Nick took the initiative. Telling the man on the floor to get up and lend a hand, he threw one arm around the strange creature who had found his way in some mysterious way to this secret corridor, and seized his wrist from behind. By this wrestling trick, the detective had both the hands of his captive firmly held.
“Hold him for a moment!” he commanded the other man, who had arisen by this time. “Poor fellow! He is too weak to resist much. Had you any notion where he was?”
“How could I have?” was the rejoinder, in an injured tone. “I never was in this hole before. Where are we, anyhow?”
“I’ll show you,” replied Nick.
He felt along the wall until his linger touched a small knob.
The next moment a panel turned open silently, and they were looking through a doorway some four feet wide, down into the dining room, where sat the men they had left there half an hour before.
A shriek of horror burst from Andrew Lampton. But Louden Powers only smiled derisively. He had an iron nerve, and nothing could surprise him very much. He had always known there were secret passages about this strange old house, although he never had found them for himself.
The appearance of the two ghostly personages in the bedchamber on that night had confirmed what he had heard about the hidden places in the house. So it did not seem so very extraordinary that Nick Carter should suddenly show himself in the wall, by two of the large pictures.
At first only Nick was visible to the people in the dining room. But, as he stepped forth upon a chair, and thus to the door, he led the escaped sick man from the hospital, while following him was the person the two conspirators had declared to be Howard Milmarsh.