I again turned my eyes to the figure upon the floor, and again the outstretched arms puzzled me.
“But he never fell to the floor in that position,” I said.
“He never did,” was the reply. “The body was arranged in that position, and the cut on his forehead was made after he was dead.”
“But why?” asked Carter.
“God knows!” was the retort. “But then, Carter, this is not our show anyway.”
Carter gave a sudden start, saying slowly: “You are right. I will call up our chief of police. He will get a mighty big shock, for there has not been a murder in this town in years. And then”—he paused—“then I'd better call the housekeeper and break the news to her.”
There was a telephone in the building near the door. After several attempts Carter got the housekeeper and told her that she had better come to the summer house. Then he held a short conversation with the police station, after which he returned to our side.
“While we are waiting for the police, we had better look this place over,” he said.
As I have mentioned, the building was an odd one with eight sides and only one story. There was a window at each side, placed rather high, and the space between the windows was filled with bookcases. All these cases had glass doors, some of which were open, while others we found locked. The books in the cases were mostly upon science and anthropology—the library of a professional scientist. It was not until we reached the further side of the room that we found anything out of the way. But there we found one of the bookcases with the glass in the locked door smashed into hundreds of pieces—pieces which lay upon the rug at our feet.
Behind the broken glass were seven book shelves with books packed tightly together. They were mostly bound in a uniform red morocco, small volumes, not very thick nor very tall. Only in the third shelf was there a gap, and there several books seemed to be missing.