Reilly said sharply, “You too, Doctor,” and added, “if you don’t mind.” The tone of the detective’s voice told Bramble that if he did mind, he’d probably be dragged along anyway.
Bramble’s thin lips drew back against his teeth. He pushed himself from his chair, muttering angrily beneath his breath as he led the way. I stepped aside as Reilly and Grady followed. As they turned into the corridor, I ducked swiftly back into the room and through the door I had been watching a moment before.
I played a narrow beam of a pencil flashlight about the short hallway, narrow and dusty, and followed it till I came to another door at the end. This opened upon a steep, worn stairway which led down into solid blackness. The stairs creaked eerily beneath my cautious step, and I stopped, turned out the flash and held my breath. I could hear nothing. The dank, musty odor from the basement put an unpleasant taste in my mouth, and the dust smarted in my nostrils. Snapping on the flash, I went on down the stairs with each step seemingly shrieking louder in the smothering silence.
At the bottom of the stairway, some instinct seemed to prompt me. I switched off the flash. The blackness pressed down upon me like a great cat. I took three steps slowly, carefully; and my foot struck something. There was still no sound.
With my foot, I felt around in the dark and touched that something again. An icy coldness trickled along my spine.
Using the flash again, I shielded it with my hand and crouched down. A man lay on the concrete floor at my feet. A dead man. He looked about thirty or thirty-five years old, was wearing an ordinary brown suit and had light-brown hair. He was lying on his side, but his clothes were covered with dirt and his shoes were scuffed as if he’d been dragged here. His head had been smashed in horribly and the blood stained the collar and sleeve of his suit coat. I swept the light to the stairs. No blood marks there. He had not been killed upstairs, apparently.
I searched his pockets. There was an insurance investigator’s identification in his right pocket. Some envelopes and papers in the inside pocket of his coat, I glanced through hurriedly. There were a couple of personal letters, a railroad timetable and a telegram reading:
CHECK ALL OVERSEAS CABLES FROM LISBON TO BRAMBLE LEXINGTON MUSEUM NEW YORK BETWEEN THREE AND SEVEN AUGUST.
It was signed by the Central-Union Indemnity Company.
I searched for some other information concerning the telegram, a verification of it, perhaps, but found nothing. The dates between the third and seventh of August were before Schweingurt had expected the Dionysus to come from Europe, many days before in fact. And I wondered if such communication between Bramble and Lisbon referred to the Dionysus, or to something else. The insurance company, as far as I knew, was not concerned with the Dionysus statuette, and probably didn’t even know about it. It was interested, however, in the Athena statue, particularly in the quick removal of the statue from New York to Mexico City.
In the tense seconds it took for these thoughts to rush through my churning mind, my flashlight rayed over the dusty concrete floor, picked out a scattered trail of bloodstains and followed it behind a stack of wooden crates. The place was cluttered with huge boxes, grimy art objects, some with only enough ancient clay chipped and washed away to be recognizable as statuary; others were covered with canvas that had become damp and odorous. The fetid, musty smell parched my throat.
I followed the bloodstains behind the crates, stooping low. Some warning sense caused me to pull the gun from my shoulder holster. I gripped it. My hand was hot and wet against the cold metal.
I thought I heard the faint scuff of a footstep behind me. I started to whirl, but in that instant I was struck violently across the shoulder. I fell, sprawling against the crates. My arm went numb and the flashlight slipped from my lax fingers and clattered across the concrete floor.
The swishing sound of a heavy weapon slashed by my head as I ducked away from my former position. There was a splintered crash from the crate beside me as the object landed. I crouched in the darkness, brought my gun up and fired blindly. The bullet whanged off the solid wall opposite me, ricocheted through the basement and whined menacingly close to my face, embedding itself in a box behind me.
The attacker whirled, frightened by the shot, and I sprang in his direction from where I had been hiding against the crate. The force of my body smashed him to his knees as he struggled frantically to keep his balance. I caught a handful of hair and brought the gun down. We rolled across the narrow space of floor. His feet shot out and caught me in the stomach, exploding the breath from my lungs. The pain in my shoulder was torture. I shot out my left fist, felt my knuckles rake his face. I brought the gun around again. The force of the blow tingled all the way up my arm. He rolled away from me, and I scrambled to my knees and went after him. And then I realized he was lying very still.
I stayed in that position about thirty seconds, maybe more, waiting for him to move. The gun in my hand was pointed toward the figure, shrouded in darkness. My finger was tense on the trigger. The man did not move. His breathing, loud in the stillness, was the breathing of a man unconscious.
I got up, wondering if the sound of the shot had been heard upstairs and why Reilly and Grady weren’t down here by now. My flashlight still glowed near the crates where it had dropped; and when I picked it up it was wet and sticky with blood. I rayed it over the spot, saw where the trail of blood ended and smiled grimly, thinking of how really far the trail had come. Before me was a Grecian statue, its canvas covering partially thrown off. The goddess, Athena. The statue that had been smeared with Max Schweingurt’s blood. And now the dark goddess stood above the blood of another victim, the insurance investigator who had discovered her here.
I went back to the unconscious man on the floor and swept a beam of light over him. He was beginning to recover consciousness.
The man struggling dazedly in front of me was the one who had posed as Leiderkrantz! He looked up at me, fright so stark in his eyes that it give him a crazed look. He dropped his head, shaking it weakly, and started to feign unconsciousness. I was not in the mood to let him play possum. I prodded him roughly with my foot.
“Get up,” I ordered. I stabbed the revolver into his ribs.
I pressed the buzzer on Bramble’s desk and sent the guard after Reilly. Then I sat down, placed the gun on the desk in front of me and wearily lighted a cigarette. The man I had met as Leiderkrantz sat near me, nervously rubbing his hands together and staring sullenly at the floor.
Reilly didn’t look friendly when he, Grady and Bramble came into the office. He looked at me narrowly and said, “It’s no good, Mike. We went over the statue with a fine-tooth comb. We couldn’t find anything suspicious.”
“What were you looking for?” I asked him and grinned.
He looked sheepish, covered it with anger in his eyes. “I don’t know, but you said the answers . . .”
I stopped him with a nod of my head. “I found another corpse. Another statue. A murder. Maybe two.” I dragged on my cigarette long enough to watch the tension get the best of Bramble, and said, “Arrest Dr Bramble for the murder of Max Schweingurt!”
“Preposterous!” screamed Bramble.
“Sit down!” Reilly ordered him sharply. “This is worth looking into. Mike usually doesn’t talk unless he’s sure of himself. Give us the story, Mike. Why do you think Bramble is the murderer?”
Reilly seated himself where he could keep watch over both Bramble and the man I had caught just a few minutes before. Grady sat near the door, the entire room under his surveillance.
“First, let me explain what I have been doing since you three left this office for a look at the statue. I didn’t accompany you for a very good reason. While we were sitting here awaiting the arrival of the guard I was quite certain that someone sneaked up to that second door, there, and started to open it. Bramble’s facial reactions at that time corroborated my suspicions. So I decided to investigate. I realize I should have let you know my plans before I did anything. But I was afraid that if Bramble guessed he might be able in some way to tip off whomever had been on the other side of that door.