An Unsolved Mystery: Nick Carter's Goverment Case

The old gentleman passed the other two as if they were strangers. He jostled by them without so much as a glance. The most observing person in the throng then pouring out of the railway station, like a swarm of busy bees out of a colossal hive, would have detected no relation between them.

While passing the couple, nevertheless, the old gentleman said quickly to one of them, though scarce above his breath:

“Go to the new Willard. Register as directed, and get a suite, Wait there till I come.”

The man addressed heard him, but did not turn his head, nor evince the fact with the slightest change of countenance.

His companion, a natty, keen-eyed chap with a blond mustache twirled upward at the ends à la kaiser, appeared oblivious to what had occurred.

The scene of this trivial episode, which was far more portentous than one would suppose, having a bearing on no less tremendous an issue than the possible fate of a nation, was the new Union Station in the city of Washington, and the hour was two o’clock one fine afternoon in October.

The old gentleman hastened out with the throng into Massachusetts Avenue, seeking a trolley car and mingling with the crowd in a plebian sort of a way, as if business of no great importance had brought him to the nation’s capital.

He rode down Pennsylvania Avenue as far as Fourteenth Street, where he alighted and walked the remaining distance to the Treasury Building, entering one of the side doors with an air and display of interest often observed in the crowds of tourists to be seen in this vast building at that hour of the day. No observer would have supposed him other than a sight-seeing stranger, viewing Uncle Sam’s great money box and financial institution for the first time in his life.

Something like five minutes later, nevertheless, he entered one of the numerous offices without the ceremony of knocking, and blandly addressed a clerk who turned from his desk to see who had entered.