show, as it
would if she were in the kitchen."

Nick went to an engine-house near by, where he secured a coil of
knotted rope.

He wished to make his investigations secretly, so as not to put Jones on
his guard. It would not have been safe to get into the flat by the
ordinary methods.

By using the fire escape of the building next door to the flat house,
Nick got to the roof.

The top of the air shaft was covered with a framework, in which large
panes of glass were set.

Nick removed one of them. Then he made his rope fast, and crept through
the space where the glass had been.

The Jones' flat was next to the top, so Nick had a short descent.

But there was an awful stretch of empty air under him as he hung there.

The shaft went to the basement floor, about seventy feet below the level
of the window which opened into the room occupied by the Jones' new
servant.

He found that window readily. One glance through it was enough to
satisfy him.

There sat the colored girl, reading a book. Nick's suspicions had been
correct.

Naturally he did not delay very long in the air shaft. He had a hard
climb to make, hand over hand, to the roof.

The instant that his eyes rested on the girl, he began the ascent.

He had gone up less than six feet when the rope suddenly gave way, and
he found himself plunging downward through the shaft.

CHAPTER VII.

THE WARDROBE OF GASPARD'S FRIEND.

Nick Carter is hard to kill. A good many crooks have tried to put him
out of the world, and a fair percentage of them have lost their own
lives in the attempt without inflicting any injury upon Nick.

He is a man of resources, and that's what saves him. When one thing
fails him, he finds something else to take its place.

And so, when that rope gave way, he took the next best thing.

That happened to be the sill of the window of Mr. Jones' bath-room. Nick
seized it with a grip of iron as he shot downward.

The strain on his arms was something awful, but he held on. His fingers
gripped the wood till they dented it.

In two seconds he had scrambled through the window into Jones' flat.

It was done so noiselessly that the colored servant in the room directly
opposite, across the narrow shaft, was not disturbed in her reading.

From the bath-room Nick made his way to the hall, and thence to the
parlor, where Mr. Jones--to judge by the light in the window observed by
Musgrave--had decided to spend the evening.

Mr. Jon