It was not difficult to guess, because of that odor, what the vial had contained: Prussic acid. Nor was it difficult to understand that the man who had taken her there and murdered her had carefully arranged everything so that it should appear to be an undoubted suicide.
To understand and appreciate everything just as Nick Carter found them, and as he discovered them, it must be remembered that it was still pitchy dark outside, and that there were no light connections in the great mansion at that time. As a consequence, the detective’s only means of searching the place was by the aid of his electric flash light, which he always carried with him when engaged upon business—and he had been on business of quite another nature, when he discovered those tracks in the snow.
When he forced his way into the house by picking the lock of the same door to which the tracks had led him, traces of the snow that those other two had brought into the house with them led him speedily enough to the scene we have already partly described.
And when he opened the door to that room, and threw his light from point to point about it, the shaft of illumination at last rested directly upon the beautiful face of the dead girl on the couch.
Such was the picture he saw before he made further investigation.
Then came the other details that we have told about, and some others that are yet to be told.
A long coat of sable, that might have reached to the young woman’s ankles, had been carefully laid across the back of a chair, and upon that were the scarf and veil that she had worn as a head covering, and they had been put there with exactly the same degree of careless attention that she might have used in doing so.
A fan, her gloves, and a gold vanity box set with jewels were upon the table in the middle of the room, and, beside them, was a sealed envelope addressed to J. Cephas Lynne.
The writing on the envelope was in the bold, rather large feminine hand that was in vogue at that time, and was presumably her own—or an imitation of her own handwriting; underneath the address was written the one further word, “Personal.â€�
There was not a thing about the room to indicate that another person than herself had visited it, and, although the detective searched diligently for such evidence, he could find no trace of the man who had accompanied her to the house which had been her home.