Chapter XXXIII: The Mystery Grows Deeper

“What do you think of that, chief?” asked Patsy.

“It is interesting, lad. Now, Timothy--is that your name?”

“It is, sor. Timothy Tucker, from Cork, sor.”

“How was the woman dressed?”

“Faith, I dunno, sor; only her shoes were new and fine, and she seemed dressed too well to be carryin’ bundles to cooks. She had on a long coat that covered her all over, like them things they wears in automobiles.”

“You did not keep an eye on her after you directed her how to find Mrs. Maguire?”

“No, sor. I wint on wid me worruk.”

“And forgot all about her, I suppose?”

“Faith, I did that--until this gintleman axed me about her.”

“That will do, Timothy. You may go, now; but you may forget all about this interview, and not talk about it to others.”

“Yis, sor.”

“Well, Patsy,” said the detective, when the man was gone, “it is evident that Mrs. Babbington did find a way to keep her engagement, after all.”

“So it seems. She dropped her handkerchief here, in this room; it was she with whom the gardener spoke, outside the house; the hour agrees with the time when she was probably in this room. How did she get here?”

“I give it up, chief.”

“I don’t suppose you questioned the cook and the housekeeper, did you?”

“I did. They both insist that no person could have passed them and entered the house at the rear without being seen; while it is possible for a person to walk past the rear of the house--that is, past the windows where those two servants were, at the time--without being seen.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“That she could have done as the gardener suggested, walked directly around the house, and out of the grounds again by the same way she came in.”

“But that would not account for her being in this room--or for Lynne’s being gone from it, Patsy.”

“No--unless there is a window along the north side of the house by which she might have entered, and have----”

“And by which she might have taken Lynne out? That is utter nonsense, Patsy.”

“The whole affair looks like utter nonsense on the face of it, and yet--well, it’s an affair, if anybody should ask you.”

“Quite right.”

“If I might speak now, sir,” said Thomas.

“Certainly. What is it?” replied the detective.

“I have already told you that I searched every room in the house as soon as I missed Mr. Lynne.”

“Yes.”

“There is a door on the north side of the house, on the first floor, that has not been opened since I have been here, and is still locked and bolted as it was the first time I ever saw it. There is no window on that side of the house that is not fastened securely. You may examine them for yourself if you like, but I personally know such to be the case.”

The detective pondered for a moment. He seemed to accept the statement of the servant as final and convincing. His mind was considering other matters, just then, than the method by which the unknown woman had been admitted to the house.

“Thomas,” he said, after a moment, “have you looked to see what clothing of Mr. Lynne’s is missing?”

“No, sir.”

“Do so. Make a thorough examination, and let me know of every article of his clothing or otherwise that is gone.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Patsy, make a thorough search of the room on your own account. I will do the same after a moment. It is plain that Madge Babbington has been here, and that she has either induced Lynne to go away with her surreptitiously, or she has forced him to do so.”

Patsy nodded.

Nick crossed the room to the window near the chair where Lynne was in the habit of sitting. The room was at the northwest corner of the house and had windows at the two exposed sides.

He stood at one of the west windows for a time, looking out, and thinking; then he passed to one of the north windows, which was open to admit the warm air.

But when he looked out of it, he shook his head decidedly. It had occurred to him that entrance to and egress from the room might have been had by means of that window, but he very quickly decided that that was out of the question--particularly in the middle of a sunlit afternoon.

He quit the window then and gave his attention to the interior of the room, but there was nothing more to be found there, so he seated himself upon the chair that Lynne had occupied, and gave himself up to thought.

He could picture to himself Madge Babbington seated upon that other chair beside which the lace handkerchief had been found, and gazing with her tiger eyes into the face of Mr. Carleton Lynne.

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.

“And if there is one, it has somehow become known to Madge Babbington.

“Very possibly Edythe Lynne knew about it during her life, and had at some time shown it to Madge; the two had at one time been more or less intimate.

“Or J. Cephas Lynne, Edythe’s father, had revealed the secret to Mrs. Babbington. He had been fond of Madge, too, at one time.

“Or it had become known to Thomas Lynne, who had murdered Cephas Lynne and the daughter Edythe, and who had afterward posed as Cephas Lynne, and as such had engaged himself to marry Madge. If that were true, he might have revealed the secret to the Babbington woman.”

Nick moved uneasily in his chair when he had completed that train of thought--and he gave a start of pain and almost uttered an exclamation, for he felt something that was very much like the prick of a pin.

He got out of the chair and examined the seat of it, and sure enough there, in one of the creases in the leather which the upholsterer had made, tightly imbedded next to the button, was an eight-pointed, diamond-studded star pin such as a woman will wear in the lace against her neck.

The center of the star pin was a gold monogram, out of which Nick had no difficulty in deciphering the letters M. H. B.

So here was another proof of the recent presence of the woman in that room.

A suggestion, too, that she had been quite close to Carleton Lynne while he was still an occupant of his favorite chair; that she had bent over him, perhaps, and had lost the pin in doing so.

He called the attention of Patsy to the fact, then dropped the pin into one of his pockets.

“Oh, there isn’t now any doubt that the woman was here,” said Patsy, at once. “The only thing that bothers me is how in blazes did she get here?”

“That isn’t as interesting as the question that follows it,” said Nick.

“What one is that?”

“How did she go away again and take Lynne with her?”

“Oh, he probably went along willingly enough, after he once looked into her eyes.”

“Would you do that?”

“Eh? Oh, well, that is hardly a fair question. I’m a married man, and----”

“Do you think that she could charm you with those wonderful eyes of hers?” insisted the detective.

“Not with Adelina waiting at home for me, chief. Nay, nay.”

“But, without Adelina waiting at home for you?”

“Look here, what are you getting at, chief?”

“A psychological question. Answer me.”

“I’d hate to give her the chance, that’s all.”

“Do you think that she could have led Lynne to do her bidding by the power of her fascinations?”

“Confound her fascinations. It isn’t that; it’s her eyes, chief; her tiger eyes; her yellow eyes, that can blaze so that they frighten one. Now! How did she get in here, and how did she get out again, and take Lynne with her? Will this thing suggest a way by which she might have taken him out?”

He held up to the detective’s view a small rubber cork.

“Looks as though it might have fitted a phial that held chloroform, chief, doesn’t it?” he asked. “I found it on the floor over there beneath that life-size painting of J. Cephas;” and as he said this he jerked his head toward the north side of the room between the windows.

“Found it there, did you?” replied Nick, rising. “Show me just where you found it.”

Patsy led the way across the room.