“You’re so trusting, Sergeant. I, in turn, have an idea that, long before this touchin’ case is clarified, you’ll wish the irascible Captain with the insect-powder had never found those finger-prints.” He made a playful gesture of emphasis. “Permit me to whisper into your ear that the person who left his sign-manuals on yonder rosewood table and cut-glass door-knob had nothing whatever to do with the precipitate demise of the fair Mademoiselle Odell.”
“What is it you suspect?” demanded Markham sharply.
“Not a thing, old dear,” blandly declared Vance. “I’m wandering about in a mental murk as empty of sign-posts as interplanetary space. The jaws of darkness do devour me up; I’m in the dead vast and middle of the night. My mental darkness is Egyptian, Stygian, Cimmerian—I’m in a perfect Erebus of tenebrosity.”
Markham’s jaw tightened in exasperation; he was familiar with this evasive loquacity of Vance’s. Dismissing the subject, he addressed himself to Heath.
“Have you done any questioning of the people in the house here?”
“I talked to Odell’s maid and to the janitor and the switchboard operators, but I didn’t go much into details—I was waiting for you. I’ll say this, though: what they did tell me made my head swim. If they don’t back down on some of their statements, we’re up against it.”
“Let’s have them in now, then,” suggested Markham; “the maid first.” He sat down on the piano-bench with his back to the keyboard.
Heath rose, but instead of going to the door, walked to the oriel window.
“There’s one thing I want to call your attention to, sir, before you interview these people, and that’s the matter of entrances and exits in this apartment.” He drew aside the gold-gauze curtain. “Look at that iron grating. All the windows in this place, including the ones in the bathroom, are equipped with iron bars just like these. It’s only eight or ten feet to the ground here, and whoever built this house wasn’t taking any chances of burglars getting in through the windows.”
He released the curtain, and strode into the foyer.