Before he could offer any resistance, Farnsworth had the irons on his wrists.
Starr’s lips parted in a smile.
“A fine joke!” panted Darwin. “A fine joke. If we hadn’t caught you, you’d been smashed to pieces down there on the pavement!”
At that Starr began to laugh.
His mirth, silent at first, quickly gave place to guffaws — guffaws which grew heavier and heavier — laughter curious and outlandish, with a beautiful dead girl at his elbow, yet laughter that caused his wide shoulders to shake and his stomach to roll; such laughter as if, even in the presence of death, he had encountered a mighty joke, such a tremendous jest that he could not control himself.
Darwin looked into the laughing man’s eyes.
“He’s gone off his nut!” he exclaimed. “He’s gone clear off his nut!”
Farnsworth picked up the telephone and called headquarters.
Chapter V
What the Dust Told
A deep silence hung over Thompson’s brilliantly lighted but deserted office. The big mahogany desk was empty. The corpse had been taken to the morgue where, on a sheeted slab, it awaited identification.
Apparently, no autopsy was necessary. The bullet that had left the purple hole in the center of the white forehead had passed through the brain and lodged in the spun-gold hair just back of the left ear. Therefore, death had come quickly indeed.
Black stained the tips of the small, tapering fingers. At headquarters experts were comparing those fingerprints with smudges on neatly filed cards, while ballistic experts were examining with their microscopes the leaden pellet that had ended a young life. Below, in the Tremont Building, Farnsworth and Darwin were poking into dusty corners.
Starr, his tremendous laughter changed to low moans and animal-like sounds, had been taken to General Hospital. Closely guarded, he was under observation in the psychopathic ward.
Dawn grayed the East. The door to Thompson’s office opened, without a sound. A slight rustle followed. Then the switch clicked and the office suddenly became dark.
Into the gray room slipped an uncanny figure, a thing which, emerging from the shadows, seemed of no more substance than the gray shadows themselves, since it, too, was gray and nebulous.
All the more unreal did it seem inasmuch as it had such little definiteness of shape that it could not be told whether it was man or woman or child, and it might not have been human save that it carried itself upright.
After a moment of hesitation, the gray thing sped noiselessly over the deep green carpet to the table, where it stopped. Then the gray figure turned back and disappeared through the door.
From the hall came the sound of light footsteps.
The door opened and Farnsworth and Darwin entered; Farnsworth, as usual, immaculate and showing no signs of a sleepless night, Darwin dusty and disheveled, eyes black-ringed.
Just inside, and with the door still open, Farnsworth stopped suddenly.
“What’s the matter?” asked Darwin sharply.
“We left the lights on in here.”
“I thought we did, too. Mebbe the fuse—”
“They’re still on in the hall.”
Farnsworth gave the door a quick look, then turned his attention to the switch, an expression of dissatisfaction on his lean face. Up and down the brass plate his magnifying glass moved. At last, with a shake of his head, he replaced the glass in his pocket and pressed the button.
As the lights came on, Darwin, whipping out his revolver, dashed into the corridor.
In less than a minute he returned.
“Nothin’ doin’,” he growled.
“You saw nothing?”
“I didn’t see nothin’.”
Farnsworth’s high, white forehead puckered.
“Whatta you tryin’ to puzzle out now, inspector?” asked Darwin, stifling a yawn.
“When we entered, I felt certain some one was in this office. I had that same feeling before.”
“Yeah?”
“When you were in the basement with Starr, putting in a new fuse, I heard a rustling noise like bare feet running over the carpet.”
“A rat come in to make you a visit.” “But when we come back up here we find the lights out.”
“Mebbe I turned ’em out and forgot it. I’m always turnin’ out lights at the house. Anyhow, I’ll put the frisk on this joint again.”
He closed the door and threw the catch. For the next several minutes he was exceedingly busy, looking into and under the desk, under and behind the couch, and even opening the filing cabinet.
“Nothing’s been disturbed,” he asserted positively.
“We might just’s well get a little rest.”
“Not yet.”
“Why not? We’re stopped till Thompson or somebody else who knows somethin’ ’bout this dump’s located. All we can do’s wait till we hear from headquarters or the day superintendent shows up. We’ve searched the old Tremont from top to bottom and all we’ve found’s junk, rats and dust. Might’s well give headquarters a buzz and park right here.”
With a great yawn he sank into a chair.
Farnsworth busied himself about the desk and Darwin’s head began to sink toward his chest. Lower and lower it drooped and finally a gentle snore escaped his lips.
The sudden ringing of the telephone bell brought him to his feet.
Farnsworth lifted the receiver and listened, while Darwin leaned forward.
“That same laugh,” he whispered.
Farnsworth worked the hook.
“Where did that call come from, central?” he asked.
“What!” he exclaimed, after a moment of silence.
He replaced the receiver slowly.
“What did she say?” asked Darwin tensely.
“She said there wasn’t any call.”
“She said there wasn’t any call?”
“None showed on her board.”
“Jeez, inspector, I’m hard-boiled but I can feel prickles on me! This whole damn’ thing’s spooky. You get that laugh at headquarters. I think somebody’s kiddin’, but you turn up a dead girl in Horace G. Thompson’s office. We’re lookin’ at that dead girl. The phone rings. You get that laugh again. Then the lights go out. And right in broad daylight you get that laugh again and central tells you there ain’t no call!”
“I wonder where Starr keeps his book?”
“What book?”
“The one he said he kept the names of the scrub women in.”
“If he’d had a book, we’d found it. He was just ravin’.”
“We haven’t found how that body was brought up here.”
“Starr’s the answer.”
“Do you really think so?”
“Sure I do.”
“Why would he kill that girl and hide her body in the desk of his employer?”
“He’s crazy, and a crazy man’s liable to do anything. Only a crazy man’d try to throw himself outta a six-story winda.”
“You think Starr’s the murderer?”
“I’m too old a dick to go that far at this stage of the game. But I’ll say it was an inside job! Mebbe Starr didn’t kill her, but he’s got guilty knowledge. He either run the body up here on that elevator, or carried it up the stairway. He’s strong ’nough to do that easy.”
“That body wasn’t brought up here on the elevator and it wasn’t carried up the stairway.”
“How’d it get here then — airplane?”
“We found all the doors of this building locked. Starr was on duty in the lobby. Nobody could have entered unless he knew it.”
“That’s what I say — he knew it.”
The inspector shook his head dubiously.
“On the way over here, you said you knew Horace G. Thompson.”
“I said I knew him when I seen him. I don’t see him very often. He’s outta town a lot. His old man left him ’nough dough so he don’t need to work.”