CHAPTER XII

THE TWO DOORWAYS

WHETHER it was strictly correct or not, no one was in a position to question, but, anyway, Inspector Lowry told Sybil finally to go home after leaving her address. A lot of skeleton theories had come tumbling down with the discovery that another and unknown woman had been present in Mortimer’s dressing room that night.

Even Claire McAllister’s testimony—that Miss Merivale had told her she sometimes wished she could kill their star—fell flat after Sybil’s own confession of not only what she had felt, but what she had threatened.

The whole business was, as Barrison could see, a sickening one for Inspector Lowry. He had fallen down right and left; practically speaking, he had nothing left now to work on, out of all his ingenious work of reconstruction.

Only his examination of the two men on guard at the doors had brought out anything clear cut, anything on which seriously to work.

First of all, he had questioned Joe Lynch, the young fellow whose job it had been to keep any one save the detective and the manager from passing either way through the communicating door.

“Your name is Joe Lynch, you say?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You have already said that you stood there by the communicating door during the dark scene, Lynch?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Just there?”

“As near as I can say, sir, yes. I was close up here by the door. My orders was to keep it shut except for the detectives or Mr. Dukane.”

“And did you know why?”

“Why, how do you mean, sir?”

“Did you understand why the orders were so strict to-night of all nights?”

“Oh, that. Yes, sir; I knew there’d been some talk of Mr. Mortimer being in some sort of danger.”

“Who told you?”

“Why, I couldn’t say, sir. I don’t rightly know. Them things gets about. Anyhow, I knew that; and I was, so to speak, sort o’ set on taking care of Mr. Mortimer.”

“Did you like him, then?”

The young man’s dull eyes opened wide.

“Me, sir?” he said, in surprise. “I never see him to talk to. But I was wanting to do my part. Mr. Dukane and Mr. Barrison, too, told me I was to look sharp. So I did.”

“Ah! You did, eh? You looked sharp, eh?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Sure?”

“Why, yes, sir! Course I did! I—I was keen on showing I was as quick as the next.”

“Ah! How were you going to show that?”

Young Lynch laughed frankly, yet with a sort of embarrassment, too.

“Well, sir, Mr. Dukane, he offered twenty-five dollars either to Mr. Roberts or me if we could spot any one trying anything suspicious, or anything.”

“Ah!” The inspector’s laconic monosyllable sounded a bit sharper than usual. “So that was it! Lynch, you were standing there when you heard the shot?”

“Yes, sir, as near as I can say now, in these very tracks.”

The inspector stood beside him and let his eyes move slowly from the big door beside them to the little flight of steps where the star had met his death.

“Mighty narrow way to pass,” he murmured, half to himself.

“Sir?” said Lynch respectfully.

The inspector continued to measure distances with his eye.

“You see,” he said to Lynch, “if you will draw a straight line from here where we stand, past the angle of the property-room corner to the entrance where Mr. Mortimer was waiting, do you see what I mean?”

Lynch looked obediently where he was directed. “No, sir,” he said, after he had looked.

Lowry sighed gently. “Not much space to pass any one, anyway,” he murmured.

Lynch looked at him, still blankly.

“Lynch,” said the inspector, “if I were in your place, and had a chance of making twenty-five dollars if I caught any one, and while I was on duty like this, and heard a shot——”

He paused, not seeming to look at Lynch, but really noting every shadow and light that passed over his face.

“If I were, in short, as you had been situated, I should have left my post when I heard that shot and run forward toward the man I was supposed to guard. I think I should have considered it my duty.”

“Would you, indeed, sir?” cried young Lynch hopefully.

The inspector suddenly looked at him and said dryly. “So that’s what you did? Suppose you tell me all about it. You heard the shot, and——”

“If you please, sir,” protested the young man eagerly and rather unhappily, “it wasn’t the shot; leastways, I didn’t know about how many shots there’d be. It was the scream. I heard the shots, one after the other, and then the scream—a dreadful scream, if you please, sir. And, of course, I thought first of all of Mr. Mortimer, and there being danger, and—and all that. And I run forward, sir, a few steps, through the dark, wishing to be of some use, and——”

“And to get the twenty-five dollars?”

“Well, sir, that perhaps; of course, I’m not saying that wasn’t in the back of my mind. But what I was thinking of first was that there was trouble, and that I might be needed.”

“That’s all right; I believe you.” Lowry spoke shortly, but not at all unkindly. “The point is that, within half a second of the time of the shooting, you had left this particular point, and run in the direction of the shots. In other words, Lynch, this door was unguarded.”

“Unguarded, sir!” Lynch was aghast, and truly so. “Unguarded, sir! But I had been at my post all the evening! No one had gone in or out——”

“No one had gone in or out during the evening, I am absolutely convinced. But, after the murder, any one who chanced to be there could have gone out. Isn’t that so?”

“But——” The young guard’s troubled eyes began to measure the distance between the door and the stage steps, just as the detectives had done before.

“Ah!” said Lowry. “You see why I spoke of the narrow passage which would have to be traversed. It would be very narrow, indeed. Any one who wanted to get from those steps to the communicating door would have to pass you at very close quarters, Lynch. And yet—the thing could be done. The thing could be done. I have not lived so long without learning that it is these unlikely, well-nigh impossible things that come off in the smoothest way of all. All right, Lynch, I’m obliged to you. It’s not your fault. You were a bit overzealous, but I don’t think we’ll put you in jail for that. However you look at it, you’ve shown us one way in which the murderer might have escaped.”

He turned and crooked his arm in that of Barrison.

“Now, we’ll go and interview the stage doorkeeper,” he said. Together he and Barrison attacked old Roberts, who confronted him at the entrance with a look of mingled apprehension and bravado. His round, flabby face was rather pale, and he gave the impression of a weak old child trying to act like a brave man.

“What do you want of me, gentlemen?” he demanded, in a tone that broke timidly in spite of himself.

They were both very nice to him. In this case, Lowry let Barrison do most of the talking, feeling that it was a case that required tact. He stood back in thoughtful silence while Jim got around the old doorkeeper in his very best and most diplomatic style with the result that within five minutes poor old Roberts was crumpling up in rather a piteous fashion, perfectly ready to tell them anything and everything he had ever done, said, or heard of.

“I didn’t mean no harm,” he protested at last, with such an attitude of abasement that neither Barrison nor, indeed, Lowry had the heart to rub it in. “I do hope—oh, I do hope, that you’ll not let Mr. Dukane discharge me! I’ve been here a good many years, and no one can say as I’ve not been faithful. I don’t believe there’s been another night in all my life when I’ve left my post.”

“It would have to be to-night!” murmured Lowry.

“It would!” agreed Barrison. “Go on, Roberts. No one wants to kill you, and I don’t believe there’s the least likelihood of your losing your job. Just tell us——”

“You don’t know Mr. Dukane, sir!” Roberts almost wept. “He’s strict, sir; very strict! He says a thing and you’ve got to do it, no matter what happens! I know—haven’t I been working for him for twenty years? And now to be fired and out——”

“Who said you were going to be fired? Get along, Roberts! Tell us what it was that you did.”

“I left the stage door, sir,” said Roberts humbly.

“That we gathered. But why did you leave it, and when, and for how long?”

Roberts sniffed and answered in a small stifled voice:

“As to when I left it, sir—it was when Mrs. Parry came to ask me to get a taxi for Miss Legaye.”

“Why didn’t you get a taxi, then—telephone for one?”

“I did, sir. I telephoned two places, but there wasn’t a single machine in. The starters all said the same thing: It looked like rain, and they couldn’t guarantee a taxi for an hour yet. I—I like Miss Kitty, sir; she’s always kind to me, and I didn’t want her to have to wait, ’specially when she was sick, as Mrs. Parry said she was. So, when I found I couldn’t get one over the wire, I went out into the alley to see if I could see one passing.”

“Well, that doesn’t seem very awful,” said Barrison, smiling at him. “Did you get one?”

Poor old Roberts brightened a bit at the kindly inflection.

“I couldn’t see one, sir, not from this door, so I went up to the gate at the end of the court, and looked up and down the street. And after a minute I saw one coming and hailed it, and it stopped. So I ran back again; and Miss Legaye was standing just outside the stage door, waiting. So I called to her ‘All right, Miss Legaye, your taxi’s here!’ and went on back. She passed me, in her red coat, about halfway, and I told her I was sorry to have kept her waiting. Then I hurried back here.”

“And you are sure you didn’t pass any one but Miss Legaye in the alley, no one coming in?”

The old fellow shook his head. “So far as any one going out goes,” he said, “how do I know? My eyes are not so young as they were. But coming in! Why, I was back here! How could any one pass me in the light without my seeing them?”

“But,” suggested Barrison, “while you were down at the street signaling the taxi, some one who had been hiding in the alley might have slipped in, mightn’t they?”

Old Roberts hung his head, and his whole heavy body expressed dejection.

“That’s what I keep saying to myself, sir!” he whispered. “Not that I think it’s likely—but—my eyes aren’t what they once were, and suppose the murderer was hiding there, and just waiting for a chance to get in?”

“And how long, altogether, were you away?” Lowry spoke for the first time.

“That’s easy, sir. I went out a few minutes after Mrs. Parry told me to send for the taxi, and I had just come back when Mr. Barrison here came out to ask me if I’d seen any one pass.”

“That was just before the shooting,” Barrison said.

“Before the shooting. And you’re prepared to swear, Roberts, that no one came out of the theater after that?”

“I am, sir!” The old man’s eyes, dim as they were, left no room for doubt; he was speaking the truth.

“All right, Roberts. I’m sure you’ve told the truth, and Mr. Dukane shall be told so. I don’t believe you’ll lose your job. Just the same, I wish you hadn’t gone to hunt taxicabs at that particular moment.”

As the two detectives walked away, Lowry said under his breath: “We’ve proved that no one left the theater by the stage door after the shooting, but we’ve proved that they might have done so by the communicating door. We’ve proved that Lynch was at his post for the whole evening up to the shooting, so that no one could have come in by that way before then; but, since he left it afterward, there is no reason to suppose that that some one could not have made their exit that way after the crime. In other words, my dear friend and colleague, while we can’t prove it, we can find a perfectly possible way for the murderer to have entered and an equally possible way for him, or her, to have departed.”

“You think that—whoever it was—came in while Roberts was blundering up or down the alley?”

“I see no other explanation. Barrison, you are not officially under me, but I respect your judgment, and I like your work. I should be obliged if you would take on such branches of this case as seem to lie in your way. You have been in it since—so to speak—its inception. You should have a line on many aspects of it that I couldn’t possibly get, coming into it as I must, from a purely and coldly official standpoint. I’ll expect you to do your darnedest on it, and help me in every way you can. Right?”

“Right, sir.” The young detective’s tone was full of ardor.

“Then good night to you. One moment. Did you notice the initial on this pistol, the one you picked up?”

He produced it as he spoke.

“No,” said Jim. “I didn’t want any one to see it, so tucked it away without a look.”

“Take it along with you,” said Lowry unexpectedly. “You may be able to spot the owner.”

Barrison seized the tiny weapon with avidity; it was too dark where they stood for him to see clearly, and he said, with open eagerness:

“What is the initial? That of any of the principals in the case?”

“Of two of them,” said the inspector, as he turned to round a corner. “It’s M. Good night.”