"Yes?"
"It's almost on top of us," said Ann. "It creaks badly no matter how you try to open it. Could anyone have come in there, walked past die light clear across to that table on a bare hardwood floor, changed the daggers, and walked out again, without our seeing him?"
They envisaged this.
"No," said Sharpless. "It's impossible. Besides, I'll swear nobody did."
Rich massaged his head. "But the windows?" he suggested.
"That floor!" cried Ann. "And the drawn curtains! And-"
With a cluck of his tongue as though in realization, Sharpless strode across to the windows. As soon as he reached the section of the floor anywhere near the windows, the resulting creaks and cracks made him pause.
He looked at the white curtains, smoothly drawn and undisturbed. He pushed them aside on one window, and put his head out.
"This window," he reported, "is eight feet up from the ground. Has anybody got an electric torch?"
Hubert Fane fetched one out of a drawer in the telephone table. Sharpless switched it on, and swept its beam outside.