"The last—the end this time."
O'Mally wheeled on me:
"She hasn't told you. He shot himself—here, last night, shortly after she arrived."
Before I had time to answer, Babbitts and the man in uniform, a police inspector, were beside us. Babbitts was speechless—as I was myself—but the inspector, pompous and stolid, answered my look of shocked amazement:
"A few minutes after one. Fortunately I'd got your instructions and the house was surrounded. My men heard the report and the screams and broke in at once."
I looked blankly from one to the other. There was a confused horror in my mind, but from the confusion one thought rose clear—Barker had done the best, the only thing.
The inspector, ostentatiously cool in the midst of our aghast concern, volunteered further:
"He didn't die till near morning and we got a full statement out of him. For an hour afterward he was as clear as a bell—they are that way sometimes—and gave us all the particulars, seemed to want to. I've got it upstairs and from what I can make out he was one of the sharpest, most daring criminals I ever ran up against. I've had the body kept here for your identification. Will you come up and see it now?"
He moved off toward the stairs. O'Mally and Babbitts, muttering together, filing after him. I didn't go but turned to Carol, who had thrust one hand through the balustrade that ran up beside where we were standing. As the tramp of ascending feet sounded on the first steps, she leaned toward me, her voice hardly more than a whisper:
"Do you know who it is?"