The Blue Sphinx

CHAPTER X THE MAN WHO KNEW

BACK at the outer door of the museum, Hollis was seated at his table. The chief attendant was restless. Hollis glanced at his watch. Twenty minutes past eight.

Hollis had bolted the outer door, his usual procedure after admitting a visitor. It was his duty to remain here until the watchmen arrived, unless otherwise ordered by Rubal. There had been no summons from the curator.

Yet Hollis was sure that something was amiss. He had an impression that he had heard an odd, sighing cry from a distant spot of the museum. He knew that the door of the curator’s office was not soundproof. Noise carried strangely through the long corridors of the museum. Could that cry have come from Rubal’s office?

Hollis ended his indecision. He glanced toward the outer door. Any one seeking admittance there would have to ring. The bell could be heard from Rubal’s office. Hollis decided that it would be a good idea to visit the curator. He glanced at his watch, then nodded. He had found a satisfactory excuse.

Pocketing his watch, Hollis plodded past the Medieval Room and took to the long corridor that led to Rubal’s office. Reaching his objective; the chief attendant stopped and listened intently. He heard some one moving within the office. That sound faded. Then Hollis fancied that he caught a moan. “Mr. Rubal!”

Hollis knocked as he gave the call. He listened. There was no response. “Mr. Rubal!”

A dull click, like some one pressing a light switch. That was all that Hollis heard.

Perplexed, the chief attendant opened the door of the office. The barrier swung inward; something stopped its course. Hollis pushed harder; he heard a moan as the door swung clear past an obstruction that shifted on the floor. Then Hollis stood astounded.

The office light was out. So was the light of the little filing room. The click that Hollis had heard was the explanation of the inner light being gone. But Hollis was not concerned with that matter. He was staring toward the floor of the curator’s office.

By the light of the corridor, Hollis could see the prone form of Joseph Rubal. The curator’s face showed pallid and distorted. Gasping lips and pleading eyes registered themselves to the chief attendant’s gaze. Hollis stooped beside the dying curator.

“Mr. Rubal!” blurted the attendant. “Tell me — what has happened—”

“Knode!” gasped the curator weakly. “Harrison Knode! He — he shot me; I’m dying—”

“Knode?” questioned Hollis. “Knode shot you? But — but where — where did he—”

HOLLIS paused abruptly. He caught a sound from straight ahead. The attendant looked up, then came slowly to his feet. He was looking toward the door of the filing room, where he could detect a slight motion.

Whirling impressions swept through the attendant’s brain. Finding Joseph Rubal on the floor, Hollis had first thought the curator stricken by a heart attack. Rubal’s words had astounded him; then had come this interruption.

Motionless, Hollis stared at that door. He realized that the murderer stood there; that the slayer had chosen the filing room as a lurking spot. Hollis did not picture what had happened. He did not know that Rubal, stepping from the filing room, had been a perfect target against a background of light.

Nor did he realize that he had stepped into a similar situation. With the light of the corridor behind him, Hollis was another target. His first cognizance of that fact came when he saw what Rubal had seen: the glimmer of a revolver.

Hollis uttered a hoarse cry. He started forward, hopelessly. Flame tongued through the darkened office; with it, the fierce sigh of the silencer-fitted gun. The second shot proved better than the first. Hollis doubled crazily and tottered.

Joseph Rubal delivered a last croaking gasp from the floor. Then Hollis came tumbling squarely on his body. The chief attendant gave a final writhe and rolled from the curator’s dead form. Side by side, Rubal and Hollis lay dead.

THE murderer did not turn on the light. Instead, he prowled about the room with a flashlight. He picked up the letters that Rubal had dropped upon the floor. He found the resignation and added it to the letters. He gathered up Rubal’s notations, including the marked plan of the museum. Then he extinguished his flash.

Stepping past the dead bodies, the killer sidled to the door. But he did not move into the corridor; wary, he wanted to avoid its revealing light, despite the fact that he had become the only living man remaining in the Latuna Museum.

An arm came into the corridor, reaching around the corner from the office door. A hand found a light switch that controlled the corridor lights. Three clicks. The pathway from office to the big front door was a mass of blackness.

Unaided even by his flashlight, the killer moved out of Rubal’s office and made his way along the corridor to the front of the museum. He reached the steps by the big front door and felt his way to the barrier. Groping, he found the bar and raised it. He swung the huge door inward, stepped out into the night and closed the door behind him.

A clouded sky had brought pitch-blackness to the ground. Even the whitened front of the museum was barely visible. The building looked a dim, ghostly sepulchre in the darkness. Its deathlike appearance was appropriate; for it had become the tomb for two murdered victims.

The killer gave a low, evil laugh as he stalked away from the museum of death. Treading hard clay soil, he left no footprints behind him. He found a hard-beaten path in the darkness and descended the hill in back of the museum until he arrived at an old road near the quarry siding.

Tiny lights were flickering half a mile away. The killer watched them bob and scatter. Then he kept on moving through the dark. They were doing night blasting at the isolated quarry. A hundred yards along the road, the murderer paused while a muffled boom resounded and the earth gave a slight shudder.

Then, as clattering rocks came tumbling down the neighboring hillside, the unseen killer turned from the road and stepped amid a thick cluster of trees. He flicked his flashlight on the stony surface of an abandoned road. The glimmer showed an old coupe, parked in readiness. The killer extinguished his torch.

Entering the car, this man of murder turned on the dim lights and started the motor. He drove bounding along the old road, curving off through trees, away from both the museum and the quarry. He reached a highway and began a curving course in the direction of Latuna.

Double death had struck tonight. With evil aforethought, a murderer had spelled finish to the affairs of Joseph Rubal. Then, as a final touch, the killer had lurked to deliver death to the only man who might have served as witness for the law.

He had slain Hollis, the man who knew. With the chief attendant dead beside the slain curator, it would take the efforts of a master sleuth to pin crime on the fiend who had committed it.