“I know. I saw it.”
“Well, naturally, he thought I’d gone away with some man. I knew it was only a question of time until I’d run into him on the street somewhere, but I felt that the longer it was put off the more chance he’d have to fall in love with someone else and forget me. But he has that peculiar complex some men have — he only wants someone he can’t get. You know how some men are?”
I nodded.
“There he was,” she went on bitterly, “in my apartment, with his gun, and probably about two-thirds drunk, sitting there on the bed, waiting for me, and determined that he was going to find out whether anyone was sufficiently intimate with me to come to my apartment. He’d insisted that I’d promised you that if you’d go out without making any trouble, you could come back later, and — well, you know.”
“And so,” I said, “Archibald C. Smith pressed the doorbell at twenty minutes past two — and walked right into the middle of that situation.”
“Yes — he must have gone on up.”
“And you think Archibald Smith thought you would be in your apartment at that hour of the night, and would answer the bell?”
“Well, he certainly must have thought I’d be there, and the bell would get me up. It was reasonable to suppose that I’d at least pick up the telephone and ask who was there.”
“Did you hear any shot?” I asked.
“No.”