Читать книгу The Bat Flies Low - Arthur Henry Ward - Страница 17

Slow footsteps descending the stairs: the three men in the Venetian lobby stood up.

“I must return to the hospital,” said Dr. Adderley, pausing on the bottom step and twirling his monocle upon its pendent cord, “where I am watching a very difficult case.” His low-pitched voice had a curiously soothing quality. “You will find me there, however, any time during the next two hours, if there should be any development. Muller is remaining—and the nurse, of course.”

He lingered, staring about the lobby. Stefanson, standing near one of the lamps, had been making notes upon a sheet of loose manuscript. Captain Rorke stood by the door leading to the library, and Lincoln Hayes had just dropped back upon the arm of a chair.

“The curious instance of somnambulism which you witnessed earlier tonight,” Adderley went on, “had interesting features, and I hoped that something might result from it. Possibly Miss Wayland’s words conveyed something to you, Hayes?”

“Very little.”

“For certain reasons I suspect post-hypnosis, but we need not go into that now. The patient is sleeping quite peacefully. I anticipate that she will be normal when she wakes.”

He sniffed.

“That curious smell seems to have disappeared,” he commented.

Lurgan conducted him to the door. Lurgan was quite composed: his composure under the circumstances was phenomenal. He had undergone a grueling examination at the hands of Detective Sergeant Hawley. He had not only survived it successfully, but had reduced that officer to a state of inarticulate wrath by pointing out that since there was not the slightest evidence of attempted murder, the case strictly did not come within the province of the Homicide Bureau.

As Lurgan went out, now, Maguire and the redoubtable Hawley entered, coming from the direction of the museum. They were followed by a busy-looking little man carrying a busy-looking attaché case. He crossed the lobby with never a word and disappeared in the direction of the street door. He had been photographing fingerprints.

“If, as I expect,” drawled Hawley, “Master Lurgan’s paws moved that mummy lid, then I’ve got Master Lurgan where I want him.”

Lincoln Hayes stood up.

“There is one thing, Sergeant Hawley, which in my opinion Lurgan couldn’t have done. He couldn’t have called down that plague of darkness. I grabbed him out here. He was a badly frightened man.”

“Maybe,” Hawley admitted reluctantly. “But he’s in on it somewhere. My idea is to search his room.”

He glanced angrily at District Attorney Maguire.

“No good,” said the latter, shaking his head. “He’s too clever a man to have hidden it in his own room. If he took it, it’s not there. What kind of a looking thing was it, anyway?”

His deep-set eyes were turned in Lincoln Hayes’ direction.

“It was a sheet of ancient and very fragile papyrus,” Captain Rorke replied. “It was pinned to the drawing board which you have seen on the library table. There were six steel pins in all; I attached them myself; and during the ... darkness, those pins were removed. We found them lying on the table. The papyrus had gone—as well as Stefanson’s notes.”

“Seems to me,” Maguire growled, “that, considered from this new angle, you don’t come off too well, Stefanson!”

Stefanson peered blinkingly at the speaker.

“D-d-don’t be so s-silly,” he replied. “I had m-moved away from the t-table when we heard the scream. Th-that wasn’t normal darkness! I sw-switched my torch on—and n-no light came! I didn’t m-move after that until I could s-see again. Then I s-saw that everything had gone.”

There was an interval of silence.

“So you say,” drawled Hawley, watching Stefanson. “What you say isn’t evidence.”

“Any one of us in the room,” Lincoln Hayes interrupted dryly, “would find it hard to prove his innocence.”

“That’s true, Hayes,” Maguire acknowledged. “The thing is bewildering.... Hello! what’s this?”

Dr. Muller was coming downstairs.

He carried a sheet of paper. He reached the lobby level, crossed, and handed the paper to Lincoln Hayes.

“In accordance with Adderley’s instructions,” he said, “I have not checked the patient in anything she wished to do. A few moments ago she sat up and asked quite normally for a writing block, as she had an important message to send. The nurse called me—and I saw at once by the patient’s eyes that she was not awake but still in a state of somnambulism. I handed her a writing block and pencil. She wrote this message, and—then went to sleep again.”

He returned upstairs.

Hayes leaned back, holding the sheet to the light.

“I don’t like these queer symptoms,” said Rorke. “It seems as though some awful thing had temporarily affected her brain.”

“I shouldn’t worry,” Hayes replied. “I have every confidence that when she really wakes she will be quite normal. Just listen to this.”

He read aloud:

“What I wanted to tell you when you returned from the theater tonight, Lincoln, was this: I overheard Lurgan speaking on the telephone. He said that Paddy Rorke had just arrived with a steel dispatch box. He was talking to Simon Lobb. I heard him ask to speak to him personally. Ann.”

Someone snapped his fingers so sharply that everybody started.

“What did I say?” Hawley asked harshly. “Did I say that bird was in on it or didn’t I?”