11:01 p.m. —Banked Fires
The corridor was deserted.
Lieutenant Valcour walked along it to the top of the stair well and looked down into the entrance hall. He could see the broad athletic back of Officer O’Brian on guard at the door. O’Brian’s snub nose was pressed against the plate glass, and his eyes, one presumed, were staring out through the door’s bronze grille upon the street.
As Lieutenant Valcour went down he wondered at the complete stillness of the house. There was no sound of any nature at all. There was a waiting quality about the stillness: a definite waiting for something that would shatter the hush into bedlam.
“What are you pressing your nose against the glass for, O’Brian?” he said.
The young policeman turned and grinned at him broadly.
“Sure, it’s them boys from the papers, sir,” he said. “They’re all stirred up over what the medical examiner has just told them.”
Lieutenant Valcour groaned faintly. “When was this, O’Brian?”
“Not two whisks of a lamb’s tail ago, sir—out there in the vestibule.”
“Did the medical examiner go out into the vestibule?”
“He did that, Lieutenant, and the last mother’s son of them has just beaten it off down the street like a jumping jack rabbit. They were crazy after photographs, but he drew the line at that now.”
“Really?” Lieutenant Valcour was politely astounded.