“Oh, it is nothing,” declared Ched Ramar, putting up his hands with a protesting gesture. “Let us go down again. There are some pieces of jade--vases--that I don’t think I have shown you, and that I should feel honored if you and Mrs. Morrison would take with you as mementos of this evening.” When, half an hour later, the party left the house, the two ladies had the magnificently carved jade vases to which Ched Ramar had referred. But Clarice held clasped to her bosom, as if she feared she might lose it, the gold idol that seemed to have been merely an uncontemplated gift, but which Nick Carter remembered had been promised to her by the strange voice from the lips of the gigantic Buddha. “I wonder just how far thought transference and hypnotism really can go?” he said, as he entered his library and lighted a cigar, an hour or so afterward. CHAPTER IV. AN EARLY-MORNING CALL. It was a custom of Nick Carter to take a brisk walk by himself in the early morning when he had been able to get to bed at a reasonable hour the night before. In accordance with this habit he was out of the house and on his way to Madison Square before seven the day after his visit, with the Benthams and Mrs. Morrison, to the home of Ched Ramar, in Brooklyn. The grass looked and smelled fresh at that hour, for it was a bright morning, and there had been a light shower of rain during the night, which had freshened the verdure and flowers, and brought out their fragrance more than usual. The detective enjoyed a stroll about the little park, and his thoughts were clearer than they would have been in a room. At least, he believed they were. “Hypnotism!” he mused, half aloud. “That is the explanation, no doubt. But it doesn’t make everything clear. For instance, it doesn’t tell me who this Ched Ramar really is. I looked at him closely last night, and I couldn’t see anything in him that warranted my doubting him. Nevertheless, I _do_ doubt him--from the top of his turban to the heels of his slippers.” He took another turn up the path he had chosen for his stroll, in a rather retired part of the square, before he resumed his half-audible cogitations. Then he went on slowly: “It is fortunate for society that the understanding of hypnotism rests chiefly in the hands of men who are to be trusted. Were its power to be wielded to any great extent by criminals, there would be many innocent tools of lawbreakers. It may be that Clarice Bentham is one of them. I hope not, but it looks suspicious. “The greatest tragedy is that, while under the dominion of another’s will, the hypnotic subject has no realization of its doings, and, when consciousness returns, no remembrance. Well, if Ched Ramar is taking advantage of that young girl’s innocence of the ways of the world to make her do things she would shrink from under ordinary circumstances, I don’t think it will be well for Ched Ramar. In fact---- Hello! What’s the trouble now? Here comes Chick!”