With his brows drawn together and his arms folded across his breast, he paced softly up and down his room, turning his discoveries over and over in his mind. He had heard enough to realize that Crawford was in deadly peril. With his usual cunning, Stephen Follansbee had again taken what promised to be a perfectly, safe course. To the specialist’s crooked brain, there could be no possible chance of fixing the contemplated crime on him, if it was Stone, the tool, who was playing the principal part. To be sure, Nick had overheard a conversation which left him in no doubt as to where the real responsibility lay. He had heard Follansbee say that as a result of the proposed measures, Crawford would be dead before the twenty-seventh. To the uninitiated, that would have seemed conclusive, and more than enough to convict the physician. Nick Carter knew better, however; at any rate, he knew enough to be sure that Follansbee would make a great fight if the case ever came to trial, and might easily wriggle out of it. In the first place, he was a distinguished man, a leading light in his profession, and the ruling spirit of a great hospital. Nick was the only witness, and it would be very hard, if not impossible, for the detective, with all his reputation, to convince a jury on the strength of such evidence alone that Doctor Stephen Follansbee would stoop to become the accessory to a murder. Follansbee would have the advantage of dealing with a demented man, and could insist that everything which seemed suspicious about his actions—the use of the fire escape and all—had been due to that fact. In other words, he might build up a plausible excuse on the theory that he had been humoring Stone in order to study his case, and to see how far the miner’s insanity would carry him. “It must be the germ of some deadly disease, characteristic of the tropics,” Nick told himself, “and he has left the hypodermic syringe there for Stone to use. That’s as plain as the nose on my face. But without more evidence than I now have, I can’t be sure of securing a conviction. Follansbee is as shrewd as they make them. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to have him claim that the contents of the syringe were harmless, and that he was merely ‘stringing’ Stone for some medical reason. What he said about Crawford’s death could always be attributed to the same motive, and his reputation is so great that it would probably hypnotize a jury into accepting his word for it. He’s a cunning rascal, and no mistake. How am I going to manage this affair? I’ve got to do something before two-thirty, but what?”