He had closed the door and was gazing up a broad, dimly lighted stairway while indulging in these reflections. He could hear no sound from the corridor of the second floor. He stole up noiselessly and found it deserted.
Glancing at the numbers on the nearest doors, he quickly learned in which direction he must turn, and he brought up within a minute at the door he was seeking—that of the suite lately occupied by the murdered man. It adjoined a diverging corridor, and its windows overlooked the narrow court mentioned.
In the meantime, for so fate sometimes brings opposing forces together, and often with disastrous results, a man moving with the stealth of an evil shadow, which any chance observer would surely have thought him, had entered the narrow court and paused under one of the several small platforms some ten feet above the ground, each the base of a rise of iron stairs forming a fire escape.
This man was clad from head to foot in black. It seemed to mingle with the almost ebon gloom in the court. He lingered only briefly. He quickly fastened a black mask on his bearded face; then took a coiled rope from under his coat. He cast it deftly around a corner standard of the platform railing, up both lengths of which he then drew himself, with the wiry strength and agility of an ape. Kneeling on the platform, he quickly drew up the rope and laid it aside; then turned to crouch with a thin strip of steel at the near window.
It was at precisely the same moment that Chick Carter, alone in the corridor, set to work with a picklock to open the door of the suite. It took him about a minute. The bolt of the lock was shot back with a sharp, metallic sound—just as the fastening of the window was forced aside with an audible snap.
Each sound was mingled with the other. Each stealthy intruder heard only that which he had caused. The window was noiselessly raised, moreover, just as Chick entered and quietly closed the door.
He had stepped into a handsomely furnished parlor. The other had entered a dining room. Between the two rooms was an open door, with a drawn portière. The feet of both men fell noiselessly on the carpets and rugs.
Chick moved toward the middle of the room and took out his electric lamp. Its beam of light leaped outward—just as the portière was drawn and a second beam of light appeared.
The two lenses were illumined at the same moment; in fact, confronting one another like two startled, suddenly opened eyes, with a glare that completely dispelled the gloom.
Two more astonished men seldom met. For an instant the sudden glare blinded both.