Part 18 (1/2)

In the long hallway of dressing rooms Marilyn stopped, grasping the k.n.o.b of her door. ”It'll only take me--” she began.

Then her face went white as the concrete of the floor, and that was immaculate. An expression which might have been fear, or horror, or hate--or all three, spread over her features, transforming her.

Following the direction of her stare, I saw s.h.i.+rley down the hall, just as he stopped at his own door. He caught her glance suddenly, and his own face went red. I thought that his hands trembled.

Marilyn wheeled about, lips pressed tightly together. Throwing open the door, she dashed into her room, slamming it with a bang which echoed and re-echoed up and down the little hall. She had forgotten our presence altogether.

XIV

ANOTHER CLUE

Kennedy looked at me quizzically. ”I guess we'd better not wait for Miss Loring to initiate us to McCann's,” he remarked.

We found our way to the courtyard, and were headed for the gate when a young man in chauffeur's cap and uniform intercepted us. I had noticed him start forward from one of the cars parked in the inclosure, but did not recognize him.

”May I speak to you a moment, Professor Kennedy--alone?”

”Mr. Jameson here is a.s.sociated with me, is a.s.sisting me in this case, if it is something concerning the death of Miss Lamar.”

”It is, sir. I saw you out at Tarrytown yesterday. McGroarty is my name and I drove one of the cars the company went in. They were pointing you out to me, and I'd read about you, and just now I says to myself there's something I ought to tell you.”

”That's right.” Kennedy lighted a cigar, offering one to the chauffeur.

”I'm not supernatural and often I'm able to solve a mystery only with the help of all those who, like myself, want justice done.”

”Yes, sir! That's my way of looking at it. Well”--McGroarty blew a cloud of smoke, appreciatively--”I do a good bit of driving for these people, and this morning it was cloudy and dull, no good for exteriors, but yet sort of so it might clear at any moment, and so I was ordered.

I brought my car and left it standing here in the yard while I went over to McCann's--the lunch room, you know--for a cup of coffee. When I came back”--again the cigar--”there still was nothing doing, and so I thought--you know how it is--I thought I'd clean up the back of the old boat, to kill time, not saying it wasn't needed. So I took out the cocoa mat to beat it and what do I find on the floor--between the mat and the rear seat it was, I guess--but this.”

He handed Kennedy some small object which glinted in the light. Looking closely, I saw that it was a peculiarly shaped little gla.s.s tube.

”An ampulla,” Kennedy explained. ”It's the technical name the doctors have for such a container.”

”It must have been between the mat and the rear seat,” the chauffeur repeated. Then he discovered that his cigar was out. He struck a match.

Kennedy turned the bit of gla.s.s over and over in his hand, examining it carefully. I felt rather fearful, wondering if it might not contain some trace of the deadly poison which had so quickly killed Stella Lamar. I even half expected to see Kennedy find some infinitesimal jagged edge or point which could have inflicted the fatal scratch. Then I realized that McGroarty had handled the thing with impunity, perhaps had carried it about half a day.

Kennedy took his scarf pin. On the outside of the little tube there was no trace of a label or marking of any sort. All about, on the inside, however, the gla.s.s was spotted with dried light-yellow incrustations, resembling crystals and at first apt to escape even the sharpest scrutiny. With the pin Kennedy scaled off one of these and put it under his pocket lens. But he came to no conclusion. Rather puzzled and nettled, he dropped the tiny bit of substance back into the tube, then replaced his pin in his scarf, and stowed this latest bit of possible evidence in his pocket carefully.

”How do you suppose it got in the car?” he asked.

”Some one must have dropped it and it must have rolled in that s.p.a.ce by the edge of the mat,” replied the chauffeur. ”There was just room for it, too! I never would have noticed it without taking up the mat.”

”It couldn't be broken, by being trampled on?”

”Nope! Not a chance!”

”How long could it have been there?”

”Two or three or four days--since I cleaned up last.”