“You see, Pinto.” There was a grin on Culligore’s lips. “The murderer couldn’t have got out of the window, because it’s much too small, and he couldn’t have walked out through the door, because it was bolted from the inside. There’s no transom, so he could not have adjusted the bolt from the other side. Nobody has yet figured out a way of passing through a door or window and leaving it bolted on the inside.”
Pinto stared at the door, at the window, and finally at Culligore. The problem seemed beyond him. Then he took his baton and, tapping as he went, explored every square foot of floor and walls, but no hollow sounds betrayed the presence of a hidden opening. He shook his head in a flabbergasted way.
“It’s possible, of course,” suggested the lieutenant, “that the murderer was still in the room when you broke in. He might have made his get-away in the dark while you were hunting for the light switch.”
“The housekeeper would have seen him,” Pinto pointed out. “She was standing just outside. And there was a crowd at the entrance. Say,” and a startled look crossed his face, “do you suppose Gage killed himself?”
“That would be an easy solution, all right. But, if he did, what was his idea in telling you that the Phantom had done it? And I don’t see any knife around. Gage wouldn’t have had the strength to pull it out of the wound, and, even if he had, how did he dispose of it? No, Pinto, Gage was murdered, and—hang it all!—it’s beginning to look as though the Phantom did it.”
“But you just said——”
“All I’m saying now is that it’s beginning to look as if the Phantom had had a hand in it. Things aren’t always what they seem, you know. I’m not taking much stock in what Gage told you just before he died. There are other reasons. One of them is the size of that window. Another is the fact that the door was bolted on the inside. Together they show that the man who committed this murder accomplished something of a miracle in getting out of the room. The Phantom is the only man I know who can do that sort of thing.”
He grinned sheepishly, as if conscious of having said something that sounded extravagant.
“Stunts like that are the Phantom’s long suit,” he went on. “He likes to throw dust in the eyes of the police and keep everybody guessing. But he was always a gentlemanly rascal, and it takes something besides a bolted door and a window latched on the inside to make me believe he has gotten down to dirty work. Wish the medical examiner would hurry up.”
He took a cover from the cot and threw it over the upper part of the body. A chance glance toward the door made him pause. Just across the threshold, with hands clasped across her breast and eyes fixed rigidly on the lifeless heap on the floor, stood the housekeeper. She awoke with a start from her reverie as she felt the lieutenant’s steady gaze on her face, and she shrank back a step. With a puckering of the brows, Culligore turned away. His eyes fell on the safe.