When he heard my story some of the starch was taken out of him, but I will say he was so interested that, after the first shock, he forgot to be jealous and was as keen as mustard.
"Two men sure enough," he agreed. "And two men who operated together, one of them in that back room."
"How do you make that out?" asked Jack.
"I'll show you—I've been busy this afternoon." He looked round, selected a gold-legged chair and pulling it to the table, sat down, and taking a fountain pen from his pocket, drew a sheet of paper toward him. "Right next to the church, as you may remember, there are three houses, dwellings. The one nearest the church is occupied by a private party, the two beyond have been thrown together and are run as a boarding house. The last of the two has a rear extension built out to the end of the lot. The day we examined the Azalea Woods Estates I saw that the windows of that extension commanded the side wall of the Black Eagle Building.
"This afternoon I went to the boarding house, said I was a writer looking for a quiet place to work, and asked if they had an empty room in the extension. They had one, not yet vacated, but to be in February. It was occupied by an old lady—Miss Darnley—who being there gave me permission to see it.
"Now here's where I get busy," he drew the paper toward him and began marking it with long straight lines and little squares. "Miss Darnley is a nice old lady and some talker. We got gassing, as natural as could be, on the horrible suicide of Mr. Harland, so close by. She took me to the window and showed me where his offices were, and told me how it was her habit, every evening as night fell, to sit in that window and watch the lights start out, especially in the Black Eagle Building. She sat there always till half-past six, when the first gong sounded for dinner. And if I took the room I was to be sure and go down then—the food was better—she always did.
"By a little skillful jollying—mostly surprise at her powers of observation and memory—I got from her some significant facts about the lights on the seventeenth floor of the Black Eagle Building on the night of January fifteenth. The Harland suite—she'd located it from the papers—was lit till she went down to dinner. Wonderful how she'd remembered! How was the floor below—bet a hat she couldn't remember that! She could, and proud as a peacock, gave a demonstration. All dark as it usually was at six, then a light in the fourth window—Azalea Woods Estates, private office. Then that goes out and the three front windows are bright. Just before she goes down to dinner, she notices that every window on the whole sweep of the seventeenth floor is dark except that fourth one—Azalea Woods Estates, private office."
He stopped and pushed the paper he'd been drawing on across to George.
"Here it is, with the time as I make it marked on each window."
Jack and Mr. George leaned down studying the diagram and Mr. Whitney slowly rose and coming up behind them looked at it over their shoulders. All their faces, clear in the lamplight, with O'Mally's red and proud glancing sideways at the drawing, were intent and frowning.