There were no papers. Barring the note-book, there was nothing identifying about the dead man's possessions. I longed to get that into my hands.
"Perhaps this will give some clue as to his associates," I said, boldly picking it up.
But the coroner was not a man to be interfered with. He promptly took it out of my hands, and tied it with the other articles into Barker's handkerchief with a severely official air.
"That will be examined into in due time," he said. "Officer, you can take the body down and then lock the rooms and give me the keys."
I watched while they carried the limp form down to the waiting patrol wagon, and saw the police sergeant place the seal of the law upon the place. I was at least as much interested as the coroner in seeing that no enterprising reporter, for example, should have an opportunity to spring a sensational story involving more reputable people than Barker.
As I turned up the empty street, I looked at my watch. It was half past twelve. Clyde's appointment with Barker had been for ten, and I had heard the town clock strike as I turned into the Phœnix Building. When had he been shot? I could not be sure. I had waited for some time, perhaps an hour, before I had had that curious sensation of being watched and had gone out into the hall. I had been watched! The eyes of the murderer in the darkened room had been fixed upon me under the gaslight, while he waited. What would have happened if I had stayed in the room? Would he have shot his victim just the same? Probably. The locked door between would in any event have given him the minute he needed to gain the fire-escape. He had planned it well. It was all so perfectly simple.
A great criminologist once said that every crime, like the burrowings of an underground animal, leaves marks on the surface by which its course can be traced. Perhaps. But it takes eyes to see. I didn't know whether I most hoped or feared that the course of Barker's murderer would be traced.
[CHAPTER IV]
CROSSED WIRES
When I awoke the next morning from a short and unrestful interval of sleep, it was with an oppressive sense of something being wrong. Then I remembered. Wrong it was, certainly, but it was not my affair. The only way in which it touched me (so I thought then) was as it affected my client, Clyde. How would he take the news? I imagined his receiving it in one way and another, and I felt that there were embarrassing contingencies connected with the matter. Finally I determined to call him up by my room telephone, if possible, and tell him the news as news. I rang him up, therefore, before going down to my breakfast.