The seventh shot A detective story
her young lover with a sort of sharp question in her blue eyes, a look
which puzzled Jim Barrison as he caught it. What was it that she was
mutely asking him? What was it that she was afraid of?
It had been scarcely five minutes since Mortimer’s murder, yet already
it seemed a long time. They all felt as though that still figure on
the floor had been there for hours. Dukane would have had the dead
man moved to his dressing room, but Barrison insisted that everything
should be left as it was. It was just then that he espied a small
object glittering on the floor just beyond the steps. He stooped,
picked it up, and put it in his pocket. As he turned he saw, to his
surprise, Tony Clay approaching.
The older detective stared and frowned.
“Where is Miss Templeton?” he demanded sharply. “I told you to stay
with her whatever happened. Where is she?”
“That’s what I want to know,” said Tony. “She’s gone!”
“Gone! When did she go?”
“Just before the dark scene. She felt faint and sent me for a glass of
water. Before I got back, all that row on the stage started, and when
the lights were turned on again, she’d gone; that’s all.”
“All!” groaned Barrison despairingly. “Tony, you fool! You fool! Well,
it’s too late to mend matters now.”
“Did anything happen, after all?” asked Tony, with round eyes.
Barrison stood aside and let him see Mortimer’s dead body, which had
been hidden from his view by the little group around Sybil.
“Oh, Heaven!” gasped Tony, horror-stricken. “Then you don’t think
she—Miss Templeton—did it? Why, Jim, she couldn’t—there wasn’t time!”
“I don’t think so myself. But it’s not our business to do any thinking
at all—just yet. This can be a lesson to you, Tony. When you’re
watching a person, _watch ’em_!”
“Well, I think it can be a lesson to you, too!” said Tony unexpectedly.
“You’ve been acting all along as though this affair were a movie
scenario, that you thought was entertaining, but not a bit serious,
and——”
Jim Barrison flushed deeply and miserably. “I know it, Tony,” he said,
in a very grave voice. “Don’t make any mistake about it; I’m getting
mine! I’ll never forgive myself as long as I live.”
Willie Coster came up to them. He was paler and wilder-eyed than ever,
and his scant red hair stood stiffly erect. Poor Willie! In all his
long years of nightmarish first nights, this was the worst. Any one who
knew him could read in his eyes the agonized determination to go and
get drunk as soon as he possibly could.
“The police inspector has come,” he said, in a low tone. “And, say,
when you get to sifting things down, I’ve something to say myself.”
“You have! You know who fired the seventh shot?”
“I didn’t say that. But if you’ll ask me some questions by and by, I
may have something to tell you.”
CHAPTER IX
RECONSTRUCTING THE CRIME
Inspector Lowry was an old friend of Barrison’s, though, like most of
the regular force, inclined to treat the younger man as a dilettante
rather than an astute professional. However, he was quite ready to
include Jim in the investigation which he set about making without loss
of time.
Lowry was a big, raw-boned man of middle age, with a peculiarly soft,
amiable voice, and a habit of looking at almost any point on earth
save the face of the person to whom he was speaking. This seemingly
indifferent manner gave him an enormous advantage over any luckless
soul whom he chanced to be examining, for when he shot the question
which was of all questions the most vital and the most important, he
would suddenly open his eyes and turn their piercing gaze full upon his
victim. That unfortunate, having by that time relaxed his self-guard,
would be apt to betray his innermost emotions under the unexpected gaze.
Naturally, the first thing to do was to get Sybil Merivale’s story.
His manner to the girl was not unkindly. She was a piteous figure
enough, as she sat drooping in the chair they had brought her, trying
to keep her eyes from turning, with a dreadful fascination, to the
spatter of red upon the steps so near her. Norman Crane stood at her
side, with the air of defying the universe, if it were necessary, for
her protection. Once in a while she would look up at him, and always
with that subtle expression of apprehension and uncertainty which
Barrison found so hard to read.
“Miss—ah—Merivale? Quite so, quite so. Miss Merivale, if you feel
strong enough, I should be glad if you would tell us what you know
about the shooting.” The inspector’s voice was mild as honey, and his
glance wandered about this queer, shadowy world behind the scenes. It
is doubtful if he had ever made an investigation in such surroundings.
To see him, one would have said that he was interested in everything
except in Sybil Merivale and what she had to tell.
“I don’t know anything about it,” she answered simply.
“But you were quite close to him when he was shot, were you not?”
“Yes.” She shuddered, and looked down at the stain of blood upon her
dress. “He was just taking me up in his arms to carry me on——”
“That was in the—ah—action of the play?”
“Yes. After the six shots, I heard another, and felt him stagger. I
slipped to the floor, and he fell at once. He put out his hand to catch
at the scenery.” She pointed to the canvas door of the stage set
which still stood open. “I felt something warm on my hand.” She closed
her eyes as though the remembrance made her faint. “Then he—he fell
backward down the steps. That’s all.”
“Ah, yes.” The inspector thought for a moment, and then he said to
Dukane: “Would it be possible for every one to go to the places they
occupied at the moment of the shooting? I am assuming that every one is
here who was here then?”
“Every one; so far as I know, no one has been allowed to leave the
theater. Willie, tell them to take their places.”
Willie caused a rather ghastly sensation when he called out:
“Everybody, please! On the stage, every one who is in the last act!”
There was a murmur among the actors.
“Good Lord!” muttered Claire McAllister. “They ain’t goin’ to rehearse
us _now_, are they?”
Dukane explained, and with all the lights blazing, the players took
the positions they had occupied at the beginning of the dark scene.
Stage carpenters and sceneshifters did the same; also Willie and his
assistant, even Dukane and Barrison. The woman Parry and old Wrenn went
into the dressing rooms, where they had been, and closed the doors.
Sybil Merivale mounted the little flight of steps and stood at the top,
looking through the open door onto the stage.
“Is that just the way you stood?”
Every one answered “yes” to this question.
One or two things became apparent by this plan, which rather surprised
Barrison. He had not, for one thing, realized how close Willie Coster
stood to the place where Mortimer fell. Yet, of course, he should have
expected it. It was, as a matter of fact, Willie who directed the six
shots, which were supposed to come from the point back of _Tarrant’s_
entrance. There were, as it turned out, at least three persons who were
so close as to have been material witnesses had there been any light:
Willie, the man who fired the shots and had charge of other off-stage
effects, and—Norman Crane.
Crane took up his position immediately inside the box set, close to the
doorway.
“Is that where you stood?” asked Lowry.
“Yes. I played the part of a Mexican desperado, and was supposed to be
on guard at the door leading down into the cellar, which was the stage.”
“The door was open, as it is now?”
“Yes.”
“Then you could have seen through it anything that happened on the
steps off stage?”
“I could have if there had been light enough.”
“As it was, you didn’t see anything?”
“No.”
“Didn’t hear anything?”
The young man seemed to pause for just a moment before he said “No,” to
this question also. If the inspector noticed his hesitation, he did
not appear to do so. He began to talk in an undertone to one of the men
who had come with him.
John Carlton had been sending in frantic messages ever since the
tragedy, begging to be permitted to come behind, but the allied powers
there agreed that there were enough people marooned as it was. There
was nothing to be gained by adding another, and one whom it would
probably be unnecessary either to hold or to bind with nervousness and
disappointment.
In an undertone, Dukane said to Jim Barrison: “I thought they always
sent for a doctor first of all? Why isn’t there one here?”
“There is,” returned Jim, in the same tone. “He’s over there with the
two policemen and the plain-clothes man who came in with Lowry—the
little, old fellow with spectacles. Lowry’ll call on him again in a
moment; he examined the body and pronounced life extinct. That was all
that was absolutely necessary. Lowry has his own way of doing things,
and he’s supreme in his department. He’s ‘reconstructing the crime’
just now.”
Barrison, indeed, was listening with gradually increasing interest.
This method which was being employed by Inspector Lowry, sometimes
known as the “reconstruction-of-the-crime” method, was rather
old-fashioned, and many younger and more modern men preferred the more
scientific, analytical, and deductive ways of solving mysteries. Yet
there was something distinctly fascinating, even illuminating, about
the inspector’s simple, sure-fire fashion of setting his stage and
perhaps his trap at one and the same time. Barrison felt his own veins
tingle with the leap of his roused blood.
“Barrison,” said Lowry pleasantly, “just go up there on those steps,
and be Mortimer for a minute. So!” The younger man obeyed with
alacrity. “Miss Merivale, was that about where he stood?”
“Yes.”
“And you are sure that you yourself were just where you are now?”
“Yes.”
“Just there, you know. Not more to the right?”
She glanced at him with faint wonder.
“I think I may have been a little more to the right,” she said. “That
is, to your right, and my left. But I don’t see why you thought so—and
it doesn’t matter, does it?”
“And you, Mr. Crane,” pursued the inspector, paying no attention to her
last words, “you are absolutely certain of where you stood?”
“Absolutely.”
“Ah, yes, quite so; quite so!” murmured Lowry, looking dreamily into
space. Suddenly he faced about and said sharply: “Mr. Crane, will you
kindly lift your right hand and point it at Mr. Barrison? Just so;
exactly! At that range, you could hardly have missed him.”
Norman Crane clenched his fists in a white heat of indignation. “You
dare to imply——”
“Only what your fiancée has already been fearing,” said the inspector
calmly, “that your position in this matter is, to say the least, not
less unpleasant than hers. You were, as is evident, only a few feet
away from the man.”
Crane started to speak, but checked himself. Barrison thought he
knew what he would have said; or, if he was not going to say it, he
should have, for the direction of the bullet was a thing which ought
to be easily determined. But something prevented the young actor from
uttering anything resembling a protest; it was simple to see what it
was.
Sybil Merivale, however unwillingly or unconsciously, had given color
to suspicion against him by the low, heart-broken sobbing into which
she had broken at the bare suggestion.
After one quick look at the obvious distress of the young girl whom he
loved so well, Norman Crane suddenly changed his antagonistic attitude.
He faced the detectives quietly, and said to them, in a manner that was
not without dignity:
“Very well. I admit that it looks bad for me. I suppose that is enough?
If you feel that you have any case at all against me, I shall make no
trouble. Do you mean to arrest me?”