And yet there was no evidence anywhere to be seen that the woman had not accompanied the man willingly enough.
It was apparent that she had walked along by his side even without clinging to his arm, for the tracks were not close enough together to suggest that; there was no place where it appeared that she had made any effort to turn back; there was no suggestion anywhere, that the detective could see, save the one of the hesitation, while still in the car, that the woman had not gone willingly enough.
The car itself, upon leaving the corner, had been driven upon the trolley tracks where it had been turned southward toward the city.
It must not be supposed that the detective wasted any time in making these discoveries. A glance at the tracks in the snow as he ran to the corner, then at the tracks left by the car, was all that was needed to inform him of the points already made, and he turned and went toward the great gate again, thinking.
Plainly, as a humane man, if not as a detective, it was his duty to enter the grounds of Pleasantglades and to find out what had become of that woman who had entered there with a man, at or soon after two o’clock in the morning, and who had not come out again.
He decided, as he again approached the gate, to go inside.
To decide to go inside, and to get inside were quite two different things.
Nick decided that the top of the wall was quite fourteen feet above the pavement where he stood. He could see that it was guarded by that most effective of all means for such a guard—by broken glass set in cement.
The gate between the two high posts was a double one, which opened at the middle, and the tops of the highest spears were nearly as high as the posts themselves, while the shortest ones were only a trifle lower than the walls.
Plainly the only method of entering the grounds was by opening the gate, and that meant that he must either pick the lock, or file through the chain that held the two gates together, for, although he had his nippers with him, they were by far too small and delicate to bite through a chain of that size.