The hallway was in utter darkness, the same as when he was there last, and, although he listened intently, he could not hear the suggestion of a sound from the lower regions of the house. After waiting a few moments longer, he tiptoed forward cautiously to the stairs, and descended them, being careful to step as closely as possible to the spindles of the balustrade, in order that they might not creak beneath his weight, and thus alarm others in the house. In this way he gained the lower floor.
Nick was somewhat handicapped without his flash light, but he remembered quite distinctly the location of the sound he had heard two hours earlier, when the party from the laundry had followed him in, and passed through the hallway to a rear door. Now he sought that door by following carefully along the wall until he came to it.
But, although he searched diligently for many minutes, he could not find so much as a suggestion of a door anywhere.
He remembered then that in all probability there was no perceptible door at all; that the door which was there somewhere was concealed in the wainscoting in some way, or otherwise hidden from casual observation. To have maintained a door of entrance to the saloon from that hallway would have rendered it entirely unnecessary for Grinnel to keep up his private entrance to the saloon from the other street. Nick's only method of finding it now was to light a match, and this he hesitated to do, not knowing what warning its glare might convey to others.
But there was no alternative, and presently he began his search by lighting matches one after another, permitting them to flare up sufficiently for a moment's vision, and then throwing them quickly to the floor, after the manner adopted by burglars when they were engaged in robbing a house before the pocket flash light was invented.
He was not long in discovering the entrance he sought. The walls along the hallway were not plastered; they were merely built up with matched boards, which had stood there unpainted for so long a time that they had achieved a veneer of filth and dirt which made them look, in the flare of the match, like mahogany.
But he could easily see where there was a keyhole cut into one of these boards, and, although around it there was no other evidence of a door, he knew that if he could turn the tumblers in that lock it would be revealed to him.
He went to work with his picklock, and, as he supposed, the instant the bolt of the lock was shot back the door opened easily and noiselessly in his grasp, and from beyond it he could at once hear the murmur of distant voices; also very far ahead of him, and beneath what was evidently another door, he could perceive a gleam of light.
He stepped through, and closed it after him, but, realizing that it was more than likely that he might wish to leave in a hurry, he left it unlocked.
And now he tiptoed forward to the door beneath which the light shone, and, getting upon his hands and knees, held his ear down where he could hear with more distinctness.