CHAPTER IX

RECONSTRUCTING THE CRIME

INSPECTOR LOWRY was an old friend of Barrison’s, though, like most of the regular force, inclined to treat the younger man as a dilettante rather than an astute professional. However, he was quite ready to include Jim in the investigation which he set about making without loss of time.

Lowry was a big, raw-boned man of middle age, with a peculiarly soft, amiable voice, and a habit of looking at almost any point on earth save the face of the person to whom he was speaking. This seemingly indifferent manner gave him an enormous advantage over any luckless soul whom he chanced to be examining, for when he shot the question which was of all questions the most vital and the most important, he would suddenly open his eyes and turn their piercing gaze full upon his victim. That unfortunate, having by that time relaxed his self-guard, would be apt to betray his innermost emotions under the unexpected gaze.

Naturally, the first thing to do was to get Sybil Merivale’s story.

His manner to the girl was not unkindly. She was a piteous figure enough, as she sat drooping in the chair they had brought her, trying to keep her eyes from turning, with a dreadful fascination, to the spatter of red upon the steps so near her. Norman Crane stood at her side, with the air of defying the universe, if it were necessary, for her protection. Once in a while she would look up at him, and always with that subtle expression of apprehension and uncertainty which Barrison found so hard to read.

“Miss—ah—Merivale? Quite so, quite so. Miss Merivale, if you feel strong enough, I should be glad if you would tell us what you know about the shooting.” The inspector’s voice was mild as honey, and his glance wandered about this queer, shadowy world behind the scenes. It is doubtful if he had ever made an investigation in such surroundings. To see him, one would have said that he was interested in everything except in Sybil Merivale and what she had to tell.

“I don’t know anything about it,” she answered simply.

“But you were quite close to him when he was shot, were you not?”

“Yes.” She shuddered, and looked down at the stain of blood upon her dress. “He was just taking me up in his arms to carry me on——”

“That was in the—ah—action of the play?”

“Yes. After the six shots, I heard another, and felt him stagger. I slipped to the floor, and he fell at once. He put out his hand to catch at the scenery.” She pointed to the canvas door of the stage set which still stood open. “I felt something warm on my hand.” She closed her eyes as though the remembrance made her faint. “Then he—he fell backward down the steps. That’s all.”

“Ah, yes.” The inspector thought for a moment, and then he said to Dukane: “Would it be possible for every one to go to the places they occupied at the moment of the shooting? I am assuming that every one is here who was here then?”

“Every one; so far as I know, no one has been allowed to leave the theater. Willie, tell them to take their places.”

Willie caused a rather ghastly sensation when he called out: “Everybody, please! On the stage, every one who is in the last act!”

There was a murmur among the actors.

“Good Lord!” muttered Claire McAllister. “They ain’t goin’ to rehearse us now, are they?”

Dukane explained, and with all the lights blazing, the players took the positions they had occupied at the beginning of the dark scene. Stage carpenters and sceneshifters did the same; also Willie and his assistant, even Dukane and Barrison. The woman Parry and old Wrenn went into the dressing rooms, where they had been, and closed the doors. Sybil Merivale mounted the little flight of steps and stood at the top, looking through the open door onto the stage.

“Is that just the way you stood?”

Every one answered “yes” to this question.

One or two things became apparent by this plan, which rather surprised Barrison. He had not, for one thing, realized how close Willie Coster stood to the place where Mortimer fell. Yet, of course, he should have expected it. It was, as a matter of fact, Willie who directed the six shots, which were supposed to come from the point back of Tarrant’s entrance. There were, as it turned out, at least three persons who were so close as to have been material witnesses had there been any light: Willie, the man who fired the shots and had charge of other off-stage effects, and—Norman Crane.

Crane took up his position immediately inside the box set, close to the doorway.

“Is that where you stood?” asked Lowry.

“Yes. I played the part of a Mexican desperado, and was supposed to be on guard at the door leading down into the cellar, which was the stage.”

“The door was open, as it is now?”

“Yes.”

“Then you could have seen through it anything that happened on the steps off stage?”

“I could have if there had been light enough.”

“As it was, you didn’t see anything?”

“No.”

“Didn’t hear anything?”

The young man seemed to pause for just a moment before he said “No,” to this question also. If the inspector noticed his hesitation, he did not appear to do so. He began to talk in an undertone to one of the men who had come with him.

John Carlton had been sending in frantic messages ever since the tragedy, begging to be permitted to come behind, but the allied powers there agreed that there were enough people marooned as it was. There was nothing to be gained by adding another, and one whom it would probably be unnecessary either to hold or to bind with nervousness and disappointment.

In an undertone, Dukane said to Jim Barrison: “I thought they always sent for a doctor first of all? Why isn’t there one here?”

“There is,” returned Jim, in the same tone. “He’s over there with the two policemen and the plain-clothes man who came in with Lowry—the little, old fellow with spectacles. Lowry’ll call on him again in a moment; he examined the body and pronounced life extinct. That was all that was absolutely necessary. Lowry has his own way of doing things, and he’s supreme in his department. He’s ‘reconstructing the crime’ just now.”

Barrison, indeed, was listening with gradually increasing interest. This method which was being employed by Inspector Lowry, sometimes known as the “reconstruction-of-the-crime” method, was rather old-fashioned, and many younger and more modern men preferred the more scientific, analytical, and deductive ways of solving mysteries. Yet there was something distinctly fascinating, even illuminating, about the inspector’s simple, sure-fire fashion of setting his stage and perhaps his trap at one and the same time. Barrison felt his own veins tingle with the leap of his roused blood.

“Barrison,” said Lowry pleasantly, “just go up there on those steps, and be Mortimer for a minute. So!” The younger man obeyed with alacrity. “Miss Merivale, was that about where he stood?”

“Yes.”

“And you are sure that you yourself were just where you are now?”

“Yes.”

“Just there, you know. Not more to the right?”

She glanced at him with faint wonder.

“I think I may have been a little more to the right,” she said. “That is, to your right, and my left. But I don’t see why you thought so—and it doesn’t matter, does it?”

“And you, Mr. Crane,” pursued the inspector, paying no attention to her last words, “you are absolutely certain of where you stood?”

“Absolutely.”

“Ah, yes, quite so; quite so!” murmured Lowry, looking dreamily into space. Suddenly he faced about and said sharply: “Mr. Crane, will you kindly lift your right hand and point it at Mr. Barrison? Just so; exactly! At that range, you could hardly have missed him.”

Norman Crane clenched his fists in a white heat of indignation. “You dare to imply——”

“Only what your fiancée has already been fearing,” said the inspector calmly, “that your position in this matter is, to say the least, not less unpleasant than hers. You were, as is evident, only a few feet away from the man.”

Crane started to speak, but checked himself. Barrison thought he knew what he would have said; or, if he was not going to say it, he should have, for the direction of the bullet was a thing which ought to be easily determined. But something prevented the young actor from uttering anything resembling a protest; it was simple to see what it was.

Sybil Merivale, however unwillingly or unconsciously, had given color to suspicion against him by the low, heart-broken sobbing into which she had broken at the bare suggestion.

After one quick look at the obvious distress of the young girl whom he loved so well, Norman Crane suddenly changed his antagonistic attitude. He faced the detectives quietly, and said to them, in a manner that was not without dignity:

“Very well. I admit that it looks bad for me. I suppose that is enough? If you feel that you have any case at all against me, I shall make no trouble. Do you mean to arrest me?”

The inspector looked at him rather more directly than was his wont, and also longer.

At last he allowed himself to smile, and though he was known to be a hard man with even possible criminals, the smile was singularly pleasant just then.

“Bless you,” he remarked tranquilly, “that’s all a matter for our medical friends to settle! If the bullet entered the body at a certain angle and a certain range, it will let you out.”

“Then all this,” exclaimed Crane angrily—it was so like a boy to be most enraged when most relieved—“all this is waste of time—pure theatrics?”

But at this point Willie Coster interfered. “Say, Mr. Inspector,” he said, awkwardly but determinedly, “I’m not crazy about a spotlight on myself, but just here there’s something I ought to say. I was pretty close by, myself, you understand.”

“Exactly where you are now?”

“Yes. And until the lantern was broken in the scrap scene, there was a little light shining through that door from the stage. See?”

“Yes!” It was not only the representatives of the law who listened eagerly now. “Go on, man, go on!”

“Well”—Willie hesitated, gulped, and plunged ahead—“I saw a woman’s shadow on the wall, and she had something in her hand. That’s all I wanted to say.”

“Something in her——A revolver?”

“I don’t know.”

“Would you be prepared to—ah—say that you recognized the shadow?”

“I would not. One woman’s shadow’s much like another, so far as I can see; and the women, too, for that matter! I never troubled to tell ’em apart!”

“And you won’t even express a—ah—an impression as to whether what this shadow woman held was a weapon or not?”

“No!” snapped Willie impatiently. “Why should I? I didn’t think about it at the time. I was waiting to time those shots. All I know is that it was a woman, and that she was holding something. She had something in her hand.”

“I’d give something if I had it in mine!” muttered the inspector fervently, more fervently than he usually permitted himself to speak when on a case.

Barrison put his hand in his pocket and drew out the thing which he had found in the shadow of the miniature stairway. He thought it the proper time to hand it over, and he said:

“I think you have it now, Lowry! The barrel was still warm when I picked it up a few minutes after the murder.”