“Now, study that! There is old Astrovox, scared looking. He is facing the big smudge of smoke from the pistol.
“But what gets me,” Tip finished, “is that the whole big puff of smoke is still hanging in the air, and the man facing it is just hit—or else his face is contractuated——”
“Contorted,” cried Roger. “Skip big words and say your say.”
“Or else his face is contorted by being awful sure he has been hit.”
He focused more sharply.
“You can see him clear enough to know Astrovox didn’t fire no gun. The smoke is between him and the guy with his back to us. But—just look. His hands rest both of ’em on the desk edge. That’s how he hit against the button in the desk edge that snapped his picture.
“Now—where is any gun?”
“He couldn’t have dropped it, and have gotten his hands back onto the desk before the smoke puff would have begun to shift,” exclaimed a policeman. “Look.” He drew out his service weapon, aimed into a corner where his bullet would show little and its mark could be wiped out with putty and paint, and fired.
The smoke, with his own movements, revealed disturbances almost as it left the mouth of his weapon; and before he could drop it, the smoke shifted. More! The pistol, falling, cut a swath in the pall.
“There’s no gun. And no one is hiding. The smoke is in front of that man and between him and Astrovox,” the detective agreed.