Chapter VI.

       The Weapon

       Table of Contents

      Right across from the Ansonia on the Rue Marboeuf was a little wine shop that remained open all night for the accommodation of cab drivers and belated pedestrians and to this Coquenil and the commissary now withdrew. Before anything else the detective wished to get from M. Pougeot his impressions of the case. And he asked Papa Tignol to come with them for a fortifying glass.

      "By the way," said the commissary to Tignol when they were seated in the back room, "did you find out how that woman left the hotel without her wraps and without being seen?"

      The old man nodded. "When she came out of the telephone booth she slipped on a long black rain coat that was hanging there. It belonged to the telephone girl and it's missing. The rain coat had a hood to it which the woman pulled over her head. Then she walked out quietly and no one paid any attention to her."

      "Good work, Papa Tignol," approved Coquenil.

      "It's you, M. Paul, who have done good work this night," chuckled Tignol. "Eh! Eh! What a lesson for Gibelin!"

      "The brute!" muttered Pougeot.

      Then they turned to the commissary's report of his investigation, Coquenil listening with intense concentration, interrupting now and then with a question or to consult the rough plan drawn by Pougeot.

      "Are you sure there is no exit from the banquet room and from these private rooms except by the corridor?" he asked.

      "They tell me not."

      "So, if the murderer went out, he must have passed Joseph?"

      "Yes."

      "And the only persons who passed Joseph were the woman and this American?"

      "Exactly."

      "Too easy!" he muttered. "Too easy!"

      "What do you mean?"

      "That would put the guilt on one or the other of those two?"

      "Apparently."

      "And end the case?"

      "Why—er——"

      "Yes, it would. A case is ended when the murderer is discovered. Well, this case is not ended, you can be sure of that. The murderer I am looking for is not that kind of a murderer. To begin with, he's not a fool. If he made up his mind to shoot a man in a private room he would know exactly what he was doing and exactly how he was going to escape."

      "But the facts are there—I've given them to you," retorted the commissary a little nettled.

      Coquenil shook his head.

      "My dear Lucien, you have given me some of the facts; before morning I hope we'll have others and—hello!"

      He stopped abruptly to look at a comical little man with a very large mouth, the owner of the place, who had been hovering about for some moments as if anxious to say something.

      "What is it, my friend?" asked Coquenil good-naturedly.

      At this the proprietor coughed in embarrassment and motioned to a prim, thin-faced woman in the front room who came forward with fidgety shyness, begging the gentlemen to forgive her if she had done wrong, but there was something on her conscience and she couldn't sleep without telling it.

      "Well?" broke in Pougeot impatiently, but Coquenil gave the woman a reassuring look and she went on to explain that she was a spinster living in a little attic room of the next house, overlooking the Rue Marboeuf. She worked as a seamstress all day in a hot, crowded atelier, and when she came home at night she loved to go out on her balcony, especially these fine summer evenings. She would stand there and brush her hair while she watched the sunset deepen and the swallows circle over the chimney tops. It was an excellent thing for a woman's hair to brush it a long time every night; she always brushed hers for half an hour—that was why it was so thick and glossy.

      "But, my dear woman," smiled Coquenil, "what has that to do with me? I have very little hair and no time to brush it."

      The seamstress begged his pardon, the point was that on the previous evening, just as she had nearly finished brushing her hair, she suddenly heard a sound like a pistol shot from across the street, and looking down, she saw a glittering object thrown from a window. She saw it distinctly and watched where it fell beyond the high wall that separated the Ansonia Hotel from an adjoining courtyard. She had not thought much about it at the moment, but, having heard that something dreadful had happened——

      Coquenil could contain himself no longer and, taking the woman's arm, he hurried her to the door.

      "Now," he said, "show me just where you saw this glittering object thrown over the wall."

      "There," she replied, pointing, "it lies to the left of that heavy doorway on the courtyard stones. I could see it from my balcony."