Part 11

“The key is always hung on the nail when they are out?”

“Yes. If any one of them is out it is left there. There is only one key. The family is out a great deal, and it saves bringing some one down from the servants’ rooms at the top of the house.”

But I think my knowledge of the key bothered her, for some reason. And as I read over my questions, certainly they indicated a suspicion that the situation was less simple than it appeared. She shot a quick glance at me.

“Did you examine the revolver when you picked it up?”

“I, monsieur? Non!” Then her fears, whatever they were, got the best of her. “I know nothing but what I tell you. I was out. I can prove that that is so. I went to a pharmacy; the clerk will remember. I will go with you, monsieur, and he will tell you that I used the telephone there.”

I daresay my business of cross-examination, of watching evidence helped me to my next question.

“You went out to telephone when there is a telephone in the house?”

But here again, as once or twice before, a veil dropped between us. She avoided my eyes. “There are things one does not want the family to hear,” she muttered. Then, having determined on a course of action, she followed it. “I am looking for another position. I do not like it here. The children are spoiled. I only came for a month’s trial.”

“And the pharmacy?”

“Elliott’s, at the corner of State Avenue and McKee Street.”

I told her that it would not be necessary for her to go to the pharmacy, and she muttered something about the children and went up the stairs. When Sperry came back with the opiate she was nowhere in sight, and he was considerably annoyed.

“She knows something,” I told him. “She is frightened.”

Sperry eyed me with a half frown.

“Now see here, Horace,” he said, “suppose we had come in here, without the thought of that seance behind us? We’d have accepted the thing as it appears to be, wouldn’t we? There may be a dozen explanations for that sponge, and for the razor strop. What in heaven’s name has a razor strop to do with it anyhow? One bullet was fired, and the revolver has one empty chamber. It may not be the custom to stop shaving in order to commit suicide, but that’s no argument that it can’t be done, and as to the key--how do I know that my own back door key isn’t hung outside on a nail sometimes?”

“We might look again for that hole in the ceiling.”

“I won’t do it. Miss Jeremy has read of something of that sort, or heard of it, and stored it in her subconscious mind.”

But he glanced up at the ceiling nevertheless, and a moment later had drawn up a chair and stepped onto it, and I did the same thing. We presented, I imagine, rather a strange picture, and I know that the presence of the rigid figure on the couch gave me a sort of ghoulish feeling.

The house was an old one, and in the center of the high ceiling a plaster ornament surrounded the chandelier. Our search gradually centered on this ornament, but the chairs were low and our long-distance examination revealed nothing. It was at that time, too, that we heard some one in the lower hall, and we had only a moment to put our chairs in place before the butler came in. He showed no surprise, but stood looking at the body on the couch, his thin face working.

“I met the detectives outside, doctor,” he said. “It’s a terrible thing, sir, a terrible thing.”

“I’d keep the other servants out of this room, Hawkins.”

“Yes, sir.” He went over to the sheet, lifted the edge slowly, and then replaced it, and tip-toed to the door. “The others are not back yet. I’ll admit them, and get them up quietly. How is Mrs. Wells?”

“Sleeping,” Sperry said briefly, and Hawkins went out.

I realize now that Sperry was--I am sure he will forgive this--in a state of nerves that night. For example, he returned only an impatient silence to my doubt as to whether Hawkins had really only just returned and he quite missed something downstairs which I later proved to have an important bearing on the case. This was when we were going out, and after Hawkins had opened the front door for us. It had been freezing hard, and Sperry, who has a bad ankle, looked about for a walking stick. He found one, and I saw Hawkins take a swift step forward, and then stop, with no expression whatever in his face.

“This will answer, Hawkins.”

“Yes, sir,” said Hawkins impassively.

And if I realize that Sperry was nervous that night, I also realize that he was fighting a battle quite his own, and with its personal problems.

“She’s got to quit this sort of thing,” he said savagely and apropos of nothing, as we walked along. “It’s hard on her, and besides--”

“Yes?”