And that very fascination which she doubtless exercised over him would lead him all the more insistently to wish to rid himself of her; it would but add to his fear of her when he was not with her, and when there was opportunity to think calmly upon who and what she was, and of what extremes she was capable.
Possibly he feared for his own life, as soon as she should be his wife.
The poisoned cup, the stealthy dagger, the pistol shot in the dark; all were possibilities which he could see waiting for him in that future that the woman had doubtless planned for both of them.
And so, while on his way to the Creotoria apartments, wearing an adequate disguise, so that he would not be recognized as the man who had called there to see Colonel Grafton, Nick Carter could not figure out in his mind any other theory that was satisfactory to him in regard to the murders, save the one that Carleton Lynne must somehow be the guilty person.
That idea of the police, of a burglar or thief, surprised at work and shooting down in cold blood three women who opposed his escape, was, to Nick Carter’s mind, preposterous.
There was one other point, too, which the detective had noticed in the reading of the account of the crime, and that was the accuracy with which the bullets had been fired at the victims—all save one of them; probably the last one.
Something of the personal description of Carleton Lynne has already been given, and now, as the detective recalled it, he remembered the cold expression in his eyes, that were set so wide apart, denoting innate cruelty; he recalled the deliberate, almost cautious, motions of the man, his steady, fearless, defiant eyes; and he remembered, too, that Lynne was a man out of the great West, where marksmanship with a six-gun is almost a matter of inheritance as well as a universal talent.
Lynne’s eyes were the eyes of a dead shot—and the bullet holes were bored exactly in the center of the foreheads of the two women who were dead, while the one fired at Madge had only narrowly missed its mark.
Nick believed that he could explain that miss, too, on the same theory that applied to the other two shots. In this manner:
Nora McQueen and the maid had been shot first, and then the weapon had been turned upon the woman whose eyes and whose very presence fascinated Lynne.