Startled, Penny decided to investigate. She pushed open the door. The light was on, but no one was in the room.
“Salt!” she called again, thinking that the photographer might be in the darkroom.
He did not reply. As she started forward to investigate, the swinging chain of the skylight drew her attention. The glass panels were closed and there was no breeze in the room. Yet the brass chain swung back and forth as if it had been agitated only a moment before.
“Queer!” thought Penny, staring upward. “Could anyone have come in here through that skylight?”
The idea seemed fantastic. She could think of no reason why anyone should seek such a difficult means of entering the newspaper office. To her knowledge, nothing of great value was kept in the photography rooms.
Yet, the fact remained that the light was on, the chain was swaying back and forth, and a door had slammed as if from a gust of wind.
Studying the skylight with keen interest, Penny decided that it would be possible and not too difficult for a person on the roof to raise the glass panels, and by means of the chain, drop down to the floor. But could a prowler reverse the process?
Penny would have dismissed the feat as impossible, had not her gaze focused upon an old filing cabinet which stood against the wall, almost directly beneath the skylight. Inspecting it, she was disturbed to find imprints of a man’s shoe on its top surface.
“Someone was in here!” Penny thought. “To get out, he climbed up on this cabinet!”
The brass handles of the cabinet drawers offered convenient steps. As she tried them, the cabinet nearly toppled over, but she reached the top without catastrophe. By standing on tiptoe, her head and shoulders would just pass through the skylight.