The Masquer sprang backward into the hall. The door slammed, the key clicked. He was gone!
Maillard was the first to wake into voice and action. "The other door!" he cried. "Into the dining room——"
He flung open a second door and dashed into the dining room, followed by the other men. Here the windows, giving upon the garden, were open. Then Maillard came to a sudden halt, and after him the others; through the night was pulsating, with great distinctness, the throbbing roar of an airplane motor! From Maillard broke a bitter cry:
"The detectives—I'll get the fools here! You gentlemen search the house; Uncle Neb, go with them, into every room! That fellow can't possibly have escaped——"
"No word of alarm to the ladies," exclaimed Judge Forester, hurriedly. "If he was not upstairs, then they have seen nothing of him. We must divide and search."
They hastily separated. Maillard dashed away to summon the detectives, also to get other men to aid in the search.
The result was vain. Within twenty minutes the entire house, from cellar to garret, had been thoroughly gone over, without causing any alarm to the dancers in the ballroom. Maillard began to think himself a little mad. No one had been seen to enter or leave the house, and certainly there had been no airplane about. The Masquer had not appeared except in the library, and now he was most indubitably not in the house. By all testimony, he had neither entered it nor left it!
"Well, I'm damned!" said Maillard, helplessly, to Judge Forester, when the search was concluded. "Not a trace of the scoundrel! Here, Fell—can't you help us out? Haven't you discovered a thing?"
"Nothing," responded Jachin Fell, calmly.
At this instant Bob Maillard rushed up. He had just learned of the Masquer's visit. In response to his excited questioning his father described the scene in the library and added: