Beyond the first impulse of resistance, Jimmy made none at all; and when the detective thrust him back again upon the chair where he had been seated before, he looked up with a quiet smile, as if he rather enjoyed the proceeding. “Jimmy,” said Nick, “I’m not going to monkey with you. You are past all that. You have laid your plans, and you think they will work out to the end. But they won’t. They might do so with some people, but they won’t with me. Now, I offer you your liberty upon those three conditions, and I do it for Nan’s sake, not for yours.” “Why don’t you marry her, Carter?” was the cool response. “You’re a widower, and she is twice a widow. Why don’t you marry her? You seem to be mightily stuck on her.” “I am, in the sense that I thoroughly respect a good woman, Jimmy, and Nan is that.” “She was good enough to go to you and give things away up here, when she supposed that she had the kibosh on me,” sneered Jimmy. “She did not come to me and give you away, Jimmy. I met her by accident; and even then it was after you had broken your solemn word given to her that night. What has changed you so, Jimmy? You used to be a man of your word, even though you were a crook.” “I’m not Jimmy, I tell you. Jimmy is dead. Nothing of him remains—unless it is that ghost we have been talking about. Come, Carter, take these irons off me. You can only make trouble for Nan, if I am found in this predicament. She would be the one to suffer; not I.” “You think so.” “I know so, Carter. I know whereof I speak. I don’t do things halfway, and you know I do not. I intend to carry off this plan I have laid out, Nick Carter to the contrary, notwithstanding.” “What does that plan include, Jimmy?” “If I should tell you, you would know.” “Do you mean that you would have married that girl, if fortune had not gone against you in the way it has?” “I intend to marry her, as it is. I have got a name to perpetuate, Carter; the name of Dinwiddie. There is not an older or a better one in this benighted country of yours.” “Perhaps you will tell me how you came by that name,” suggested the detective; and he was surprised when Duryea laughed aloud. “I’d like to tell you; by Jove, I would, and no mistake, Carter. It is almost too good to keep. But that would be throwing altogether too much information in your way—and it cannot be done. Look here, Carter, I’ll tell you what I’ll do.” “Well?” This was what Nick had been hoping for. He had now got his man to a point where he was tacitly admitting his position, and was doing his share of the talking. “We’ll admit, for the sake of the circumstance, that I am the ghost of Bare-Faced Jimmy, or at least that I represent the ghost. We’ll admit that the ghost got the diamonds. We’ll admit that the ghost can return them. See?” “Yes.”