“Chick!” he called down to his assistant. “If anybody comes, tell me. Then, if you must, bring him down at all risks. But--make no noise.” “Am I in on this?” asked Patsy. “Of course.” “Good! Here’s where we shake down the plums. But telling us not to make any noise sort of puts prickles on the job.” With his two assistants at the foot of the ladder, ready to fly at any intruder, Nick Carter leaned forward, and, in lowered tones, spoke through the brazen lips of the great Buddha. “You will obey!” were his first words. As he spoke he fastened his gaze firmly on the eyes of the girl, and was encouraged when she looked steadily at him. The vacant expression had left them. This told him that he had been able to take the place of Ched Ramar, and that the hypnotic power exerted by the East Indian had been maintained by himself. That it would not be easy to make this sort of transfer he had realized from the first. But he believed it could be done if he could concentrate himself sufficiently to overwhelm the mentality of the subject. He had succeeded now, almost beyond his hopes. The girl would do anything he commanded. CHAPTER X. HIS HOUR OF SUCCESS. “You will obey!” repeated Nick Carter. “Obey!” she responded dreamily. “That is well. Tell me what you did when you got the packet you brought to me this morning. You remember that it _was_ this morning?” “It was this morning,” she replied, repeating the last few words of his query, as was always her way. “Where did you get them? The library?” “The library.” “Who showed you where they were?” “Where they were?” she repeated. “Yes. Tell me.” “He did,” she answered. “The man I fear.” “What’s his name?” But to this there was no reply. She seemed to have no remembrance of names. Perhaps she never had known the name of this man she feared. “Is it the man who speaks through Buddha?” She seemed to wrestle hard with this question, as if trying to comprehend its meaning. At last she slowly nodded. “You are sure?” “Sure!” she repeated. “That is enough,” said Nick Carter. “The packet will again be placed in your hands. Take it, as you were commanded, and put it where you got it--in the table leg.” A gleam of understanding came into her eyes, that had in it more of memory than she had shown before. Nick Carter knew then that this girl, under the fiendish influence of Ched Ramar, had indeed robbed her father without knowing that she had done so. A half-repressed ejaculation dangerously near an oath broke from the detective’s lips, as he came down the ladder. Hurriedly he took the packet from his pocket, where he had slipped it before ascending the ladder, and looked through it under the red lamp in front of the idol. The girl had already descended, and was walking, like a somnambulist, toward her chair.