The best way to hide a human body is to utterly destroy it. This is no easy task for an ordinary man, but to a scientist, like Dr. Jarvis, it would be comparatively easy.
However, it would take time. Patrick Deever had disappeared on Monday night. Forty-eight hours had elapsed, but yet Nick hoped to find a trace, if the work of destruction had been attempted in the laboratory.
Nick had entered Cleary's room with the purpose of guarding against any interruption from the negro. He found Cleary sleeping heavily; but when Nick left the room and glided into the laboratory, Cleary's sleep was even deeper than it had been before.
An adept in chemistry, Nick knew how to produce a slumber from which no ordinary means could arouse the sleeper. His drug was sure and it left no bad effects.
The laboratory was unlighted, except by the moon, which shone in over the shutters, which covered the lower parts of the windows, preventing observation from without.
The first object which attracted Nick's attention was a corpse which lay upon a stone table in the middle of the room.
Nick had made a hasty search of the laboratory some hours before, while the doctor had been at dinner. He had then seen this corpse, and had assured himself that it was not Patrick Deever's; but he had been unable to do much more before the doctor returned. Therefore, he had made this late visit.
He first examined some instruments which lay near the dissecting-table. They revealed nothing. Then for perhaps half an hour, he searched various parts of the room without result.
Beneath the laboratory was a cellar in which, as Nick knew, were electric apparatus and a furnace which the doctor used for his experiments.
Nick was about to descend into this cellar when a noise in the direction of the doctor's room attracted his attention.