“An odd fact about the commotion,” remarked Doring, as he finished the preliminary details. “The noise stopped after I had pounded rather heavily. It ended with uncanny suddenness.”
“So you believe someone heard you?” questioned Barth.
“That is what I thought at the time,” replied Doring. “But afterward, I changed my opinion. The noise did not stop while I was hammering at the door. It finished just as I was about to beat away again.”
“Ah!” interjected Barth.
“From then on there was silence,” resumed Doring. “I rapped after an interval of about one minute; then I waited another minute and pounded. After another pause, I was about to knock again when the telephone commenced to ring.”
“Then you waited?”
“Yes. To see if someone answered. I thought for a moment that someone had done so. There was an intermission in the ringing; but it resumed again.”
“There’s a point, commissioner,” put in Cardona. “Someone could have answered that phone. Picked up the receiver and let it down again.”
“But I would have heard footsteps,” insisted Doring.
“How do you know?” demanded Cardona, sharply.
“There is no rug in the entry,” explained Doring. “I have visited here before; whenever Tanning has answered the door, his approach has been quite audible. The telephone is almost at the door.”
“Proceed,” ordered Barth. “The pause in the ringing is not an important point, Cardona. It requires no explanation. What happened next, Mr. Doring?”
“The ringing continued,” replied the witness.
“With another pause,” added his wife. “Like the first one — quite brief.”
“You see?” Barth turned to Cardona. “That proves my opinion. Proceed, Mr. Doring.”
“When the ringing suddenly ceased,” stated Doring, “I told Mabel — my wife — to summon the elevator operator. When the elevator arrived, Mr. Brooks stepped off. We told him and the operator about the mystery. I went to the front apartment with Mr. Brooks and called detective headquarters.”
“Very well.” Barth began to pace back and forth across the room. He paused to study the card table, cocking his head as he did so. He adjusted his spectacles and turned to Cardona.
“Everything is as you found it?” inquired the commissioner, sharply.
“Yes,” replied Cardona, “except for the victims. The window was open, commissioner.”
Barth turned in the direction indicated. He could see the outline of the balcony rail against the sky that showed above the parapet of the warehouse.
“A balcony,” observed the commissioner. “Did you inspect there, Cardona?”
“Yes. No sign of anybody. We made an inspection up from the bottom — using a man that the sergeant posted down there — and we didn’t find a trace of any intruder.”
“Hm-m-m.” Barth removed his spectacles and polished them, blinking owlishly as he did so. “Well, the evening has been quite warm for this season. An opened window would be expected. Have you searched the other apartments on this floor?”
“Yes,” responded Cardona. “There are four, altogether. Two have no occupants; the superintendent has the keys and he let us in. Nothing wrong in any of them.”
“This one and two others,” observed Barth, wisely, as he put on his pince-nez. “That makes only three. What about the fourth?”
“Mr. Brooks lives there. We looked around thoroughly. Nobody hiding. I don’t see how any outsider could have been in this, commissioner — and yet I—”
“Yet what?”
“The telephone. It must have been a dialed call, the way Mr. and Mrs. Doring describe it. I can’t see why it made those two breaks. No one could have been responsible—”
“Preposterous!” interjected Barth. “Every iota of testimony points to the contrary, Cardona. Someone must have approached the telephone to touch it. Mr. Doring would have heard him.”
“Someone could have been there to begin with.”
“Then Mr. Doring would have heard him move away.”
Cardona was silent. Barth’s testy comment damaged the detective’s theory.
CONVINCED that no one had been in the room — except, of course, the victims — Cardona began to realize that he was only complicating matters. Having squelched the detective, Barth raised his head imposingly.
“We are dealing,” he declared, “with a remarkable mystery that must be solved by science; not by the law. We have encountered the phenomenon of four persons suddenly struck by an unknown ailment which Cardona has aptly described as a ‘death sleep.’ The victims of this amazing malady are receiving medical attention.
“We shall examine the contents of these glasses here upon the table. Possibly some toxic substance was surreptitiously introduced. A chemical analysis will answer that question. But I feel certain, in advance, that the liquids will show nothing extraordinary.
“I base this assumption upon the fact that the victims were overcome simultaneously. As you can observe, all were not drinking. There are only two glasses upon the table at present. Were this an ordinary case of foul play, the persons would have succumbed one by one. It remains a strange case; and we must depend upon the medical authorities for their answer.”
Finished with his statements, Wainwright Barth reached for the notations that Cardona had prepared. The commissioner read them aloud. The notes consisted of statements by witnesses, in which the time of the peculiar occurrence had been established as precisely midnight. Barth checked on other details. The party had apparently been in progress since eight o’clock. Doring and his wife, leaving for the theater at that hour, had received a call from Tanning asking them to stop in when the show was over.
“The death sleep,” commented Barth, as he dismissed the witnesses and prepared to leave. “An apt title, Cardona. I believe that I shall go to the Talleyrand Hospital and view the victims. Let me state again, however, that we are dealing with a malady. This mystery has naught to do with crime.
“Motive seems absent. This apartment is isolated; no one could have gained access and departed unobserved. The presence of persons in the hallway — people who heard sounds of life; then silence — is proof that crime has no connection.”
A few minutes later, the apartment was deserted. The bridge lamp had been turned off. Darkness was broken only by the dull glow of the skyline beyond the warehouse. It was then that blackness obscured a portion of the window. The form of The Shadow moved into the apartment.
THE SHADOW had heard all the statements. The probing ray of a tiny flashlight was his means of checking on the details. Gloved fingers touched the surface of the card table. They lifted; the cloth seemed to restrain them slightly.
The same effect resulted when The Shadow stooped to the floor and examined a rug just beyond the table. The bare floor, however, produced no such effect. It was only in the vicinity of the table that The Shadow discovered this slight trace of stickiness.
Yet as he traced, The Shadow discovered that the area formed a wide circle. Its center was not the table itself, but a spot just to one side and beyond. The wall at the right of the room, looking in from the window, was a trifle sticky to a point three feet above the floor.
When The Shadow stood at the center point of this odd circle, he found himself facing directly toward the window. The card table was a slight space away from that line. A soft laugh came from The Shadow’s hidden lips. The cloaked form moved to the window, through the opening and to the balcony.
The patrol had been ended below. Yet The Shadow did not descend. Instead, he rose upon the rail, grasped the bottom of a balcony above and swung up to the next floor. Outside the window of a darkened apartment, he stared across the alleyway.