CHAPTER III THE UNEXPECTED HAPPENS

I went directly to the Ph?nix Building, on the second floor of which Barker had his office under cover of the name of the Western Land and Improvement Company. The door was ajar, and the gas was burning inside, so I went in. The room was empty. I tried the door of an inner office, but found it locked, and by the curtained glass of the door I could see that there was no light in that room. I inferred that Barker had been called away, and had left the door open for Clyde.

I closed the door, not wishing to have Barker see me from the hall and turn back, and sat down by the desk under the gaslight to await his return. On the desk were a few circulars of the Western Land and Improvement Company which looked as though they had served the purpose of giving verisimilitude to Mr. Barker's office for a long time. I guessed the same theatrical and decorative mission in the display baskets of apples, sheaves of heavy-headed wheat, and samples of other grains and fruits which adorned the room--though somewhat dustily. I had soon exhausted the visible means of supporting meditation, and my thoughts went back to the evening at the Whytes'. I took my mother's miniature from my pocket, and looked at it with a rueful consciousness that she would most sweetly and conclusively disapprove of the use which I had made of her counterfeit. She would ask if my legal training had so perverted my instinct for simple truth that I could justify sophistries like that!

I had been lecturing myself in her name for some minutes, holding the miniature up before me to give point to the lesson, when I suddenly had that queer feeling--you know it--of being watched. I felt I was not alone. I jumped to my feet and looked about me. The room was quite empty except for the desk, a chair or two besides mine, and the baskets of fruit and grain which stood on a low table by the window. If there was any person on the premises, he must be in the unlighted inner room with the locked door. Instantly it flashed upon me that Barker was probably in there, waiting for Clyde. He had so arranged things that, hidden himself, he could survey the outer room, and when I entered instead of Clyde, he simply lay perdu. In that case, there was no use waiting for his return by way of the hall! I returned the locket to my pocket, looked ostentatiously at my watch, picked up my cane, and left the room. He would suppose my patience exhausted.

But I did not go down the stairs. Instead I walked to the end of a short diverging hall which commanded a view of the door. If Barker was inside, he would have to come out sometime, unless he took the fire escape, and I could wait as late as he could. I wanted to meet him, also I wanted to see if my queer sensation of being watched had any foundation in fact.

I had waited perhaps fifteen minutes when the rattle of the elevator broke the silence. It stopped at the second floor, and a man came rapidly down the main hall and turned toward the office of the W.L.&I. Co. It was Barker himself! I recognized him perfectly. So my intuitions had been merely a feminine case of nerves! I was not a little disgusted with myself.

I lingered a few moments, (so as to give Barker a chance to see that he had not kept me waiting), then I sauntered slowly in the direction of the office. I was opposite the elevator when I was startled by a shot. For a moment I did not realize that the sound came from Barker's room. When I did, I made a jump toward it, and the elevator man, who had been waiting since Barker got out, came only a step behind me. We pushed the door open,--it yielded at once,--and there, outstretched on the floor, lay Barker. I dropped on my knee beside him and turned him over. He turned astonished and inquiring eyes upon me, and made a slight motion with his hand, but even while I was holding up his head, the consciousness faded from his eyes, his head fell forward, and I knew it was a dead man whom I laid down upon the bare floor of his dingy office. I had never before seen a man die, and the solemnity of the event swept everything else out of my mind for the moment. But soon I began to realize the situation.

"Do you see a weapon anywhere about?" I asked the elevator man, glancing myself about the room.

"No, sir. There ain't none."

"Then he was murdered, and his murderer is in there," I said in a low voice, indicating the inner office by a glance.

The man immediately backed toward the door,--and I didn't blame him. It gives one a curious feeling to think of interfering with someone who has no restraining prejudices against taking the life of people with whom he is displeased. But for the credit of my superior civilization, I could not join the retreat.

"I'm going in," I said, and laid my hand on the doorknob. The door was locked.

"Is there anyone on this floor at this time?" I asked the elevator man. "No, sir."

"Or in the building?"

"The watchman."

"Find him. Or, first, telephone to the police station. Then send the watchman here and then go out on the street and try to find a policeman. Bring in anybody who looks equal to breaking in the door. I'll wait here and see that he doesn't get out--if I can prevent it."

The man seemed glad to go, and I took a position at one side of the inner door with my hand on the back of a stout office chair. An unarmed man does feel at a disadvantage before a gun! The very silence seemed full of menace.

In a few minutes there was a sound of running feet in the hall, and the watchman came in.

"He won't be in there by this time," he said at once. "The fire escape runs by the window!" And with the courage of assured safety he opened the door with a pass key. The room was empty, and the window, open to the fire escape, showed that the watchman's surmise was justified. The escape ran down to an alley that opened in turn upon the street. The murderer could have made his descent and joined the theater crowds on the street without the slightest difficulty. He had had at least ten minutes' clear time before we looked vainly out into the night after him.

We were still at the window when the police arrived,--the officer on the beat, whom the elevator man had soon found, and a sergeant with another man from the station. The sergeant took charge.

"Man dead," he said briefly. "And the murderer gone by the window, eh? Tell me what you know about it."

I told him the facts as I have given them above. He lit the gas in the private office and examined the door between the rooms.

"Easy enough," he said.

The upper half of the door consisted of four panes of glass, behind which hung a flimsy curtain. But the lower right-hand pane was gone, leaving merely an open space before the curtain.

"He sat here watching for him through the curtain,--dark in here, light on the outside,--and then, when he came in, he shot through this opening without unlocking the door, dropped the curtain, and quietly went out by the window. He could be five blocks from here by the time you telephoned, and where he may be now,--well, the devil knows. Here is where he sat waiting."

We all looked with interest at the inner room. A chair had been drawn up in front of the door and beside it was a table with a basket of apples on it. The murderer had been munching apples while waiting for his victim! The peelings and cores had been dropped into an office waste-basket beside the chair. It was a curious detail, gruesome just because it was so commonplace and matter of fact. I shivered as I turned away.

By this time the coroner had arrived. He immediately took possession of the premises. I followed his every movement as he went from one room to the other, for I was by no means easy in my mind as to the revelations that might develop. If Barker had committed any of his profitable secrets to writing, his death would not of necessity clear the slate for Kenneth Clyde! But they did not seem to make any compromising discoveries. The desk in the outer office held nothing whatsoever but the decoy circulars which I had already examined, a dried bottle of ink, and some unused pens and penholders. The inner office held a cheap wooden table, but the drawer in it was empty. There was nothing on the table but the basket of apples. The coroner then went through Barker's pockets. He laid out on the floor, and then listed in a note-book, these items:

A worn purse, with eighty dollars in bills.

Three dollars and fifteen cents in loose change.

A ring with six keys.

A narrow memorandum book, worn on the edges.

A pocket-knife, handkerchief, and a small comb.

There were no papers. Barring the note-book, there was nothing identifying about the dead man's possessions. I longed to get that into my hands.

"Perhaps this will give some clue as to his associates," I said, boldly picking it up.

But the coroner was not a man to be interfered with. He promptly took it out of my hands, and tied it with the other articles into Barker's handkerchief with a severely official air.

"That will be examined into in due time," he said. "Officer, you can take the body down and then lock the rooms and give me the keys."

I watched while they carried the limp form down to the waiting patrol wagon, and saw the police sergeant place the seal of the law upon the place. I was at least as much interested as the coroner in seeing that no enterprising reporter, for example, should have an opportunity to spring a sensational story involving more reputable people than Barker.

As I turned up the empty street, I looked at my watch. It was half past twelve. Clyde's appointment with Barker had been for ten, and I had heard the town clock strike as I turned into the Ph?nix Building. When had he been shot? I could not be sure. I had waited for some time, perhaps an hour, before I had had that curious sensation of being watched and had gone out into the hall. I had been watched! The eyes of the murderer in the darkened room had been fixed upon me under the gaslight, while he waited. What would have happened if I had stayed in the room? Would he have shot his victim just the same? Probably. The locked door between would in any event have given him the minute he needed to gain the fire-escape. He had planned it well. It was all so perfectly simple.

A great criminologist once said that every crime, like the burrowings of an underground animal, leaves marks on the surface by which its course can be traced. Perhaps. But it takes eyes to see. I didn't know whether I most hoped or feared that the course of Barker's murderer would be traced.