Herrick looked again at the couch. Its cushions had lately been rumpled and lounged upon; at its head, under the tall lamp, stood a teakwood tabouret, set with smoking materials on a Benares tray. At its foot, as if for the convenience of the musician, a little ebony table bore a decanter and a bowl of ice; the ice in a tall glass, half-empty, was still melting into the whiskey; in a shallow Wedgewood saucer a half-smoked cigarette was smoldering still.
"McGarrigle!" said Herrick, in a low voice.
"Hallo!"
"He was shot in here, after all. I was sure of it." And he pointed to the foot of the piano stool. Still well above the surface of the hardwood flooring was a little puddle of blood.
McGarrigle contemplated this with a kind of sour bewilderment. "Well, the coroner's notified. You'll be wanted, y'know, to the inquest."
"What's this?" asked somebody.
It was a long chiffon scarf and it lay on the library table under the lamp. Clancy lifted it and its whiteness creamed down from his fingers in the tender lights and folds which lately it had taken around a woman's throat. Just above the long silk fringe, a sort of cloudy arabesque was embroidered in a dim wave of lucent silk. And Herrick noticed that the color of this border was blue-gray, like the blue-gray room. As they all grimly stared at it, the superintendent exclaimed, "I never saw it before!"
McGarrigle looked from him to the scarf and commanded, in deference to the coming coroner, "You leave that lay, now, Clancy!"
Clancy left it. But something in the thing's frail softness affected Herrick more painfully than the blood of the dead man. In no nightmare, then, had he imagined that shadow of a woman! She had been here; she was gone. And, on the floor in there, was that her work?
Now that the interest of rescue had failed, he wanted to get away from that place. He wanted to dress and go down to the river and think the whole thing over alone. He had now heard the doctor's verdict of instant death; and McGarrigle, again reminding him that he would be wanted at the inquest, made no objection to his withdrawal.