“Yes, a total stranger. She knows nothing about him. I happen to know, however, that he’s a very bad egg, and I wanted to get him.” Nick remained only a few moments longer, then went to the outer office and rejoined the waiting girl. “Come with me,” he said pleasantly. “There is no occasion for you to remain here. I don’t think you will ever be wanted again, Miss Bailey.” “I cannot express my gratitude, Mr. Carter,” she replied, while she accompanied him to the street. “Don’t try,” smiled Nick. “Tell me something about yourself and your brother. He used to work for Mantell & Goulard, I understand.” “Yes, sir. Young Mr. Mantell gave him a position there for--for my sake,” said Helen, blushing in a way that Nick rightly interpreted. “But Bart can’t go straight. He is bad, awfully bad. He is only my half brother, sir.” Nick saw that the topic was a painful one for her, and he decided not to press his inquiries. He learned that the rascal had frequently threatened her, however, because of her refusals to join in his knavish projects, and that the girl stood somewhat in fear of him. Nick took her Lexington Avenue address, therefore, and promised to aid her again if occasion required it. Smiling in response to her repeated thanks, he then placed her in a taxicab which he hailed and saw her driven rapidly away, well satisfied with the kindly deed he had done, but not supposing for a moment that it would have any further significance. CHAPTER III. THE MAN OF LAST RESORT. “There are detectives, Mr. Carter, and detectives,” said Nick Carter’s visitor. “By that I mean that only half of them are worthy of the name. Half of the remainder are mediocre, and only one in a hundred of the rest is really keen and clever. You, Mr. Carter, are the recognized man of last resort. When all others have failed, it is to you that the harrowed victim of crookdom turns for aid, as the only man in Christendom who can ferret out the truth and round up the guilty. That, sir, is why I am here.” Nick Carter laughed. “You are complimentary, Mr. Mantell, and I appreciate your very exalted opinion of me,” he replied, a bit dryly. “All that sounds very nice and pretty, remarkably so, but it does not do what you asserted. It tells me only what impelled you to come here, not why you are here. Suppose you come to the point and tell me why.” Nick’s visitor joined in the detective’s genial laugh, as did Chick and Patsy, who were seated with them in Nick’s attractively furnished library. It was about seven o’clock in the evening, that of the very day on which had occurred the episodes described. He was a young man, this visitor, of remarkably frank and prepossessing appearance. He was still under thirty, set up like an athlete and scrupulously well dressed. He was the type of man to whom others are instinctively drawn, and to whom women turn for a second look.