"Like breaking sticks," said Patsy. "You’re in right, chief, to pull off a big stunt of some kind. My money goes on that." Nick Carter dropped the matter temporarily. Only emergency cases ever interfered with the regular routine of his business, and it was not in his nature to figure blindly on what could be accomplished through the relations he had established with Sadie Badger. Later in the morning, nevertheless, Nick sent Patsy Garvan to learn what he could on the quiet concerning the woman during her residence in the flat she then occupied. Nick lunched with a friend in the Waldorf that day. He departed alone about half past one, and had just turned the corner of Fifth Avenue when an approaching limousine swerved to the curbing and its occupant called him by name. "Get in Nick, please, and go with me," he added, opening the door when the detective approached. "Don’t say you’re too busy. You’re the one man I most wanted to see." Nick stepped into the costly car before the last was said. "Home, Greeley. Let her go lively." These directions were to his chauffeur, and the speaker was Frank Mantell, son of the senior partner of the late firm of Mantell & Goulard, whose big department store had been wrecked months before by the robberies of Goulard himself. Nick at once recalled his encounter with him the previous night, and he instinctively felt that the matter on Mantell’s mind, for he obviously was carrying a heavy burden, might indirectly relate to it. It was for that reason that he immediately complied with the young man’s request. "What’s the trouble, Frank?" he inquired, as the limousine sped up the avenue. "You look a bit white and drawn." "Drawn through a knothole, Nick, is about how I feel," Mantell replied, placing his hand on that of the detective. "Are you ill?" "No. Only worried." "About what?" "My wife." "Your wife?" Nick echoed inquiringly. "You don’t mean----” "No, no; there’s nothing wrong on her part, Nick," put in Mantell quickly. "She is all that a man could wish. But we’re living in a house of fear, Nick, a house of fear. The dread that hangs over us is something appalling. I have had in mind to appeal to you for more than a week, but I know you to be so busy that----” "One moment," Nick interposed, noting the exceeding nervousness with which his companion was speaking. "What is the cause of your terrible fear? What is it that you dread? Is your wife threatened in any way, or----” "That’s it!" Mantell cut in quickly. "That hits the nail on the head. She is threatened in a way that is breaking her down mentally and bodily; both of us, in fact. Our lives are becoming a ceaseless shudder, a nightmare from which----” "Stop right there, Frank," Nick commanded, with some austerity. "I’ll listen to no more talk of that kind. Come to the point at once and state the bare facts, or I’ll order your chauffeur to drop me on the next corner."