Detective and mystery stories; Drug traffic -- Fiction
Chief Inspector Kerry pushed upon the broken door, and walked into the
rooms of Kazmah. Flashing the ray of his torch on the wall, he found
the switch and snapped up the lights. He removed his overall and tossed
it on a divan with his cane. Then, tilting his bowler further forward,
he thrust his hands into his reefer pockets, and stood staring toward
the door, beyond which lay the room of the murder, in darkness.
“Who is he?” he muttered. “What’s it mean?”
Taking up the torch, he walked through and turned on the lights in the
inner rooms. For a long time he stood staring at the little square
window low down behind the ebony chair, striving to imagine uses for it
as his wife had urged him to do. The globular green lamp in the second
apartment was worked by three switches situated in the inside room, and
he had discovered that in this way the visitor who came to consult
Kazmah was treated to the illusion of a gradually falling darkness.
Then, the door in the first partition being opened, whoever sat in the
ebony chair would become visible by the gradual uncovering of a light
situated above the chair. On this light being covered again the figure
would apparently fade away.
It was ingenious, and, so far, quite clear. But two things badly
puzzled the inquirer; the little window down behind the chair, and the
fact that all the arrangements for raising and lowering the lights were
situated not in the narrow chamber in which Kazmah’s chair stood, and
in which Sir Lucien had been found, but in the room behind it—the room
with which the little window communicated.
The table upon which the telephone rested was set immediately under
this mysterious window, the window was provided with a green blind, and
the switchboard controlling the complicated lighting scheme was also
within reach of anyone seated at the table.
Kerry rolled mint gum from side to side of his mouth, and absently
tried the handle of the door opening out from this interior
room—evidently the office of the establishment—into the corridor. He
knew it to be locked. Turning, he walked through the suite and out on
to the landing, passing the constable and going upstairs to the top
floor, torch in hand.
From the main landing he walked along the narrow corridor until he
stood at the head of the back stairs. The door nearest to him bore the
name: “Cubanis Cigarette Company.” He tried the handle. The door was
locked, as he had anticipated. Kneeling down, he peered into the
keyhole, holding the electric torch close beside his face and chewing
industriously.
Ere long he stood up, descended again, but by the back stair, and stood
staring reflectively at the door communicating with Kazmah’s inner
room. Then walking along the corridor to where the man stood on, the
landing, he went in again to the mysterious apartments, but only to get
his cane and his overall and to turn out the lights.
Five minutes later he was ringing the late Sir Lucien’s door-bell.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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