Selby hung up the phone, took a hot bath, changed his clothes and felt better. He went to the movies, but scarcely followed the picture. There was a chilled, numb feeling in the back of his mind, the feeling of one who has had ideals shattered, who has lost confidence in a friend, and a sense of vague, impending disaster hung over him.
After the show, he aimlessly tramped the streets for more than an hour, paused to have a drink at a bar which was filled with gaily chatting, laughing people. Then he returned to his room.
As he opened the door and groped for the light switch, he was filled with a vague sense of uneasiness. For a moment he couldn’t determine the source of that feeling of danger. Then he realized that the odor of cigar smoke was clinging to the room.
Selby didn’t smoke cigars. Someone who did smoke cigars was either in the room or had been in it.
Selby found the light switch, pressed it and braced himself against the rush of an attack.
There was no one in the room.
Selby entered the room, kicked the door shut behind him and made certain that it was bolted. He was on the point of barricading it with a chair, when he remembered the room in which William Larrabie had met his death.
Feeling absurdly self-conscious, the district attorney got to his knees and peered under the bed. He saw nothing. He tried the doors to the connecting rooms and made certain they were both bolted on the inside. He opened the window and looked out. The fire escape was not near enough to furnish a means of ingress.
His baggage consisted of a single light handbag. It was on the floor where he had left it, but Selby noticed on the bedspread an oblong imprint with the dots of four round depressions in the corners.
He picked up his handbag, looked at the bottom. There were round brass studs in each corner. Carefully, he fitted the bag to the impression on the bedspread. Beyond any doubt, someone had placed the bag on the bed. Selby knew that he had not done so.
He opened the bag. It showed that it had been searched, and searched hurriedly. Apparently the contents had been dumped onto the bed, then thrown back helter-skelter.
Selby stood staring at it in puzzled scrutiny.
Why should anyone have searched his handbag?
What object of value did he have? The search had been hasty and hurried, showing that the man who made it had been fighting against time, apparently afraid that Selby would return to the room in time to catch the caller at his task. But, not having found what he looked for, the man had overcome his fear of detection sufficiently to remain and make a thorough search of the room. That much was evident by the reek of cigar smoke which saturated the atmosphere.
The prowler had probably lit a cigar to steady his nerves. Then he had evidently made a thorough search, apparently looking for some object which had been concealed. Selby pulled back the bedspread.
The pillows had lost that appearance of starched symmetry which is the result of a chambermaid’s deft touch. Evidently they had been moved and replaced.
Suddenly the thought of the miniature camera crashed home to Selby’s consciousness.
He had left the camera at the camera store where the man had promised, in view of Selby’s explanation of his position and the possible significance of the films, to have the negatives ready by morning. Evidently that camera was, then, of far greater importance than he had originally assumed.
Selby opened the windows and transom in order to air out the cigar smoke. He undressed, got into bed and was unable to sleep. Finally, notwithstanding the fact that he felt utterly ludicrous in doing so, he arose, walked in bare feet across the carpet, picked up a straight-backed chair, dragged it to the door and tilted it in such a way that the back was caught under the doorknob — in exactly the same manner in which the dead minister had barricaded his room on the night of the murder.
Chapter XVI
Selby awakened to find sun streaming into his room. He looked at the chair propped against the knob of the door and laughed outright at his fears of the night before.
A cold shower made him feel much better. He shaved, breakfasted at a restaurant, and was at the camera store by the time it opened. It was with a feeling of relief that he saw the clerk produce a roll of films from a drawer and slip them into an envelope.
“There was also a camera,” Selby said.
“We have it here,” the clerk nodded, and handed over the camera with its leather case.
Selby pocketed the camera. “I wonder,” he asked, “if there’s some place where I could look at these films?”
“Certainly,” the clerk said, and switched on a light back of a ground glass.
Selby spread out the roll.
“Only fifteen of the negatives were exposed,” the clerk said.
Selby nodded, and stared in puzzled bewilderment at the negatives. Without exception, they were pictures of street scenes, and, as Selby studied them, he realized that the street scenes had all been taken in Madison City.
So this, then, was merely another blank wall.
“Would you wish a magnifying glass?” the clerk asked. He handed Selby a powerful magnifier on a stand which fitted over the strip of film.
Selby bent to the films and slid them through the magnifier one at a time. He recognized familiar street scenes.
Suddenly he paused to stare at the end picture on the roll.
“Look here,” he said to the clerk, “was this the first picture?”
The clerk looked at it and nodded.
“And it was impossible for these others to have been exposed before this picture was taken?”
“That’s right.”
The picture showed a street scene, showed street car tracks, the Madison Hotel; showed, moreover, an ornamental lamp post in position at the corner.
That lamp post was being erected when Selby had gone to the hotel to inspect the body of the dead minister!
In other words, every picture in that camera had been taken long after the owner of the camera had died!
The clerk, seeing the expression on his face, said, “Was there something?”
Selby shook his head, slowly rolled up the films and put them in the metal container the clerk handed him.
“Rather nice exposures,” the clerk said. “Perfectly timed.”
Selby nodded, and sought the street.
Once more, what apparently had been a simple case had taken a baffling turn and he was faced with a complete impossibility, dressed, however, in the garb of such everyday plausibility that it seemed as though his own senses must be at fault.
Chapter XVII
Having returned to Madison City, Selby left his car in the garage to be serviced and walked up to the courthouse. On the way he had an opportunity to realize how fickle is public opinion.
While Madison City had been divided into two hostile camps over the election of district attorney and sheriff, Selby had commanded the respect of his enemies as well as the admiration and loyal support of his friends. Now he found himself in an entirely different status.
The Blade had put out an extra. Selby had stopped at a newsstand near the city limits to pick one up. It had been worse than he had anticipated.
The photograph was damning. There was a table arranged for a tête-à-tête. The actress was slumped forward in an attitude of dejection. Selby’s outstretched arm seemed on the point of encircling her shoulders in a caressing gesture.
Worse than all, he had been made to appear ludicrous. When the photographer had called his name and he had looked up to experience the blinding glare of the flashlight, he had been both startled and surprised.
Photographs of human beings under the stress of emotion almost invariably show strained, distorted expressions which appear as a gross caricature of the individual. The face of a runner breasting the tape in a hundred-yard dash, the face of a man behind the steering wheel of an automobile, making a frenzied attempt to avoid a collision, all show features which are recognizable, yet which are so twisted and distorted as to appear ludicrous.