Doctor Ansley was kneeling above a motionless figure, prone on the dirty floor; and it was the figure of Joseph Maillard. The physician glanced up, then rose slowly to his feet. He made a terribly significant gesture, and his crisp voice broke in upon the appalled silence.
"Dead," he said, curtly. "Shot twice—each bullet through the heart. Judge Forester, I'm afraid there is no alternative but to call in the police. Gentlemen, you will kindly unmask—which one of you is Robert Maillard?"
Amid a stunned and horrified silence the members of the Krewe one by one removed their grotesque headgear, staring at the dead man whose white face looked up at them with an air of grim accusation. But none of them came forward to claim kinship with the dead man. Bob Maillard was not in the room.
"I think," said the toneless, even voice of Jachin Fell, "that all of you gentlemen had better be very careful to say only what you have seen—and know. You will kindly remain here until I have summoned the police."
He left the room, and if there were any dark implication hidden in his words, no one seemed to observe it.
CHAPTER IX
On The Bayou
AT THREE o'clock in the morning a great office building is not the most desolate place on earth, perhaps; but it approaches very closely to that definition.