Argosy All-Story Weekly, October 6, 1923 — page 81: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

MARKED DOWN. doctor was a painstaking as well as a bril- liant physician and surgeon. So he had very methodically marked in white chalk the exact position where Cavendish had lain on the wooden floor. Now the gas jet lighted up the ghostly and ghastly white line which crudely sug- gested a human figure distorted and pros- trate. Nancy fancied that, had she not seen what had lain there before it had been removed, the simple lines remaining to mark the presence of death would have told her all. Quickly her eyes estimated the exact placement of those indicative white lines. She started suddenly. Why had the fact escaped her before? Were its many threads drawing cobwebs across her observation? For beyond doubt Hugh Cavendish’s body had lain at a spot equidistant from four doors. Mentally she branded the position of these doors on her memory. How extraordinary that the man had died approximately ten feet from these four doors! First came Mlle. Mignonne’s to the room where she was in consultation with her unknown client; next Miss Ivy Green- wood had sat by her own testimony in a chair by the door of the Kent & Fulton reception room nearest to the body on that diagonal; next was the door of Mr. Win- ters’s private office; and lastly the door from which she was now peering. This fourth door, completing those near- est the fatal white-lined spot, was the one behind which Dorothy Cavendish herself had sat in grief and horror. And the sole entrance to the building, where had stood the suspicious acting Graham, also known as Slippy Gates, with a prison record, was more than twice that distance or about twenty-five feet. Black doubt assailed the girl as she quiet- ly shut the door behind her. The telltale pin hole still stood out a mute and ines- capable reminder. Quite casually Nancy approached the girl’s bent, tear-stained face. ‘““Haven’t you dropped one of your hat pins?” she suggested, with nothing but the most commonplace expression in her voice. Dully Dorothy Cavendish’s right hand rose tremblingly to her hat, fumbled blind- 8635 ly, and came to a stop on the single re- maining pinhead. She raised her swollen eyes in sur- prise at the question. Then the hand went back dazedly to the rear of the hat. It groped about, but found nothing. “'Yes,”’ she replied mechanically, as her hand fell back limply to her lap. “It seems to be gone.” Nancy stooped over and pretended to search the floor in the vicinity of the girl, although the lost hatpin was carefully se- creted in a legal envelope inside her own gray leather case. Somewhat wonderingly, Dorothy Caven- dish’s eyes followed her movements. Half dispassionately she, too, glanced about on the floor. ‘“* Oh—oh, it doesn’t matter.” Her voice broke. ‘“ Nothing matters very much now.” Instantly Nancy desisted from her pseu- do search. If Dorothy Cd¥endish were acting, she displayed a histrionic art un- equalled by many world-renowned artists. Furthermore, instinctively the girl had reached for the front pin first. Didn’t this show that she had no knowledge which pin had been lost? It might be that. On the other hand, were the girl dissimu- lating, wouldn’t her hand have gone direct- ly to the empty hole where she knew it would find nothing? Wouldn’t she then simulate an admirable surprise? Or would she have followed the course of procedure groped out by her trembling hand? Again thick doubt assailed Nancy. What a blind business it all was! And how inexorably were several persons already enmeshed in the tightening net. “Why,” she asked directly, “ didn’t you bring your aunt here?” ‘““T wanted her to be in Mr. Kent’s re- ception room should he ask for me before I happened to get back. She could then tell him that I was really here, that there need be no halt.” ‘Did your aunt know why you had sud- denly decided to come to this room?” ce Yes.”’ Instantly that reply brought back the doctrine of a certain famous French psv- cho analyst. His renowned postulate in COMiclooe S ©