“Don’t you get it?” I asked. “Someone pressed the buzzer for us to come on up. Then that someone left the door slightly ajar.”
“Who?” she asked.
I said, “You have two guesses. Either the police were in there waiting for someone to show up, which, under the circumstances, is rather unlikely, or the murderer was waiting patiently to claim his second victim.”
Her hard little eyes stared at me, fairly sparkling with the intensity of her thought. She said, “Pickle me for a peach! I believe you’re right, you little bastard.”
“I know I’m right.”
“But it’s hardly possible that we could have been the ones he was laying for.”
“We would have been,” I said, “once we entered that room.”
“What do you mean?”
“We’d have seen who he was then. We might not have been the ones he expected, but once we got in there, he couldn’t afford to let us get out-not after we’d seen his face.”
I saw Bertha’s color change as she realized the narrow escape she’d had. She said, “And that was why you were doing all that talking about no one being in?”