After a time I got up, and going to a window looked down at the quiet
world below. The fog was lifting. Automobiles were making cautious
progress along the slippery street. A woman with a basket had stopped
under the street light and was rearranging her parcels. The clock of the
city hall, visible over the opposite roofs, marked only twenty minutes
to nine. It was still early evening--not even midnight, the magic hour
of the night.
Somehow that fact reassured me, and I was able to take stock of my
surroundings. I realized, for instance, that I stood in the room over
Arthur’s dressing room, and that it was into the ceiling under me that
the second--or probably the first--bullet had penetrated. I know, as
it happens, very little of firearms, but I did realize that a shot from
a.45 Colt automatic would have considerable penetrative power. To be
exact, that the bullet had probably either lodged itself in a joist, or
had penetrated through the flooring and might be somewhere over my head.
But my candle was inadequate for more than the most superficial
examination of the ceiling, which presented so far as I could see an
unbroken surface. I turned my attention, therefore, to the floor. It was
when I was turning the rug back that I recognized the natural and not
supernatural origin of the sound which had so startled me. It had been
the soft movement of the carpet across the floor boards.
Some one, then, had been there before me--some one who knew what I knew,
had reasoned as I reasoned. Some one who, in all probability, still
lurked on the upper floor.
Obeying an impulse, I stood erect and called out sharply, “Sperry!” I
said. “Sperry!”
There was no answer. I tried again, calling Herbert. But only my own
voice came back to me, and the whistling of the wind through the window
I had opened.
My fears, never long in abeyance that night, roused again. I had
instantly a conviction that some human figure, sinister and dangerous,
was lurking in the shadows of that empty floor, and I remember backing
away from the door and standing in the center of the room, prepared for
some stealthy, murderous assault. When none came I looked about for a
weapon, and finally took the only thing in sight, a coal-tongs from the
fireplace. Armed with that, I made a cursory round of the near-by rooms
but there was no one hiding in them.
I went back to the rug and examined the floor beneath it. I was right.
Some one had been there before me. Bits of splintered wood lay about.
The second bullet had been fired, had buried itself in the flooring, and
had, some five minutes before, been dug out.