The Classic Mystery Collection - Arthur Conan Doyle [652]
Father Brown went racing along the passage like an arrow from the bow and was struggling with the door-handle before Jarvis had wakened with a start and begun to follow him.
"The door is locked," said the priest, turning a face that was a little pale. "And I am all in favour of breaking down this door."
"Do you mean," asked Jarvis with a rather ghastly look, "that the unknown visitor has got in here again? Do you think it's anything serious?" After a moment he added: "I may be able to push back the bolt; I know the fastening on these doors."
He knelt down and pulled out a pocket-knife with a long steel implement, manipulated it for a moment, and the door swung open on the manager's study. Almost the first thing they noticed was that there was no other door and even no window, but a great electric lamp stood on the table. But it was not quite the first thing that they noticed; for even before that they had seen that Mandeville was lying flat on his face in the middle of the room and the blood was crawling out from under his fallen face like a pattern of scarlet snakes that glittered evilly in that unnatural subterranean light.
They did not know how long they had been staring at each other when Jarvis said, like one letting loose something that he had held back with his breath:
"If the stranger got in somehow, she has gone somehow."
"Perhaps we think too much about the stranger," said Father Brown. "There are so many strange things in this strange theatre that you rather tend to forget some of them."
"Why, which things do you mean?" asked his friend quickly.
"There are many," said the priest. "There is the other locked door, for instance."
"But the other door is locked," cried Jarvis staring.
"But you forgot it all the same," said Father Brown. A few moments afterwards he said thoughtfully: "That Mrs. Sands is a grumpy and gloomy sort of card."
"Do you mean," asked the other in a lowered voice, "that she's lying and the Italian did come out?"
"No," said the priest calmly; "I think I meant it more or less as a detached study of character."
"You can't mean," cried the actor, "that Mrs. Sands did it herself?"
"I didn't mean a study of her character," said Father Brown.
While they had been exchanging these abrupt reflections, Father Brown had knelt down by the body and ascertained that it was beyond any hope or question a dead body. Lying beside it, though not immediately visible from the doorway, was a dagger of the theatrical sort; lying as if it had fallen from the wound or from the hand of the assassin. According to Jarvis, who recognized the instrument, there was not very much to be learned from it, unless the experts could find some finger-prints. It was a property dagger; that is, it was nobody's property; it had been kicking about the theatre for a long time, and anybody might have picked it up. Then the priest rose and looked gravely round the room.
"We must send for the police," he said; "and for a doctor, though the doctor comes too late. Looking at this room, by the way, I don't see how our Italian friend could manage it."
"The Italian!" cried his friend; "I should think not. I should have thought she had an alibi, if anybody had. Two separate rooms, both locked, at opposite ends of a long passage, with a fixed witness watching it."
"No," said Father Brown. "Not quite. The difficulty is how she could have got in this end. I think she might have got out the other end."
"And why?" asked the other.
"I told you," said Father Brown, "that it sounded as if she was breaking glass--mirrors or windows. Stupidly enough I forgot something I knew quite well; that she is pretty superstitious. She wouldn't be likely to break a mirror; so I suspect she broke a window. It's true that all this is under the ground floor; but it might be a skylight or a window opening on an area. But there don't seem to be any skylights