There was an easily recognizable undercurrent of admiration in his tone, and I felt that this youthful telephone operator had seen in Miss Odell’s caller a certain physical and sartorial ideal. This palpable admiration, coupled with the somewhat outré clothes affected by the youth, permitted us to read between the lines of his remarks a fairly accurate description of the man who had unsuccessfully rung the dead girl’s bell at half past nine the night before.
When Spively had been dismissed, Markham rose and strode about the room, his head enveloped in a cloud of cigar smoke, while Heath sat stolidly watching him, his brows knit.
Vance stood up and stretched himself.
“The absorbin’ problem, it would seem, remains in statu quo,” he remarked airily. “How, oh how, did the fair Margaret’s executioner get in?”
“You know, Mr. Markham,” rumbled Heath sententiously, “I’ve been thinking that the fellow may have come here earlier in the afternoon—say, before that side door was locked. Odell herself may have let him in and hidden him when the other man came to take her to dinner.”
“It looks that way,” Markham admitted. “Bring the maid in here again, and we’ll see what we can find out.”
When the woman had been brought in, Markham questioned her as to her actions during the afternoon, and learned that she had gone out at about four to do some shopping, and had returned about half past five.
“Did Miss Odell have any visitor with her when you got back?”
“No, sir,” was the prompt answer. “She was alone.”
“Did she mention that any one had called?”
“No, sir.”
“Now,” continued Markham, “could any one have been hidden in this apartment when you went home at seven?”
The maid was frankly astonished, and even a little horrified.
“Where could any one hide?” she asked, looking round the apartment.
“There are several possible places,” Markham suggested: “in the bathroom, in one of the clothes-closets, under the bed, behind the window draperies. . . .”
The woman shook her head decisively. “No one could have been hidden,” she declared. “I was in the bathroom half a dozen times, and I got Miss Odell’s gown out of the clothes-closet in the bedroom. As soon as it began to get dark I drew all the window-shades myself. And as for the bed, it’s built almost down to the floor; no one could squeeze under it.” (I glanced closely at the bed, and realized that this statement was quite true.)
“What about the clothes-closet in this room?” Markham put the question hopefully, but again the maid shook her head.
“Nobody was in there. That’s where I keep my own hat and coat, and I took them out myself when I was getting ready to go. I even put away one of Miss Odell’s old dresses in that closet before I left.”
“And you are absolutely certain,” reiterated Markham, “that no one could have been hidden anywhere in these rooms at the time you went home?”
“Absolutely, sir.”
“Do you happen to remember if the key of this clothes-closet was on the inside or the outside of the lock when you opened the door to get your hat?”
The woman paused, and looked thoughtfully at the closet door.
“It was on the outside, where it always was,” she announced, after several moments’ reflection. “I remember because it caught in the chiffon of the old dress I put away.”
Markham frowned and then resumed his questioning.
“You say you don’t know the name of Miss Odell’s dinner companion last night. Can you tell us the names of any men she was in the habit of going out with?”
“Miss Odell never mentioned any names to me,” the woman said. “She was very careful about it, too—secretive, you might say. You see, I’m only here in the daytime, and the gentlemen she knew generally came in the evening.”
“And you never heard her speak of any one of whom she was frightened—any one she had reason to fear?”
“No, sir—although there was one man she was trying to get rid of. He was a bad character—I wouldn’t have trusted him anywhere—and I told Miss Odell she’d better look out for him. But she’d known him a long time, I guess, and had been pretty soft on him once.”
“How do you happen to know this?”
“One day, about a week ago,” the maid explained, “I came in after lunch, and he was with her in the other room. They didn’t hear me, because the portières were drawn. He was demanding money, and when she tried to put him off, he began threatening her. And she said something that showed she’d given him money before. I made a noise, and then they stopped arguing; and pretty soon he went out.”
“What did this man look like?” Markham’s interest was reviving.
“He was kind of thin—not very tall—and I’d say he was around thirty. He had a hard face—good-looking, some would say—and pale blue eyes that gave you the shivers. He always wore his hair greased back, and he had a little yellow moustache pointed at the ends.”
“Ah!” said Vance. “Our gigolo!”
“Has this man been here since?” asked Markham.
“I don’t know, sir—not when I was here.”
“That will be all,” said Markham; and the woman went out.
“She didn’t help us much,” complained Heath.
“What!” exclaimed Vance. “I think she did remarkably well. She cleared up several moot points.”
“And just what portions of her information do you consider particularly illuminating?” asked Markham, with ill-concealed annoyance.
“We now know, do we not,” rejoined Vance serenely, “that no one was lying perdu in here when the bonne departed yesterevening.”
“Instead of that fact being helpful,” retorted Markham, “I’d say it added materially to the complications of the situation.”
“It would appear that way, wouldn’t it, now? But, then—who knows?—it may prove to be your brightest and most comfortin’ clue. . . . Furthermore, we learned that some one evidently locked himself in that clothes-press, as witness the shifting of the key, and that, moreover, this occultation did not occur until the abigail had gone, or, let us say, after seven o’clock.”
“Sure,” said Heath with sour facetiousness; “when the side door was bolted and an operator was sitting in the front hall, who swears nobody came in that way.”
“It is a bit mystifyin’,” Vance conceded sadly.
“Mystifying? It’s impossible!” grumbled Markham.
Heath, who was now staring with meditative pugnacity into the closet, shook his head helplessly.
“What I don’t understand,” he ruminated, “is why, if the fellow was hiding in the closet, he didn’t ransack it when he came out, like he did all the rest of the apartment.”
“Sergeant,” said Vance, “you’ve put your finger on the crux of the matter. . . . Y’ know, the neat, undisturbed aspect of that closet rather suggests that the crude person who rifled these charming rooms omitted to give it his attention because it was locked on the inside and he couldn’t open it.”
“Come, come!” protested Markham. “That theory implies that there were two unknown persons in here last night.”
Vance sighed. “Harrow and alas! I know it. And we can’t introduce even one into this apartment logically.