"Errington," said Dorothy, who had recovered her coolness more quickly than her companions, "there's no one on the staircase, is there? Dario, surely the window is too small for any one to slip through? Webster and Kourobelef look to the walls of the alcove."
She stooped and took the dagger from the wound. No convulsion stirred the victim's body. It was indeed a corpse. An examination of the dagger and the clothes gave no clue.
Errington and Dario rendered an account of their mission. The staircase? Empty. The window? Too narrow.
They joined the Russian and the American, as did Dorothy also; and all five of them examined and sounded the walls of the alcove with such minuteness that Dorothy expressed the absolute conviction of all of them when she declared in a tone of finality:
"No entrance. It is impossible to admit that any one passed that way."
"Then?" stuttered the notary, who was sitting on the stool and had not moved for the excellent reason that his legs refused to be of the slightest use to him. "Then?"
He asked the question with a kind of humility as if he regretted not having admitted without opposition all Dorothy's explanations, and promised to accept all she should consent to give him. Dorothy, who had so clearly announced the peril which threatened them, and so clearly elucidated all the problems of this obscure affair, suddenly appeared to him to be a woman who makes no mistake, who cannot make any mistake. And owing to that fact he saw in her a powerful protection against the attacks which were about to ensue.
Dorothy for her part felt confusedly that the truth was prowling round her, that she was on the point of perceiving with perfect clearness that which had no form, and that it was a thing which must moreover astonish her infinitely. Why could she not guess what was hidden in the shadow? It appeared almost as if she was afraid to guess it and that she was deliberately turning away from a danger which her intelligence would have pointed out to her at once, if her womanly instincts had not suffered her to blind herself for several minutes.
Indeed, those several minutes, she lost them. Like one whom dangers surround and who does not know against which he must first defend himself, she shuffled about on one spot. She wasted time on futile phrases, keeping herself simply to the actual facts of the situation, in the hope perhaps that one of her words might strike the enlightening spark out of its flint.
"Maître Delarue, there's a death and a crime. We must therefore inform the police. However ... however I think we could put it off for a day or two."