He listened for a moment, then came up and tried the door. I crouched inside, as guilty as the veriest house-breaker in the business. But he had no suspicion, clearly, for he turned and went away, whistling as he went.
Not until we heard him going down the street again, absently running his night-stick along the fence palings, did Sperry or I move.
"A narrow squeak, that," I said, mopping my face.
"A miss is as good as a mile," he observed, and there was a sort of exultation in his voice. He is a born adventurer.
He came out into the pa.s.sage and quickly locked the door behind him.
"Now, friend Horace," he said, "if you have anything but toothpicks for matches, we will look for the overcoat, and then we will go upstairs."
"Suppose he wakens and raises an alarm?"
"We"ll be out of luck. That"s all."
As we had antic.i.p.ated, there was no overcoat in the library, and after listening a moment at the kitchen door, we ascended a rear staircase to the upper floor. I had, it will be remembered, fallen from a chair on a table in the dressing room, and had left them thus overturned when I charged the third floor. The room, however, was now in perfect order, and when I held my candle to the ceiling, I perceived that the bullet hole had again been repaired, and this time with such skill that I could not even locate it.
"We are up against some one cleverer than we are, Sperry," I acknowledged.
"And who has more to lose than we have to gain," he added cheerfully.
"Don"t worry about that, Horace. You"re a married man and I"m not. If a woman wanted to hide some letters from her husband, and chose a curtain for a receptacle, what room would hide them in. Not in his dressing-room, eh?"
He took the candle and led the way to Elinor Wells"s bedroom. Here, however, the draperies were down, and we would have been at a loss, had I not remembered my wife"s custom of folding draperies when we close the house, and placing them under the dusting sheets which cover the various beds.
Our inspection of the curtains was hurried, and broken by various excursions on my part to listen for the watchman. But he remained quiet below, and finally we found what we were looking for. In the lining of one of the curtains, near the bottom, a long, ragged cut had been made.
"Cut in a hurry, with curved scissors," was Sperry"s comment. "Probably manicure scissors."
The result was a sort of pocket in the curtain, concealed on the chintz side, which was the side which would hang toward the room.
"Probably," he said, "the curtain would have been better. It would have stayed anyhow. Whereas the bag--" He was flushed with triumph. "How in the world would Hawkins know that?" he demanded. "You can talk all you like. She"s told us things that no one ever told her."
Before examining the floor in the hall I went downstairs and listened outside the kitchen door. The watchman was stirring inside the room, and groaning occasionally. Sperry, however, when I told him, remained cool and in his exultant mood, and I saw that he meant to vindicate Miss Jeremy if he flung me into jail and the newspapers while doing it.
"We"ll have a go at the floors under the carpets now," he said. "If he gets noisy, you can go down with the fire-tongs. I understand you are an expert with them."
The dressing-room had a large rug, like the nursery above it, and turning back the carpet was a simple matter. There had been a stain beneath where the dead man"s head had lain, but it had been scrubbed and sc.r.a.ped away. The boards were white for an area of a square foot or so.
Sperry eyed the spot with indifference. "Not essential," he said. "Shows good housekeeping. That"s all. The point is, are there other spots?"
And, after a time, we found what we were after. The upper hall was carpeted, and my penknife came into requisition to lift the tacks. They came up rather easily, as if but recently put in. That, indeed, proved to be the case.
Just outside the dressing-room door the boards for an area of two square feet or more beneath the carpet had been sc.r.a.ped and scrubbed. With the lifting of the carpet came, too, a strong odor, as of ammonia. But the stain of blood had absolutely disappeared.
Sperry, kneeling on the floor with the candle held close, examined the wood. "Not only scrubbed," he said, "but sc.r.a.ped down, probably with a floor-sc.r.a.per. It"s pretty clear, Horace. The poor devil fell here.
There was a struggle, and he went down. He lay there for a while, too, until some plan was thought out. A man does not usually kill himself in a hallway. It"s a sort of solitary deed. He fell here, and was dragged into the room. The angle of the bullet in the ceiling would probably show it came from here, too, and went through the doorway."
We were startled at that moment by a loud banging below. Sperry leaped to his feet and caught up his hat.
"The watchman," he said. "We"d better get out. He"ll have all the neighbors in at that rate."
He was still hammering on the door as we went down the rear stairs, and Sperry stood outside the door and to one side.
"Keep out of range, Horace," he cautioned me. And to the watchman:
"Now, George, we will put the key under the door, and in ten minutes you may come out. Don"t come sooner. I"ve warned you."
By the faint light from outside I could see him stooping, not in front of the door, but behind it. And it was well he did, for the moment the key was on the other side, a shot zipped through one of the lower panels. I had not expected it and it set me to shivering.
"No more of that, George," said Sperry calmly and cheerfully. "This is a quiet neighborhood, and we don"t like shooting. What is more, my friend here is very expert with his own particular weapon, and at any moment he may go to the fire-place in the library and--"
I have no idea why Sperry chose to be facetious at that time, and my resentment rises as I record it. For when we reached the yard we heard the officer running along the alley-way, calling as he ran.
"The fence, quick," Sperry said.
I am not very good at fences, as a rule, but I leaped that one like a cat, and came down in a barrel of waste-paper on the other side. Getting me out was a breathless matter, finally accomplished by turning the barrel over so that I could crawl out. We could hear the excited voices of the two men beyond the fence, and we ran. I was better than Sperry at that. I ran like a rabbit. I never even felt my legs. And Sperry pounded on behind me.
We heard, behind us, one of the men climbing the fence. But in jumping down he seemed to have struck the side of the overturned barrel.
Probably it rolled and threw him, for that part of my mind which was not intent on flight heard him fall, and curse loudly.
"Go to it," Sperry panted behind me. "Roll over and break your neck."
This, I need hardly explain, was meant for our pursuer.
We turned a corner and were out on one of the main thoroughfares.
Instantly, so innate is cunning to the human brain, we fell to walking sedately.
It was as well that we did, for we had not gone a half block before we saw our policeman again, lumbering toward us and blowing a whistle as he ran.
"Stop and get this street-car," Sperry directed me. "And don"t breathe so hard."
The policeman stared at us fixedly, stopping to do so, but all he saw was two well-dressed and professional-looking men, one of them rather elderly who was hailing a street-car. I had the presence of mind to draw my watch and consult it.
"Just in good time," I said distinctly, and we mounted the car step.
Sperry remained on the platform and lighted a cigar. This gave him a chance to look back.
"Rather narrow squeak, that," he observed, as he came in and sat down beside me. "Your gray hairs probably saved us."
I was quite numb from the waist down, from my tumble and from running, and it was some time before I could breathe quietly. Suddenly Sperry fell to laughing.
"I wish you could have seen yourself in that barrel, and crawling out,"
he said.
We reached Mrs. Dane"s, to find that Miss Jeremy had already arrived, looking rather pale, as I had noticed she always did before a seance.
Her color had faded, and her eyes seemed sunken in her head.
"Not ill, are you?" Sperry asked her, as he took her hand.