The audacity of Green-eye Gordon’s venture has doubtless been apparent from the beginning, but now the real purpose of his impersonation has begun to be discernible. He was not there in Nick Carter’s shoes, in undisturbed possession of the detective’s study, for the mere satisfaction involved in such a daring masquerade. Of course, the experience was a stimulating one, and the clever rascal chuckled to himself every time he pictured Nick’s face when the detective learned the truth. It was something more practical, though, that had brought him there. Naturally, if he succeeded in gaining access to the safe, he would not be above appropriating to his own uses whatever money and valuables he might find there, but his desires even went beyond that—far beyond it. He knew that Nick had handled many of the most delicate cases that had ever developed in this country, and was the custodian of more secrets than had come into the possession of any other American. Among those secrets he had no doubt were many of such a nature that those concerned would feel compelled to part with large sums of money, in order that their secrets might be kept. Some of them doubtless were men and women now wealthy or distinguished, who had some secret connected with their past lives which they would go to almost any lengths to keep the world from knowing. In other cases, the guilty might be dead, or unable to pay, but the records would probably give the names of relatives, friends, or former business associates who might be successfully blackmailed. That was it—blackmail on a huge and hitherto unprecedented scale. The accomplished scoundrel had made up his mind that Nick Carter’s records would prove nothing less than a gold mine, and he meant to work that mine for all it was worth in the next week or ten days. Nick might have destroyed the most confidential and dangerous of these records, but Gordon did not believe that to be the case. “They are too valuable to him in his work,” he told himself. “And, even if they were not, the keeping of records gets to be a habit. Of course, he may realize that some of them would be more dangerous than a few tons of dynamite, if they should fall into the wrong hands, and he may have placed the ones of that description in some safe-deposit vault. If he has, that will mean much more trouble, but if I can locate the vault, I ought to be able to trick those in charge of it into giving me access to the box, even if I can’t produce the key. Am I not Carter himself, and are not keys lost or mislaid in the best-regulated families? “Let’s hope that won’t be necessary, though. I trust I shall find what I want right in this room.”