Lieutenant Valcour felt a distinct shock, and his eyes became predatorily alert. If this astonishing thing was true and Mrs. Endicott had not taken the narcotic prepared for her by Dr. Worth, then the bypaths one might dart along were numerous and alarming indeed.

“How do you know, Miss Roberts?” he said.

“Because when the nurse went downstairs to make that coffee I went over to the bed. I wanted to take a close look at Mrs. Endicott. Have you ever felt that desire to look closely at something that you hate very much? It’s the curiosity of hate, I suppose. I put my hand on the spread, at the edge, so that I could lean down. The spread was damp; something had been poured on it. There wasn’t anything that could have been poured on it except the narcotic. She’d recovered consciousness, you see, when the nurse and Dr. Worth brought her in from here and put her to bed.”

“But wouldn’t he or the nurse have seen her pour it out?”

“None of us saw it, Lieutenant, because she said, just after the doctor had handed her the glass, ‘There’s blood on that dresser.’ We all looked at the dresser, of course. Naturally there wasn’t any blood on it. The doctor thought she was delirious. She was just finishing drinking when we turned around.”

“Didn’t you accuse her⁠—when you felt the damp spot on the spread?”

“What was the use? She never would have admitted it. I believe,” Roberts said fiercely, “that I could have stuck pins in her and that she’d have endured the pain rather than admit it. And suddenly I began to feel afraid⁠—not so much of her, as of what she might do to Mr. Endicott. She was playing a trick and I didn’t know just what the purpose of it was. I ran upstairs and got my gun, then came right back.”

“She was still in bed?”

“Yes. But the shooting was over, and the room was cold. The room was cold”⁠—Roberts’s voice was very intense as she drove her points home⁠—“and her skin was cold, and her breathing was heavy from recent exertion. I think I was going to kill her. I would have killed her if the nurse hadn’t come in just then.”

“Why didn’t you tell someone of this at once, Miss Roberts?”

“Would you have? Would anyone have?”

“I don’t quite understand.”

“There had just been that shooting⁠—and I had a gun. I wanted to get rid of it. By the time I had got rid of it, it was too late. I couldn’t say anything then without practically accusing myself of a murder I didn’t commit.”

“You’ll stay here in the house, Miss Roberts?”

“Naturally, since I’m to be accused of having killed Mr. Endicott.”

“Not as yet, Miss Roberts.”

“It won’t bother me.” She added bitterly, as she started for the door, “You’ll find me a tractable prisoner.”

“One minute please, Miss Roberts. How long were you gone from Mrs. Endicott’s room when you went upstairs to get the gun?”

“Just long enough to run up and back again. I have no idea, really.”

“Where is your room?”

“On the upper floor⁠—the room to the left of the corridor in the front of the house.”

“And whereabouts did you keep the gun?”

“In my trunk⁠—where it is now.”

“Was the trunk locked?”

“Yes. I keep it locked.”

“And the keys for it?”

“In a purse. The purse was in a dresser drawer.”

“Then that gives us a pretty good idea of the length of time you must have been gone, doesn’t it?”

“I suppose it does. Three or four minutes, probably.”

“Nearer, I imagine, to five or six. But we don’t require the actual number of minutes. The point we need is, rather, a comparison of two different operations within the same time limit. While you were going through the various movements you have described, would Mrs. Endicott have had the time to get out of bed, supply herself with a revolver, open a window, and, from the balcony, shoot Mr. Endicott, return to her room, and be in bed again by the time you came down? I think so, don’t you?”

“There would have been plenty of time for that.”

“You’ve been with Mrs. Endicott for quite a while. Have you ever noticed whether or not she owns a pistol?”

“I don’t think I have. No, I’m sure I’ve never seen one. That doesn’t prove anything, though. There are any number of private places where she may have kept it. It is also possible”⁠—Roberts seemed desperately earnest in her effort to strengthen each link in her accusation, for she was accusing rather than simply offering a theory⁠—“that someone may recently have given her a revolver, isn’t it?”

“Everything is possible.”

“Mr. Hollander, for example?”

“A very good example.”

He said nothing further, and after a while the stillness became almost physically oppressive. Roberts was finished with emotions. “Is that all?” she said, and her voice was colourless.

“I believe so, Miss Roberts⁠—except that I wish you would tell me why, in view of your recent insinuations concerning Mrs. Endicott and Hollander, you ever suggested him as the proper friend to stay with her husband tonight. It’s a little inconsistent, don’t you think?”

“Very.”

“Then why did you do it?”

“I have nothing further to say.”

Lieutenant Valcour went abruptly to the door and opened it. Cassidy and Hansen were standing near by in the corridor.

“Hansen,” he said, “go with Miss Roberts up to her room. There is a gun in her trunk. She will give it to you. Keep it for me.”

“Yes, sir.”

Roberts went outside.

“Am I to consider myself under arrest, Lieutenant?”

“No, Miss Roberts. But, as I have explained, you are not to leave the house. Cassidy, come inside here with me.”

Cassidy came in and closed the door. He watched Lieutenant Valcour draw the sheet up again over Endicott’s face.

“What’s Dr. Worth doing, Cassidy?”

“He has gone back to bed, sir. Shall I go get him?” Cassidy cast one suspicious look toward the bed.

“No, let him sleep. There’s nothing just this instant. I’ll want to see him in about a quarter of an hour, though.”

Lieutenant Valcour went into the bathroom, opened the window, and went outside onto the balcony. The gray before dawning was in the sky, and a rare clearness was vibrant in the fresh, sweet air.

The outline of the garden down below was quite distinct. There were other gardens belonging to the adjacent houses, too, and to the houses backing them from the rear. It was a street of gardens which bloomed, Lieutenant Valcour reflected, for the express benefit of caretakers in summer, while their owners spent the season at fashionable resorts either in the mountains or on the shore.

Lieutenant Valcour went and carefully examined with his flashlight the window to Endicott’s room that had been raised from the bottom when the shot was fired. He played the light upon the surface of its glass. It was quite clean. There was no trace of any pressing of noses or of foreheads against its polished surface. Nor, on the stone sill, were there any telltale threads of silk, or any of the various clues that would serve to indicate a woman’s presence.

He stared speculatively for a minute at the windows of the room above, where the curiously vindictive Mrs. Siddons was now presumably resting, or else indulging in her blank-eyed game of mental maledictions. No, he couldn’t really visualize her as descending to the balcony by a rope or any other kind of ladder. A hundred years ago, perhaps, she might have gone so far as to shape a replica of Mr. Endicott in wax and then, with appropriate incantations, proceed to stick pins in such portions of it as would cabalistically do the most good. But there was no such simple expedient left her in our modern skeptic age. It would be necessary, of course, to interview her further concerning those vague, bitter hints she had thrown out about outrageous actions on the part of Endicott toward the maids.

Even the city could not kill the fair fresh breezes of dawn. He stared at the dimming stars and wondered whether Roberts’s extraordinary statement was a lie. For after all it hinged upon nothing more significant than a damp spot at the edge of a spread, and Roberts could easily have spilled something there herself to offer as corroborative evidence to her tale. Was she, he wondered, quite so smart? And from all that he had been able to judge of her, he rather thought that she was.

He would have to consult with Dr. Worth, of course, before doing anything drastic. And the doctor would probably raise a holler, especially since he had just gone to bed and would have to be yanked summarily out of it again. Well, bed-yankings were to be expected in the lives of doctors and of the police; they were expected to be perpetually on tap, like heat or water.

He made his way slowly toward the windows of Mrs. Endicott’s room, carefully inspecting the balcony and sills with his flashlight as he went along. There were no smudges, no threads, no clues until he reached the last window in the row. And there, on the balcony floor just below its sash, something blazed in the circle of his torch a bright jade green.

It was a woman’s slipper.