The Classic Mystery Collection - Arthur Conan Doyle [3960]
"My name is Ermentrude Taylor. I came to look at the bronzes. I should like to go now."
But the crowd which had formed about her was too compact to allow her to pass. Besides, the director, Mr. Roberts, had something to say first. Working his way forward, he waited till he had attracted her attention and then remarked in his most considerate manner:
"You will pardon these importunities, Mrs. Taylor. I am a director of this museum, and if Mr. Jewett will excuse me,"--here he bowed to the Curator,--"I should like to inquire from what direction the arrow came which ended this young girl's life?"
For a moment she stood aghast, fixing him with her eye as though to ask whither this inquiry tended. Then with an air of intention which was not without some strange element of fear, she allowed her glance to travel across the court till it rested upon the row of connected arches facing them from the opposite gallery.
"Ah," said he, putting her look into words, "you think the arrow came from the other side of the building. Did you see anyone over there,--in the gallery, I mean,--at or before the instant of this young girl's fall?"
She shook her head.
"Did any of _you_?" he urged, with his eyes on the crowd. "Some one must have been looking that way."
But no answer came, and the silence was fast becoming oppressive when these words, whispered by one woman to another, roused them anew and sent every glance again to the walls--even hers for whose benefit this remark had possibly been made:
"But there are no arrows over there. All the arrows are here."
She was right. They were here, quiver after quiver of them; nor were they all beyond reach. As the woman thus significantly assailed noted this and saw with what suspicion others noted it also, a decided change took place in her aspect.
"I should like to sit down," she murmured. Possibly she was afraid she might fall.
As some one brought a chair, she spoke, but very tremulously, to the director:
"Are there no arrows in the rooms over there?"
"I am quite sure not."
"And no bows?"
"None."
"If--if anyone had been seen in the gallery----"
"No one was."
"You are sure of that?"
"You heard the question asked. It brought no answer."
"But--but these galleries are visible from below. Some one may have been looking up from the court and----"
"If there was any such person in the building, he would have been here by this time. People don't hold back such information."
"Then--then--" she stammered, her eyes taking on a hunted look, "you conclude--these people conclude _what_?"
"Madam,"--the word came coldly, stinging her into drawing herself to her full height,--"it is not for me to conclude in a case like this. That is the business of the police."
At this word, with its suggestion of crime, her air of conscious power vanished in sudden collapse. Possibly she had seen the significant gesture with which the Curator pointed out a quiver from which one of the arrows was missing. That this was so, was shown by her next question:
"But where is the bow? Look about on the floor. You will find none. How can an arrow be shot without a bow?"
"It cannot be," came from some one at her back. "But it can be driven home like a dagger if the hand wielding it is sufficiently powerful."
A cry left her lips; she seemed to listen as for some echo; then in a wild abandonment which ignored person and place she flung herself again at the dead girl's side, and before the astonished people surrounding her could intervene, she had caught up the body in her arms, and bending over it, whispered word after word into the poor child's closed ear.
II
IN ROOM B
Five minutes later the Curator was at the 'phone calling up Police Headquarters. A death had occurred at the museum. Would they send over a capable detective?
"What kind of death?" was the harsh reply. "We don't send detectives in cases of heart-failure or simple accident. Is it an accident?"
"No--no--hardly.