I closed the door, not wishing to have Barker see me from the hall and turn back, and sat down by the desk under the gaslight to await his return. On the desk were a few circulars of the Western Land and Improvement Company which looked as though they had served the purpose of giving verisimilitude to Mr. Barker's office for a long time. I guessed the same theatrical and decorative mission in the display baskets of apples, sheaves of heavy-headed wheat, and samples of other grains and fruits which adorned the room--though somewhat dustily. I had soon exhausted the visible means of supporting meditation, and my thoughts went back to the evening at the Whytes'. I took my mother's miniature from my pocket, and looked at it with a rueful consciousness that she would most sweetly and conclusively disapprove of the use which I had made of her counterfeit. She would ask if my legal training had so perverted my instinct for simple truth that I could justify sophistries like that!
I had been lecturing myself in her name for some minutes, holding the miniature up before me to give point to the lesson, when I suddenly had that queer feeling--you know it--of being watched. I felt I was not alone. I jumped to my feet and looked about me. The room was quite empty except for the desk, a chair or two besides mine, and the baskets of fruit and grain which stood on a low table by the window. If there was any person on the premises, he must be in the unlighted inner room with the locked door. Instantly it flashed upon me that Barker was probably in there, waiting for Clyde. He had so arranged things that, hidden himself, he could survey the outer room, and when I entered instead of Clyde, he simply lay perdu. In that case, there was no use waiting for his return by way of the hall! I returned the locket to my pocket, looked ostentatiously at my watch, picked up my cane, and left the room. He would suppose my patience exhausted.
But I did not go down the stairs. Instead I walked to the end of a short diverging hall which commanded a view of the door. If Barker was inside, he would have to come out sometime, unless he took the fire escape, and I could wait as late as he could. I wanted to meet him, also I wanted to see if my queer sensation of being watched had any foundation in fact.
I had waited perhaps fifteen minutes when the rattle of the elevator broke the silence. It stopped at the second floor, and a man came rapidly down the main hall and turned toward the office of the W.L.&I. Co. It was Barker himself! I recognized him perfectly. So my intuitions had been merely a feminine case of nerves! I was not a little disgusted with myself.
I lingered a few moments, (so as to give Barker a chance to see that he had not kept me waiting), then I sauntered slowly in the direction of the office. I was opposite the elevator when I was startled by a shot. For a moment I did not realize that the sound came from Barker's room. When I did, I made a jump toward it, and the elevator man, who had been waiting since Barker got out, came only a step behind me. We pushed the door open,--it yielded at once,--and there, outstretched on the floor, lay Barker. I dropped on my knee beside him and turned him over. He turned astonished and inquiring eyes upon me, and made a slight motion with his hand, but even while I was holding up his head, the consciousness faded from his eyes, his head fell forward, and I knew it was a dead man whom I laid down upon the bare floor of his dingy office. I had never before seen a man die, and the solemnity of the event swept everything else out of my mind for the moment. But soon I began to realize the situation.
"Do you see a weapon anywhere about?" I asked the elevator man, glancing myself about the room.
"No, sir. There ain't none."
"Then he was murdered, and his murderer is in there," I said in a low voice, indicating the inner office by a glance.
The man immediately backed toward the door,--and I didn't blame him. It gives one a curious feeling to think of interfering with someone who has no restraining prejudices against taking the life of people with whom he is displeased. But for the credit of my superior civilization, I could not join the retreat.
"I'm going in," I said, and laid my hand on the doorknob. The door was locked.