The sound, whatever it had been, was not repeated. We went awkwardly out into the hall, very uncomfortable, all of us, and flipped a coin. The choice fell to me, which was right enough, for the affair was mine, primarily.
“Wait just inside the door,” I directed, “and if Sullivan comes, or anybody that answers his description, grab him without ceremony and ask him questions afterwards.”
The apartment, save in the hallway, was unlighted. By one of those freaks of arrangement possible only in the modern flat, I found the kitchen first, and was struck a smart and unexpected blow by a swinging door. I carried a handful of matches, and by the time I had passed through a butler’s pantry and a refrigerator room I was completely lost in the darkness. Until then the situation had been merely uncomfortable; suddenly it became grisly. From somewhere near came a long-sustained groan, followed almost instantly by the crash of something—glass or china—on the floor.
I struck a fresh match, and found myself in a narrow rear hallway. Behind me was the door by which I must have come; with a keen desire to get back to the place I had started from, I opened the door and attempted to cross the room. I thought I had kept my sense of direction, but I crashed without warning into what, from the resulting jangle, was the dining-table, probably laid for dinner. I cursed my stupidity in getting into such a situation, and I cursed my nerves for making my hand shake when I tried to strike a match. The groan had not been repeated.
I braced myself against the table and struck the match sharply against the sole of my shoe. It flickered faintly and went out. And then, without the slightest warning, another dish went off the table. It fell with a thousand splinterings; the very air seemed broken into crashing waves of sound. I stood still, braced against the table, holding the red end of the dying match, and listened. I had not long to wait; the groan came again, and I recognized it, the cry of a dog in straits. I breathed again.
“Come, old fellow,” I said. “Come on, old man. Let’s have a look at you.”
I could hear the thud of his tail on the floor, but he did not move. He only whimpered. There is something companionable in the presence of a dog, and I fancied this dog in trouble. Slowly I began to work my way around the table toward him.
“Good boy,” I said, as he whimpered. “We’ll find the light, which ought to be somewhere or other around here, and then—”
I stumbled over something, and I drew back my foot almost instantly. “Did I step on you, old man?” I exclaimed, and bent to pat him. I remember straightening suddenly and hearing the dog pad softly toward me around the table. I recall even that I had put the matches down and could not find them. Then, with a bursting horror of the room and its contents, of the gibbering dark around me, I turned and made for the door by which I had entered.
I could not find it. I felt along the endless wainscoting, past miles of wall. The dog was beside me, I think, but he was part and parcel now, to my excited mind, with the Thing under the table. And when, after æons of search, I found a knob and stumbled into the reception hall, I was as nearly in a panic as any man could be.
I was myself again in a second, and by the light from the hall I led the way back to the tragedy I had stumbled on. Bronson still sat at the table, his elbows propped on it, his cigarette still lighted, burning a hole in the cloth. Partly under the table lay Mrs. Conway face down. The dog stood over her and wagged his tail.
McKnight pointed silently to a large copper ashtray, filled with ashes and charred bits of paper.
“The notes, probably,” he said ruefully. “He got them after all, and burned them before her. It was more than she could stand. Stabbed him first and then herself.”
Hotchkiss got up and took off his hat. “They are dead,” he announced solemnly, and took his notebook out of his hatband.
McKnight and I did the only thing we could think of—drove Hotchkiss and the dog out of the room, and closed and locked the door. “It’s a matter for the police,” McKnight asserted. “I suppose you’ve got an officer tied to you somewhere, Lawrence? You usually have.”
We left Hotchkiss in charge and went downstairs. It was McKnight who first saw Johnson, leaning against a park railing across the street, and called him over. We told him in a few words what we had found, and he grinned at me cheerfully.
“After while, in a few weeks or months, Mr. Blakeley,” he said, “when you get tired of monkeying around with the bloodstain and fingerprint specialist upstairs, you come to me. I’ve had that fellow you want under surveillance for ten days!”
XXX
Finer Details
At ten minutes before two the following day, Monday, I arrived at my office. I had spent the morning putting my affairs in shape, and in a trip to the stable. The afternoon would see me either a free man or a prisoner for an indefinite length of time, and, in spite of Johnson’s promise to produce Sullivan, I was more prepared for the latter than the former.
Blobs was watching for me outside the door, and it was clear that he was in a state of excitement bordering on delirium. He did nothing, however, save to tip me a wink that meant “As man to man, I’m for you.” I was too much engrossed either to reprove him or return the courtesy, but I heard him follow me down the hall to the small room where we keep outgrown lawbooks,
