“I do object, young man,” Nick now interrupted, with ominously quiet determination. “Your chief may possibly have persons in his office before whom I do not care to have my name announced. Now, you go to him and deliver my message just as I gave it to you, neither more nor less, or you’ll very suddenly hear something drop—providing you still retain your senses.” Now the clerk laughed, as if amused by the cool terms of the quiet threat, and then he turned quickly and vanished into a short passageway between the outer room and Chief Weston’s private office. Nick gazed after him with a rather quizzical stare—a slender chap of about twenty-five, with reddish hair, thin features, a sallow complexion thickly dotted with freckles, and a countenance lighted by a pair of narrow gray eyes, that greenish-gray sometimes seen in the eyes of a cat. “I wonder what use they have for him around here?” Nick said to himself, while waiting. “If I were chief in this joint, it’s long odds that that red-headed monkey would get his walking-ticket in short order.” The subject of these uncomplimentary cogitations returned in less than a minute. “You are to walk right in, sir—this way,” he glibly announced, with much more deference. At the same time he opened the way for Nick to pass into the enclosure, and through the passage mentioned. “Thank you,” said Nick, with half a growl. “Don’t mention it,” grinned the clerk. “Straight ahead, sir. Chief Weston is at his desk.” Nick heard, meantime, the tramp of men through a corridor adjoining the opposite side of the outer office, and he knew that Chief Weston had immediately dismissed them, to receive him in private. “So, so; the business is important,” he rightly conjectured. The door closed behind Nick of itself, but the snap of the catch-lock hung fire until after the hearty voice of the Boston chief of detectives, as he arose and gripped Nick by the hand, had sounded through the room. “How are you, Nick?” he cried cordially. “I’m a thousand times more than glad to see you, Carter, on my word.” “Same to you, Weston,” laughed Nick. “Some time has passed since we met.” “Too long a time, eh?” “That’s right, too.” “Have a chair.” Now the catch-lock snapped lightly. A finger between the door and the jamb had been withdrawn. A reddish head drew away from the panel, a pair of ears ceased their strained attention, a light step retreated through the passage, and two narrow gray eyes like those of a cat indicated that their owner had now satisfied his inquisitive yearning, and learned the name of the visitor who so peremptorily had issued his commands. As Nick accepted a chair near that taken by Weston at his desk, he carelessly jerked his thumb toward the door by which he had entered. “Where’d you get him, Weston?” he asked dryly. “Get whom?” queried the chief, with inquiring eyes. “The clerk.” “Hyde—the one who announced you?” “The same.”