CHAPTER III.NOT SO DEAD, AFTER ALL.
Two days later a striking-looking, conspicuously well-groomed man presented himself at Nick Carter’s door.
He did not give his name, which is not to be wondered at under the circumstances, for the caller was Green-eye Gordon—not his ghost, but the man himself, substantial flesh and blood, escaped convict, and first-class criminal.
For once Chick’s intuitions had been keener than his chief’s. The younger detective had been inclined to question the validity of Gordon’s death in the absence of any more conclusive testimony than that given in the first accounts of the fire. Nick, however, had been in a mood to discourage such skepticism—perhaps because of that relief to which he had confessed.
The fact was that it was Green Eye who had escaped, and not t
