He moved toward the door; then back to the table. He took a position in one chair; then in the other. His little flashlight ran along the edges of the table; then toward the hanging lamp with its green shade.
Within two short minutes, this investigator had followed the same course that Detective Harvey Griffith had taken on the previous day.
He had learned the important fact that if Henry Windsor had used a pistol from a standing position, his vision would have been obscured by the shade.
The flashlight reappeared after a moment of darkness. It was at the door, running along the woodwork of the doorway.
It stopped, and was focused on a smudge in the white paint. A long, thin finger appeared in the tiny circle of light, and scraped the paint with its nail.
The doorway had evidently been painted while Frank Jarnow had been away. The paint had barely dried at the time of his return. Some one, moving slowly through the doorway, had pressed his left shoulder against the woodwork and had made the smudge.
The tiniest bit of cloth was in the paint; the finger nail removed it. The light went to the bottom of the doorway and up again, determining the exact distance of the smudge above the floor.
Then the light swept about the room, covering every inch of the floor. It stopped at a wastebasket in the corner. The basket was empty.
An unseen hand pulled it from the corner. There, in the space behind, lay the fragments of a small green slip of paper, which had been torn to bits.
A hand gathered these and carried them to the table. There they were fitted together with amazing rapidity. It was the receipt of a Pullman ticket from Springfield, Massachusetts, to New York City.