“Yes, sir, that door is the only one connecting these rooms with the house.”
“I see. Now what about the windows?”
“They haven’t been touched, sir.”
Kee Moore turned his attention to the windows. There were many of them. The suite of Sampson Tracy’s was a rectangular wing, built out from the main house, and having windows on three sides. But all of these windows overlooked the deep, black waters of the Sunless Sea. It had been the whim of the man to have his quarters thus, to be surrounded on all sides by the water of the lake that he loved, and he usually had all the windows wide open, doubtless enjoying the lake breezes that played through the rooms, and listening to the birds, whose notes broke the stillness of the night.
“What is below these rooms?” Moore asked.
“The big ballroom, sir. Nothing else.”
After scrutinizing every window in the bedroom, dressing room, bathroom and sitting room, Moore said, slowly: “These windows seem to me to be inaccessible from below.”
It was characteristic of the man that he didn’t say they were inaccessible but merely that they seemed so to him.
As they certainly did to the rest of us. We all looked out, and in every instance, the sheer drop to the lake was about fifteen or more feet. The outer walls of marble presented no foothold for even the most daring of climbers. They were smooth, plain, and absolutely unscalable.
“It is certain no one entered by the windows,” Moore said, at last, having looked out of every one. “I suppose the house is always carefully secured at night?”