So it followed that those tracks must have been made within that hour.
Within an hour a man and a woman had entered the grounds of Pleasantglades—for that is the name by which the magnificent estate was known, or, at least, it is the one that we will use here to represent it—within an hour the two had entered together, and the man had come out alone, locking the gate after him, and, therefore, leaving her there.
And Nick Carter knew that the great house was unoccupied; that there was not even a caretaker there, so——
Why had two gone in and only one come out?
Curiosity gave place to interest; and as he studied the footprints with still more care, interest became absorbtion.
Both persons had been well shod. The woman daintily so, for, as the detective looked even more closely, he came almost to the opinion that she had been wearing slippers.
And the tracks of the man suggested dress shoes, even pumps, if one was to call upon one’s imagination just a trifle.
The hour, be it said, when the detective discovered the tracks in the snow, was between two and three o’clock in the morning, and a hundred feet away from the gate an arc light glowed brightly. Otherwise, the place would have been intensely dark, for, although that flurry of snow had lasted but a few minutes, it was still cloudy and threatening.
If Nick had approached the gate from the opposite direction, he might not have noticed the tracks at all; but, as it happened, he had approached toward the light, and had looked directly down upon them, plainly revealed.
The place was quite near to New York; near enough so that the detective had gone there in his car since dark that night.