Chick reasoned, too, that the side road must lead to a dwelling, the occupants of which Nick had been led to suspect, and he then became more cautious.
Leaving the road, lest he might possibly be seen, he struck into the woods on the left and picked his way over a low hill, a course that brought him to the edge of the clearing directly back of the Ardley dwelling.
Chick had arrived at a point, however, from which he could see only a part of the building a short distance beyond the house, and at which Margate and his confederates had arrived a few moments before. He was too far away, moreover, for their voices to reach his ears.
It so happened, too, that Toulon and Patsy Garvan then were approaching the building, but Chick had come from nearly the opposite direction, and the building itself hid them from his view.
Though unable to see any sign of Nick, a fact that somewhat mystified him, Chick made one discovery that immediately shaped his course of action.
He had arrived just in time to see Jane Ardley come out of the back door of the house, from which she walked away several yards, and then turned to gaze up intently at an attic window, so intently and for so long a time, in fact, that Chick naturally gazed in the same direction, wondering what occasioned her interest.
He then saw that the attic window was closely curtained. He could see, too, that the curtain evidently was held in place with several wooden slats running across it and nailed to the casing.
“By Jove, that window is barred,” he said to himself. “The woman is looking to see whether it can be detected from outside, or for some other equally suspicious reason. It’s dead open and shut, therefore, that some one is confined in that attic room. Is it Clara Clayton, or has Nick met with some mishap and fallen into the hands of a gang? There now seems to be no one around here but the woman. By thunder, I’ll mighty soon find out.”
Chick whipped out a revolver and thrust it into his side pocket.[Pg 36]
Jane Ardley had retraced her steps and was entering the back door of the house. She left it open and passed through the kitchen.