To their left, a row of small dressing-rooms extended toward the front of the house. To their right, a backdrop of unpainted canvas formed, with the rear wall, a narrow passage across the rear of the stage.
Miss Mount closed several switches and led them around the end of the backdrop to show them a small stage proper, brilliantly lighted. Perhaps thirty feet across, it was broken in the middle near the backdrop by the chimney which came up through the house from the billiard-room and Joel Harrison’s bedroom. The attention of the two detectives focussed on a conventional archery target with the usual bull’s-eye and four concentric rings about it. From the center out they were painted gold, red, blue, black and, the outermost, white. The target faced the front of the stage, its back toward the chimney and almost against it. The surface was pitted in a few places where arrows had struck and been withdrawn. There were no indentations in the white outer ring.
After a brief inspection of the target, Landis and Bernard faced about. Beyond the raised edge of the stage a room, well lighted and large enough for a numerous audience, stretched away for at least a hundred feet toward the front of the house. Dozens of rows of folding seats had been stacked against the walls to left and right, leaving the floor space clear. There were flat skylights in the roof but no side windows.
Landis smiled at Miss Mount.
“What are all those doors along the walls down there?”
“The two doors on the left and the two on the right open into trunk-rooms. They contain boxes, old furniture, costumes, scenery and things of that sort.”
“What about those two doors at the far end?” Bernard inquired.
“That is the butler’s suite,” replied Miss Mount. “The door on the left leads to his bedroom, the other to his sitting-room. There is a bathroom between. His windows, of course, open on the front of the house and overlook the drive.”
“What’s the point of telling us that?” demanded Bernard suddenly. “Why drag that in—about the drive?”
A pulse began to throb visibly in Miss Mount’s white, muscular throat. Her face remained impassive.