It still was the skeleton in her closet. Despite the death of that vicious son, who had followed the footsteps of his criminal father, or his supposed death under circumstances warranting hardly the shadow of a doubt, there had been no further disclosure of her terrible secret.
“Let it die with him, Mr. Carter, if David Margate is really dead,” she had said confidentially to Nick, after the sensational case at Langham Manor. “God grant that it is so. Not that I am an unnatural mother, however, who can deliberately wish for the death of her own son, but because his career has been one of persistent vice and crime, and his kinship with the loyal son who bears my maiden name has been the one black shadow that I have seen threatening the happiness and welfare of Chester Clayton. He does not know; must never know. It will be better far for all concerned. Let the dead bury the dead.”
Nick agreed with her to this extent, and he was again thinking of her when, after more than a year, he strode up the driveway toward the Clayton residence—instinctively feeling himself on the threshold of another mystery.
“There is a light in the front hall,” he remarked to Chick, when they came nearer the house. “There must be some one at home.”
“Surely.”
“Come this way. I think the library also is lighted. Instead of ringing, Chick, we’ll try to obtain a look from outside.”
Nick had observed a brighter beam of light from one of the side windows. He saw it through the gloom under the porte-cochère. It streamed out over the side driveway beyond, giving a faint glow to the hazy mist that hung just above the cold earth, and lending a waxy luster to the dew-damp greensward of the near lawn.
Nick led the way in that direction, passing under the porte-cochère and by the closed door of a dimly lighted side hall. He then could see more plainly the window from which the light was shed.
It was a broad French window, obviously that of the house library, and opening upon a spacious side veranda. The interior blinds were partly raised, and one section of the window was open several inches.
“For ventilation, perhaps,” Chick whispered, with a significant glance at his companion.