“Where is he!” he demanded. “What did you do with him? We heard the row out here—!”
“There wasn’t any ‘him,’” Dennis interrupted sheepishly. “It was me, by myself. I came on the stairs unexpected-like and took the whole flight of them without even breaking my flashlight!—But come in, the both of you, and see what I found!”
McCarty scrambled over the sill and Inspector Druet, despite his added years, followed with the effortless ease of a boy. They found themselves in a large room bare of furniture but in the dust which lay like a heavy carpet upon the floor a meandering trail of footsteps, many times traversed, ran from the window by which they had entered to a connecting door opening into a laundry. Dusty finger-marks, with here and there the imprint of a whole hand, were plainly outlined on the white woodwork of the inner sill and below it greasy pieces of wrapping paper were scattered. In a corner two pitchers and several small tin cans were heaped.
“Some one has been camping out here, that’s evident,” the inspector remarked. “Getting his food handed in to him through that window, too!”
“And it wasn’t any ordinary bought stuff, the kind that comes ready fixed in stores.” McCarty was poking about in the papers. “Here’s the carcass of a whole chicken, pieces of fancy rolls and pastry and other stuff, but it’s all stale; it’s been here for four or five days, at least.”
“And there’s traces of coffee in those pitchers and cans, to say nothing of the wine bottles on that shelf!” Dennis pointed impatiently. “He’s been living on the fat of the land from one of the houses in this row and the nearer the likelier, even if it does happen to be occupied by the Parsons! Come upstairs till I show you more.”
The larger adjoining room had evidently been the laundry, for rows of enameled tubs and washing machines were ranged against the wall and dryers stood about, but all were covered with a thick blanket of dust. Dennis led the way through a series of kitchens and pantries, far more elaborate than those they had encountered in Orbit’s house, to the back stairs and up to the second floor rear, into the room with the broken window. All the way they had followed that zigzag trail of overlapping footsteps and here the floor was crossed and recrossed by a network of them. This apartment had evidently been one of the master bedrooms, for a well-appointed, marble-lined bath opened from it and heavy, old-fashioned furniture of richly carved mahogany was ranged with stiff precision about the room. A half-burned candle, shielded from the window by an old cardboard box-cover, stood on a side table together with a handful of matches and some cigarette stubs. McCarty pointed to it.
“He couldn’t live without a light but he hid it from the window and he didn’t dare carry it when he went down to get his food; that’s why those footprints ramble so, he was feeling his way in the dark. That bed looks as if it had been slept in, with all those old draperies piled on it, and what’s in that big pitcher on the bureau?”
“Water,” Dennis replied. “There’s still a little left, though you can see from the marks on the inside where it has dried down.”
“Evaporated?” The inspector nodded. “That would show, too, that whoever the fellow was he hadn’t used any of it for a few days at least.—Hello, what’s this?”