“What’s more, Mr. Markham,” he went on, “there wasn’t any finger-prints on either the bow or the arrow. Dubois says they looked as though they’d both been wiped clean. There were a few smears on the end of the bow where the old gentleman picked it up; but not another sign of a print.”
Markham smoked a while in gloomy silence.
“What about the handle on the gate leading to the street? And the knob on the door to the alley between the apartment houses?”
“Nothing!” Heath snorted his disgust. “Both of rough, rusty iron that wouldn’t take a print.”
“I say, Markham,” observed Vance; “you’re going at this thing the wrong way. Naturally there’d be no finger-prints. Really, y’ know, one doesn’t carefully produce a playlet and then leave all the stage props in full view of the audience. What we’ve got to learn is why this particular impresario decided to indulge in silly theatricals.”
“It ain’t as easy as all that, Mr. Vance,” submitted Heath bitterly.
“Did I intimate it was easy? No, Sergeant; it’s deucedly difficult. And it’s worse than difficult: it’s subtle and obscure and . . . fiendish.”
CHAPTER IV.
A Mysterious Note
(Saturday, April 2; 2 p. m.)
Markham sat down resolutely before the centre-table.