In the Onyx Lobby Part 8

"Murder!" answered Moore, briefly. "Hike into some clothes and get downstairs. Sir Herbert Binney's been done for!"

Not waiting, Moore ran back down the stairs, and took his station guarding the dead man. He resolved to touch nothing, but his attention at once fell on a bit of paper, on which Binney had evidently been scrawling some message, with the pencil that had at last fallen from his nerveless fingers.

Careful not to touch the paper, Moore devoured it with his eyes.

This is what he read:

[Ill.u.s.tration (handwritten note): women did this get [unreadable]]

CHAPTER IV

The Busy Police

But even the astonis.h.i.+ng disclosure of the scrawled statement did not cause Bob Moore to lose his head. Excited and startled though he was, he was also alertly conscious that he must conduct himself with care. He had a vague fear that he might be connected with the case and weirdly enough he had a secret fear that he might not!

Already in fancy he saw himself doing marvelously clever detective work that should result in getting the criminal of whom the dying efforts of the victim strove to tell him. But he must be careful not to put himself forward, not to overstep his privileges, and, above all, not to seem too eager to help in the search for the murderer, for he felt sure his offers of a.s.sistance would be deemed presumptuous.

Doctor Pagett came running down the stairs, knotting his necktie as he descended.

"Binney!" he exclaimed; "the Englishman who makes Buns. What's this paper?"

"I haven't touched it, Doctor; I haven't touched anything. You can see for yourself what the paper says."

"Women did this," said the doctor, his eyes fairly bulging; "what--what does it mean? Where were you?"

"Up at the tenth floor, taking Mr Vail up. He came in,--there was no Binney about then!--and I took him up in the elevator to his floor, and when I came down, Mr Binney was there just as you see him now,--only, he was still alive."

"Alive!"

"Yes, sir,--just dying. He mumbled a word or two----"

"What did he say?"

"He said--'Get--get----' but he couldn't say who. That's all,--then he drew a long breath and died."

"You came straight to me?"

"Yes, sir. I flew! I thought it my duty to hesitate that moment, in case he might get out the name of the murderer."

"I think you did all right, Moore. He's surely dead,--and, just as surely, he was murdered. And by women! But how is it possible? However, that's not my province. We must get the police, and also, notify his people. He lived in the Prall apartment, didn't he?"

"No; he was there a lot; they're his relatives, I believe, but he had his own apartment, a small one on the eighth floor. Miss Prall, she's on the eighth, too, shall I call her up?"

"Oh, that's pretty awful. Call the nephew, young Bates, first."

"Shall I telephone or go up there----?"

"Go up--no, telephone,--somebody might come in, and want you."

"h.e.l.lo," Richard Bates responded to Moore's telephone call.

"Mr. Bates?"

"Yes."

"Will you come downstairs, sir, right away? There's been a--an accident.

Mr. Binney,--that is, Sir Binney, you know,--he's--he's----"

"Well, he's what?"

"He's--oh, come down, sir, _please_!"

Moore hung up his receiver, for his nerve suddenly deserted him when it came to telling the dreadful fact of the tragedy.

In a few moments the elevator bell sounded and Moore went up to bring Bates down.

"What is it?" Bates asked. "Is my uncle--er,--lit up?"

"Oh, no, sir," and Bob Moore looked shocked, "it isn't that, at all.

It's worse than that,--it's an accident."

"What sort of an accident? Taxi smash-up? Any kind of a stroke?"

But by this time they were down to the street floor, and the two men stepped out of the car.

Seeing the doctor, who was still bending over the inert figure on the floor, Bates hurried along the onyx lobby till he reached the scene, and could see, without being told, what had happened.

A moment he gazed in silence at his uncle's face, and then said, excitedly, "Who did this? How was he killed? Why should anybody----"

Silently the doctor pointed to the paper on the floor at the dead man's side.

Bates read it, and looked up wonderingly.

"Don't touch it," warned the physician as the young man stretched out his hand. "It's a clew,--the police must take charge of it."

"The police! Oh, yes,--of course,--it's a murder, isn't it?"

"You bet it's a murder!" exclaimed Moore. "And done by women! Oh, gee!

what a case it will be!"

"Hush up!" Bates cried, angrily. "Don't talk like that in the presence of the dead! We must send for an undertaker."

"Not yet," demurred Doctor Pagett. "In a case like this, the police must be notified first of all."

"Not first of all," said Bates, slowly, as his mind began to work; "we must tell my aunt, Miss Prall."