Chapter IX: Rascality Tricked

“Aha! You didn’t get away, after all, did you?” was the fellow’s triumphant shout, as he turned the light of his flash light full upon the detective’s face. “It’s no use, Marcos! You may have things your own way in Joyalita, but you can’t do it here.”

He tried to drag Nick into the boat. But the light craft had not the steadiness of the launch, and it was evident that if he persisted, there must inevitably be an upset.

“Get in, Marcos!” growled the man. “You can help if you will. No matter what happens, you are better off in the boat than swimming around in that cold river.”

“Think so?” jeered Nick.

“Why, yes. Even if you swim to shore, we shall be by your side and catch you as you come out of the water.”

“What would be the use of my going with you to the yacht?” demanded Nick. “You would keep me there, and you know I have to be in Joyalita on the eighteenth.”

The gruff man gave vent to a loud guffaw.

“That’s just what we don’t want,” he returned. “We are going to keep you till the eighteenth is past. But come on! You may as well argue in the boat as in the water. Better, I should say. It will be more comfortable for you.”

Nick Carter acquiesced in this opinion. He saw that he had been mistaken for Prince Marcos, and it occurred to him that it would be well to keep up the deception for a short time--at least till Marcos had got away for his own country.

After that he would let these scoundrels know who he was, and enjoy a laugh at their discomfiture.

“Give me your hand!” he called out.

The other man clutched him firmly by the hand and wrist. With a spring, Nick Carter raised himself in the water, and landed in the boat, neck and heels, but without capsizing.

The detective had noticed that Marcos’ clothes were a dark business suit, so much like his own that only a very close observer would detect the difference.

When they were soaked in water, it would be impossible to tell one from the other unless the observer were very familiar with the pattern and cut of both.

“Well, Marcos!” began the gruff man, as the oarsman turned the boat around, with the assistance of the sailor who was steering, “I hope you are convinced that it is useless for you to try and get away from us.”

“I nearly did it that time,” rejoined Nick.

“Not at all. You came near to being drowned. That’s all. If that fellow, whoever he was, hadn’t seen you struggling in the water and gone after you, there would have been an end of Prince Marcos, and the people in Joyalita never would have known what had become of you.”

“You wouldn’t want that, would you?” asked Nick.

“Oh, I don’t know that it would have been so very bad for me,” was the slow reply. “I wouldn’t kill you, of course. I am not an assassin. But if you were to die accidentally, who would be the heir to the throne but your humble servant and cousin, Prince Miguel?”

“Prince Miguel!” thought Nick. “I suspected as much. Well, I’ll have something to say to Prince Miguel in New York if he doesn’t behave himself.”

Miguel was looking at him by the light of his flash light, shaking his head with an amused smile.

“You are very wet, my cousin,” he broke out, after a short pause. “Who was that person who tried to get you out of the water and whom you put on that launch?”

“How should I know?”

“A stranger, eh?”

“What else would he be?” demanded Nick. “Do you suppose I know anybody up here?”

“There was a lady in the launch,” went on Miguel. “She seemed to be much interested in you.”

“Probably a friend of the man who tried to save me from drowning,” suggested the detective.

“Ah! Very likely! She got away in a great hurry when once she had the man aboard. He looked as if he were in worse condition than you.”

“He was.”

“So that the rescuer became the rescued, eh? That was funny. Still, you have always been a good swimmer, and I never knew the time when you could not hold your own in athletic sports generally. It is a pity you are so obstinate with it all.”

Nick Carter did not reply. They were by the side of the yacht now, for the distance back had been much less than that covered in rowing from it, when a large curve had been described in the river.

Several men were on deck, and there were half a dozen lights flitting about.

Down one side of the yacht to the water was a short ladder--brass mounted and finely finished, like everything else about the vessel.

“Hello! You got him, then?”

A man in ordinary clothing stood at the gangway looking down at the boat.

“Yes, Solado!” returned Miguel. “We have him!”

“Glad he wasn’t drowned.”

Nick Carter was sure he could make out, in the way this was said, that the speaker’s sentiments were just the opposite to those he expressed.

“Well, he was nearly drowned,” replied Miguel. “Some stranger went after him with a small boat, and it tipped over. After that the two of them were nearly gone.”

“What saved them?”

“A launch came along, with a woman in it, and the other man was shoved into it. Marcos was just going to follow when I begged him to come with me. With his usual complaisance, he did what I asked.”

The two rascals indulged in a duet of laughter over this. They little thought that the supposed Prince Marcos was enjoying a joke of much finer texture than their own.

Once on the yacht, the supposed Marcos was shown into a stateroom, where a man who seemed to be the personal servant of Miguel, or Don Solado, or perhaps of both, pointed respectfully to a complete outfit of clothing lying on the bed and chairs.

Nick was glad to see that clean underwear, as well as white shirt, collar, necktie, et cetera, were all included.

“The bathroom adjoins, sir, as you know,” said the man softly. “I have prepared the water about as you like it. If it is too hot or cold, and you would like me to change it, will you kindly touch the bell?”

“If there are faucets at the bathtub, I can change it myself if necessary. Let me see, your name is----”

“Jean, sir!”

“Ah, yes! Jean!” repeated the detective. “Well, that is all at present. I will remember the bell if I want you.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

Jean went out of the stateroom, and Nick Carter heard the key turn in the lock.

“Jean is polite--almost servile, in fact,” muttered Nick Carter. “But he does not forget that I’m a prisoner. Well, this is an amusing affair. I never expected it to come out this way. However, so long as Marcos gets back to Joyalita, I guess I can attend to my friends on board the yacht.”

He had been taking off his wet clothing while reflecting thus, and now carefully transferred all his personal property to the pockets of the dry suit he intended to put on.

There was an automatic pistol, which, in its waterproof case, was quite unharmed by its plunge into the river. Also, Nick brought out his pocketknife, with its many useful tools packed in the handle, his waterproof wallet well supplied with bank notes, and several other articles that he always carried. Among them was a pair of nickel-plated handcuffs, very light, but as strong as the heaviest kind made.

“I don’t suppose I shall have to use them,” he muttered, as he stepped into the bathroom, and found the water in the tub was just as he liked it--cold, but with the raw chill taken off. “Still if there should be too much trouble with my friends aboard, I should not hesitate to slip them on.”

No one came near him as he enjoyed his bath, and afterward dressed carefully in the clothes that had been prepared for him.

“I’m not such a bad-looking prince,” he said to himself, with a smile, as he looked at himself in the mirror. “These garments are the kind you buy in New York. Yet, somehow, knowing they belong to a prince, I fancy I detect an odor of royalty about them.”

He laughed at his own conceit. Then, finding that a box of cigars, of a well-known brand, was in a little cupboard at one side of the stateroom, he selected one and nipped off the end.

“It is possible these cigars are drugged,” he muttered. “But I don’t think so. Anyhow, it is so long since I had a smoke, that I shall have to take the risk.”

He puffed away comfortably for more than a quarter of an hour, deep in his own thoughts, as he sat in one of the two chairs in the cabin, and was beginning to think he would not be disturbed till morning, when there came a tap at the door.

“Considering they have me locked in, I don’t see that they can expect me to open the door to see who is there,” he said to himself, with a smile. Then, aloud, he called: “Come in!”

There was the faint grating of a lock, and the door opened. It was Don Solado who entered.

“Well, Marcos! I thought I’d come in and see how you are after your swim in the river,” began Solado.

“Hadn’t you better lock the door?” suggested Nick, with a mocking smile. “You shouldn’t tempt me.”

“There’s no fear of your getting away, if that’s what you mean,” was the comfortable rejoinder. “You wouldn’t want to swim again, I’m sure, and you couldn’t leave us even that way, for we have men watching the whole deck.”

“Yet, to get to Joyalita by the eighteenth is so important to me, that I don’t know that I should hesitate to swim if it would get me there by that time.”

“Why do you want to get to Joyalita by the eighteenth?” suddenly demanded Solado, in a different tone, as he leaned forward to look closely into the detective’s face. “What is Joyalita to you?”

“What do you mean?”

“What do I mean?” broke out Don Solado, so savagely that his tone became almost a shriek. “What do I mean? Why, I mean that you are a fraud!”

“A fraud?” asked Nick Carter composedly. “In what way am I one?”

“You say your name is Marcos--Prince Marcos?” howled Solado.

“Do I say so? I don’t remember saying anything of the kind. Still, you know me, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do know you! Curse you! I thought there was something wrong about you as they brought you on the yacht a little while ago. That’s why I came down here to look at you again, and particularly to hear you speak. Now I know you are an impostor!”

“Who do you think I am, then?” asked Nick.

“I don’t know who you are, except that I believe you are the man who assaulted me at the Hotel Supremacy a few nights ago.”

“You were assaulted there, then?”

The coolness with which the detective asked this question evidently increased the rage of the other, and he snorted inarticulately.

“It was I who assaulted you--most likely,” went on Nick Carter. “I was obliged to teach a lesson to a masked man there, because he attacked me. I am pleased to meet you again, under more peaceful conditions.”

“You’ll find they are not so peaceful, perhaps!”

Don Solado’s tones had risen to a shriek again, and he shook his fist at the quietly smoking detective.

“Don’t do that,” advised Nick calmly. “It annoys me.”

“I’ll do what I please. I don’t know who you are, but I know you are not Prince Marcos!”

“Well? And then?”

“You have helped him to escape. Now escape yourself--if you can!”

As Solado shouted this last sentence, he jumped up and flung himself out of the door.

It closed with a bang, and Nick heard the lock turn.