“All quibbling aside, don’t the scratch on her arm look as though somebody had shot a dose of poison into her with a needle?”
The examiner pondered. “It could mean that, but it doesn’t necessarily follow. An autopsy will be necessary to establish the exact cause of death. Why should a murderer use a hypodermic injection when there are so many simpler and easier ways of accomplishing the same result?”
The stout man guffawed. “Mr. Shei never picks the simple and easy way. When he wants to pull off a crime, he always dresses it up in flossy trimmings. And he always plays safe. Now, my idea is that the safest thing in the world to kill a person with is a hypodermic syringe. It makes no noise, there’s no smoke, no bullet, no powder marks, no anything, and it don’t leave any clews behind.”
The examiner smiled skeptically, as if he had his own views on the subject. “The autopsy will tell. What I fail to understand is why you seem so certain that Mr. Shei, as he calls himself, has had a hand in this affair.”
“Miss Darrow saw him, didn’t she?”
“She called out his name, if I understood the witnesses correctly, but she did not say she had seen him. It’s possible she imagined she saw him. The same drugs that produce exhilaration and laughter also produce hallucinations. However,” and he pulled a cigar from his pocket and lighted it carefully, “whether Miss Darrow did or did not see Mr. Shei is for you gentlemen to decide. Good-night.”
He strode out. The stout man made a wry face and stroked his chin. Evidently the medical man had given him something to think about. Helen, too, had found food for reflection in the doctor’s statement. She stood beside her father a few feet from the others. She had remained for no other reason than a feeling that Culligore, who had been watching her covertly from time to time, might try to detain her if she made a move to go. She believed the lieutenant had rightly guessed that she had not told all she knew.
Starr, who had unobtrusively slipped out of the building while the late colloquy was in progress, returned with the report that he had questioned the doorkeepers and the watchman, and that they had seen no suspicious looking characters about the place. They were positive no one had entered or left the building either before or after Miss Darrow’s death. Starr ended by inquiring whether it were not possible that the murderer, granting that Miss Darrow had been murdered, was still hiding in the building.
The stout man rather scouted the suggestion, but he instructed the two uniformed officers to make a thorough search.
“If this is Mr. Shei’s job, you can bet your sweet life he’s made a safe get-away,” he grumbled. “He probably sneaked out through one of the fire exits.”