CHAPTER XXXIV.

THE GIRL IN THE CASE.

“Will you take me to him?” asked the girl, with a blush. Then she went on in a more resolute tone, and as if she knew she had nothing of which to be ashamed: “He has asked me to marry him, Mr. Carter.”

“Ah!”

“Yes, that’s what I told him,” she continued innocently. “I said it could never be.”

“I didn’t say anything,” smiled the detective.

“I know you didn’t. At least, you only said ‘Ah!’ But I know what you meant, and I agree with you.”

“I wish you would explain, Miss Silvius.”

“You mean that he is a multimillionaire, if he chooses to claim his own. If I were to marry him, people might say he was throwing himself away on a poor girl.”

“I don’t think it would matter what people might say.”

“It would matter a great deal to me,” she interrupted, with decision. “I am getting a living by teaching music. My father teaches the violin. We both play when we get a chance. And—and—sometimes the places we play at are not at all—at all nice.”

“Poor girl!” murmured Nick, below his breath. Then, aloud: “We all have to do things we don’t like sometimes, Miss Silvius. I can assure you, knowing Howard Milmarsh as well as I do, that if he asked you to marry him, he will insist on your doing it—providing, of course, that you care for him.”

“I do,” burst out the girl involuntarily. Then she blushed again. “I did not mean to say that. I’ve told him I shall never marry, and I intend to keep my word.”

“No doubt. Girls always intend to keep their word when they make a rash assertion of that kind,” said Nick, with a laugh. “You say you haven’t seen him since the night of the fire?”

“No. We were all so much excited, and my poor father, who had rheumatism, was in such a dangerous state, that I was only too glad that some of the neighbors took us in and cared for us. When I came to myself, and could make inquiries about Mr. Gordon, no one knew where he was. I couldn’t find any one who remembered seeing him after he came down the ladder, except that a policeman said he was hurt.”

“I took him away in my motor car,” said the detective quietly.

“You did? And is he well? Can you take me to him? Is he here, in your house?”

“Not at present. But what made you think of coming here to-day? Why did you connect me with the disappearance of this—er—Mr. Gordon?”

“The same policeman who told me he was taken away in a motor car saw me on the street this morning. We have always been on speaking terms since the fire. He said to-day he had heard that the motor car in which Mr. Gordon—as everybody called him where he lived—was taken away belonged to the detective, Nick Carter.”

“Yes?”

“It was not difficult to find your address. So my father and I came down to try to see you. I was so disappointed when your man said you were away. We had come a long way, and I was determined to see you if I could. So we said we would wait.”

“You have been here more than an hour?”

“Yes, but we didn’t mind waiting, so long as you are here at last. We should have waited another hour, and more than that. And if we had not seen you to-day, we should have been here again to-morrow.”

“That’s true, sir,” added Roscoe Silvius, who had hardly spoken. “I can’t say all I should like, but I don’t think I need speak my gratitude. You surely must _know_. Why, Mr. Carter, you plucked me out of the very jaws of a horrible death!”

“I’m very glad I happened to be there,” returned Carter earnestly. “At such a time as that any man would have done what I did. Mr.—er—Gordon, was as active as I was.”

“Yes, but he couldn’t have done it alone, although I saw that he would have given his life to save us. Then there is the young man over there at the other side of the room—Mr. Chick. I remember how he helped to get my father down the ladder when it was breaking in the middle. I wish I could say something to him that would seem only partly adequate.”

“Don’t say anything, Miss Silvius,” put in Chick, blushing like a girl himself. “It was the chief who did it. I only helped him a little. And—and—it was all in my day’s work. Nothing to talk about!”

“Well, now, Mr. Carter, will you take me to him?” asked the girl, going back to her former request.

“I should hardly like to do that without first seeing him,” answered the detective kindly. “You see——”

“He is still ill? Isn’t that it, Mr. Carter?”

There was an agony of anxiety in her voice that caused it to tremble as she looked eagerly into his face.

“Yes, he is ill,” admitted Nick. “I am going to see him at the hospital.”

“Is—is he very bad?”

“I don’t know. I do not think so. The last time I saw him, some days ago, he was up and dressed. The trouble is with his mind. The shock of the injuries he suffered at the fire still affects him. I hope—and expect—it will soon pass away.”

“I wish I could see him.”

“I intend that you shall—but not just now.”

“When?”

“Let me see. It is now four o’clock. I will go to the hospital. You may have an opportunity this evening. I cannot promise, but it may be so. Will you remain here until I get back. You have spent over an hour in this room,” he added, smiling. “You won’t mind another half hour or so, I’m sure.”

“How kind you are!” she murmured.

“Not at all. As Chick says, it is all in my day’s work.”

Chick brought a bundle of magazines to her, and placed a chair for her at the big table, with another for her father.

Carter smiled inwardly as he noted the assiduous attentions of his assistant. Bessie Silvius was a pretty girl.

With a cheerful nod of farewell to Bessie and her father, and another for Chick, the detective went out, picked up a taxi at the next corner, and sped away to the Universal Hospital.

He knew his way about the big building, and did not require anybody to show him how to reach the private room he had engaged for Howard Milmarsh. It was on the fourth floor, and there was good elevator service. In fact, there were two passenger elevators, besides others for taking patients, on cots, from one floor to another, and for other hospital uses.

Most of the doctors and nurses knew him, and he had to stop and speak to several of them before he was allowed to enter the elevator and tell the attendant to put him off on “the fourth.”

As he walked down the long corridor on his way to the room, he met the nurse who was in charge of Howard Milmarsh at night.

“How is he, Miss Jordan?” he asked.

“He had a good night, Mr. Carter. But I haven’t seen him since seven this morning.”

“His mind?”

“I fancy it is better. He seems to remember things a little. I feel sure he will recover in time.”

This nurse had had long experience, comparatively. She was nearly thirty years of age, and was considered one of the most competent of her profession in the hospital. When she said a patient was better, there was reason to believe she was right.

“I’m glad to hear it, Miss Jordan. Were you going to see him now?”

“Yes. I don’t go on till seven. But as I am in the hospital, I’ll go in, of course, to see my patient. I am deeply interested in the case. It is a sad one, it seems to me, for I hear that he is a very wealthy man.”

Miss Jordan looked inquiringly at Nick. But if she expected to receive any information from him as to Howard Milmarsh’s private affairs, she was disappointed. The detective was not given to idle gossip.

The young man was known in the hospital as Robert Gordon. If he had been entered in the name of Howard Milmarsh, there would have been altogether too much curiosity about him, in Nick’s opinion.

The two reached the door of the private room, and Miss Jordan tapped at the door.

It was opened quickly, and Nick saw that there were three doctors and as many nurses standing between him and the bed, and all were talking with more excitement than is usual in a sick chamber.

“Is anything the matter?” demanded the detective.

“He’s gone!” replied one of the doctors, with a jerk. “The patient has left the hospital, and we are questioning Miss Sawyer, the day nurse, to find out how it happened.”

“Gone?” echoed Nick sharply. “Do you mean he ran away without anybody knowing he had done so?”

“No, no, Mr. Carter. Not so bad as that. Such a thing could not happen in a well-managed institution like the Universal Hospital. But he went for a stroll about the building, and on the lawn, and slipped out of the front door without anybody in the office on the main floor noticing him. That is the report.”

“Oh, that’s the report, is it?” observed Nick dryly.