THE UNEXPECTED HAPPENS
I went directly to the Ph[oe]nix Building, on the second floor of
which Barker had his office under cover of the name of the Western
Land and Improvement Company. The door was ajar, and the gas was
burning inside, so I went in. The room was empty. I tried the door of
an inner office, but found it locked, and by the curtained glass of
the door I could see that there was no light in that room. I inferred
that Barker had been called away, and had left the door open for
Clyde.
I closed the door, not wishing to have Barker see me from the hall and
turn back, and sat down by the desk under the gaslight to await his
return. On the desk were a few circulars of the Western Land and
Improvement Company which looked as though they had served the purpose
of giving verisimilitude to Mr. Barker's office for a long time. I
guessed the same theatrical and decorative mission in the display
baskets of apples, sheaves of heavy-headed wheat, and samples of other
grains and fruits which adorned the room--though somewhat dustily. I
had soon exhausted the visible means of supporting meditation, and my
thoughts went back to the evening at the Whytes'. I took my mother's
miniature from my pocket, and looked at it with a rueful consciousness
that she would most sweetly and conclusively disapprove of the use
which I had made of her counterfeit. She would ask if my legal
training had so perverted my instinct for simple truth that I could
justify sophistries like that!
I had been lecturing myself in her name for some minutes, holding the
miniature up before me to give point to the lesson, when I suddenly
had that queer feeling--you know it--of being watched. I felt I was
not alone. I jumped to my feet and looked about me. The room was quite
empty except for the desk, a chair or two besides mine, and the
baskets of fruit and grain which stood on a low table by the window.
If there was any person on the premises, he must be in the unlighted
inner room with the locked door. Instantly it flashed upon me that
Barker was probably in there, waiting for Clyde. He had so arranged
things that, hidden himself, he could survey the outer room, and when
I entered instead of Clyde, he simply lay perdu. In that case, there
was no use waiting for his return by way of the hall! I returned the
locket to my pocket, looked ostentatiously at my watch, picked up my
cane, and left the room. He would suppose my patience exhausted.
But I did not go down the stairs. Instead I walked to the end of a
short diverging hall which commanded a view of the door. If Barker was
inside, he would have to come out sometime, unless he took the fire
escape, and I could wait as late as he could. I wanted to meet him,
also I wanted to see if my queer sensation of being watched had any
foundation in fact.
I had waited perhaps fifteen minutes when the rattle of the elevator
broke the silence. It stopped at the second floor, and a man came
rapidly down the main hall and turned toward the office of the W.L.&I.
Co. It was Barker himself! I recognized him perfectly. So my
intuitions had been merely a feminine case of nerves! I was not a
little disgusted with myself.
I lingered a few moments, (so as to give Barker a chance to see that
he had not kept me waiting), then I sauntered slowly in the direction
of the office. I was opposite the elevator when I was startled by a
shot. For a moment I did not realize that the sound came from Barker's
room. When I did, I made a jump toward it, and the elevator man, who
had been waiting since Barker got out, came only a step behind me. We
pushed the door open,--it yielded at once,--and there, outstretched on
the floor, lay Barker. I dropped on my knee beside him and turned him
over. He turned astonished and inquiring eyes upon me, and made a
slight motion with his hand, but even while I was holding up his head,
the consciousness faded from his eyes, his head fell forward, and I
knew it was a dead man whom I laid down upon the bare floor of his
dingy office. I had never before seen a man die, and the solemnity of
the event swept everything else out of my mind for the moment. But
soon I began to realize the situation.
"Do you see a weapon anywhere about?" I asked the elevator man,
glancing myself about the room.
"No, sir. There ain't none."
"Then he was murdered, and his murderer is in there," I said in a low
voice, indicating the inner office by a glance.
The man immediately backed toward the door,--and I didn't blame him.
It gives one a curious feeling to think of interfering with someone
who has no restraining prejudices against taking the life of people
with whom he is displeased. But for the credit of my superior
civilization, I could not join the retreat.
"I'm going in," I said, and laid my hand on the doorknob. The door was
locked.
"Is there anyone on this floor at this time?" I asked the elevator
man. "No, sir."
"Or in the building?"
"The watchman."
"Find him. Or, first, telephone to the police station. Then send the
watchman here and then go out on the street and try to find a
policeman. Bring in anybody who looks equal to breaking in the door.
I'll wait here and see that he doesn't get out--if I can prevent it."
The man seemed glad to go, and I took a position at one side of the
inner door with my hand on the back of a stout office chair. An
unarmed man does feel at a disadvantage before a gun! The very silence
seemed full of menace.
In a few minutes there was a sound of running feet in the hall, and
the watchman came in.
"He won't be in there by this time," he said at once. "The fire escape
runs by the window!" And with the courage of assured safety he opened
the door with a pass key. The room was empty, and the window, open to
the fire escape, showed that the watchman's surmise was justified. The
escape ran down to an alley that opened in turn upon the street. The
murderer could have made his descent and joined the theater crowds on
the street without the slightest difficulty. He had had at least ten
minutes' clear time before we looked vainly out into the night after
him.
We were still at the window when the police arrived,--the officer on
the beat, whom the elevator man had soon found, and a sergeant with
another man from the station. The sergeant took charge.
"Man dead," he said briefly. "And the murderer gone by the window, eh?
Tell me what you know about it."
I told him the facts as I have given them above. He lit the gas in the
private office and examined the door between the rooms.
"Easy enough," he said.
The upper half of the door consisted of four panes of glass, behind
which hung a flimsy curtain. But the lower right-hand pane was gone,
leaving merely an open space before the curtain.
"He sat here watching for him through the curtain,--dark in here,
light on the outside,--and then, when he came in, he shot through this
opening without unlocking the door, dropped the curtain, and quietly
went out by the window. He could be five blocks from here by the time
you telephoned, and where he may be now,--well, the devil knows. Here
is where he sat waiting."
We all looked with interest at the inner room. A chair had been drawn
up in front of the door and beside it was a table with a basket of
apples on it. The murderer had been munching apples while waiting for
his victim! The peelings and cores had been dropped into an office
waste-basket beside the chair. It was a curious detail, gruesome just
because it was so commonplace and matter of fact. I shivered as I
turned away.
By this time the coroner had arrived. He immediately took possession
of the premises. I followed his every movement as he went from one
room to the other, for I was by no means easy in my mind as to the
revelations that might develop. If Barker had committed any of his
profitable secrets to writing, his death would not of necessity clear
the slate for Kenneth Clyde! But they did not seem to make any
compromising discoveries. The desk in the outer office held nothing
whatsoever but the decoy circulars which I had already examined, a
dried bottle of ink, and some unused pens and penholders. The inner
office held a cheap wooden table, but the drawer in it was empty.
There was nothing on the table but the basket of apples. The coroner
then went through Barker's pockets. He laid out on the floor, and then
listed in a note-book, these items:
A worn purse, with eighty dollars in bills.
Three dollars and fifteen cents in loose change.
A ring with six keys.
A narrow memorandum book, worn on the edges.
A pocket-knife, handkerchief, and a small comb.
There were no papers. Barring the note-book, there was nothing
identifying about the dead man's possessions. I longed to get that
into my hands.
"Perhaps this will give some clue as to his associates," I said,
boldly picking it up.
But the coroner was not a man to be interfered with. He promptly took
it out of my hands, and tied it with the other articles into Barker's
handkerchief with a severely official air.
"That will be examined into in due time," he said. "Officer, you can
take the body down and then lock the rooms and give me the keys."
I watched while they carried the limp form down to the waiting patrol
wagon, and saw the police sergeant place the seal of the law upon the
place. I was at least as much interested as the coroner in seeing that
no enterprising reporter, for example, should have an opportunity to
spring a sensational story involving more reputable people than
Barker.
As I turned up the empty street, I looked at my watch. It was half
past twelve. Clyde's appointment with Barker had been for ten, and I
had heard the town clock strike as I turned into the Ph[oe]nix
Building. When had he been shot? I could not be sure. I had waited for
some time, perhaps an hour, before I had had that curious sensation of
being watched and had gone out into the hall. I _had_ been watched!
The eyes of the murderer in the darkened room had been fixed upon me
under the gaslight, while he waited. What would have happened if I had
stayed in the room? Would he have shot his victim just the same?
Probably. The locked door between would in any event have given him
the minute he needed to gain the fire-escape. He had planned it well.
It was all so perfectly simple.
A great criminologist once said that every crime, like the burrowings
of an underground animal, leaves marks on the surface by which its
course can be traced. Perhaps. But it takes eyes to see. I didn't know
whether I most hoped or feared that the course of Barker's murderer
would be traced.