“Look out!” Virginia Trent screamed from the doorway.
Mason flung himself to one side. The big packing box slid down the pile, split with a crash on one corner, and spilled out the inert body of a man, which slumped to the floor, where it lay, indistinct in the half-light, a grotesque sprawl of death.
Virginia Trent stared, then started to scream, shrill, hysterical screams which cut through the silence of the building.
Mason moved toward her. “Shut up!” he said. “Help me find that drop-cord.”
He had dropped the flashlight in his fall, and now groped, with outstretched hands, searching for the cord which controlled the light. Virginia Trent backed away from him, as though, in some manner, associating him with that which lay on the floor. Her eyes were wide and staring. Her mouth formed a great dark circle as she continued to scream.
Mason heard feet in the corridor, heard someone pounding at the door.
“Shut up, you little fool!” Mason said, jumping toward her. “Can’t you see...”
She ran screaming back into the outer office. The pound of fists on the door became louder. Virginia Trent backed into a corner. Someone knocked out the glass panel in the door, reached in through the jagged break in the glass and turned the knob.
Mason stood facing the door as Sergeant Holcomb twisted back the knob. “What the hell’s coming off here?” he asked.
Mason jerked his head toward the shop. “I don’t know. There’s something out there you’d better look at, Sergeant.”