Much had been said about the ability of Nick Carter in the way of disguises. It was an art that his father had taught him, and which he had studied in all its branches ever since then, at every time and place where opportunity offered. One of the things that Nick Carter could do, and do well, was to make himself like another person, provided that stature and physical development were approximately the same.
Nick’s first occupation in arranging the present disguise was to make a careful drawing of Jimmy, and this, when he began to manufacture the actual disguise, he pinned against the wall beside the mirror.
Midnight found the detective in the vicinity of the home of Juno, Countess Narnine. He studied the dwelling for a time, and then walked away from it, satisfied that he would have no difficulty in carrying his design into execution.
He satisfied himself on another point also, and that was that Juno was not only at home, but that she had denied herself to all callers; for he saw several persons approach the door of her home, only to be turned away again by the servants.
“I shouldn’t wonder if the murder of Turnieff and the hue and cry after me, as a consequence of the crime, has got on her nerves,” he told himself.
At two in the morning he was back again near the house. This time, watching for his opportunity, he sprang over the fence, for the house was a detached one, crept through the shrubbery, and presently approached a side door which he had selected for the beginning of his operations.
He did not know that, during his absence between midnight and two o’clock, three men had called there, had been admitted, and were even at that moment in consultation with Juno in the library of her home.
Perhaps, if he had known it, it would only have rendered him the more eager to proceed with the undertaking in hand; at all events, he did go ahead with it.
It consisted, first, in using his picklock upon that side door; a small instrument of his own invention of which he often had occasion to make use.
A chain bolt inside the door was quickly snipped through by nippers he had brought with him for that purpose, and he stood inside the home of Juno shortly after two o’clock in the morning.