He could picture, also, Lynne’s consternation at her presence; his surprise; and he recalled now that, two days before, at the time of the visit of Red Mike to that same house, and to the sleeping room that adjoined the room he was now in, he had made no investigation as to Red Mike’s method of entering.
Mike had escaped; no particular damage had been done. Thomas had a marred ear, and a piece of skin was gone from one side of his head, and Lynne had been grazed by a bullet on the shoulder; that was all.
It suddenly occurred to him now, as he sat there thinking, that the Lynne mansion was not one that would be selected by a burglar as an easy one.
There was the big iron gate outside which was locked at night; and the high fence was not easily scalable—and yet Red Mike had evidently found little difficulty in gaining an entrance, not only to the grounds and house, but to the rooms of the master of the mansion.
Then Nick recalled another circumstance.
When Red Mike made his escape from Lynne’s sleeping room after firing the four shots which nearly killed Thomas and his master, he had gone out by a door other than the one which had admitted Nick Carter to that sleeping room.
In a word, he had gone out of the sleeping room by the door which opened between it and the sitting room where the detective was now seated.
It is true that other doors were found open—enough to have led him to the outside, and therefore to the avenue; but there was Danny, Nick’s chauffeur, outside in the car, and he had seen nobody escaping from the house.
Nick Carter smiled grimly to himself. His thought, just then, if he had uttered it aloud, was about like this:
“This is not the day for secret and mysterious entrances to houses, and of hidden passages, like Kenilworth Castle and other places we read about, but there must be one here, somewhere, for that is the only way to explain this mystery.