Before Quong Kee could answer, the pound of heavy feet sounded in the doorway. Barnard whirled and watched the three local policemen march in.
"Where's the body?" asked the leader.
Quong Kee's eyes flickered briefly toward Barnard, and he gestured toward something the newsman hadn't noticed. In a corner of the room was a bed. With something on it. The policeman yanked a sheet off the something. Barnard felt the hairs on the back of his neck beginning to rise.
He stared at the body of George Melvin.
"I had my men detain everybody," Quong Kee told the police. "But the body was discovered close to the door, indicating that the murderer escaped. Several fights were in progress at the time, and it is possible that he was struck by a stray knife, but I doubt it."
"No," the policeman grunted. "The knife struck upwards and his pockets have been searched."
"Evidently he was enticed into the hallway for that purpose," said Quong Kee.
Barnard frowned, watching the police examine the knife that protruded from George Melvin's chest. Then the dope ring, fearing that he would divulge something, had finished him off.
But that didn't make sense. They had seemed pleased to let him run loose before, probably as an example—why the sudden fear of his talking? He thought suddenly of the new lie detector mentioned by Remish, and wondered if that instrument could reach even into the mind that George Melvin did not have.