Chapter XXXV: A Message in the Dust

With the tools he had asked for at hand, Nick Carter lost no time in beginning the work of uncovering the entrance to the secret passage between the walls if one existed, and he had every reason to believe that one did exist.

He had not proceeded far with this part of the search when he made the discovery that the canvas upon which the portrait was painted had been stretched over a flat sheet of metal, probably steel, that there were no screw heads in sight, and that prying with the tools that Thomas had brought to him would be unavailable.

He attacked the frame of the picture, then, and here he could pry with his improvised levers.

It seemed like vandalism to injure that frame, for it was a beautiful and a costly one; but there was reason sufficient for doing so, and Nick Carter did not hesitate.

After a time the vertical strip to the right of the picture--that is, toward the east--began to give, and presently came loose in the detective’s grasp.

He pulled it aside and put it down upon the floor, and then turning his attention to the space that he had uncovered he immediately saw where there was a hole the size of a lead pencil, through the steel that had been covered by that section of the frame that he had just removed.

A glance at the section of the frame itself revealed a small steel rod which was in the exact place where it would have fitted through the hole when the frame was in place, and at the outside of the frame it was fastened to a section of the ornamental part of it, so that if Nick had but known where to place his thumb a few moments sooner, it would have been unnecessary to have gone to all that trouble.

With the hammer he drove the small steel rod out of the frame, took it in his hand, inserted it in the hole, and pressed solidly upon it.

At once there was a sharp click from beyond the wall, and the whole picture moved outward the distance of a quarter of an inch, and stopped.

Nick put his fingers into the opening, and pulled, and the steel plate across which the canvas had been stretched responded to his effort.

It moved outward into the room on silent hinges, forming a perfect doorway, and it revealed--well, just what he had been seeking; more explicit description seems unnecessary just now.

To add to the possibilities of the secret entrance, its approach, the necessary stairs, and its general utility, a false chimney had been added to the construction of the house at just that point.

That, added to the thickness of the wall itself, afforded ample space for the object in view when the place was constructed, and it added to the general symmetry of the proportions of the building, also.

In the space into which the three men gazed, and which was at least four feet by six, and from one of which a spiral staircase descended, there were two chairs. There was also an incandescent electric bulb brilliantly alight; and there were also many stumps of handmade cigarettes, burnt matches, and sprinklings of tobacco on the stone floor.

“Red Mike evidently waited for Madge right here while she entered the room,” was the comment of the detective, as he gazed upon these things.

“Sure thing,” agreed Patsy. “Here is where he waited for the signal to enter.”

“And there,” rejoined the detective, “is where the secret door is worked to open and close it from this side of the wall.”

But he was already moving forward when he spoke, and had begun to descend the spiral stairs.

If it should seem incredible to the reader that in this modern day there should be such an arrangement inside one of the New York palaces, it will be interesting to know that the police records show three instances of the kind in palatial residences that have been built by multimillionaires within the last two decades.

And one of these to which reference is made--the mystery of which has never been revealed in print--was instrumental in one of the most sensational crimes that has happened in the city of New York within a generation.

But, to quote Kipling, that is another story.

This particular spiral staircase down which Nick Carter was making his way, began--or ended, as you prefer--at the second floor of the mansion.

It continued past the parlor floor of the house, there being no indication of possible egress from it there, and came to an end, apparently, before a heavy door upon which there was only an ordinary latch.

Raising this and pushing upon the door, Nick stepped into the inner vault of a wine cellar, and he noticed that in opening the door he had pushed out into the room an entire section of shelves.

This wine cellar was of ample proportions.

There was a round table in the center of it, and four chairs at the table; but that was not what attracted the immediate attention of the detective so much as the very evident fact that only a very short time had elapsed since some person or persons had been seated there.

The place still smelled of tobacco smoke from handmade cigarettes, indicating that Red Mike had at least been one of those persons. A single black kid glove on the floor near one of the chairs suggested that Madge had also been one of those who were present.

The fact that two incandescent lights were burning directly over the table suggested that the occupants had departed in haste.

The detective--Patsy and Thomas had both followed him--looked around him with closer attention.

He had at once reached the conclusion that Red Mike and Madge, with Lynne, had stopped in this wine cellar to wait there for a more propitious opportunity for leaving the house--doubtless with the idea of waiting there until night, so that they might escape from the neighborhood with little or no danger of being observed.

He assumed that after taking Lynne to the wine cellar Mike had returned to the space behind the portrait and had waited there, listening to all that had happened in the room from which they had taken their prisoner, and that he had heard enough to make him understand that Nick Carter suspected the presence of a secret entrance to that room.

Thus forewarned, Red Mike had doubtless hastened down the spiral staircase and given the alarm, which would account for the evidence of hasty departure.

But, of a surety, Lynne had been detained in that cellar long enough to have recovered from the effects of that first administering of the chloroform.

Nick Carter had known Lynne only a comparatively short time, but he had found the heir to the Lynne millions to be a cool, self-centered, well-poised man, one of the kind who, trained to life in the great West, never lost his head under any circumstances.

Such being the case, Lynne would, if there happened a possible opportunity, leave some indication or sign of his presence, wherever he might stop.

He would leave what he would call a trail, where any person following in search of him might find it.

Nick had read the man so, and now he looked for such a sign.

He discovered it, too, presently, on one of the bottles of Burgundy in a case that had been opened a long time, and which stood at the top of a pile close to the chair upon which Lynne had doubtless been seated when the effects of the chloroform had worn off.

Dust had collected upon one of the bottles of wine from which the tissue paper had been torn, and upon that collected dust, faintly traced, as if with one of the burnt matches that Red Mike had used and thrown aside, in lighting his cigarettes, were written words.

They were faint, and almost undecipherable at first; there was every indication, too, that they had been written by jerks, and at intervals, sometimes only half of a letter having been formed at a time.

This, of course, had been done to escape observation.

But Nick Carter brought forth his magnifying glass and bent to the task; and after an interval of patient effort he was able to read the message. Here it is:

“Bbngtn woman & Mike scret entrance. Chloroform. Plot to get money.
Taking me place they call Pleasantglades deserted. Mike brings
warning. More chlor.” And then the last three characters were
scrawled, as if hastily made: “6.30.”

The detective read it aloud to Patsy, and he added:

“If we read between the lines, and also between the words, we get this: ‘Babbington woman and Red Mike entered my room upstairs by means of the secret entrance. They chloroformed me and brought me here to this wine cellar. It is all a plot to extort money from me by some means which they consider adequate. I have listened to their talk until I am of the opinion that they are taking me to a place which they call Pleasantglades, which I understand them to say is now deserted, and will be therefore safe for hiding. Red Mike has suddenly appeared from his post on watch upstairs and brings a warning that they are pursued. A hasty departure is decided upon, and they intend to chloroform me again into unconsciousness. The time is now half-past six o’clock.’ If he could have written it all out, that is what he would have said,” the detective concluded; and he looked at his watch.

“It is five minutes to seven,” he said. “They have been gone from here twenty or twenty-five minutes. We must----”

Patsy interrupted him.

“I have been searching for a way out of here other than the one by which we entered,” he said. “I haven’t found it.”

“I have,” exclaimed Thomas. “Look!”

He pointed through the opening into the space at the foot of the spiral staircase, for the door formed of the shelves had been left ajar.

A narrow section of the wall across that narrow space had disappeared, revealing a literal hole in the wall. Darkness was beyond it, but neither of the detectives thought of that.

“The act of opening this door opened that one also,” said Nick, as he stepped quickly forward.

They passed along an underground passage which was just wide enough and high enough for one person at a time, and which led, Nick thought, in a southeasterly direction.

“It leads us toward the garage,” was all the comment he made; but after a moment, as they went onward, he added: “It was once a stable, you know, before horses gave place to the choo-choos.”

There was no difficulty of egress at the other end of the passageway; there never is, from the inside of such secret places.

They presently found themselves in what had once been a grainery, and there were doors from it, two in number, one opening upon the interior of the garage, the other upon a narrow hallway at one side of it, which in turn gave upon the street.

Nick opened the door into the garage and stepped forward; then he pointed toward the body of a man who was stretched face downward on the floor, while beside him was a monkey wrench with which he had been stricken down.

“We are just too late,” he said to Patsy. “Red Mike has struck the chauffeur on the head with the monkey wrench, they have stolen the car, and have got away.”

“We can trace them by the car,” said Patsy.

“Possibly,” replied Nick.