“Easily.  Great heavens, I never thought of that!  One of them may be the murderer!”

Gaspard, at these words, turned as white as a sheet.

He was so frightened that his English—­which was usually very fluent—­deserted him, and he mumbled protestations of innocence in his mother tongue.

“Thank you, Mr. Hammond,” said Nick, without appearing to notice Gaspard’s distress.  “I have no more questions to ask, but I would be obliged to you if you would wait here a few minutes for me.”

Nick went into another room, where he knew that Patsy was waiting.

A set of signals is arranged in Nick’s house, by which he always knows when one of his staff gets in.

“Patsy,” said Nick, “there’s a fellow up stairs whom you’ll have to shadow.”

“Gaspard?”

“No; a man who calls himself Hammond.  Gaspard has identified him as the man who was in room A.”

“Look here,” said Patsy, “am I a farmer, or is the man Gaspard the greatest living identifier?”

“What do you mean?”

“Why, it strikes me that he picked out his men a good deal too easy.  If it’s all straight, I’d like the loan of his luck for a few days.

“That identification on the elevated station looked to me like a fake.  I don’t believe he ever intended that you should get hold of the man.

“In my opinion, he’s simply running around identifying everybody he sees.”

“But this man Hammond admits it.”

“Is he telling the truth?”

“No,” said Nick, with a peculiar smile, “I don’t believe he is.”

“Well, then, Gaspard’s a liar, and if he’s lied here, he may have done the same thing in Jones’ case.”

Nick looked shrewdly at his youthful assistant.  He is very fond of this bright boy, and gives him every chance to develop his theories in those cases in which he is employed.

“Come, my lad,” said the famous detective, “tell me what has set you against Gaspard.”

“He’s going to skip.”

“Is that so?  Well, this is serious.”

“It’s a fact.  I got it from one of the men in the restaurant.  My man was told of it by Corbut.”

“Corbut?”

“Yes; and there’s another suspicious circumstance.  There’s a Frenchwoman who is going to give little old New York the shake at the same time as Gaspard.  They’re going back to sunny France together.

“Now, nobody knows this but the man I talked with.  Gaspard thinks that Corbut was the only one who knew it.

“So it was for Gaspard’s interest, in case he really did this job, and lifted some valuable plunder off that woman, to get Corbut out of the way.

“Did he pay Corbut to skip first?  And is he now identifying Tom, Dick and Harry for the purpose of bothering us and keeping us busy till he can light out?”

“It’s worth looking into,” said Nick.  “At any rate, you stick to Gaspard.  I’ll put somebody else onto Hammond.”