Heath produced the key and handed it over, still grinning.
“A word of stage-direction,” Vance continued. “When I have departed by the front door, you are to wait exactly three minutes, and then knock at the late Canary’s apartment.”
He sauntered to the front door and, turning, walked back toward the switchboard. Markham and I stood behind Heath in the little alcove, facing the front of the building.
“Enter Mr. Skeel!” announced Vance. “Remember, it’s half past nine.” Then, as he came abreast of the switchboard: “Dash it all! You forgot your lines, Sergeant. You should have told me that Miss Odell was out. But it doesn’t matter. … Mr. Skeel continues to the lady’s door … thus.”
He walked past us, and we heard him ring the apartment bell. After a brief pause, he knocked on the door. Then he came back down the hall.
“I guess you were right,” he said, quoting the words of Skeel as reported by Spively; and went on to the front door. Stepping out into the street, he turned toward Broadway.
For exactly three minutes we waited. None of us spoke. Heath had become serious, and his accelerated puffing on his cigar bore evidence of his state of expectancy. Markham was frowning stoically. At the end of the three minutes Heath rose and hurried up the hall, with Markham and me at his heels. In answer to his knock, the apartment door was opened from the inside. Vance was standing in the little foyer.
“The end of the first act,” he greeted us airily. “Thus did Mr. Skeel enter the lady’s boudoir Monday night after the side door had been bolted, without the operator’s seeing him.”
Heath narrowed his eyes, but said nothing. Then he suddenly swung round and looked down the rear passageway to the oak door at the end. The handle of the bolt was in a vertical position, showing that the catch had been turned and that the door was unbolted. Heath regarded it for several moments; then he turned his eyes toward the switchboard. Presently he let out a gleeful whoop.
“Very good, Mr. Vance—very good!” he proclaimed, nodding his head knowingly. “That was easy, though. And it don’t take psychology to explain it.—After you rang the apartment bell, you ran down this rear hallway and unbolted the door. Then you ran back and knocked. After that you went out the front entrance, turned toward Broadway, swung round across the street, came in the alley, walked in the side door, and quietly let yourself into the apartment behind our backs.”
“Simple, wasn’t it?” agreed Vance.
“Sure.” The Sergeant was almost contemptuous. “But that don’t get you nowhere. Anybody coulda figured it out if that had been the only problem connected with Monday night’s operations. But it’s the rebolting of that side door, after Skeel had gone, that’s been occupying my mind. Skeel might’ve—might’ve, mind you—got in the way you did. But he couldn’t have got out that way, because the door was bolted the next morning. And if there was someone here to bolt the door after him, then that same person could’ve unbolted the door for him earlier, without his doing the ten-foot dash down the rear hall to unbolt the door himself at half past nine. So I don’t see that your interesting little drama helps Jessup out any.”
“Oh, but the drama isn’t over,” Vance replied. “The curtain is about to go up on the next act.”
Heath lifted his eyes sharply.
“Yeah?” His tone was one of almost jeering incredulity, but his expression was searching and dubious. “And you’re going to show us how Skeel got out and bolted the door on the inside without Jessup’s help?”
“That is precisely what I intend to do, my Sergeant.”
Heath opened his mouth to speak, but thought better of it. Instead, he merely shrugged his shoulders and gave Markham a sly look.
“Let us repair to the public atrium,” proceeded Vance; and he led us into the little reception-room diagonally opposite to the switchboard. This room, as I have explained, was just beyond the staircase, and along its rear wall ran the little passageway to the side door. (A glance at the accompanying diagram will clarify the arrangement.)
Vance shepherded us ceremoniously to chairs, and cocked his eye at the Sergeant.
“You will be so good as to rest here until you hear me knock at the side door. Then come and open it for me.” He went toward the archway. “Once more I personate the departed Mr. Skeel; so picture me again en grande tenue—sartorially radiant. … The curtain ascends.”
He bowed and, stepping from the reception-room into the main hall, disappeared round the corner into the rear passageway.
Heath shifted his position restlessly and gave Markham a questioning, troubled look.
“Will he pull it off, sir, do you think?” All jocularity had gone out of his tone.
“I can’t see how.” Markham was scowling. “If he does, though, it will knock the chief underpinning from your theory of Jessup’s guilt.”
“I’m not worrying,” declared Heath. “Mr. Vance knows a lot; he’s got ideas. But how in hell—?”
He was interrupted by a loud knocking on the side door.
