He looked about him for a means of escape from that small room—a thing that he had somehow neglected to attend to before the necessity arose for it; and he remembered, as he did so, that the unusually large Navaho blanket that hung suspended from ceiling to floor close at his right hand, next to the easel, concealed a door; and as he recalled the plan of the apartment when he had searched through it, he believed that the door must communicate with the private hallway of the apartment.
But even so, would it be possible for him to open it and to pass through and close it again without attracting the attention of the occupants of the adjoining room? He doubted it.
Unused doors are apt to stick or creak on their hinges; nevertheless, it offered the only means out of the present dilemma, and he determined to attempt it.
He went about it methodically, realizing that haste would be fatal, and hoping almost against hope that no impulse on the part of Madge would send her into that small room before he could make his escape from it.
He stepped from behind the easel, knowing from the direction of the voices in the next room that neither of the women would be able to see him as he did so; and he pulled aside the Navaho blanket.
His luck favored him.
The key to the door was in the lock—quite naturally, one might say, on the inside of the door—and he opened the blade of his pocketknife, passing it up and down between the door and the casing, to discover if the bolt of the lock had been shot.
It had; and so he brought out his little case of miniature tools, with the tiny oil can that is half the diameter of an ordinary lead pencil, and shot a drop of oil against the bolt of the lock and upon the hinges of the door, and then, withdrawing the key, administered to that in the same manner—and believed that now, by exercising great care, he would be able to open the door without making a sound.
In the meantime the conversation in the adjoining room had been continued, and the detective had necessarily overheard every word of it, although he would not have remained a moment to do so had he been able to make his escape on the instant.
The reply that Madge Babbington made to the statement of Miss McQueen was characteristic. Nick could imagine just how she shrugged her shoulders when she made it.