Page:Argosy All-story Weekly v123 n03 (1920-07-24).djvu/12

294 ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. roll lay beside it, and the glass was half full of dead champagne. Near at hand was an ash tray containing the stub of a cigarette and another unsmoked, but broken in two lay in the center of the table.

McCarty was turning away when almost imbedded in the heavy pile of the rug just beneath the end of the cloth close to the champagne bucket something shining caught his eye. It was a broken bit of amber from the mouthpiece of a cigarette-holder. He picked it up and shamelessly put it in his pocket.

The subdued purring of a second motor came to his ears and he left the breakfast-room and hurrying across the rotunda, flung open the house-door. Inspector Druet was descending the steps.

"Come in, sir," McCarty urged superfluously. "The men are here from borough headquarters and they are holding a grand session in the room where Mr. Creveling was killed."

He led his former superior into the breakfast-room and pointed to the table.

"Wherever the servants and the rest of the family have got to, there was two people had supper here to-night, as you can see, sir. One of them was contented and pleased, too interested to bother much with his wine, but ate a good meal, though something interrupted him before he finished smoking his cigarette, and if he left the room then he didn't take it with him. The other was nervous or angry or scared; couldn't eat, crumbled his bread, drank his wine to keep up his courage, but broke his cigarette in two and maybe his holder. One of them is lying dead in the next room and the other has gone. What's the answer, sir? It's up to you."

The inspector approached the table and gazed thoughtfully down upon its array of porcelain and silver and glass.

"You're getting to be quite in Wade Terhune's class with your deductions, Mac, but you're right, I think," he observed. "If Creveling sat here, where the food is almost untouched and the bread crumbled, it looks as though he might have known what was coming to him, or feared it, anyway. We'll find out what enemies he had—"

McCarty shook his head.

"I don't think so, sir," he said quietly. "I think it was his visitor who sat in that chair. Mr. Creveling was host and all the servants were gone unless they're lying murdered up-stairs, so he must have waited on the table himself, and you see the wine cooler is right close up to the other chair. I found this near it on the floor."

He produced the broken bit of amber and the inspector scrutinized it carefully.

"Part of a cigarette holder, eh? A mighty slender one, too, by the curve of this fragment. It looks as though a lady—"

He paused as McCarty picked up the broken cigarette from the table and silently handed it to him. It was but little thicker than a straw and bore in tiny square gold letters the initials E. C. C.

"They're the same as on the platinum case in the waistcoat pocket of the dead man in the other room there," McCarty remarked at length. "I've my opinion of a fellow that would call a thing like that a smoke, but no matter. Did you take a good look at the supper table, sir?"

"No dope there, beyond what you pointed out." Inspector Druet had turned away. "Let's have a look up-stairs before the rest go to it."

But he was too late, for even as he spoke the door of the next room opened and heavy footsteps could be heard crossing the rotunda and mounting the broad stairs. Like conspirators, the inspector and McCarty waited until they died away in the regions above.

"I wonder, now, what they did with the young crook I caught climbing out of the window?" McCarty queried aloud to himself.

"What's that?" Inspector Druet demanded.

Briefly McCarty recounted the events of the night and when he had concluded his companion started for the door leading into the hall once more.

"We'll have a look at the body, and then join the rest up-stairs. This is a headquarters job all right, Mac, and I'm going to take charge."

"I thought you would, sir." McCarty