He went over to the door he believed led to the other part of the house, and found it locked, but the key in the door.
“That’s lucky! I didn’t want to have to stop to break it open. Besides, it would have made a big noise, and I don’t know how many men may be close by.”
Once outside the door, which he closed softly as soon as he was through, he switched on his electric light. What he found was what he had expected. In one direction were the stairs leading upward to the “parlor floor,” and in the other was the outer door to the front yard. Farther along the wall he saw the door into the room he had just left, so that it was possible to get to the yard by both exits.
“Now for the yard door,” he said to himself inaudibly. “It’s locked, no doubt.”
He was right about this. The door—a very heavy one, evidently built to resist possible attack—was locked, and there was a heavy, rusty bolt pushed into a massive socket.
Chick could have picked the lock and withdrawn the bolt. That would not have been a long or difficult operation. But he had had experiences of this kind before. Therefore, he took another course.
“That rusty bolt would screech like a jackass in agony,” he murmured. “I could never get it out of the socket without proclaiming to the whole street what I was doing. I’ll take the liberty of using some others of the ‘Engineer’s’ tools. I’m glad he is in the den, or he might be doing something with them, instead of my making honest use of them.”
Chick grinned at his own conceit, as he took out a mechanical, automatic screw driver from the canvas bag in which he kept the implements, each in its own little pocket. With this screw driver he rapidly took out the screws that held the massive socket of the bolt. Then he removed the ponderous box of the lock in the same way.
Chick was a good mechanic. He would not have suited Nick Carter otherwise. So he did his work not only swiftly, but noiselessly, and in a workmanlike manner. A regular locksmith could not have done it better.