Before discussing the matter with Minna, or calling the local police again, Wise went to the bedroom North had occupied and locked himself in. “If I can’t tell,” he said to himself, “whether that man was kidnapped or whether he sneaked himself off—yet _why_ would he do such a thing as that? My desperation over this puzzle is leading my mind astray.” Carefully, without touching a thing, Wise considered the state of the room. The bed had been occupied, and, it was quite evident, had been hastily quitted. The coverings were tossed back over the footboard, and the pillow still bore the impress of a head. On the dresser lay North’s collar and tie, and beneath the pillow, Wise discovered his watch and a handkerchief. Clearly, the man had gone, after a hasty and incomplete toilette. On the small table, lay some sheets of paper and a pencil. These papers were some that they had used the night before drawing plans and making measurements of the house. Scanning the papers, Wise was startled to see a scrawled message on the corner of a sheet. It read: They’ve got me. _L. N._ It had been so hastily jotted down as to be almost illegible. Had North managed to scribble it while his captor or captors looked another way? It was all too unbelievable! The thought would creep in that North was implicated in the mystery himself. Yet that was quite as unbelievable as the rest of it,—if not more so. Wise turned his attention to the disordered furniture. The overturned chair was not broken, but a glass tumbler was. Evidently it had been knocked off the night stand. The rug was in wrinkles and one window curtain had been partly pulled from its rod. The scratches on the hardwood floor were apparently made by scuffling feet, but of that Wise could not be sure. In fine, the whole disorder of the room could have been made by struggling men, or could have been faked by any one desiring to produce that effect. “Yet I’ve no reason to think North faked it,” Wise told himself frankly, “except that that would be an easy way out of it for me! And that message he left looks genuine,—and his watch is a valuable one,—oh, Lord, I _am_ up against it!” He went downstairs, and learned that Lawrence North’s straw hat still hung on the hall rack. The man must have been forcibly carried off. He couldn’t have walked out without collar, tie or hat! Moreover, the doors were all locked. It still was necessary to assume a secret exit from the house. Wise inclined to the hinged door frame, or window frame, but his most careful search failed to reveal any such. He determined to get an expert carpenter to look over the house, feeling that such would be better than an architect. Crestfallen, dispirited and utterly nonplussed, Wise sat down in the library to think it over. First, the authorities must be told of North’s disappearance, and all that, but those things he left to Granniss. The mystery was his province.