Batlike, this second and terrible visitant avoided the light.
The deed had occupied so brief a time that but one note of the great bell had accompanied it.
TWELVE! rang out the final stroke from the clock-tower. A low, eerie whistle, minor, rising in three irregular notes and falling in weird, unusual cadence to silence again, came from somewhere outside the room.
Then darkness—stillness—with the moon a witness of one more ghastly crime.
Presently, confused and intermingled voices from above proclaimed the return of Leroux with the doctor. They were talking in an excited key, the voice of Leroux, especially, sounding almost hysterical. They created such a disturbance that they attracted the attention of Mr. John Exel, M. P., occupant of the flat below, who at that very moment had returned from the House and was about to insert the key in the lock of his door. He looked up the stairway, but, all being in darkness, was unable to detect anything. Therefore he called out:—
"Is that you, Leroux? Is anything the matter?"
"Matter, Exel!" cried Leroux; "there's a devil of a business! For mercy's sake, come up!"
His curiosity greatly excited, Mr. Exel mounted the stairs, entering the lobby of Leroux's flat immediately behind the owner and Dr. Cumberly—who, like Leroux, was arrayed in a dressing-gown; for he had been in bed when summoned by his friend.
"You are all in the dark, here," muttered Dr. Cumberly, fumbling for the switch.
"Some one has turned the light out!" whispered Leroux, nervously; "I left it on."
Dr. Cumberly pressed the switch, turning up the lobby light as Exel entered from the landing. Then Leroux, entering the study first of the three, switched on the light there, also.
One glance he threw about the room, then started back like a man physically stricken.
"Cumberly!" he gasped, "Cumberly"—and he pointed to the furry heap by the writing-table.
"You said she lay on the chesterfield," muttered Cumberly.
"I left her there."…
Dr. Cumberly crossed the room and dropped upon his knees. He turned the white face toward the light, gently parted the civet fur, and pressed his ear to the silken covering of the breast. He started slightly and looked into the glazing eyes.
Replacing the fur which he had disarranged, the physician stood up and fixed a keen gaze upon the face of Henry Leroux. The latter swallowed noisily, moistening his parched lips.
"Is she"… he muttered; "is she"…
"God's mercy, Leroux!" whispered Mr. Exel—"what does this mean?"
"The woman is dead," said Dr. Cumberly.
In common with all medical men, Dr. Cumberly was a physiognomist; he was a great physician and a proportionately great physiognomist. Therefore, when he looked into Henry Leroux's eyes, he saw there, and recognized, horror and consternation. With no further evidence than that furnished by his own powers of perception, he knew that the mystery of this woman's death was as inexplicable to Henry Leroux as it was inexplicable to himself.
He was a masterful man, with the gray eyes of a diplomat, and he knew Leroux as did few men. He laid both hands upon the novelist's shoulders.
"Brace up, old chap!" he said; "you will want all your wits about you."
"I left her," began Leroux, hesitatingly—"I left"…
"We know all about where you left her, Leroux," interrupted Cumberly; "but what we want to get at is this: what occurred between the time you left her, and the time of our return?"
Exel, who had walked across to the table, and with a horror-stricken face was gingerly examining the victim, now exclaimed:—
"Why! Leroux! she is—she is… UNDRESSED!"
Leroux clutched at his dishevelled hair with both hands.
"My dear Exel!" he cried—"my dear, good man! Why do you use that tone? You say 'she is undressed!' as though I were responsible for the poor soul's condition!"
"On the contrary, Leroux!" retorted Exel, standing very upright, and staring through his monocle; "on the contrary, YOU misconstrue ME! I did not intend to imply—to insinuate—"
"My dear Exel!" broke in Dr. Cumberly—"Leroux is perfectly well aware that you intended nothing unkindly. But the poor chap, quite naturally, is distraught at the moment. You MUST understand that, man!"
"I understand; and I am sorry," said Exel, casting a sidelong glance at the body. "Of course, it is a delicate subject. No doubt Leroux can explain."…
"Damn your explanation!" shrieked Leroux hysterically. "I CANNOT explain! If I could explain, I"…
"Leroux!" said Cumberly, placing his arm paternally about the shaking man—"you are such a nervous subject. DO make an effort, old fellow. Pull yourself together. Exel does not know the circumstances—"
"I am curious to learn them," said the M. P. icily.
Leroux was about to launch some angry retort, but Cumberly forced him into the chesterfield, and crossing to a bureau, poured out a stiff peg of brandy from a decanter which stood there. Leroux sank upon the chesterfield, rubbing his fingers up and down his palms with a curious nervous movement and glancing at the dead woman, and at Exel, alternately, in a mechanical, regular fashion, pathetic to behold.
Mr. Exel, tapping his boot with the head of his inverted cane, was staring fixedly at the doctor.
"Here you are, Leroux," said Cumberly; "drink this up, and let us arrange our facts in decent order before we—"
"Phone for the police?" concluded Exel, his gaze upon the last speaker.
Leroux drank the brandy at a gulp and put down the glass upon a little persian coffee table with a hand which he had somehow contrived to steady.
"You are keen on the official forms, Exel?" he said, with a wry smile. "Please accept my apology for my recent—er—outburst, but picture this thing happening in your place!"
"I cannot," declared Exel, bluntly.
"You lack imagination," said Cumberly. "Take a whisky and soda, and help me to search the flat."
"Search the flat!"
The physician raised a forefinger, forensically.
"Since you, Exel, if not actually in the building, must certainly have been within sight of the street entrance at the moment of the crime, and since Leroux and I descended the stair and met you on the landing, it is reasonable to suppose that the assassin can only be in one place: HERE!"
"HERE!" cried Exel and Leroux, together.
"Did you see anyone leave the lower hall as you entered?"
"No one; emphatically, there was no one there!"
"Then I am right."
"Good God!" whispered Exel, glancing about him, with a new, and keen apprehensiveness.
"Take your drink," concluded Cumberly, "and join me in my search."
"Thanks," replied Exel, nervously proffering a cigar-case; "but I won't drink."
"As you wish," said the doctor, who thus, in his masterful way, acted the host; "and I won't smoke. But do you light up."
"Later," muttered Exel; "later. Let us search, first."
Leroux stood up; Cumberly forced him back.
"Stay where you are, Leroux; it is elementary strategy to operate from a fixed base. This study shall be the base. Ready, Exel?"
Exel nodded, and the search commenced. Leroux sat rigidly upon the settee, his hands resting upon his knees, watching and listening. Save for the merry ticking of the table-clock, and the movements of the searchers from room to room, nothing disturbed the silence. From the table, and that which lay near to it, he kept his gaze obstinately averted.
Five or six minutes passed in this fashion, Leroux expecting each to bring a sudden outcry. He was disappointed. The searchers returned, Exel noticeably holding himself aloof and Cumberly very stern.
Exel, a cigar between his teeth, walked to the writing-table, carefully circling around the dreadful obstacle which lay in his path, to help himself to a match. As he stooped to do so, he perceived that in the closed right hand of the dead woman was a torn scrap of paper.