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 

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