The Gray Phantom Part 2

"I wouldn't say that. It might prove a far-fetched guess."

"All quibbling aside, don't the scratch on her arm look as though somebody had shot a dose of poison into her with a needle?"

The examiner pondered. "It could mean that, but it doesn't necessarily follow. An autopsy will be necessary to establish the exact cause of death. Why should a murderer use a hypodermic injection when there are so many simpler and easier ways of accomplis.h.i.+ng the same result?"

The stout man guffawed. "Mr. Shei never picks the simple and easy way.

When he wants to pull off a crime, he always dresses it up in flossy tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs. And he always plays safe. Now, my idea is that the safest thing in the world to kill a person with is a hypodermic syringe. It makes no noise, there's no smoke, no bullet, no powder marks, no anything, and it don't leave any clews behind."

The examiner smiled skeptically, as if he had his own views on the subject. "The autopsy will tell. What I fail to understand is why you seem so certain that Mr. Shei, as he calls himself, has had a hand in this affair."

"Miss Darrow saw him, didn't she?"

"She called out his name, if I understood the witnesses correctly, but she did not say she had seen him. It's possible she imagined she saw him. The same drugs that produce exhilaration and laughter also produce hallucinations. However," and he pulled a cigar from his pocket and lighted it carefully, "whether Miss Darrow did or did not see Mr. Shei is for you gentlemen to decide. Good-night."

He strode out. The stout man made a wry face and stroked his chin.

Evidently the medical man had given him something to think about.

Helen, too, had found food for reflection in the doctor's statement.

She stood beside her father a few feet from the others. She had remained for no other reason than a feeling that Culligore, who had been watching her covertly from time to time, might try to detain her if she made a move to go. She believed the lieutenant had rightly guessed that she had not told all she knew.

Starr, who had un.o.btrusively slipped out of the building while the late colloquy was in progress, returned with the report that he had questioned the doorkeepers and the watchman, and that they had seen no suspicious looking characters about the place. They were positive no one had entered or left the building either before or after Miss Darrow's death. Starr ended by inquiring whether it were not possible that the murderer, granting that Miss Darrow had been murdered, was still hiding in the building.

The stout man rather scouted the suggestion, but he instructed the two uniformed officers to make a thorough search.

"If this is Mr. Shei's job, you can bet your sweet life he's made a safe get-away," he grumbled. "He probably sneaked out through one of the fire exits."

The two policemen withdrew. Starr, gliding about with the softness of a panther, found a piece of drapery and covered the body. Helen's lids contracted as she followed his movements. It struck her as odd that during the entire questioning he had made no reference to the communication Miss Darrow had sent him a few minutes before her death.

She wondered whether he had forgotten it or was deliberately withholding it. In the latter case, what could be his reason?

"How about the motive?" suggested Lieutenant Culligore. It was one of the few times he had spoken since the investigation began. "Know of anybody who could have had a reason for getting Miss Darrow out of the way, Mr. Starr?"

Starr stood for a moment with head lowered, deep in thought. Then he slowly shook his finely proportioned head. "No, I don't. I knew Miss Darrow quite well. As far as I am aware, she had no enemies. I can't imagine why----"

He checked himself. Then he gaped, and his eyes widened, and he looked as though an important matter had just occurred to him. Finally, with a sheepish smile, he began to search his pockets.

"This dreadful affair has upset me completely," he murmured; and then, as if in answer to the question that had flashed through Helen's mind a few moments before, he produced a crumpled piece of paper. "If I had not been so fl.u.s.tered I should have shown you this at once," he added.

He smoothed out the message and handed it to the stout man. The latter's face clouded as he read it aloud:

Mr. Shei, like a fool, rushes in where angels might fear to tread.

V. D.

A pause followed the reading. Culligore's upper lip brushed the tip of his nose, a sign that he had found a problem to ponder. A blank expression came into the stout man's face. He looked bewilderedly at Starr.

"What do you suppose she meant by that?" he asked.

"That's just what I wondered when the note was brought me," explained Starr, a blend of sadness and self-reproach in his tones. "Miss Darrow was a strange woman, full of subtleties and queer whims. The note startled me at first; then I decided it was only a jest. At any rate, it was time for the curtain, and I dismissed the matter from my mind.

Now, in the light of what has happened, I can see it was meant as a warning."

"Warning?" echoed the stout man.

"Undoubtedly." Starr gazed regretfully into s.p.a.ce. "In some manner Miss Darrow must have become aware that Mr. Shei was in the house, and she chose this method of warning me of his presence. I was a fool not to see it."

He paced back and forth, running his fingers through his thick hair and muttering self-reproaches. The stout man looked as if he were trying to untangle a mental knot. Again he read the note.

"If Miss Darrow wanted to tip you off that Mr. Shei was in the house, why didn't she say so in plain words?"

"Facetiousness," said Starr grimly. "Virginia Darrow was the kind of woman you would expect to be facetious at her own funeral. Why didn't I realize that she was trying to warn me? I remember now that she behaved in a peculiar manner all evening. Whenever I happened to look in her direction, I found her gazing at me in a strange way. I didn't understand then, but I suppose now that she was trying to send me an ocular message. When that failed, she sent me the note. Oh, why didn't I----"

He made a gesture of distress and self-disgust. Helen, watching his every movement, remembered that it was Miss Darrow's odd way of staring at Starr that had first attracted her attention to the woman.

The recollection started a train of new thoughts, but Culligore's voice interrupted it.

"If Miss Darrow was right and Mr. Shei was in the house," he told the fat man, "then you and I might as well hand in our badges and look for new jobs."

The other jerked up his head. "You don't think that----" he began in startled tones, then broke off and grinned complacently. "Not a chance of that. Mr. Shei couldn't have been in the audience. I gave all of them a pretty stiff quiz, and every one gave a good account of himself. Anyhow, they're the kind that get their names and pictures into the society columns of the Sunday papers. A bunch of harmless nuts--that's all."

He looked at Starr, as if realizing that the epithet had been a trifle brusque, but the manager seemed amused rather than offended.

"I think you are right," he murmured. "The audience was composed of invited guests. I am willing to vouch for every one of them.

Furthermore, you have their names and addresses, and you can communicate with them whenever you wish. If Mr. Shei was really in the theater, he came here as an unbidden guest. In all likelihood he stole in while the house was dark during the first scene of the last act, and departed as soon as he had accomplished his purpose."

It sounded plausible enough, Helen thought; yet her mind was heavy with a giddying whirl of suspicions and contradictions. She slanted a reluctant glance toward the chair containing the body. With a s.h.i.+ver she turned away, and a look at her father's drawn and tired face warned her that he should be in bed. Then she glanced at the man from the district attorney's office, and finally at Culligore. His face was a mask, but his occasional glances in her direction troubled her. The two uniformed officers had not yet returned from their search, and she wondered what they would have to report.

Once more her eyes flitted over the little group, and then, with a suddenness that choked a cry in her throat, everything was blotted from sight. In a twinkling impenetrable darkness had descended upon the house. Somewhere a door banged. She felt her father's tightening clutch on her arm. The stout man swore. Dark shapes were darting hither and thither. She heard a fragmentary cry, followed by a crash and a succession of thuds. A thrust sent her sprawling to the floor, and her mind drifted into a state of semi-stupor during which she was conscious of nothing but the swift and silent movements of the shadowy shapes.

Voices and the return of light jolted her mind back to consciousness.

She struggled to her feet and blinked her eyes at the strange scene.

Her father, dazed but apparently unharmed, sat a short distance away, with his back to the wall. The stout man, seemingly unconscious, lay in a twisted heap on the floor. Culligore was staring about him groggily and muttering something about a blow on the head. A policeman, one of the pair who had been sent off to search the house, was helping Starr to his feet.

With the attention to detail that comes in moments of great bewilderment, Helen noticed that Starr made a ludicrous picture. His attire, so faultless and immaculate a few minutes ago, was now in a sorry state of disorder. A streak of crimson stained his s.h.i.+rt front, and he held a handkerchief to his nose. He wabbled drunkenly across the floor, but all at once his figure stiffened and a blank look came into his face. His lips formed unspoken words as he raised a finger and pointed toward a seat in the last tier.

As she followed the pointing finger, things swam in confusion before Helen's eyes. Starr, speechless and crestfallen, was indicating the chair where the body of Virginia Darrow had been. As she stared stonily toward the empty chair, Helen felt an impulse to cry out. She came a few steps closer, then stopped with a shudder and dazedly swept her hand across her forehead.

"It's--it's gone!" she cried huskily.

CHAPTER III

HELEN EQUIVOCATES

Across the breakfast table Mr. Hardwick looked anxiously at his daughter. The wild-rose color that usually flooded her cheeks had faded a trifle since last night, and her eyes were less bright. Most of the time the curator's mind browsed among relics of the past, but his perceptions were amazingly keen where his daughter was concerned.

"Mr. Shei gave us quite a shock last night," he remarked.

Helen kept her eyes down while she poured his coffee and added two and a half lumps of sugar and the usual portion of cream. Then she stirred it for him, knowing he would be quite apt to forget to do so himself.

Despite the half dozen t.i.tles bestowed upon him by universities and learned societies, she felt he needed looking after.