It was not in the least degree by chance, but by a very remarkably clever bit of detective work, that Nick Carter had succeeded so quickly in picking up the trail of the miscreants by whom Clara Clayton had been abducted.
Only one detective in a thousand, possibly only Nick Carter himself, would so quickly have suspected Pierre Toulon of actual complicity in the daring crime; much less been able, even though suspected, to have clinched his distrust of the treacherous waiter by any such artful methods as Nick had employed. It had required the discernment and subtlety possessed only by the celebrated detective himself.
Nick keenly realized, nevertheless, that he had been very fortunate in that the victim of the crime was so self-possessed and resourceful a girl, and that the trail of the v
