“And why so, sir?”
“Because if the calibre of the bullet that killed Endicott differs from the ones in the guns of my men, or if the angle of its course proves conclusively that it could not have been fired by one of them, then the murderer is still loose about the house. He couldn’t have escaped, you see, as the guards are still on duty down below.”
… Then the murderer is still loose about the house …
The chilling possibilities of the statement served a good deal to cool Dr. Worth’s steaming indignation. He was getting tired with being angry, anyway.
“I’m sorry I have been impatient, Lieutenant. You may be quite right, and I’ll be glad to help you in any way that I can.”
“Thank you, Doctor. I’ll telephone Central Office from downstairs, as I want to instruct the men on guard down there to be doubly careful. If you’d care to start in probing it will be quite all right. I’ll explain everything to the medical examiner. It’s something, you see, that we must know. Cassidy, you and Hansen are not to leave this room. Search both it and Hollander for a gun.”
“Yes, sir.”
Lieutenant Valcour went out, and Dr. Worth proceeded, with the aid of Nurse Murrow, to probe.
The room had an air about it of a shambles. Cassidy and Hansen, having searched for a gun and found none, leaned dispiritedly against the wall near the chest on which Hollander was lying. They felt a measured sense of relief—had felt it, in fact, from the moment when Lieutenant Valcour had come into the room. Each knew he could never have fired that shot which had killed Endicott. And each was reasonably certain that the other couldn’t have, either.
They could determine nothing from Dr. Worth’s face as to how the examination was going. Neither of them looked very closely at what he was doing. Their wonderings ran along parallel lines: Hollander couldn’t have had a gun or they’d have seen it or found it during their recent search. None of their shots could have gone so hopelessly wild as to have hit Endicott. But somebody did have a gun, and Endicott had been shot by it. But there had been nobody in the room with Endicott except themselves and Hollander. And Hollander couldn’t have had a gun, or they’d have seen it … the perfect loop continued on and on. Each made the circle in his thoughts and then started in all over again. If Lieutenant Valcour hadn’t reentered the room, and if Dr. Worth hadn’t just then extracted the bullet, they probably would have gone mildly mad.
“Everything’s all right, Doctor,” Lieutenant Valcour said. “The medical examiner was only too pleased at your kindness in helping him out. He won’t be up again tonight unless I send for him. He asked me to thank you.”
“Not at all, Lieutenant.” Dr. Worth showed considerable excitement. “You know, it’s surprising. I don’t know much about the calibre of bullets, but I think you’re right about the angle. Here’s the bullet.”
Lieutenant Valcour inspected a leaden pellet curiously and then slipped it into a pocket.
“It isn’t from one of our guns, Doctor,” he said.
“I’m not surprised, Lieutenant—not surprised at all. Because the angle it entered at—why, damn it, Lieutenant, it must have been fired from some place over there.”
Dr. Worth indicated a problematic area which included the corner where Hollander was stretched out. Lieutenant Valcour looked just above Hollander at the window. It was the window which had been opened about six or seven inches from the bottom by Nurse Murrow so that the air for her patient would be quite fresh and clear.
It was still open.
And outside of it, as Lieutenant Valcour very well knew, ran the shallow balcony which offered not only adornment to the rear of the house but a passageway to—and from—the windows of Mrs. Endicott’s room.
But Mrs. Endicott was under the influence of a narcotic, and a nurse and a maid were both in the room with her.
But were they? …
XVIII
3:00 a.m.—Thin Haze of Dread
Dr. Worth, too, was staring at the black, impenetrable rectangle left by the opened window. It was a passageway for air, but infinitely more so was it a passageway leading to obscure recesses of the night: recesses that seemed to offer a maleficent sanctuary to hell-born secrets of distorted souls.
Who had crept along that balcony and fired that shot?
The apparent improbability of anyone from Mrs. Endicott’s room having done so transplanted the problem from clear fields of logic and of simple facts into vague regions of absurd conjecturings which stared wanly out at Lieutenant Valcour through baffling curtains of darkness and of fog.
He felt a definite sense of uncertainty, and—as one does when confronted by a suggestion of the unknown—an impalpable dread. It was nothing that he could put his finger on; it seemed, absurdly, some emanation from the outer night creeping in through that rectangle of black to hang in thin hazes about the room.
“What would you suggest doing with Hollander, Doctor?” he said.
Dr. Worth, whose own thoughts had been warily browsing in disagreeable pastures, sought relief in professional preciseness.
“He would be better off in a hospital, Lieutenant. I consider his constitution to be more than sufficiently strong to obviate any danger in moving him. Are you going to arrest him?”
Lieutenant Valcour smiled faintly. “He is under arrest now, Doctor. I should like to get a few things straightened out, though, before booking him on any definite charge. Would it hurt him very much to talk with me before he is taken to the hospital?”
“Not if it weren’t for too long.”
“Could you give him something to revive him—to brace him up?”
“Certainly.”
“Then I will have a man send for an ambulance, and I’ll just talk with Hollander until it gets here.”
“That will be all right.”
“And if you don’t mind, Doctor, I should like to be alone with him. Just he and I
