“You’ve got to strike another match,” she said, “if I mustn’t feel my way along here with my fingers.”
He struck another match and the flickering flame disclosed a flight of stairs leading up into the darkness. She went up them upon light, silent feet. Moraine followed, walking on tip-toe. In the upper corridor he struck another match.
Wind was blowing down through the corridor. Occasionally, papers rattled around the inside of the room through which the wind was blowing. Moraine struck another match. Its light disclosed the stretch of a corridor, an open door, papers that had blown out into the corridor.
“That the room?” he asked.
She shuddered and clung to him.
He pushed her away and said in a low voice, “Snap out of it. Keep your head. We’re in a spot.”
He took the lead.
The window was on the north. It had been broken, and wind poured in through the shattered pane. The wind was blowing papers from the desk, and, occasionally, the wind stirred up loose sheets from the floor, sent them whirling and fluttering against wall or bookcase. The room was filled with a disagreeable odor.
Moraine stepped to one side, out of the wind, and struck a match.
The flame of the match illuminated the broken window, showed the jagged prongs of glass sticking from the edges of the sash. Just below the window, sprawled on his back, lay a man of perhaps forty-eight, the hair thin on his forehead, but carefully trained so as to cover an incipient baldness. A waxed mustache, twisted to stubby points, had no streak of gray, and made the face seem slightly younger in appearance.
Moraine gave an exclamation and bent forward. His motion brought the match within the path of the wind. It snuffed out.
Natalie Rice, standing behind him, said in a thin, frightened voice, “There’s a candle there on the desk.”
Moraine stepped back, struck another match, held it between his cupped hands so that he could look around him at the room. Natalie Rice reached toward the candle.
“Wait a minute,” Moraine cautioned, his eyes fastened on the candle, “that may be important.”
“Why?”
“You can see,” he said, “that it was blown out when the window was broken. Probably someone knows when that candle was lit. That may fix the time of the murder.”
She seemed puzzled, but Moraine didn’t bother to make any further explanation.
“Keep your hands off everything in the room,” he said. “There’s your purse over there by the telephone. Take it. Take this handkerchief and wipe off the telephone. Wipe off the receiver. Scrub off the glass top of the stand where the telephone is. Look around for anything you may have dropped.”
He struck another match, held it, likewise, between his cupped hands. He inspected the candle carefully. It was an orange tinted candle some five inches in length, and less than an inch in diameter. Moraine turned from the candle to inspect the room.
“There’s something underneath the desk. It looks as thought it were your handkerchief. Pick it up.”
His eyes moved rapidly, making a swift, efficient scrutiny of the room.
“Don’t touch anything,” he ordered. “Keep your hands covered. Get fingerprints off of anything you may have left them on... My God, you certainly did leave enough stuff scattered around! What were you trying to do — advertise to the police that you’d been here? You don’t usually lose your head in an emergency.”
“It was dark,” she explained, “and I was frightened — I’m still frightened.”
He nodded.
“Never mind that. Get busy. Pick up those things from the floor. Pick up those paper matches.”
“What are you doing with your matches?” she asked.
“Putting them in my pocket when they go out,” he told her, speaking rapidly. “Never mind all that stuff. Get busy. We’ve got to get out of here. Hello, that safe’s open! Was it open when you were here?”
“I guess so,” she said. “I didn’t notice.”
“Looks like some of those papers may have been taken from the safe... No, no, don’t touch them! Get your things together.”
“Can we telephone the police and pretend we just found the body?” she asked.
“Not now. We can’t explain being here. It’s a mess. I can’t understand why you called me from this room.”
“I’m sorry,” she said humbly. “It seemed to be the wisest course at the time. I felt all at sea. I wanted you.”
“Well, there’s nothing more we can do here. Let’s get out.”
“He’s dead?” she asked. “You’re certain of that?”
“Sure he’s dead. Shot twice. You can see the bullet holes — one in the chest and one in the temple. Looks like that one in the temple was fired while he was lying there on the floor. Those look like powder bums at the base of the hair. He smashed the window as he fell. See, there’s a long sliver of glass underneath the body, with just an edge sticking out, and there are some little bits of glass on the front of his coat. He must have gone down with glass falling all around him... No, don’t go over there, there’s no need to. I’ve only got a few matches left. We’ve got to work fast.”
Under the impetus of his commands, she snapped into rapid action, moving with mechanical swiftness.
“All right, polish off the knob of the door... Come on, let’s go.”
“Perhaps,” she said, “we could...”
“Get busy with the knob of that door,” he interrupted. “We can speculate later. Scrub it well with a handkerchief and come on.”
He led the way down the corridor, walking cautiously.
“Do we get a taxicab?” she asked in the lower corridor.
“Not here,” he told her. “We’ve left too broad a trail as it is.”
They paused in the shadows, near the outer door, watching and listening, then tip-toed to the gate in the wrought-iron fence.
Moraine took her arm, turned to the left. They walked briskly down the sidewalk.
“Tell me,” she asked, after half a block, “how did you know that the candle was put out by the wind that came in through the open window?”
“Because,” he said, “the wax was evenly distributed around the base of the candle. If the wind hadn’t blown the candle out immediately, it would have blown the flame over toward the far side of the candle and the wax would have melted and run down that side.”
“I see,” she muttered, “and the time of the murder may be, important?”
“You can never tell. We can fix the time that you called me, I think.”
“How?”
“By the fact that the train went through on the track as you were telephoning. There’s not a great deal of traffic through here at night. I’ll find out to-morrow just how those trains do run.”
“Why should the time I called you be important?”
“Because, if the officers should find out you were calling me from Dixon’s place, our only possible defense would be to prove that he was dead when you entered the room.”
“Could we show that?”
“I think so. The candle may be valuable evidence, and then there are other ways by which an expert can fix the time of death. I would think they could fix an exact time from an examination of the body — probably within an hour or so at the most. But they could tell how long the candle had been burning. I didn’t make a very complete examination because I wanted to get out of there before we were discovered?”
She clutched at his arm. “I’ve made you a frightful lot of trouble, haven’t I?”
“I don’t know. I hope not. It wasn’t your fault.”
“Looking back on it,” she said, “I’m not so sure. I wanted to be a competent secretary. I know that excuses don’t amount to anything; it’s results that count. As soon as I heard Mr. Dixon say he wouldn’t see me, I thought I must seem him at any cost.”
Moraine caught her arm. They were now under a street light. He spun her about so that he could look into her face.