Jerry gave signs of new impatience.
“You keep an eye on ’em, Red,” he said. “I’m going to take a look around.”
He pulled a flashlight from his pocket, strode toward the kitchen. After a minute or two Mr. Kistler followed him out. We were quiet while they were gone. When I turned to look at one of the others, now, his eyes would slide from mine.
Jerry was back shortly. “It don’t look like anything’s been sprung,” he announced.
He tramped through my rooms, into the hall; we heard him running down the cellar stairs. He was down there a much longer time. When he came back he stood thoughtfully in the center of the room, swinging his flashlight.
“Them steps you thought you heard stealin’ down the stairs, that’s all you got to go on, to think it was someone in the house?”
“Yes, that’s all.”
“Now listen, sister. This is how I dope it out. Some small-time guy is around trying his luck, see. Some poor sod from down on Water Street, maybe. There’s a basement window back there that’s open about an inch. It’s nailed there or something; anyway, it sticks; I can’t move it. He tries to jimmy it open, can’t make it. You hear him. Then you open your door and scare him so he jumps on you to keep you from yelling, and beats it. You come with me if you want to rest your mind. I’ll show you.”
He started for my back door, beckoning us after him.
I’ve often thought what a theatrical procession we must have made, if anyone had passed to see us at two o’clock of that moonless night. The policeman ahead, flashing his light low at the basement windows, the night-clad parade after him. We toured the entire house that way, the light playing on each basement window in turn.
All those basement windows were of frosted glass, made doubly obscure by dust and dirt. They were all locked tight, too, except for the one to the left of my back porch, which was open an inch or so from the bottom. It seemed nailed there, as Jerry had said: I guessed that Mrs. Garr knew her pets needed air, but didn’t want burglars.
The policeman played his light on that window longest.
“See that window? That’s where some guy thinks maybe he can squeeze through and pick up whatever’s loose inside. But he don’t make it. He don’t get through. I’ll show you if you’re still scared.”
We all trooped back through my kitchen door; Mr. Kistler, last, bolted it. In the cellar Jerry continued his assurances.
“See? I’ll go through everything here. Rooms in front empty, and not even locked.”
The Tewmans hadn’t been around all evening. I guessed they were taking advantage of Mrs. Garr’s absence.
“Not a soul in there. Nothing touched that I can see. Now look at this furnace room. Nobody in the furnace. Nobody under the washtubs. Nobody in the storage room.”
He darted his light briefly in there; the room was now orderly again. There was something, though. Mrs. Garr’s chair, with some clothes left on it in a dark heap.
“Mrs. Garr’s chair’s in there. She usually keeps it near the furnace.”
Jerry snorted. “Well, she wasn’t going to sit on it for a while, was she? Why shouldn’t she stick it away in there?”
I subsided. Jerry took up the march.
The dog barked as we drew near the back kitchen.
“And this here room, see? The door’s safely locked.”
We all looked at the kitchen door. The dog barked again, and for some reason I didn’t know a shiver shook me. I tried to explain it, seizing on the only reason I could see.
“That’s funny, the key’s gone. Mrs. Garr always left that key hanging on the casing. She must have taken it with her.”
“Well, you got a right to think things is funny,” Jerry said paternally. “But now you’ve seen for yourself there ain’t a thing wrong down here.” He turned, stalked toward the stairs. “The next time you get to thinking, don’t go opening your back door to see what noises is in the middle of the night. Wasn’t it near here that Zeitman guy was picked up? Yeah, I thought it was. You keep that in mind, lady. What if you’d run into something like that? You could have been knocked over that railing, just as well as left on that kitchen floor. You’re lucky, that’s all.”
“All right,” I said meekly. It would have been a longer, darker drop, that real one over the rail.
“Why don’t you come on up and sleep on my couch in my living room the rest of the night?” Mrs. Waller suddenly offered. Now that the attack had been pinned on an outsider, there was forgiveness and a sort of amused condescension at my weakness in the air.
“That’s fine, that’s fine,” Jerry said.
Mr. Kistler had been at my elbow during the entire tour of the house; when we stood once more in the hall on the main floor he spoke up thoughtfully.
“There’s one more reassurance we might make, Mrs. Dacres. We might glance over the rest of the house to make sure no one’s in hiding. And there’s one thing more we might look at. The way I figure it, if it was anybody in the house, that person must have gone around in his stocking feet. And those stockings would be pretty dusty—show they’d been walked on, anyway. I suggest we look over all the socks in this outfit. We can begin on mine.”
He sat down on the black leather chair to pull his shoes off. He hadn’t been walking outdoors in those socks.
I looked at the other slippered feet. The policeman laughed.
“Okay, buddy.” He was bored now.
One by one the others showed socks or bare feet, guiltless of dust.
They looked briefly into Mrs. Garr’s parlor before going upstairs. Mrs. Garr’s house has no attic;
