The seventh shot A detective story
“Ah!” said Lowry. “You provided yourself with these make-up rags, then?”
“Yes, sir!” Wrenn spoke eagerly. “I asked the chambermaid at the hotel
for some old pieces for Mr. Mortimer, and——”
“Wrenn, don’t be a fool,” said Lowry, speaking sharply for the first
time. “In the first place—unless I am much mistaken—make-up rags are
used only when the make-up is taken off—right, Mr. Dukane?”
The manager nodded.
“And then—why, in that case, was this rag so precious that you had to
shut it up in a trunk, before it had been used? For I take it that a
make-up rag doesn’t show just one or two complete sets of finger prints
when a man gets through with it! It must look something like a rag
that’s used on brasses or an automobile! Also, I see that there are two
or three cloths already on the dressing table.”
He turned his back on Wrenn, and examined the bit of linen that he
held, while the other detectives held their breath.
“This,” he said at last, “was torn from the dress of some woman who was
in the dressing room to-night, at some time after Mortimer was made up.”
He turned to Dukane, with the faintest shrug, and said:
“You know, when I tried to reconstruct the crime by putting every
one in their places—the places they had occupied at the time of the
shooting—I was attempting the impossible. For there evidently was some
one else here, some one who has gone; some one”—his eyes flew suddenly
and piercingly to Wrenn—“whom this man wishes to shield.”
CHAPTER XII
THE TWO DOORWAYS
Whether it was strictly correct or not, no one was in a position to
question, but, anyway, Inspector Lowry told Sybil finally to go home
after leaving her address. A lot of skeleton theories had come tumbling
down with the discovery that another and unknown woman had been present
in Mortimer’s dressing room that night.
Even Claire McAllister’s testimony—that Miss Merivale had told her she
sometimes wished she could kill their star—fell flat after Sybil’s own
confession of not only what she had felt, but what she had threatened.
The whole business was, as Barrison could see, a sickening one for
Inspector Lowry. He had fallen down right and left; practically
speaking, he had nothing left now to work on, out of all his ingenious
work of reconstruction.
Only his examination of the two men on guard at the doors had brought
out anything clear cut, anything on which seriously to work.
First of all, he had questioned Joe Lynch, the young fellow whose job
it had been to keep any one save the detective and the manager from
passing either way through the communicating door.
“Your name is Joe Lynch, you say?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You have already said that you stood there by the communicating door
during the dark scene, Lynch?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Just there?”
“As near as I can say, sir, yes. I was close up here by the door. My
orders was to keep it shut except for the detectives or Mr. Dukane.”
“And did you know why?”
“Why, how do you mean, sir?”
“Did you understand why the orders were so strict to-night of all
nights?”
“Oh, that. Yes, sir; I knew there’d been some talk of Mr. Mortimer
being in some sort of danger.”
“Who told you?”
“Why, I couldn’t say, sir. I don’t rightly know. Them things gets
about. Anyhow, I knew that; and I was, so to speak, sort o’ set on
taking care of Mr. Mortimer.”
“Did you like him, then?”
The young man’s dull eyes opened wide.
“Me, sir?” he said, in surprise. “I never see him to talk to. But I was
wanting to do my part. Mr. Dukane and Mr. Barrison, too, told me I was
to look sharp. So I did.”
“Ah! You did, eh? You looked sharp, eh?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Sure?”
“Why, yes, sir! Course I did! I—I was keen on showing I was as quick as
the next.”
“Ah! How were you going to show that?”
Young Lynch laughed frankly, yet with a sort of embarrassment, too.
“Well, sir, Mr. Dukane, he offered twenty-five dollars either to Mr.
Roberts or me if we could spot any one trying anything suspicious, or
anything.”
“_Ah!_” The inspector’s laconic monosyllable sounded a bit sharper than
usual. “So that was it! Lynch, you were standing there when you heard
the shot?”
“Yes, sir, as near as I can say now, in these very tracks.”
The inspector stood beside him and let his eyes move slowly from the
big door beside them to the little flight of steps where the star had
met his death.
“Mighty narrow way to pass,” he murmured, half to himself.
“Sir?” said Lynch respectfully.
The inspector continued to measure distances with his eye.
“You see,” he said to Lynch, “if you will draw a straight line from
here where we stand, past the angle of the property-room corner to the
entrance where Mr. Mortimer was waiting, do you see what I mean?”
Lynch looked obediently where he was directed. “No, sir,” he said,
after he had looked.
Lowry sighed gently. “Not much space to pass any one, anyway,” he
murmured.
Lynch looked at him, still blankly.
“Lynch,” said the inspector, “if I were in your place, and had a chance
of making twenty-five dollars if I caught any one, and while I was on
duty like this, and heard a shot——”
He paused, not seeming to look at Lynch, but really noting every shadow
and light that passed over his face.
“If I were, in short, as you had been situated, I should have left
my post when I heard that shot and run forward toward the man I was
supposed to guard. I think I should have considered it my duty.”
“Would you, indeed, sir?” cried young Lynch hopefully.
The inspector suddenly looked at him and said dryly. “So that’s what
you did? Suppose you tell me all about it. You heard the shot, and——”
“If you please, sir,” protested the young man eagerly and rather
unhappily, “it wasn’t the shot; leastways, I didn’t know about how many
shots there’d be. It was the scream. I heard the shots, one after the
other, and then the scream—a dreadful scream, if you please, sir. And,
of course, I thought first of all of Mr. Mortimer, and there being
danger, and—and all that. And I run forward, sir, a few steps, through
the dark, wishing to be of some use, and——”
“And to get the twenty-five dollars?”
“Well, sir, that perhaps; of course, I’m not saying that wasn’t in the
back of my mind. But what I was thinking of first was that there was
trouble, and that I might be needed.”
“That’s all right; I believe you.” Lowry spoke shortly, but not at all
unkindly. “The point is that, within half a second of the time of the
shooting, you had left this particular point, and run in the direction
of the shots. In other words, Lynch, this door was unguarded.”
“Unguarded, sir!” Lynch was aghast, and truly so. “Unguarded, sir! But
I had been at my post all the evening! No one had gone in or out——”
“No one had gone in or out during the evening, I am absolutely
convinced. But, after the murder, any one who chanced to be there could
have gone out. Isn’t that so?”
“But——” The young guard’s troubled eyes began to measure the distance
between the door and the stage steps, just as the detectives had done
before.
“Ah!” said Lowry. “You see why I spoke of the narrow passage which
would have to be traversed. It would be very narrow, indeed. Any one
who wanted to get from those steps to the communicating door would
have to pass you at very close quarters, Lynch. And yet—the thing could
be done. The thing could be done. I have not lived so long without
learning that it is these unlikely, well-nigh impossible things that
come off in the smoothest way of all. All right, Lynch, I’m obliged to
you. It’s not your fault. You were a bit overzealous, but I don’t think
we’ll put you in jail for that. However you look at it, you’ve shown us
one way in which the murderer might have escaped.”
He turned and crooked his arm in that of Barrison.
“Now, we’ll go and interview the stage doorkeeper,” he said. Together
he and Barrison attacked old Roberts, who confronted him at the
entrance with a look of mingled apprehension and bravado. His round,
flabby face was rather pale, and he gave the impression of a weak old
child trying to act like a brave man.
“What do you want of me, gentlemen?” he demanded, in a tone that broke
timidly in spite of himself.
They were both very nice to him. In this case, Lowry let Barrison do
most of the talking, feeling that it was a case that required tact.
He stood back in thoughtful silence while Jim got around the old
doorkeeper in his very best and most diplomatic style with the result
that within five minutes poor old Roberts was crumpling up in rather a
piteous fashion, perfectly ready to tell them anything and everything
he had ever done, said, or heard of.
“I didn’t mean no harm,” he protested at last, with such an attitude
of abasement that neither Barrison nor, indeed, Lowry had the heart to
rub it in. “I do hope—oh, I do hope, that you’ll not let Mr. Dukane
discharge me! I’ve been here a good many years, and no one can say as
I’ve not been faithful. I don’t believe there’s been another night in
all my life when I’ve left my post.”
“It would have to be to-night!” murmured Lowry.
“It would!” agreed Barrison. “Go on, Roberts. No one wants to kill you,
and I don’t believe there’s the least likelihood of your losing your
job. Just tell us——”
“You don’t know Mr. Dukane, sir!” Roberts almost wept. “He’s strict,
sir; very strict! He says a thing and you’ve got to do it, no matter
what happens! _I_ know—haven’t I been working for him for twenty years?
And now to be fired and out——”
“Who said you were going to be fired? Get along, Roberts! Tell us what
it was that you did.”
“I left the stage door, sir,” said Roberts humbly.
“That we gathered. But why did you leave it, and when, and for how
long?”
Roberts sniffed and answered in a small stifled voice:
“As to when I left it, sir—it was when Mrs. Parry came to ask me to get
a taxi for Miss Legaye.”
“Why didn’t you get a taxi, then—telephone for one?”
“I did, sir. I telephoned two places, but there wasn’t a single machine
in. The starters all said the same thing: It looked like rain, and
they couldn’t guarantee a taxi for an hour yet. I—I like Miss Kitty,
sir; she’s always kind to me, and I didn’t want her to have to wait,
’specially when she was sick, as Mrs. Parry said she was. So, when I
found I couldn’t get one over the wire, I went out into the alley to
see if I could see one passing.”
“Well, that doesn’t seem very awful,” said Barrison, smiling at him.
“Did you get one?”
Poor old Roberts brightened a bit at the kindly inflection.
“I couldn’t see one, sir, not from this door, so I went up to the gate
at the end of the court, and looked up and down the street. And after
a minute I saw one coming and hailed it, and it stopped. So I ran
back again; and Miss Legaye was standing just outside the stage door,
waiting. So I called to her ‘All right, Miss Legaye, your taxi’s here!’
and went on back. She passed me, in her red coat, about halfway, and
I told her I was sorry to have kept her waiting. Then I hurried back
here.”
“And you are sure you didn’t pass any one but Miss Legaye in the alley,
no one coming in?”
The old fellow shook his head. “So far as any one going out goes,”
he said, “how do I know? My eyes are not so young as they were. But
coming in! Why, I was back here! How could any one pass me in the light
without my seeing them?”
“But,” suggested Barrison, “while you were down at the street signaling
the taxi, some one who had been hiding in the alley might have slipped
in, mightn’t they?”
Old Roberts hung his head, and his whole heavy body expressed dejection.
“That’s what I keep saying to myself, sir!” he whispered. “Not that I
think it’s likely—but—my eyes aren’t what they once were, and suppose