One of the three was an officer who had been brought over from Milford to make the expected arrest. The other two were Mr. Morley and Mr. Baxter.
The botanist had been told of the robbery that had been planned, and had been invited to be “in at the death.” But he had not received the slightest hint of the presence of Nina in the house. The detective did not care to risk a possible disappointment. Then, too, he had a sense of the dramatic, and schooled himself to wait.
As for Nina herself, she kept carefully out of view, as she always did when there were visitors at Kill Kare.
Eleven o’clock was the usual hour of retiring at the bungalow, and no deviation from the custom occurred on that night. A few minutes after eleven the lights were out, and Kill Kare seemed to be peacefully sleeping.
The door at the rear had been left unlocked, as arranged. The members of the party, all fully dressed, waited in different rooms the outcome of the drama.
“He’ll probably stop in the dining room to look over the silver,” remarked the officer, Thompson by name, to Mr. Baxter. “Do you think we’d better nab him then?”
“Don’t be in too much of a hurry,” advised Baxter. “He’ll probably look for his biggest haul in the sleeping rooms upstairs. Give him plenty of rope and let him hang himself. Besides, the farther he gets into the heart of the house, the harder it will be for him to escape in case any of our plans go wrong.”
The girls were seated in the dark in their own rooms, their hearts beating fast with excitement.
“I suppose we’ll be only lookers on,” remarked Bess in a low tone. “The men will do all the work.”
“I’m not so sure of that,” replied Cora. “We may come in somewhere.”