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It was a tacit refusal to discuss the matter, and as such Jim accepted it. He turned from the subject with a grunt of discontent. "Well, if I am to undertake your case, you had better let me look at you. But we'll have a clean understanding first, mind, that you obey my orders. I won't be responsible otherwise." Nick opened his eyes with a chuckle.
"My observation was not intended to cast any reflection upon Señora Cervera. I have no doubt that she is perfectly honest." "I should hope not, sir." "By the way, have you the note she sent to you this morning?" "Yes. Here it is." "By mail, or a messenger?" "A messenger brought it." "Ah!" murmured Nick, briefly studying the written page. "Plainly a foreign hand. Very firm and forceful.
But the muscles of Nick Carter's jaws were like fibers of steel, and the instant he realized his situation he opened his mouth no wider.
"I want you," said Nick, pointedly, "for that ugly 'Jack-in-the-box' trick which you perpetrated this afternoon." Cervera's eyes emitted a single swift, fiery gleam, and her red lips drew closer. Yet she cried, still pleasantly: "What do you mean by that, Detective Carter? Is it a joke?" "You'll find it no joke." "If it is, sir, I don't see the point."
"Wake up!" said Nick softly. "Wake up! Don't be afraid." But Muriel turned her face from the light with a moan. Memory winged with horror was sweeping back upon her, and she wanted never to wake again. "Wake up!" Nick said again, and this time there was insistence in his voice. "Open your eyes, Muriel. There is nothing to frighten you." Shuddering, she obeyed him.
Nick laughed aloud. "Man alive! You don't suppose I did it for your sake, do you? Don't you know I wanted to break the journey to the coast?" "Odd place to choose!" commented Will. Nick arose in his own peculiarly abrupt fashion, and thrust his hand through his friend's arm. "Perhaps I thought a couple of days of your society would cheer me up," he observed lightly. "I daresay that seems odd too."
Meantime the next speaker, a woman, had mounted upon a box, and was crying in a shrill voice: "We are Socialists! We are the only political party which dares to speak for the working class of Lockmanville! We protest against this outrage! We demand free speech! There has been bribery in our city council!" Then suddenly the boy heard a disturbance behind him, and turned, just in the nick of time.
Another volunteered further information in Cree, in which the names of Mary and Nick Grylls were coupled. "What's that?" demanded the startled Garth. "Mary Co-que-wasa Nick Grylls's woman," said his first informant. That was all he could get out of them. It did not conduce to the ease of his first bed in the wilderness.
"I do na live in London," Nick began. "What matters the place?" said she. "Live wheresoever thine heart doth please. It is enough so. Thou mayst kiss our hand." She held her hand out, bright with jewels. He knelt and kissed it as if it were all a doing in a dream, or in some unlikely story he had read. But a long while after he could smell the perfume from her slender fingers on his lips.
At that moment a card was brought in. The superintendent looked at it and whistled softly. Then he handed the card to Nick, who read the name. The two men exchanged glances, and both smiled. "Mrs. John Jones," said Nick; "well, this puts a new face on the matter." "It's a great case," was the reply. "I'm mighty glad you happened to be on the scene at once."
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