The Undetected

By GEORGE O. SMITH
Illustrated by FINLAY
Nothing can possibly be more baffling than a crime in a sealed room ... but what if the investigator happens to have an open mind?
I took a quick look around the apartment, even though I already knew what I had to know.
Gordon Andrews had been slain in his sleep by the quick thrust of some rapierlike instrument. There was no sign of any struggle. The wall safe stood with its door open and its contents missing. Every door and window was closed, locked, burglar-bugged, and non-openable from the inside; the front door had been forced by the police. Furthermore, it had been raining in wind-whipped torrents for hours, yet there was no trace of moisture on any of the floors.
Of course no one had heard a sound, and naturally there were no fingerprints.
Police Chief Weston spied me and snapped, What do you make of it, Schnell?
I shrugged and said, Completely sealed room.
Got any ideas? he demanded.
I had a lot of ideas, but I was not going to express myself without a lot of stark evidence. I do not yearn to have the prefix ex- installed in front of my title of Captain of Detectives. I'm much too young to be retired. So instead of trying to explain, I said, The modus operandi is—
Chief Weston snorted, Schnell, there isn't a clue in the whole damned building, and yet you stand there and yap about modus operandi ?
That's the point, Chief. The cluelessness is itself the modus operandi that points to—