The Traitors of the Tropics: Nick Carter's Royal Flush

"You say he cannot travel to-day, doctor?" "Impossible, Mr. Carter!" "He would be in a drawing-room on the Pullman, and every care would be taken to make the journey easy for him." The surgeon shook his head. "He would have his own servant, Phillips, to attend him," persisted Nick Carter. "This is Prince Marcos, you know, Doctor Sloane. You've heard of him, and I've explained that it is essential for him to be in the country of which he is the ruler by the eighteenth of this month. He has only five days now." "I am sorry, but" "He could make it in the five days, by continuous traveling," still pressed the detective. "I realize that he would be taking some risk. But when it is considered that the very existence of his country depends on his getting there by a certain date, I doubt whether any one has the moral right to stop him." Doctor Sloane shrugged his shoulders. He was one of the distinguished surgeons in New York, and he was accustomed to being obeyed. Even a prince was not important enough in his eyes to dispute his professional commands. "As to the moral right, Mr. Carter," intoned the doctor, in his most impressive manner, "that, it seems to me, is beside the matter. I tell you, as a surgeon, that a man who has just been shot in the chest, and has narrowly escaped a puncture of the pericardium, must lie still for a more or less protracted period, if he intends ever to get up at all." "I feel quite well," suddenly interposed the man in the bed. "I can travel easily, Mr. Carter. Make the doctor understand that." "Very well, Mr. Marcos," answered Nick Carter, as he held up a hand of warning to the patient not to talk. "I think the doctor does understand our position." "I understand that if you let this Mr. Marcos get up to-day, or this week, or next, I will not be responsible for his life," interrupted Doctor Sloane. "His temperature is nearly a hundred and rising, and he is too weak to talk, to say nothing of his getting up." There could be no doubt that the surgeon spoke the truth. Prince Marcos, ruler of Joyalita, the Caribbean principality, was in bad physical condition. He had been preparing to go home, to take part in an important gathering of the officers of his government, when somebody had fired a shot at him from ambush as he strolled in the grounds of his temporary home, Crownledge, on the Hudson River, and had brought him down. If there had been anybody with Prince Marcos when his hidden enemy tried to kill him, the miscreant might have been captured. But the prince was alone. Naturally, nothing could be found of the would-be assassin when the grounds were searched, for it was then half an hour after the shooting, and Marcos was in bed. Phillips, his valet, had heard the shot, and knowing that the prince's cousin, Prince Miguel, with Don Solado, prime minister of Joyalita, had made attempts on his life before, in New York, he had suspected these men again. Nicholas Carter, the famous detective, had been telephoned for. He had come racing up in his high-powered motor car soon after the eminent surgeonwith the aid of one of much less note, as well as a trained nursehad extracted the bullet. Doctor Sloane had just given his decision now that the patient must stay in bed for two weeks at leastperhaps much longer. To the surgeon's disgust, the patient insisted that he must get up at once. He had to take a long journey into Central America, he said. Strangely enough, Nicholas Carter, the famous detectivewhose knowledge of medicine and surgery was great enough to have made him a successful practitioner if he had cared to follow a doctor's careerhad backed up Prince Marcos in his wild purpose. "I've no doubt that, according to all precedent, a man in my condition should stay in bed," conceded Marcos. "But I shall have to go down to Joyalita at once, nevertheless."

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