.

Occasionally a wagon, drawn by mules, would make a trip through these mountains. Then there would be some few purchases, mostly of coffee and tobacco, the money being wages received for farming for the few comparatively wealthy men who had a score or so of acres under cultivation and were too lazy to do the work themselves.

If they had not needed coffee and tobacco, nobody would have worked at all.

At a small farmhouse Nick and his party had stopped for the night. The sight of real money had stimulated the woman of the house, and she had actually given up her own room and another to the four wayfarers.

There had been supper and breakfast after a sort, for which Nick Carter had paid with a liberality that the people considered only right for a royal personage.

They knew of Prince Marcos, they said—although this was not his country—and they had heard that he was generous, as well as handsome.

When Nick Carter had paid them for the meals and rooms, they were convinced that common report was correct. The husband, wife, with four or five half-naked children, all agreed that Prince Marcos was magnificently free-handed.

“This next town is called Paron, and it is in Carita, which adjoins Joyalita,” remarked Nick, in a general way, to his companions.

“Carita is the little country that wants to swallow up Joyalita, isn’t it?” asked Chick.

“Yes, sir,” answered Phillips, the valet, who had been silent heretofore, although taking a lively interest in the conversation about him. “Representatives of Carita are at Penza now. I hope we shall get there in time to save Joyalita.”

“We shall do that, Phillips,” promised Nick Carter, without looking around from the steering wheel. “We shall roll into Penza some time in the morning.”

“If we don’t get there before noon, it will be too late,” Phillips reminded him.

“We shall not be late,” said Nick shortly.

“And you can bet that when the chief says it that way, it goes,” observed Patsy to himself.

Chick had discarded his high hat—which Phillips had bestowed carefully in its own box—and now wore a soft cap, which shaded his eyes. He had been staring out to one side of the road, in silence, with his hand over the visor of the cap, to make his vision better.

“Chief!” he whispered, leaning over the back of the seat. “I think I saw him again just now.”

“Where?”

“Riding down the hill, on the other side of that thicket of big trees. There seems to be a road over there where horses can go.”

“There is a trail of that kind,” answered Nick, steadily driving. “It is not bad for horses, and it is much more direct to Joyalita than this road.”

“Then that is how this fellow keeps on cutting off corners,” suggested Chick.

“It can easily be done,” assented Nick, still looking straight ahead, in the light of the electric headlamps which he had just turned on. “How many times have we seen him now?”

“Three.”

“Since when?”

“Last night. He passed the house where we slept. We saw him again while we were fixing up the tire and gears, along the road, and now here he is again,” replied Chick.

“You didn’t mention the time when we saw the horse standing, with his bridle trailing, in the valley, by the side of a stream,” put in Patsy. “We didn’t see the man, but he must have been there, all the same.”

“That’s true,” agreed Nick. “Look at him through the glass the next time we catch him in daylight. We ought to have done that before.”

“I did do it,” announced Chick. “You were busy with the car when we stopped about noon, and I took a good long stare at him across the hood.”

“Well? What did he look like? Did you know him?”

“Never saw him before,” was Chick’s answer. “But I’ll know him again. He is a dark fellow, with short hair. He is in a linen suit of light gray, with a belt holding a sword, and a large panama hat. There is a holster, with a pistol in it, hanging to his belt, too.”

“Soldier?”

“I don’t think so. He hasn’t a uniform, and he doesn’t carry himself stiff enough.”

Nick Carter drove on, thinking, for ten minutes, before he spoke again.

“Sure you don’t recognize his face, Chick?” he asked suddenly.

“I couldn’t see his face at that distance. I could only make out his general appearance.”

“Yet you know his dress is gray?”

Chick looked uncomfortable for a moment. Then he blurted out, half defiantly, as he leaned over the back of the driving seat:

“If a man has on clothes that are not red, yellow, black, or white, what can they be but gray?”

Nick Carter smiled, and Patsy burst into a guffaw that made Chick very indignant.

“Say, Chick! You’re the cutest little guesser, when it comes to colors, that ever moseyed down the pike. What was the color of the lunch we had to-day?”

“That will do, Patsy!” gently rebuked Nick Carter. “It does not matter much whether the man’s clothes were gray or any other color, so long as we block his game, whatever it may be. Here’s the town of Paron that I told you about, and right before us is the hotel.”

Nick drove the car into a courtyard and got out, glad to stretch his limbs after his long drive. His three companions were by his side as he looked about for some place to take his car.

It was a rambling sort of shack that Nick had dignified by the name of hotel, but quite evidently the landlord took himself seriously.

He was a fat, greasy, long-haired individual, and he spoke in broken English, or in Spanish, according to the preference of his guests.

Nick Carter had been to this place before, but it was several years previously, and the landlord did not remember him.

This was just as well, since Nick had come now in another character than his own, and he stood quietly by, while Phillips informed the landlord that this was his highness, Prince Marcos, of Joyalita, on his way to Penza.

Phillips spoke Spanish, and instantly there was a voluble conversation between the two, with the landlord protesting that everything in this house, as well as in the whole town, was at the disposal of Prince Marcos.

“He’s a liar, your highness,” whispered Phillips to Nick Carter, as he drew a little aside. “His name is Mala. He hates Joyalita and everybody in it. We must watch him.”

“That’s cheerful information,” returned Nick. “I remember seeing the fellow when I motored through here a few years ago. But I had very little to do with him then.”

“He would be all right to an American coming through in a car,” was Phillips’ response. “It is the motor cars that have made this village what it is. Many automobiles pass along every week. Before that nothing was here. Bicycles—that’s all.”

Phillips referred to the useful “bike” in a contemptuous tone. Evidently he regarded it as not worth any consideration.

Mala came forward, rubbing his hands, and asking, in Spanish, if his highness would condescend to honor his humble house till the morning, and what his highness would be graciously pleased to like for supper.

“In the first place, Mala,” broke in Phillips sternly, “you know that in Joyalita the speech is English——”

“Ah! Yes!” interrupted Mala, with an apologetic upward sweep of his palms. “I am stupid. I am a mule.”

“A jackass, I should say,” remarked Patsy, in an inaudible tone. “I don’t like that guy.”

“In the next place,” went on Phillips, disregarding all interruptions, “you will set forth the best of everything you have, with some good wine in a sealed bottle. Understand?”

“I will open the wine for his highness,” protested Mala. “He must not have the trouble——”

“You’ll do nothing of the kind,” snapped Phillips. “I’ll open the bottle. Bring it sealed, or I will not take it from you.”

Mala shrugged his shoulders, and pointed to a large open room, in which three lamps, illuminated with American kerosene, were burning. The room had several fairly comfortable chairs, including two rockers and a sofa, with a large mahogany table in the center. It was a curious combination of American civilization and mountain savagery.

Nick Carter saw that Chick and Patsy were looking after the car, putting it under the cover of a tumble-down old shack.

Then he turned toward the room into which the bowing Mala was anxious to usher him.

Nick sat down near a wide-open window, which commanded the road, while Mala went to look after the preparations for supper and to get the sealed bottle of wine for which Phillips had so urgently stipulated.

For five minutes Nick Carter reclined in one of the two comfortable American rockers, his hand before his face, but his eyes peering out between the fingers.

Suddenly he jumped from the chair, ran out of the front door, and crossed the dusty road.

Behind a huge bowlder, one of several which had rolled down from the mountains at different periods, he came across a man, who had been peeping out slyly, watching the detective in the hotel room.

He wore a panama hat and he had a ridiculous sword in his belt.

Nick Carter seized this man by the throat in so strong a grip that he could only gurgle incoherently, as he struggled vainly to escape.

“So you didn’t die, after all!” said Nick, with a grim smile.

“Die? Of course not. Who do you think I am?” demanded the man, as the detective slightly released his grip to allow the words to come.

“Who do I think you are, my friend?” rejoined Nick Carter. “I know who you are, in spite of the mustache you have stuck on your lip to deceive me. You are Jason, the rascal who was in the employ of Prince Marcos, now trying to get back to his own country in time to save it from ruin.”

“My name is not Jason, and I don’t know what you are talking about,” was the surly response. “I never heard of Prince Marcos. Who are you?”

Before Nick could say anything more, the fellow, realizing that the hold upon him was not so strong as it had been, made a sudden dive and got away.

A mocking laugh came back to the detective. But it was too dark to pursue the man, and Nick went back to the hotel.

“It looks as if I shall have some little work to do before I land in Penza to put my veto on that annexation resolution in the name of Prince Marcos,” he murmured, as he lighted a cigar.

CHAPTER V.
A ONE-EYED BEAUTY.

Nothing occurred to disturb the supper which Nick Carter and his two assistants enjoyed later.

Phillips oscillated between the dining room and the kitchen regions, bringing the dishes himself.

He would not trust any one else to do this work, and Nick Carter learned afterward that he had superintended the preparation of all the viands, besides being careful that the quart bottle of red wine served had never been tampered with since its importation from Spain.

“Phillips thinks they are going to dope us, I reckon,” observed Patsy, in a whisper, to Chick.

“I shouldn’t be surprised if they did try something like that,” was Chick’s answer. “I suppose you know that Jason was around here to-night, and that he isn’t alone.”

“Gee! Is that so?”

“It certainly is.”