“Miss Braden!” I called, and she turned, waiting for me to come up. “Did you see the man who just came in our office?”
“Yes.” Curiosity put lights in her green eyes. “A tall man who came up in the elevator with me. Why?”
“Was he alone?”
“Yes. That is, he and I were the only ones who got off at this floor. Why?”
“Did you see anybody close to him?”
“No, though I didn’t notice him in the elevator. Why?”
“Did he act funny?”
“Not that I noticed. Why?”
“Thanks. I’ll drop in and tell you about it later.”
I made a circuit of the corridors on our floor, finding nothing.
The rawboned man was still on the floor when I returned to the office, but he had been turned over on his back. He was as dead as I had thought. The Old Man, who had been examining him, straightened up as I came in. Porter was at the telephone, trying to get the police. Tommy Howd’s eyes were blue half-dollars in a white face.
“Nothing in the corridors,” I told the Old Man. “He came up in the elevator with Agnes Braden. She says he was alone, and she saw nobody close to him.”
“Quite so.” The Old Man’s voice and smile were as pleasantly polite as if the corpse at his feet had been a part of the pattern in the carpet. Fifty years of sleuthing have left him with no more emotion than a pawnbroker. “He seems to have been stabbed in the left breast, a rather