The Mystery of the Hasty ArrowGreen, Anna Katharine
General
The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow
Green, Anna Katharine
Detective and mystery stories
This notice, appended to such particulars of the tragedy as appeared in
all the morning papers, roused the city--I may even say the country--to
even greater wonder and excitement than had followed the first details
given in the journals of the evening before.
Would anything come of it?
Morning passed; no news of Antoinette Duclos.
Afternoon: messages of all kinds leading to much work, but bringing no
result.
Five o'clock: a missive from the directors of the museum to the effect
that under the peculiar circumstances and the seeming absence of any
friends of the deceased, they would be glad to furnish the means
necessary to the proper care and burial of the young woman killed in such
an unhappy manner within their walls.
A half-hour later, Gryce, for whose appearance the Inspector had been
anxiously waiting, came in with his report. A chair was pushed up for
him, for he was an old man and had had a sleepless night, as we know,
besides two days of continued work. But he did not drop into it, as the
Inspector expected, or give any other signs of exceptional fatigue; yet
when he had seated himself and they were left alone, he did not hasten to
speak, though he evidently had much to say, but remained quiet, holding
counsel, as it were, in his old way, with some small object he had picked
up from the desk before him.
At last the Inspector spoke:
"You have been on the hunt; what did you find?"
"Not much, Inspector--and yet enough to disturb me in a way I was not
looking for. Of course, in studying the situation carefully, you have
asked yourself how the man who shot the arrow from behind the upper
pedestal got away. He did not wait as Travis did till the first
excitement had abated and the way was, in a manner, cleared for an escape
into the court. For X, as we will call him, was certainly among those I
saw lined up before me at the moment I bade them one and all to return
and stand until released, in the exact spot occupied by them when the
first alarm rang out. After the surprise Travis gave us we had the
building searched from roof to cellar. Not another soul was found in it
whose name was not registered on the chart. As I have already said, the
guilty one had managed to escape immediately upon the flight of the
arrow, though how, even then, he could have got below in the time he did
is a mystery which trips me up every time I think of it. But letting that
go for the present, he did get there and get there unnoticed. How? Now,
there are three ways of escape from behind either of those pedestals. The
way Travis took, that is, toward the front, and round through the suite
of rooms headed by the one marked H, to the rear staircase; the more
direct one of an immediate exit from the gallery through Sections VI and
VII to this same staircase; and (the only one worth considering) a
straight plunge for the door behind the tapestry and so down by the
winding staircase beyond, into the Curator's office. The unknown never
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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