He smiled at his inadvertent play on words, and renewed his search. He paid special attention to the chimney, for except the windows and door that was the only outlet from the room.
It was a large fireplace, of the old fashioned style. There was an empty and scrupulously clean basket grate, wide but not deep, with horizontal bars in front after the fashion of most old grates. The black japanned parts were shining, and the gilded rim round the fireplace opening was brilliantly bright. Surely the Webbs had been scrupulous in their tidying up of Kimball’s room.
Coe looked about. The white paint was immaculate, the window panes fairly sparkled with cleanliness. He gave a sigh,—any clue that might have been left in that room must have been destroyed by the ruthless hands of the Webbs’ servants.
Coe poked his head well up the chimney, to the imminent peril of his waving forelocks, but the flue was not sooty at all. Neither was it in any way a possible means of escape. Coe’s imagination was well nigh boundless, but he couldn’t, by the wildest flight of fancy, see Kimball Webb making an exit that way. It was simply impossible.
He sat in a chair and strove to reconstruct the scene. Webb, perhaps, had sat in that very chair, the night before the day that was to have been his wedding day. Coe knew that Webb had every intention of attending his own wedding. He had learned from Elsie the indubitable truths of the man’s character and of his love for the girl he had chosen. Not for a minute did Coley Coe think Webb had absconded purposely.
And abduction presupposed one other person at least. How did that person get in,—and accompanied by Webb, get out?
“He couldn’t,” Coe decided, and then turned his attention to the idea that Webb had been lured away,—say, by means of an imperative message.
But that made the exit from the locked room no easier of solution, and Coley Coe gave it up, and turned in for the night.
As he stretched himself between the sheets of Kimball Webb’s bed, he realized there was no night light, as is usual in modern houses.
He thought of going down stairs for a candle, but concluded that the switch of the centre chandelier was within two jumps of his bedside and depended on that.