Page 4 of 5
More Books
More by this Author
|
"But to go back. This discovery, so important if true, was as
yet - that is, at the time of our entering the room,- limited to
the off-hand declaration of an irresponsible physician, but the
possibility it involved was of so astonishing a nature that it
influenced us unconsciously in our investigation and led us almost
immediately into a consideration of the difficulties attending
an entrance into, as well as an escape from, a room situated as
this was.
"Up three flights from the court, with no communication with the
adjoining rooms save through a door guarded on both sides by heavy
pieces of furniture no one person could handle, the hall door
buttoned on the inside, and the fire-escape some fifteen feet to
the left, this room of death appeared to be as removed from the
approach of a murderous outsider as the spot in the writing-room
of the Clermont where Miss Challoner fell.
"Otherwise, the place presented the greatest contrast possible to
that scene of splendour and comfort. I had not entered the
Clermont at that time, and no, such comparison could have struck
my mind. But I have thought of it since, and you, with your
experience, will not find it difficult to picture the room where
this poor woman lived and worked. Bare walls, with just a newspaper
illustration pinned up here and there, a bed - tragically occupied
at this moment - a kitchen stove on which a boiler, half-filled
with steaming clothes still bubbled and foamed, - an old bureau,- a
large pine wardrobe against an inner door which we later found to
have been locked for months, and the key lost,- some chairs - and
most pronounced of all, because of its position directly before the
window, a pine bench supporting a wash-tub of the old sort.
|