Miles pointed past the great circular staircase that wound upward from the main hall. "You can't see the door from here, but it's behind the staircase. Celia found the door closed this morning, and no light on, as I said—"
Dundee cut him short by marching toward the door which was again closed. He entered so noiselessly that Captain Strawn, Dr. Price and the fingerprint expert, Carraway, did not hear him. For a moment he stood just inside the door and let his eyes wander about the room which Penny Crain had already described. It was not a large room—twelve by fourteen feet, possibly—but it looked even smaller, crowded as it was with the long ping-pong table, bags of golf clubs, fishing tackle, tennis racquets, skis and sleds. There were two windows in the north wall of the room, looking out upon the yew-hedged driveway, and between them stood a cabinet of numerous big and little drawers.
Not until he had taken in the general aspect of the room did Dundee look at the thing over which Captain Strawn and the coroner were bending—the body of Dexter Sprague.
The alien from New York had fallen about four feet from the window nearer the east wall of the trophy room. He lay on his side, his left cheek against the floor, the fingers of his left hand still clutching the powder-burned bosom of his soft shirt, now stiff with dried blood, a pool of which had formed and then half congealed upon the rug. The right hand, the fingers curled but not touching each other, lay palm-upward on the floor at the end of the rigid, outstretched arm. The one visible eye was half open, but on the sallow, thin face, which had been strikingly handsome in an obvious sort of way, was a peace and dignity which Dundee had never seen upon Sprague's face when the man was alive. The left leg was drawn upward so that the knee almost touched the bullet-pierced stomach.
"How long has he been dead, doctor?" Dundee asked quietly.
"Hello, boy!" Dr. Price greeted him placidly. "Always the same question! I've been here only a few minutes, and I've already told Strawn that I shall probably be unable to fix the hour of death with any degree of accuracy."
"Took your time, didn't you, Bonnie?" Captain Strawn greeted his former subordinate on the Homicide Squad. "Doc says he's been dead between ten and twelve hours. Since it's nearly ten now, that means Sprague was killed some time between nine and eleven o'clock last night."
"Better say between nine o'clock and midnight last night," Dr. Price suggested. "He may have lived an hour or more—unconscious, of course. For the indications are that he did not die instantly, but staggered a few steps, clutching at the wound. But of course I shall have to perform an autopsy first——"
Dundee crossed the room, stepping over the dead man's stick—a swank affair of dark, polished wood, with a heavy knob of carved onyx, which lay about a foot beyond the reach of the curled fingers of the stiff right hand.
"Sprague's hat?" he asked, pointing to a brightly banded straw which lay upon the top of the cabinet.