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THE MYSTERY OF THE HASTY ARROW
by
ANNA KATHARINE GREEN
Author of "The Chief Legatee," "That Affair Next Door," "A Strange
Disappearance," Etc.
With Frontispiece by H. R. Ballinger
[Illustration: "Do not by any show of curiosity endanger her recovery.
I would not have her body or mind sacrificed on any account."]
A. L. Burt Company
Publishers New York
Published by Arrangement with Dodd, Mead & Company
Copyright, 1917,
By Dodd, Mead and Company, Inc.
Made in U.S.A.
CONTENTS
BOOK I--A PROBLEM OF THE FIRST ORDER
CHAPTER
I "Let Some One Speak!"
II In Room B
III "I Have Something to Show You"
IV A Strategic Move
V Three Where Two Should Be
VI The Man in the Gallery
VII "You Think that of Me!"
BOOK II--MR. X
VIII On the Search
IX While the City Slept
X "And He Stood Here?"
XI Footsteps
XII "Spare Nobody! I Say, Spare Nobody!"
XIII "Write Me His Name"
XIV A Loop of Silk
XV News from France
BOOK III--STORM IN THE MOUNTAINS
XVI Friends
XVII The Cuckoo-Clock
XVIII Mrs. Davis' Strange Lodger
XIX Mr. Gryce and the Timid Child
XX Mr. Gryce and the Unwary Woman
XXI Perplexed
XXII He Remembers
XXIII Girls, Girls! Nothing but Girls!
XXIV Flight
XXV Terror
XXVI The Face in the Window
BOOK IV--NEMESIS
XXVII From Lips Long Silent
XXVIII "Romantic! Too Romantic!"
XXIX A Strong Man
XXX The Creeping Shadow
XXXI Confronted
XXXII "Why Is that Here?"
XXXIII Again the Cuckoo-Clock
XXXIV The Bud--Then the Deadly Flower
BOOK I
A PROBLEM OF THE FIRST ORDER
I
"LET SOME ONE SPEAK!"
The hour of noon had just struck, and the few visitors still lingering
among the curiosities of the great museum were suddenly startled by the
sight of one of the attendants running down the broad, central staircase,
loudly shouting:
"Close the doors! Let no one out! An accident has occurred, and nobody's
to leave the building."
There was but one person near either of the doors, and as he chanced to
be a man closely connected with the museum,--being, in fact, one of its
most active directors,--he immediately turned about and in obedience to a
gesture made by the attendant, ran up the marble steps, followed by some
dozen others.
At the top they all turned, as by common consent, toward the left-hand
gallery, where in the section marked II, a tableau greeted them which few
of them will ever forget.
I say "tableau" because the few persons concerned in it stood as in a
picture, absolutely motionless and silent as the dead. Sense, if not
feeling, was benumbed in them all, as in another moment it was benumbed
in the breasts of these new arrivals. Tragedy was there in its most
terrible, its most pathetic, aspect. The pathos was given by the
victim,--a young and pretty girl lying face upward on the tessellated
floor with an arrow in her breast and death stamped unmistakably on every
feature,--the terror by the look and attitude of the woman they saw
kneeling over her--a remarkable woman, no longer young, but of a presence
to hold the attention, even if the circumstances had been of a far less
tragic nature. Her hand was on the arrow but she had made no movement to
withdraw it, and her eyes, fixed upon space, showed depths of horror
hardly to be explained even by the suddenness and startling character
of the untoward fatality of which she had just been made the unhappy
witness.
The director, whose name was Roberts, thought as he paused on the edge of
the crowd that he had never seen a countenance upon which woe had stamped
so deep a mark; and greatly moved by it, he was about to seek some
explanation of a scene to which appearances gave so little clue, when the
tall but stooping figure of the Curator entered, and he found himself
relieved from a task whose seriousness he had no difficulty in measuring.
To those who knew William Jewett well, it was evident that he had been
called from some task which still occupied his thoughts and for the
moment somewhat bewildered his understanding. But as he was a
conscientious man and quite capable of taking the lead when once roused
to the exigencies of an occasion, Mr. Roberts felt a certain interest in
watching the slow awakening of this self-absorbed man to the awful
circumstances which in one instant had clouded the museum in an
atmosphere of mysterious horror.
When the full realization came,--which was not till a way had been made
for him to the side of the stricken woman crouching over the dead
child,--the energy which transformed his countenance and gave character
to his usually bent and inconspicuous figure was all if not more than the
anxious director expected.
Finding that his attempts to meet the older woman's eye only prolonged
the suspense, the Curator addressed her quietly, and in sympathetic tones
inquired whose child this was and how so dreadful a thing had happened.
She did not answer. She did not even look his way. With a rapid glance
into the faces about him, ending in one of deep compassion directed
toward herself, he repeated his question.
Still no response--still that heavy silence, that absolute immobility of
face and limb. If her faculty of hearing was dulled, possibly she would
yield to that of touch. Stooping, he laid his hand on her arm.
This roused her. Slowly her eyes lost their fixed stare and took on a
more human light. A shudder shook her frame, and gazing down into the
countenance of the young girl lying at her feet, she broke into moans of
such fathomless despair as wrung the hearts of all about her.
It was a scene to test the nerve of any man. To one of the Curator's
sympathetic temperament it was well-nigh unendurable. Turning to those
nearest, he begged for an explanation of what they saw before them:
"Some one here must be able to tell me. Let that some one speak."
At this the quietest and least conspicuous person present, a young man
heavily spectacled and of student-like appearance, advanced a step and
said:
"I was the first person to come in here after this poor young lady fell.
I was looking at coins just beyond the partition there, when I heard a
gasping cry. I had not heard her fall--I fear I was very much preoccupied
in my search for an especial coin I had been told I should find here--but
I did hear the cry she gave, and startled by the sound, left the section
where I was and entered this one, only to see just what you are seeing
now."
The Curator pointed at the two women.
"This? The one woman kneeling over the other with her hand on the arrow?"
"Yes, sir."
A change took place in the Curator's expression. Involuntarily his eyes
rose to the walls hung closely with Indian relics, among which was a
quiver in which all could see arrows similar to the one now in the breast
of the young girl lying dead before them.
"This woman must be made to speak," he said in answer to the low murmur
which followed this discovery. "If there is a doctor present----"
Waiting, but receiving no response, he withdrew his hand from the woman's
arm and laid it on the arrow.
This roused her completely. Loosing her own grasp upon the shaft, she
cried, with sudden realization of the people pressing about her:
"I could not draw it. That causes death, they say. Wait! she may still be
alive. She may have a word to speak."
She was bending to listen. It was hardly a favorable moment for further
questioning, but the Curator in his anxiety could not refrain from
saying:
"Who is she? What is her name and what is yours?"
"Her name?" repeated the woman, rising to face him again. "How should I
know? I was passing through this gallery and had just stopped to take a
look into the court when this young girl bounded by me from behind and
flinging up her arms, fell with a deep sigh to the floor. I saw an arrow
in her breast, and----"
Emotion choked her, and when some one asked if the girl was a stranger to
her, she simply bowed her head; then, letting her gaze pass from face to
face till it had completed the circle of those about her, she said in her
former mechanical way:
"My name is Ermentrude Taylor. I came to look at the bronzes. I should
like to go now."
But the crowd which had formed about her was too compact to allow her to
pass. Besides, the director, Mr. Roberts, had something to say first.
Working his way forward, he waited till he had attracted her attention
and then remarked in his most considerate manner:
"You will pardon these importunities, Mrs. Taylor. I am a director of
this museum, and if Mr. Jewett will excuse me,"--here he bowed to the
Curator,--"I should like to inquire from what direction the arrow came
which ended this young girl's life?"
For a moment she stood aghast, fixing him with her eye as though to ask
whither this inquiry tended. Then with an air of intention which was not
without some strange element of fear, she allowed her glance to travel
across the court till it rested upon the row of connected arches facing
them from the opposite gallery.
"Ah," said he, putting her look into words, "you think the arrow came
from the other side of the building. Did you see anyone over there,--in
the gallery, I mean,--at or before the instant of this young girl's
fall?"
She shook her head.
"Did any of _you_?" he urged, with his eyes on the crowd. "Some one must
have been looking that way."
But no answer came, and the silence was fast becoming oppressive when
these words, whispered by one woman to another, roused them anew and
sent every glance again to the walls--even hers for whose benefit this
remark had possibly been made:
"But there are no arrows over there. All the arrows are here."
She was right. They were here, quiver after quiver of them; nor were they
all beyond reach. As the woman thus significantly assailed noted this and
saw with what suspicion others noted it also, a decided change took place
in her aspect.
"I should like to sit down," she murmured. Possibly she was afraid she
might fall.
As some one brought a chair, she spoke, but very tremulously, to the
director:
"Are there no arrows in the rooms over there?"
"I am quite sure not."
"And no bows?"
"None."
"If--if anyone had been seen in the gallery----"
"No one was."
"You are sure of that?"
"You heard the question asked. It brought no answer."
"But--but these galleries are visible from below. Some one may have been
looking up from the court and----"
"If there was any such person in the building, he would have been here by
this time. People don't hold back such information."
"Then--then--" she stammered, her eyes taking on a hunted look, "you
conclude--these people conclude _what_?"
"Madam,"--the word came coldly, stinging her into drawing herself to her
full height,--"it is not for me to conclude in a case like this. That is
the business of the police."
At this word, with its suggestion of crime, her air of conscious power
vanished in sudden collapse. Possibly she had seen the significant
gesture with which the Curator pointed out a quiver from which one of the
arrows was missing. That this was so, was shown by her next question:
"But where is the bow? Look about on the floor. You will find none. How
can an arrow be shot without a bow?"
"It cannot be," came from some one at her back. "But it can be driven
home like a dagger if the hand wielding it is sufficiently powerful."
A cry left her lips; she seemed to listen as for some echo; then in a
wild abandonment which ignored person and place she flung herself again
at the dead girl's side, and before the astonished people surrounding her
could intervene, she had caught up the body in her arms, and bending over
it, whispered word after word into the poor child's closed ear.
II
IN ROOM B
Five minutes later the Curator was at the 'phone calling up Police
Headquarters. A death had occurred at the museum. Would they send over
a capable detective?
"What kind of death?" was the harsh reply. "We don't send detectives in
cases of heart-failure or simple accident. Is it an accident?"
"No--no--hardly. It looks more like an insane woman's attack upon a
harmless stranger. It's the oddest sort of an affair, and we feel very
helpless. No common officer will do. We have one of that kind in the
building. What we want is a man of brains; he will need them."
A muffled sound at the other end--then a different voice asking some
half-dozen comprehensive questions--which, having been answered to the
best of the Curator's ability, were followed by the welcome assurance
that a man on whose experience he could rely would be at the museum doors
within five minutes.
With an air of relief Mr. Jewett stepped again into the court, and
repelling with hasty gestures the importunities of the small group of men
and women who had lacked the courage to follow the more adventurous ones
upstairs, crossed to where the door-man stood on guard over the main
entrance.
"Locked?" he asked.
"Yes, sir. Such were the orders. Didn't you give them?"
"No, but I should have done so, had I known. No one's to go out, and no
one's to come in but the detective whom I am expecting any moment."
They had not long to wait. Before their suspense had reached fever-point,
a tap was heard on the great door. It was opened, and a young man stepped
in.
"Coast clear?" he sang out with a humorous twist of his jaw as he noted
the Curator's evident chagrin at his meager and unsatisfactory
appearance. "Oh, I'm not your man," he added as his eye ran over the
whole place with a look which seemed to take in every detail in an
instant. "Mr. Gryce is in the automobile. Wait till I help him up."
He was gone before the Curator could utter a word, only to reappear in a
few minutes with a man in his wake whom the former at first blush thought
to be as much past the age where experience makes for efficiency as the
other seemed to be short of it.
But this impression, if impression it were, was of short duration. No
sooner had this physically weak but extremely wise old man entered upon
the scene than his mental power became evident to every person there.
Timorous hearts regained their composure, and the Curator--who in his ten
years of service had never felt the burden of his position so acutely as
in the last ten minutes--showed his relief by a volubility quite
unnatural to him under ordinary conditions. As he conducted the
detectives across the court, he talked not of the victim, as might
reasonably be expected, but of the woman who had been found leaning over
her with her hand on the arrow.
"We think her some escaped lunatic," he remarked. "Only a demented woman
would act as she does. First she denied all knowledge of the girl. Then
when she was made to see that the arrow sticking in the girl's breast had
been taken from a quiver hanging within arm's reach on the wall and used
as lances are used, she fell a-moaning and crying, and began to whisper
in the poor child's senseless ear."
"A common woman? One of a low-down type?"
"Not at all. A lady, and an impressive one, at that. You seldom see her
equal. That's what has upset us so. The crime and the criminal do not
seem to fit."
The detective blinked. Then suddenly he seemed to grow an inch taller.
"Where is she now?" he asked.
"In Room B, away from the crowd. She is not alone. A young lady detained
with the rest of the people here is keeping her company, to say nothing
of an officer we have put on guard."
"And the victim?"
"Lies where she fell, in Section II on the upper floor. There was no call
to move her. She was dead when we came upon the scene. She does not look
to be more than sixteen years old."
"Let's go up. But wait--can we see that section from here?"
They were standing at the foot of the great staircase connecting the two
floors. Above them, stretching away on either side, ran the two famous,
highly ornamented galleries, with their row of long, low arches
indicating the five compartments into which they were severally divided.
Pointing to the second one on the southern side, the Curator replied:
"That's it--the one where you see the Apache relics hanging high on the
rear wall. We shall have to shift those to some other place just as soon
as we can recover from this horror. I don't want the finest spot in the
whole museum made a Mecca for the morbid and the curious."
The remark fell upon unheeding ears. Detective Gryce was looking, not in
the direction named, but in the one directly opposite to it.
"I see," he quietly observed, "that there is a clear view across. Was
there no one in the right-hand gallery to see what went on in the left?"
"Not that I have heard of. It's the dullest hour of the day, and not only
this gallery but many of the rooms were entirely empty."
"I see. And now, what about the persons who were here? How many of them
have you let go?"
"Not one; the doors have been opened twice only--once to admit the
officer you will find on guard, and the other to let in yourself."
"Good! And how many have you here, all told?"
"I have not had time to count them, but I should say less than thirty.
This includes myself, as well as two attendants."
With a thoughtful air Mr. Gryce turned in the direction of the few
persons he could see huddled together around one of the central statues.
"Where are the others?" he asked.
"Upstairs--in and about the place where the poor child lies."
"They must be got out of there. Sweetwater!"
The young man who had entered with him was at his side in an instant.
"Clear the galleries. Then take down the name and address of every person
in the building."
"Yes, sir."
Before the last word had left his lips, the busy fellow was halfway up
the marble steps. "Lightning," some of his pals called him, perhaps
because he was as noiseless as he was quick. Meanwhile the senior
detective had drawn the Curator to one side.
"We'll take a look at these people as they come down. I have been said to
be able to spot a witness with my eyes shut. Let's see what I can do with
my eyes open."
"Young and old, rich and poor," murmured the Curator as some dozen
persons appeared at the top of the staircase.
"Yes," sighed the detective, noting each one carefully as he or she filed
down, "we sha'n't make much out of this experiment. Not one of them
avoids our looks. Emotion enough, but not of the right sort. Well, we'll
leave them to Sweetwater. Our business is above."
The Curator offered his arm. The old man made a move to take it--then
drew himself up with an air of quiet confidence.
"Many thanks," said he, "but I can go alone. Rheumatism is my trouble,
but these mild days loosen its grip upon my poor old muscles." He did
not say that the prospect of an interesting inquiry had much the same
effect, but the Curator suspected it, possibly because he was feeling
just a little bit spry himself.
Steeled as such experienced officers necessarily are to death in all its
phases, it was with no common emotion that the aged detective entered the
presence of the dead girl and took his first look at this latest victim
of mental or moral aberration. So young! so innocent! so fair! A
schoolgirl, or little more, of a class certainly above the average,
whether judged from the contour of her features or the niceties of her
dress. With no evidences of great wealth about her, there was yet
something in the cut of her garments and the careful attention to each
detail which bespoke not only natural but cultivated taste. On her breast
just above the spot where the cruel dart had entered, a fresh and
blooming nosegay still exhaled its perfume--a tragic detail accentuating
the pathos of a death so sudden that the joy with which she had pinned on
this simple adornment seemed to linger about her yet.
The detective, with no words for this touching spectacle, stretched out
his hand and with a reverent and fatherly touch pressed down the lids
over the unseeing eyes. This office done to the innocent dead, he asked
if anything had been found to establish the young girl's identity.
"Surely," he observed, "she was not without a purse or handbag. All young
ladies carry them."
For answer the officer on guard thrust his hand into one of his capacious
pockets, and drawing out a neat little bag of knitted beads, passed it
over to the detective with the laconic remark:
"Nothing doing."
And so it proved. It held only a pocket handkerchief--embroidered but
without a monogram--and a memorandum-book without an entry.
"A blind alley, if ever there was one," muttered Mr. Gryce; and ordering
the policeman to replace the bag as nearly as possible on the spot from
which it had been taken, he proceeded with the Curator to Room B.
Prepared to encounter a woman of disordered mind, the appearance
presented by Mrs. Taylor at his entrance greatly astonished Mr. Gryce.
There was a calmness in her attitude which one would scarcely expect to
see in a woman whom mania had just driven into crime. Surely lunacy does
not show such self-restraint; nor does lunacy awaken any such feelings of
awe as followed a prolonged scrutiny of her set but determined features.
Only grief of the most intense and sacred character could account for the
aspect she presented, and as the man to whom the tragedies of life were
of daily occurrence took in this mystery with all its incongruities, he
realized, not without a sense of professional pleasure, no doubt, that he
had before him an affair calling for the old-time judgment which, for
forty or more years, had made his record famous in the police annals of
the metropolis.
She was seated with no one near her but a young lady whom sympathetic
interest had drawn to her side. Mr. Roberts stood in one of the windows,
and not far from him a man in the museum uniform.
At the authoritative advance of the old detective, the woman, whose eye
he had caught, attempted to struggle to her feet, but desisted after a
moment of hopeless effort, and sank back in her chair. There was no
pretense in this. Though gifted with a strong frame, emotion had so
weakened her that she was simply unable to stand. Quite convinced of
this, and affected in spite of himself by her look of lofty patience, Mr.
Gryce prefaced his questions with an apology--quite an unusual proceeding
for him.
Whether or no she heard it, he could not tell; but she was quite ready to
answer when he asked her name and then her place of residence--saying in
response to the latter query:
"I live at the Calderon, a family hotel in Sixty-seventh Street.
My name"--here she paused for a second to moisten her lips--"is
Taylor--Ermentrude Taylor.... Nothing else," she speedily added in
a tone which drew every eye her way. Then more evenly: "You will find
the name on the hotel's books."
"Wife or widow?"
"Widow."
What a voice! how it reached every heart, waking strange sympathies
there! As the word fell, not a person in the room but stirred uneasily.
Even she herself started at its sound; and moved, perhaps, by the depth
of silence which followed, she added in suppressed tones:
"A widow within the hour. That's why you see me still in colors, but
crushed as you behold--killed! killed!"
That settled it. There was no mistaking her condition after an expression
of this kind. The Curator and Mr. Gryce exchanged glances, and Mr.
Roberts, stepping from his corner, betrayed the effect which her words
had produced on him, by whispering in the detective's ear:
"What you need is an alienist."
Had she heard? It would seem so from the quick way she roused and
exclaimed with indignant emphasis:
"You do not understand me! I see that I must drink my bitter cup to the
dregs. This is what I mean: My husband was living this morning--living
up to the hour when the clock in this building struck twelve. I knew it
from the joyous hopes with which my breast was filled. But with the
stroke of noon the blow fell. I was bending above the poor child who had
fallen so suddenly at my feet, when the vision came, and I saw him gazing
at me from a distance so remote--across a desert so immeasurable--that
nothing but death could create such a removal or make of him the ghastly
silhouette I saw. He is dead. At that moment I felt his soul pass; and so
I say that I am a widow."
Ravings? No, the calm certainty of her tone, the grief, touching depths
so profound it had no need of words, showed the confidence she felt in
the warning she believed herself to have received. Though probably not
a single person present put any faith in occultism in any of its forms,
there was a general movement of sympathy which led Mr. Gryce to pass the
matter by without any attempt at controversy, and return to the question
in hand. With a decided modification of manner, he therefore asked her to
relate how she came to be kneeling over the injured girl with her hand
upon the arrow.
"Let me have a moment in which to recover myself," she prayed, covering
her eyes with her hand. Then, while all waited, she gave a low cry, "I
suffer; I suffer!" and leaped to her feet, only to sink back again inert
and powerless. But only for an instant: with that one burst of extreme
feeling she recovered her self-control, answering with apparent calmness
the detective's question:
"I was passing through the gallery as any other visitor might, when a
young lady rushed by me--stopped short--threw up her arms and fell
backward to the floor, pierced to the heart by an arrow. In a moment
I was on my knees at her side with hand outstretched to withdraw this
dreadful arrow. But I was afraid--I had heard that this sometimes causes
death, and while I was hesitating, that vision came, engulfing
everything. I could think of nothing else."
She was near collapsing again; but being a woman of great nerve, she
fought her weakness and waited patiently for the next question. It was
different, without doubt, from any she had expected.
"Then you positively deny any active connection with the strange death of
this young girl?"
A pause, as if to take in what he meant. Then slowly, impressively, came
the answer:
"I do."
"Did you see the person who shot the arrow?"
"No."
"From what direction would it have had to come to strike her as it did?"
"From the opposite balcony."
"Did you see anyone there?"
"No."
"But you heard the arrow?"
"Heard?"
"An arrow shot from a bow makes a whizzing sound as it flies. Didn't you
hear that?"
"I don't know." She looked troubled and uncertain. "I don't remember. I
was expecting no such thing--I was not prepared. The sight of an arrow--a
killing arrow--in that innocent breast overcame me with inexpressible
grief and horror. If the vision of my husband had not followed, I might
remember more. As it is, I have told all I can. Won't you excuse me? I
should like to go. I am not fit to remain. I want to return home--to
hear from my husband--to learn by letter or telegram whether he is indeed
dead."
Mr. Gryce had let her finish. An inquiry so unofficial might easily await
the moods of such a witness. Not till the last word had been followed by
what some there afterward called a hungry silence, did he make use of his
prerogative to say:
"I shall be pleased to release you and will do so just as soon as I can.
But I must put one or two more questions. Were you interested in the
Indian relics you had come among? Did you handle any of them in passing?"
"No. I had no interest. I like glass, bronzes, china--I hate weapons. I
shall hate them eternally after this." And she began to shudder.
The detective, with a quick bend of his head, approached her ear with the
whispered remark:
"I am told that when your attention was drawn to these weapons, you fell
on your knees and murmured something into the dead girl's ears. How do
you explain that?"
"I was giving her messages to my husband. I felt--strange as it may seem
to you--that they had fled the earth together--and I wanted him to know
that I would be constant, and other foolish things you will not wish me
to repeat here. Is that all you wish to know?"
Mr. Gryce bowed, and cast a quizzical glance in the direction of the
Curator. Certainly for oddity this case transcended any he had had in
years. With this woman eliminated from the situation, what explanation
was there of the curious death he was there to investigate? As he was
meditating how he could best convey to her the necessity of detaining
her further, he heard a muttered exclamation from the young woman
standing near her, and following the direction of her pointing finger,
saw that the strange silence which had fallen upon the room had a cause.
Mrs. Taylor had fainted away in her chair.
III
"I HAVE SOMETHING TO SHOW YOU"
Mr. Gryce took advantage of the momentary disturbance to slip from the
room. He was followed by the Curator, who seemed more than ever anxious
to talk.
"You see! Mad as a March hare!" was his hurried exclamation as the door
closed behind them. "I declare I do not know which I pity more, her
victim or herself. The one is freed from all her troubles; the other--Do
you think we ought to have a doctor to look after her? Shall I
telephone?"
"Not yet. We have much to learn before taking any decided steps." Then as
he caught the look of amazement with which this unexpected suggestion of
difficulties was met, he paused on his way to the stair-head to ask in a
tentative way peculiarly his own: "Then you still think the girl died
from a thrust given by this woman?"
"Of course. What else is there to think? You saw where the arrow came
from. You saw that the only bow the place contained was hanging high and
unstrung upon the wall, and you are witness to this woman's irresponsible
condition of mind. The sight of those arrows well within her reach
evidently aroused the homicidal mania often latent in one of her highly
emotional nature; and when this fresh young girl came by, the natural
result followed. I only hope I shall not be called upon to face the poor
child's parents. What can I say to them? What can anybody say? Yet I do
not see how we can be held responsible for so unprecedented an attack as
this, do you?"
Mr. Gryce made no answer. He had turned his back toward the stair-head
and was wondering if this easy explanation of a tragedy so peculiar as to
have no prototype in all of the hundreds of cases he had been called upon
to investigate in a long life of detective activity would satisfy all the
other persons then in the building. It was his present business to find
out--to search and probe among the dozen or two people he saw collected
below, for the witness who had seen or had heard some slight thing as yet
unrevealed which would throw a different light upon this matter. For his
mind--or shall we say the almost unerring instinct of this ancient delver
into human hearts?--would not accept without question this theory of
sudden madness in one of Mrs. Taylor's appearance, strange and
inexplicable as her conduct seemed. Though it was quite among the
possibilities that she had struck the fatal blow and in the manner
mentioned, it was equally clear to his mind that she had not done it in
an access of frenzy. He knew a mad eye and he knew a despairing one.
Fantastic as her story certainly was, he found himself more ready to
believe it than to accept any explanation of this crime which ascribed
its peculiar features to the irresponsibilities of lunacy.
However, he kept his impressions to himself and in his anxiety to pursue
his inquiries among the people below, was on the point of descending
thither, when he found his attention arrested, and that of the Curator's
as well, by the sight of a young man hastening toward them through the
northern gallery. (The tragedy, as you will remember, had occurred in the
southern one.) He was dressed in the uniform of the museum, and moved so
quickly and in such an evident flurry of spirits that the detective
instinctively asked:
"Who's that? One of your own men?"
"Yes, that's Correy, our best-informed and most-trusted attendant. Looks
as if he had something to tell us. Well, Correy, what is it?" he queried
as the man emerged upon the landing where they stood. "Anything new? If
there is, speak out plainly. Mr. Gryce is anxious for all the evidence he
can get."
With an ingenuousness rather pleasing than otherwise to the man thus
presented to his notice, the young fellow stopped short and subjected the
famous detective to a keen and close scrutiny before venturing to give
the required information.
Was it because of the importance of what he had to communicate? It would
seem so, from the suppressed excitement of his tone, as after his brief
but exceedingly satisfactory survey, he jerked his finger over his
shoulder in the direction from which he had come, with the short remark:
"I have something to show you."
Something! Mr. Gryce had been asking for this something only a moment
before. We can imagine, then, the celerity with which he followed this
new guide into the one spot of all others which possessed for him the
greatest interest. For if by any chance the arrow which had done such
deadly work had been sped from a bow instead of having been used as a
dart, then it was from this gallery and from no other quarter of the
building that it had been so sped. Any proof of this could have but the
one effect of exonerating from all blame the woman who had so impressed
him. He had traversed the first section and had entered the second, when
the Curator joined him; together they passed into the third.
For those who have not visited this museum, a more detailed description
of these galleries may be welcome. Acting as a means of communication
between the row of front rooms and those at the back, they also serve to
exhibit certain choice articles which call for little space, and are of a
nature more or less ornamental. For this purpose they are each divided
into five sections connected by arches narrower but not less decorative
than those which open in a direct row upon the court. Of these sections
the middle one on either side is much larger than the rest; otherwise
they do not differ.
It was in the midst of this larger section that Correy now stood,
awaiting their approach. There had been show-cases filled with rare
exhibits in the two through which they had just passed, but in this one
there was nothing to be seen but a gorgeous hanging, covering very nearly
the whole wall, flanked at either end by a pedestal upholding a vase of
inestimable value and corresponding ugliness. A highly decorative
arrangement, it is true, but in what lay its interest for the criminal
investigator?
Correy was soon to show them. With a significant gesture toward the
tapestry, he eagerly exclaimed:
"You see that? I've run by it several times since the accident sent me
flying all over the building at everybody's call. But only just now, when
I had a moment to myself, did I remember the door hid behind it. It's a
door we no longer use, and I'd no reason for thinking it had anything to
do with the killing of the young lady in the opposite gallery. But for
all that I felt it would do no harm to give it a look, and running from
the front, where I happened to be, I pulled out the tapestry and saw--but
supposing I wait and let you see for yourselves. That will be better."
Leaving them where they stood face to face with the great hanging, he
made a dive for the pedestal towering aloft at the farther end, and
edging himself in behind it, drew out the tapestry from the wall, calling
on them as he did so to come and look behind it. The Curator did not
hesitate. He was there almost as soon as the young man himself.
But the detective was not so hasty. With a thousand things in mind, he
stopped to peer along the gallery and down into the court before giving
himself away to any prying eye. Satisfied that he might make the desired
move with impunity, Mr. Gryce was about to turn in the desired direction
when, struck by a new fact, he again stopped short.
He had noticed how the heavy tapestry shivered under Correy's clutch. Had
this been observed by anyone besides himself? If by chance some person
wandering about the court had been looking up--but no, the few people
gathered there stood too far forward to see what was going on in this
part of the gallery; and relieved from all further anxiety on this score,
he joined Correy at the pedestal and at a word from him succeeded in
squeezing himself around it into the small space they had left for him
between the pushed-out hanging and the wall. An exclamation from the
Curator, who had only waited for his coming to take his first look, added
zest to his own scrutiny. It would take something more than the sight of
a well-known door to give it such a tone of astonished discovery. What?
Even he, with the accumulated surprises of years to give wings to his
imagination, did not succeed in guessing. But when his eyes, once
accustomed to the semi-darkness of the narrow space which Correy had thus
opened out before him, saw not the door but what lay within its recess,
he acknowledged to himself that he should have guessed--and that a dozen
years before, he certainly would have done so.
It was a _bow_--not like the one hanging high in the Apache exhibit, but
yet a bow strong of make and strung for use.
* * * * *
Here was a discovery as important as it was unexpected, eliminating Mrs.
Taylor at once from the case and raising it into a mystery of the first
order. By dint of long custom, Mr. Gryce succeeded in hiding his extreme
satisfaction, but not the perplexity into which he was thrown by this
complete change of base. The Curator appeared to be impressed in much the
same way, and shook his head in a doubtful fashion when Correy asked him
if he recognized the bow as belonging to the museum.
"I should have to see it nearer to answer that question with any sort of
confidence," he demurred. "From such glimpses as I can get of it from
here I should say that it has not been taken from any of our exhibits."
"I am sure it has not," muttered Correy. Then with a side glance at Mr.
Gryce, he added: "Shall I slip in behind and get it?"
The detective, thus appealed to, hesitated a moment; then with an
irrelevance perhaps natural to the occasion, he inquired where this door
so conveniently hidden from the general view led to. It was the Curator
who answered.
"To a twisting, breakneck staircase opening directly into my office. But
this door has not been used in years. See! Here is the key to it on my
own ring. There is no other. I lost the mate to it myself not long after
my installation here."
The detective, working his way back around the pedestal, cast another
glance up and down the gallery and over into the court. Still no spying
eye, save that of the officer opposite.
"We will leave that bow where it is for the present," he decided, "a
secret between us three." And motioning for Correy to let the tapestry
fall, he stood watching it settle into place, till it hung quite straight
again, with its one edge close to the wall and the other sweeping the
floor. Had its weight been great enough to push the bow back again into
its former place close against the door? Yes. No eye, however trained,
would, from any bulge in the heavy tapestry, detect its presence there.
He could leave the spot without fear; their secret would remain theirs
until such time as they chose to disclose it.
As the three walked back the way they had come, the Curator glanced
earnestly at the detective, who seemed to have fallen into a kind of
anxious dream. Would it do to interrupt him with questions? Would he
obtain a straight answer if he did? The old man moved heavily but the now
fully alert Curator could not fail to see that it was with the heaviness
of absorbed thought. Dare he disturb that thought? They had both reached
the broad corridor separating the two galleries at the western end before
he ventured to remark:
"This discovery alters matters, does it not? May I ask what you propose
to do now? Anything in which we can help you?"
[Illustration:
1--Ephraim Short.
2--Mrs. Lynch.
3--Director Roberts.
4--Door-man.
5--Copyist.
6--Mrs. Alice Lee.
7-8--Mr. and Mrs. Draper.
9--Mr. Coit.
10--Mr. Simpson.
11--Prof. Turnbull.
12--Second Door-man.
13--Miss Hunsicker.
14--Attendant.
15--Miss Blake.
16--Officer.]
The detective may have heard him and he may not; at all events he made no
reply though he continued to advance with a mechanical step until he
stood again at the top of the marble steps leading down into the court.
Here some of the uncertainty pervading his mind seemed to leave him,
though he still looked very old and very troubled, or so the Curator
thought, as pausing there, he allowed his glance to wander from the
marble recesses below to the galleries on either side of him, and from
these on to the seemingly empty spaces back of the high, carved railing
guarding the great well. Would a younger man have served them better? It
began to look so; then without warning and in a flash, as it were, the
whole appearance of the octogenarian detective changed, and turning with
a smile to the two men so anxiously watching him, he exclaimed with an
air of quiet triumph:
"I have it. Follow and see how my plan works."
Amazed, for he looked and moved like another man,--a man in whom the
almost extinguished spark of early genius had suddenly flared again into
full blaze,--they hastily joined him in anticipation of they knew not
what. But their enthusiasm received a check when at the moment of descent
Mr. Gryce again turned back with the remark:
"I had forgotten. I have something to do first. If you will kindly see
that the people down there are kept from growing too impatient, I will
soon join you with Mrs. Taylor, who must not be left on this floor after
we have gone below."
And with no further explanation of his purpose, he turned and proceeded
without delay to Room B.
IV
A STRATEGIC MOVE
He found the unhappy woman quite recovered from her fainting spell, but
still greatly depressed and not a little incoherent. He set himself to
work to soothe her, for he had a request to make which called for an
intelligent answer. Relieved from all suspicion of her having been an
active agent in the deplorable deed he was here to investigate, he was
lavish in his promises of speedy release, and seeing how much this
steadied her, he turned to Mr. Roberts, who was still in the room, and
then to the young lady who had been giving her a woman's care, and
signified that their attentions were no longer required and that he would
be glad to have them join the people below.
When the door had closed and Mr. Gryce found himself for the first time
alone with Mrs. Taylor, he drew up a chair to her side and remarked in
his old benevolent way:
"I feel guilty of cruelty, madam, in repeating a question you have
already answered. But the conditions are such that I must, and do it now.
When this young lady fell so unexpectedly at your feet, was your first
look at her or at the opposite gallery?"
For an instant her eyes held his--something which did not often happen to
him.
"At her," she vehemently declared. "I never thought of looking anywhere
else. I saw her at my feet, and fell on my knees at her side. Who
wouldn't have done so! Who would have seen anything but that arrow--_that
arrow_! Oh, it was terrible! Do not make me recall it. I have sorrows
enough----"
"Mrs. Taylor, you have my utmost sympathy. But you must realize how
important it is for me to make sure that you saw nothing in the place
from which that arrow was sent which would help us to locate the author
of this accident. The flitting of an escaping figure up or down the
opposite gallery, even a stir in the great tapestry confronting you from
that far-away wall, might give us a clue."
"I saw nothing," she replied coldly but with extreme firmness, "nothing
but that lifeless child and the picture of desolation which rose in my
own mind. Do not, I pray, make me speak again of that. It would sound
like delirium, and it is my wish to impress you with my sanity, so that
you will allow me to go home."
"You shall go, after the Coroner has had an opportunity to see you. We
expect him any moment. Meanwhile, you will facilitate your release and
greatly help us in what we have to do, if you will carry your fortitude
to the point of showing me in your own person just where you were
standing when this young girl dashed by you to her death."
"Do you mean for me to go back to that--that----"
"Yes, Mrs. Taylor. Surely you can do so if you will. When you have time
to think, you will be as anxious as ourselves to know through whose
carelessness (to call it nothing worse) this child came to her death.
Though it may prove to be quite immaterial whether you stood in one place
or another at that fatal moment, it is a question which will be sure to
come up at the inquest. That you may be able to answer correctly I urge
you to return with me to the exact spot, before your recollection of the
same has had time to fade. After that we will go below and I will see
that you are taken to some quiet place where you can remain undisturbed
till the Coroner comes."
Had she been a weak woman she would have succumbed again at this. But
she was a strong one, and after the first moment of recoil she rose
tremulously to her feet and signified her willingness to follow him to
the scene of death.
"Is--is she there alone?" was her sole question as they crossed the
corridor separating the room they had been in from the galleries.
"No--you will find an officer there. We could not leave the place quite
unguarded."
If she shuddered he did not observe it. Having summoned up all her
forces to meet this ordeal, she followed him without further word, and
re-entering the spot she had so lately left in great agony of mind,
stopped for one look and for one look only at the sweet face of the dead
girl smiling up at her from the cold floor, then she showed Mr. Gryce as
nearly as she could just where she had paused in shock and horror when
the poor child smitten by the fatal arrow fell back almost into her arms.
The detective, with a glance at the opposite gallery, turned and spoke to
the officer who had stepped aside into the neighboring section.
"Take the place just occupied by this lady," he said, "and hold it till
you hear from me again." Then offering his arm to Mrs. Taylor, he led her
out.
"I see that you were approaching the railing overlooking the court when
you were stopped in this fearful manner," he remarked when well down the
gallery toward its lower exit. "What did you have in mind? A nearer
glimpse of the tapestry over there and the two great vases?"
"No, no." She was wrought up by now to a tension almost unendurable. "It
was the court--what I might see in the court. Oh!" she impulsively cried:
"the child! the child! that innocent, beautiful child!" And breaking away
from his arm, she threw herself against the wall in a burst of
uncontrollable weeping.
He allowed her a moment of unrestrained grief, then he took her on his
arm again and led her down into the court where he gave her into the
charge of Correy. He had gone as far as he dared in her present
hysterical condition. Besides, he could no longer defer the great
experiment by means of which he hoped to reach the heart of this mystery.
Taking the slip of paper handed him by Sweetwater, he crossed the court
to where the various visitors, detained, some against their will and some
quite in accordance with it, stood about in groups or sat side by side on
the long benches placed along the front for their comfort. As he
confronted them, his face beamed with that benevolent smile which had
done so much for him in days gone by. Raising his hand he called
attention to himself; then, when he was quite sure of being heard by them
all, he addressed them with a quiet emphasis which could not fail to gain
and hold their attention:
"I am Detective Gryce, sent here from Police Headquarters to look into
this very serious matter. Till the Coroner arrives, I am in authority
here, and being so, will have to ask your indulgence for any discomfort
you may experience in helping me with my investigation. A young girl,
full of life an hour ago, lies dead in the gallery above. We do not know
her name; we do not know who killed her. But there is some one here who
does. The man or woman who, wittingly or unwittingly, launched that fatal
shaft, is present with us in this building. This person has not spoken.
If he will do so now, he will save us and himself, too, no end of
trouble. Let him speak, then. I will give him five minutes in which to
make this acknowledgment. Five minutes! If that man is wise--or can it
be a woman?--he will not keep us waiting."
Silence. Heads moving, eyes peering, excitement visible in every face,
but not a word from anybody. Mr. Gryce turned and pointed up at the
clock. All looked--but still no word from man or woman.
One minute gone!
Two minutes!
Three!
The silence had become portentous. The movement, involuntary and
simultaneous, which had run through the crowd at first had stopped. They
were waiting--each and all--waiting with eyes on the minute-hand creeping
forward over the dial toward which the detective's glance was still
turned.
The fourth minute passed--then the fifth--and no one had spoken.
With a sigh Mr. Gryce wheeled himself back and faced the crowd again.
"You see," he quietly announced, "the case is serious. Twenty-two of you,
and not one to speak the half-dozen words which would release the rest
from their present embarrassing position! What remains for us to do under
circumstances like these? My experience suggests but one course: to
narrow down this inquiry to those--you will not find them many--who from
their nearness to the place of tragedy or from some other cause equally
pertinent may be looked upon as possible witnesses for the Coroner's
jury. That this may be done speedily and surely, I am going to ask you,
every one of you, to retake the exact place in the building which you
were occupying when you heard the first alarm. I will begin with the
Curator himself. Mr. Jewett, will you be so good as to return to the
room, and if possible to the precise spot, you were occupying when you
first learned what had occurred here?"
The Curator, who stood at his elbow, made a quick bow and turned in the
direction of the marble steps, which he hastily remounted. A murmur from
the crowd followed this action and continued till he disappeared in the
recesses of the right-hand gallery. Then, at a gesture from Mr. Gryce, it
suddenly ceased, and with a breathless interest easy to comprehend, they
one and all waited for his next word. It was a simple one.
"We are all obliged to Mr. Jewett for his speedy compliance with so
unusual a request. He has made my task a comparatively easy one."
Then, glancing at the list of names and addresses which had been compiled
for him by Sweetwater, he added:
"I will read off your names as recorded here. If each person, on hearing
his own, will move quickly to his place and remain there till my young
man can make a note of the same, we shall get through this matter in
short order. And let me add"--as he perceived here and there a shoulder
shrugged, or an eye turned askance--"that once the name is called, no
excuse of non-recollection will be accepted. You must know, every one of
you, just where you were standing when the cry of death rang out, and any
attempt to mislead me or others in this matter will only subject the
person making it to a suspicion he must wish to avoid. Remember that
there are enough persons here for no one to be sure that his whereabouts
at so exciting a moment escaped notice. Listen, then, and when your own
name is spoken, step quickly into place, whether that place be on this
floor or in the rooms or galleries above.--Mrs. Alice Lee!"
You can imagine the flurry, the excitement and the blank looks of the
average men and women he addressed. But not one hesitated to obey. Mrs.
Lee was on the farther side of one of the statues before her name had
more than left his lips. Her example set the pace for those who followed.
Like soldiers at roll-call, each one responded to the summons, going now
in one direction and now in another until on reaching the proper spot he
or she stopped.
Only six persons followed the Curator upstairs--an old woman who shook
her head violently as she plodded slowly up the marble steps; Correy; a
man with a packet of books under his arm (the same who had been studying
coins in Section II); a young couple whose movements showed such a marked
reluctance that more than one eye followed them as they went hesitatingly
up, clinging together with interlocking hands and stopping now on one
step and now on another to stare at each other in visible consternation;
and a boy of fourteen who grinned from ear to ear as he bounded gayly
up three steps at a time and took his position on the threshold of one
of the upper doors with all the precision of a soldier called to
sentry-duty--a boy scout if ever there was one.
There were twenty-two names on the list, and with the calling out of the
twenty-second, Mr. Gryce perceived the space before him entirely cleared
of its odd assortment of people. As he turned to take a look at the
result, a gleam of satisfaction crossed his time-worn face. By this
scheme, which he may be pardoned for looking upon as a stroke of genius
worthy of his brilliant prime, he had set back time a full hour,
restoring as by a magician's wand the conditions of that fatal moment of
initial alarm. Surely, with the knowledge of that hidden bow in his mind,
he should be able now to place his hand upon the person who had made use
of it to launch the fatal arrow. No one, however sly of foot and quick of
action, could have gone far from the gallery where that bow lay in the
few minutes which were all that could have elapsed between the shooting
of the arrow and the gasping cry which had brought all within hearing to
the Apache section. The man or woman whom he should find nearest to that
concealed door in the northern gallery would have to give a very good
account of himself. Not even the Curator would escape suspicion under
those circumstances.
However, it is only fair to add that Mr. Gryce had no fear of any such
embarrassing end to his inquisition as that. He had noticed the young
couple who had betrayed their alarm so ingenuously to every eye, and had
already decided within himself that the man was just such a fool as might
in a moment of vacuity pick up a bow and arrow to test his skill at a
given mark. Such things had been and such results had followed. The man
was a gawk and the woman a ninny; a few questions and their guiltiness
would appear--that is, if they should be found near enough the tapestry
to warrant his suspicion. If not--the alternative held an interest all
its own, and sent him in haste toward the stairway.
To reach it Mr. Gryce had to pass several persons standing where fate had
fixed them among the statuary grouped about the court, and had his
attention been less engrossed by what he expected to discover above, he
would have been deeply interested in noting how these persons, or most of
them at least, had so thoroughly accepted the situation that they had
taken the exact position and the exact attitude of the moment preceding
the alarm. Those who were admiring the great torsos or carved chariots of
the ancients, made a show of admiring them still. The man or woman who
had been going in an easterly direction, faced east; and those who had
been on the point of entering certain rooms, stood halting in the
doorways with their backs to the court.
Unfortunately, he did not take note of all this, or give the poor pawns
thus parading for his purpose more than a cursory glance. When he did
think, which was when he was halfway up the staircase, it was to look
back upon a changed scene. For with his going, interest had flagged and
the tableau lost its pointedness. No one had ventured as yet to leave his
place, but all had turned their faces his way, and on many of these faces
could be seen signs of fatigue if not of absolute impatience. He had
ordered them to stand and they had stood, but to be left there while he
went above was certainly trying. The one spot which held the interest was
in the southern gallery. If they could only follow him there----
All this was to be seen in their faces, and possibly the cunning old man
read it there; but if he did, it was to ask himself if their conclusions
were quite correct. The locale of interest had shifted in the last half
hour; and while most of these people believed him to be searching for the
witness who could tell him what had occurred in the death gallery, he
really was hunting for one who could add to his knowledge of what had
happened in the opposite one. And this witness might not be found in the
gallery, or even on the upper floor. It was well among the probabilities
that there might be among the various persons he saw posing in the court
below some who by an upward look might take in a part of if not the whole
broad sweep of that huge square of tapestry upon which his thoughts were
centered. It was for him to make a note of these persons. A diagram of
the court as it looked to him at that moment is shown for your
enlightenment.
[Illustration:
1--Ephraim Short.
2--Mrs. Lynch.
3--Director Roberts.
4--Door-man.
5--Copyist.
6--Mrs. Alice Lee.
7-8--Mr. and Mrs. Draper.
9--Mr. Coit.
10--Mr. Simpson.
11--Prof. Turnbull.
12--Second Door-man.
13--Miss Hunsicker.
14--Attendant.
15--Miss Blake.
16--Officer.]
Sixteen persons! Ten in view from the steps and six not. Of the sixteen,
only the following seemed to afford any excuse for future interrogation:
Numbers Two, Six, Ten, Seven, Eight and Thirteen. Making a mental note of
these, during which operation the poor unfortunates who had just been
considering themselves as quite out of the game revived in a startling
manner under his eye, he proceeded on his way.
As the action has now shifted to the upper floor, a diagram of this
second story is now in order.
As you will see, a straight glimpse is given down either gallery from the
arches opening into the broad corridor into which Mr. Gryce had stepped
on leaving the central staircase. He had therefore only to choose which
of the two would better repay his immediate investigation.
He decided upon the northern one, which you will remember was the one
holding the tapestry; since, to find anybody there, no matter whom, would
certainly settle the identity of the person responsible for that flying
arrow. For, as all conceded, too little time had elapsed between its
delivery and the discovery of the victim for the quickest possible
attempt at escape to have carried the concealer of the bow very far from
the spot where he had thrown it. It was possible--just possible--that he
might have got as far as one of the four large rooms opening into the
corridor stretching across the front, but that he was not in the gallery
itself Mr. Gryce soon convinced himself by a rapid walk through its
entire length.
That he did not follow up this move by an immediate searching of the
rooms I have mentioned was owing to a wish he had to satisfy himself on
another point first.
What was this point?
In passing along the rear on his way to this gallery, he had noticed the
narrow staircase opening not a dozen feet away to his left. This
undoubtedly led down to the side-entrance. If by any chance the user of
the bow had fled to the rear instead of to the front, he would be found
somewhere on this staircase, for he never could have got to the bottom
before the cry of "Close the doors! Let no man out!" rendered this chance
of immediate exit unavailable. So Mr. Gryce retraced his steps, and
barely stopping to note the boy eying him with eager glances from the
doorway of Room A, he approached the iron balustrade guarding the small
staircase, and cautiously looked over.
A man was there! A man going down--no, coming up; and this man, as he
soon saw from his face and uniform, was Correy the attendant.
"So that is where _you_ were," he called down as he beckoned the man up.
"As near as I can remember. I was on my way in search of Mr. Jewett, for
whom I had a message, and had got as far as you saw me, when I heard a
cry of pain from somewhere in the gallery. This naturally quickened my
steps and I was up and on this floor in a jiffy."
"Did you notice, as you stepped from the landing, whether the boy staring
at us from the doorway over there was facing just as we see him now?"
"He was. I remember his attitude perfectly."
"Coming out of the door--not going in?"
"Sure. He was on the run. He had heard the cry too."
"And followed you into the gallery?"
"Preceded me. He was on the scene almost as soon as the man who stepped
in from the adjoining section."
"I see. And this man?"
"Was well within my view from the minute I entered the first arch.
He seemed more bewildered than frightened till he had passed the
communicating arch and nearly stumbled over the body of the girl shot
down almost at his elbow."
"And yourself?"
"I knew by his look that something dreadful had happened, and when I saw
what it was, I didn't think of anything better to do than to order the
doors shut."
"On your own initiative? Where was the Curator?"
"Not far, it seems. But he gets awfully absorbed in whatever he is doing,
and there was no time to lose. Some one had shot that arrow, some one who
might escape."
Mr. Gryce never allowed himself--or very rarely--to look at anyone full
and square in the face; yet he always seemed to form an instant opinion
of whomever he talked with. Perhaps he had already gauged this man and
not unfavorably, for he showed not the slightest distrust as he remarked
quite frankly:
"You must have had some suspicion of foul play even then, to act in so
expeditious a manner."
"I don't know what my suspicions were. I simply followed my first
impulse. I don't think it was a bad one. Do you, sir?"
"Far from it. But enough of that. Do you think"--here he drew Correy into
the gallery out of earshot of the boy, who was watching them with all the
curiosity of his fourteen years--"that this lad could have stolen from
where we are standing now to the door where you first saw him, during the
time you were making your rush up the stairs? Boys of his age are mighty
quick, and----"
"I know it, sir; and I see what you mean. But even if he had been able to
do this,--which I very much doubt,--no boy of his age could have strung
that bow, or had he found it strung, have shot an arrow from it with
force enough to kill. Only a hand accustomed to its use could handle a
bow like that with any success."
"You know the bow, then? Saw it nearer than you said--possibly handled
it?"
"No, sir; but I know its kind and have handled many of them."
"In this building?"