“Then I know no more than you, for the detective, Mr. O’Leary, told me of it, too. Of course, it was a shock.”
Jim Gainsay nodded, his gaze again on the little stream that, swollen by the night’s rain, swept in a bubbling current almost to our feet.
“Poor old Louis,” he muttered.
“You have known him a long time?” I said absently, my eyes too on the water.
“Since university days,” said Jim Gainsay slowly. “I always liked Louis though I can’t say I understood him; no one ever did. In the last few years I have seen him only a few times. It was terrible to—go like that. Do they have any idea as to who—who killed him?”
“Not that I know of,” I said and shivered at the thought of the black night so recently past and of the unknown and ghastly presence that Room 18 had held. And I had taken that futile little candle and searched the room for the thing that some sixth sense warned me was there! I shivered again and caught my breath and Jim Gainsay turned to me again.
“Don’t let me keep you out here in the storm. You are cold in that slicker thing.”
“A little. I am going to see Corole. How does she take it?”
Jim Gainsay’s frown deepened.
“I hardly know. I can’t understand her any better than I could understand Louis. She looked—sort of bad—this morning. Tired, you know. And kept saying Louis would return. But she was terribly nervous. Prowled over the house like a cat.” He shrugged in distaste. “Fairly gave me the creeps to watch her. Then when they came up to the house to tell her that—that they had found him she just sort of froze all up. Hardly said a word.”