CHAPTER III.
“GOOD-BY TO THE SIMPLE LIFE!”
He told her what he had heard, and her big, blue eyes grew bigger still with incredulous amazement.
“You take my breath away!” she gasped. “Alfred Knox Atherton, one of the idols of New York society, who is hand in glove with most of the ‘big bugs’! It sounds unbelievable.”
“It’s a bit of an eye opener, isn’t it?” chuckled the waiter. “What a sensation I could create if I hunted up a reporter and filled him up with the details of that little conversation in Frost’s room! But, of course, I’m not going to do anything of the kind. It’s too good a thing to give away. It’s a veritable gold mine, and I’m going to work it for all it’s worth.”
“Blackmail, I suppose?” the girl suggested calmly. “You will interview Mr. Atherton and tell him what you have discovered, and threaten to expose him unless he buys your silence?”
“Not so fast, my dear! That’s not quite the idea. I shall certainly interview Atherton and tell him what I have discovered, but instead of demanding money as the price of my silence, I shall demand a place in the firm. In other words, I shall say to Atherton: ‘I know everything. Let me stand in with you and share the loot, or I’ll give away the show!’”
The girl nodded approvingly.
“Yes, that will be much better than merely demanding money,” she said.
“You bet your life it will!” declared her husband, and it was curious to note that he seemed perfectly at home with American slang. Indeed, there was nothing suggestive of Switzerland about him now. “Instead of a lump sum,” he went on, “it means a comfortable income for the rest of our lives. Better still, it means action, excitement, risk. Perhaps, even the chance of a tussle with Nick Carter.”
Elaine shivered at the mention of the great detective’s name, but the man laughed light-heartedly.
“You don’t like to hear that name?” he asked teasingly.
“I don’t,” his wife confessed. “Nick Carter has never really caught us, but he’s spoiled more than one pretty plan of ours, and he has always seemed a sort of bogy man to me. I wish you hadn’t mentioned him just now, and I don’t see how you can think of him at such a time—at least, how you can make a joke of it. Whenever Nick Carter comes to my mind, I find my courage oozing out, and my feet getting cold.”
Her husband leaned over the corner of the table, gave her a great hug, and kissed her.
“Cheer up, little girl!” he said. “Nick Carter isn’t going to hurt you. Trust me for that.”
“But what if he catches you? Could anything hurt me more than that?”
“But he isn’t going to catch me, dear. I’ll admit that he hasn’t really tried as yet, but I’m perfectly ready to have him do it. He’s certainly a wonder, but I think I can tie him up in a knot, and I like to think of him when I’m planning to turn a trick. It puts me on my mettle, and makes me plan more carefully than I otherwise might. Therefore, I’m really glad he’s on the job. You mustn’t have such fancies. They’re no real part of you. You’re the pluckiest girl who ever bucked up against the law, and you know you would tackle anything.”
Elaine’s smile was serious.
“I’ve proved that I’m not a coward, and I like excitement as well as you do. I come nearer being afraid of Nick Carter, though, than of anybody else. He’s been so successful. They say he never really went after a crook, big or little, without getting him in the end, no matter how long it took.”
Max reseated himself again.
“The longest string of victories is sometimes broken,” he said confidently. “There’s no doubt that Carter has set a hot pace, but he can’t keep it up. Somebody is going to spoil his record some of these days—and why not yours truly?”
The girl shrugged her shoulders.
“I know there’s no use of arguing with you,” she said. “I wouldn’t have you different, anyway. If you weren’t so sure of yourself, you couldn’t have done half the things you’ve done, and very likely you wouldn’t have won me, either. Tell me this, though: Supposing Mr. Atherton tries to bluff you when you go to see him? Supposing he indignantly denies your charge, and orders you to leave the house, and all that sort of thing, what will you do? You see, you can’t prove that he and Mr. Frost are leading this double life. You were alone when you listened to their talk this evening, and if they both deny that they said what you say they did, you have no witness to bring forward.”
“Don’t you fret. I’ve thought of that,” the man informed her. “Before I pay that little call on Atherton, I’m going to have positive proof of his guilt, and I’m going to know who his other accomplices are.”
“But how can you obtain such a proof?”
“By going to Freehold. It’s now ten minutes to twelve, and the job is fixed for three o’clock in the morning. I have tuned up my motor bike, and everything is ready. If I leave here about quarter after twelve, I ought to reach Freehold easily by two o’clock.
“When I do so,” he continued, “I shall hide my machine, and keep watch on the Meadowview house. When I have seen all I want to see, I’ll come back here, and to-morrow I’ll interview Atherton. He’ll have to accept my terms when he finds out what I know, and then——”
He refilled his glass, and surveyed it with the critical eye of a connoisseur.
“Good-by to the Marmawell!” he said. “Good-by to the front row of the chorus! Good-by to the simple life in a tenement house! Exit all the things we hate, and enter all the things we love—ease and wealth and luxury!”
He drained the glass, and, twenty minutes later, mounted on his motor cycle, started for Long Island.