The passage was deserted. The hotel staff dared not venture into it. Some of the permanent visitors had locked themselves in their rooms; and the police had to knock for a long time and proclaim who they were before they could get the doors opened.
Farther on, M. Lenormand saw another group of policemen searching the maid’s pantry and, at the end of a long passage, he saw some more men who were approaching the turning, that is to say, that part of the passage which contained the rooms overlooking the Rue de Judée.
And, suddenly, he heard these men shouting; and they disappeared at a run.
He hurried after them.
The policemen had stopped in the middle of the passage. At their feet, blocking their way, with its face on the carpet, lay a corpse.
M. Lenormand bent down and took the lifeless head in his hands:
“Chapman,” he muttered. “He is dead.”
He examined the body. A white knitted silk muffler was tied round the neck. He undid it. Red stains appeared; and he saw that the muffler held a thick wad of cotton-wool in position against the nape of the neck. The wad was soaked with blood.
Once again there was the same little wound, clean, frank and pitiless.
M. Formerie and the commissary were at once told and came hastening up.
“No one gone out?” asked the chief detective. “No surprise?”
“No,” said the commissary. “There are two men on guard at the foot of each staircase.”
“Perhaps he has gone up again?” said M. Formerie.
“No! … No! …”
“But someone must have met him. …”
“No. … This all happened quite a long time ago. The hands are cold. … The murder must have been committed almost immediately after the other … as soon as the two men came here by the servants’ staircase.”
“But the body would have been seen! Think, fifty people must have passed this spot during the last two hours. …”
“The body was not here.”
“Then where was it?”
“Why, how can I tell?” snapped the chief detective. “Do as I’m doing, look for yourself! You can’t find things by talking.”
He furiously patted the knob of his stick with a twitching hand; and he stood there, with his eyes fixed on the body, silent and thoughtful. At last he spoke:
“Monsieur le Commissaire, be so good as to have the victim taken to an empty room. Let them fetch the doctor. Mr. Manager, would you mind opening the doors of all the rooms on this passage for me?”
On the left were three bedrooms and two sitting-rooms, forming an empty suite, which M. Lenormand inspected. On the right were four bedrooms. Two were occupied respectively by a M. Reverdat and an Italian, Baron Giacomini, who were both then out. In the third room they found an elderly English maiden lady still in bed; and, in the fourth, an Englishman who was placidly reading and smoking and who had not been in the least disturbed by the noises in the passage. His name was Major Parbury.
No amount of searching or questioning led to any result. The old maid had heard nothing before the exclamations of the policeman: no noise of a struggle, no cry of pain, no sound of quarreling; and Major Parbury neither.
Moreover, there was no suspicious clue found, no trace of blood, nothing to lead them to suppose that the unfortunate Chapman had been in one of those rooms.
“It’s queer,” muttered the examining-magistrate, “it’s all very queer. …” And he confessed, ingenuously, “I feel more and more at sea. … There is a whole series of circumstances that are partly beyond me. What do you make of it, M. Lenormand?”
M. Lenormand was on the point of letting off one of those pointed rejoinders in which he was wont to give vent to his chronic ill-temper, when Gourel appeared upon the scene, all out of breath.
“Chief,” he panted, “they’ve found this … downstairs … in the office … on a chair. …”
It was a parcel of moderate dimensions, wrapped up in a piece of black serge.
“Did they open it?” asked the chief.
“Yes, but when they saw what the parcel contained, they did it up again exactly as it was … fastened very tight, as you can see. …”
“Untie it.”
Gourel removed the wrapper and disclosed a black diagonal jacket and trousers, which had evidently been packed up in a hurry, as the creases in the cloth showed. In the middle was a towel, covered with blood, which had been dipped in water, in order, no doubt, to destroy the marks of the hands that had been wiped on it. Inside the napkin was a steel dagger, with a handle encrusted with gold. This also was red with blood, the blood of three men stabbed within the space of a few hours by an invisible hand, amid the crowd of three hundred people moving about in the huge hotel.
Edwards, the manservant, at once identified the dagger as belonging to Mr. Kesselbach. He had seen it on the table on the previous day, before the assault committed by Lupin.
“Mr. Manager,” said the chief detective, “the restriction is over. Gourel, go and give orders to leave the doors free.”
“So you think that Lupin has succeeded in getting out?” asked M. Formerie.
“No. The perpetrator of the three murders which we have discovered is in one of the rooms of the hotel, or, rather, he is among the visitors in the hall or in the reception-rooms. In my opinion, he was staying in the hotel.”
“Impossible! Besides, where would he have changed his clothes? And what clothes would he have on now?”
“I don’t know, but I am stating a fact.”
“And you are letting him go? Why, he’ll just walk out quietly, with his hands in his pockets!”
“The one who walks away like that, without his luggage, and who does not return, will be the criminal. Mr. Manager, please come with me to the office. I should like to make a close inspection of your visitors’ book.”
In the office, M. Lenormand found a few letters addressed to Mr. Kesselbach. He handed them to the examining-magistrate. There was also a parcel
