“I very nearly fainted,” she said hysterically. “I might have been murdered, and no one would have cared. I wish they would stop that chopping, I’m so nervous I could scream.”
Jim took the Burgundy from her with one hand and pointed the police to the barricaded door with the other.
“That is the door to the dumb-waiter shaft,” he said. “The lower one is fastened on the inside, in some manner. The noises commenced about eleven o’clock, while Mr. Brown was on guard. There were scraping sounds first, and later the sound of a falling body. He roused Mr. Reed and myself, but when we examined the shaft everything was quiet, and dark. We tried lowering a candle on a string, but—it was extinguished from below.”
The reporters were busily removing the table and chairs from the door.
“If you have a rope handy,” one of them said, “I will go down the shaft.”
(Dal says that all reporters should have been policemen, and that all policemen are natural newsgatherers.)
“The cage appears to be stuck, half-way between the floors,” Jim said. “They are cutting through the door in the kitchen below.”
They opened the door then and cautiously peered down, but there was nothing to be seen. I touched Jim gingerly on the arm.
“Is it—is it Flannigan,” I asked, “shut in there?”
“No—yes—I don’t know,” he returned absently. “Run along and don’t bother, Kit. He may take to shooting any minute.”