The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow | Page 3

to allow
her to pass. Besides, the director, Mr. Roberts, had something to say
first. Working his way forward, he waited till he had attracted her
attention and then remarked in his most considerate manner:
"You will pardon these importunities, Mrs. Taylor. I am a director of
this museum, and if Mr. Jewett will excuse me,"--here he bowed to the
Curator,--"I should like to inquire from what direction the arrow came
which ended this young girl's life?"
For a moment she stood aghast, fixing him with her eye as though to
ask whither this inquiry tended. Then with an air of intention which
was not without some strange element of fear, she allowed her glance

to travel across the court till it rested upon the row of connected arches
facing them from the opposite gallery.
"Ah," said he, putting her look into words, "you think the arrow came
from the other side of the building. Did you see anyone over there,--in
the gallery, I mean,--at or before the instant of this young girl's fall?"
She shook her head.
"Did any of you?" he urged, with his eyes on the crowd. "Some one
must have been looking that way."
But no answer came, and the silence was fast becoming oppressive
when these words, whispered by one woman to another, roused them
anew and sent every glance again to the walls--even hers for whose
benefit this remark had possibly been made:
"But there are no arrows over there. All the arrows are here."
She was right. They were here, quiver after quiver of them; nor were
they all beyond reach. As the woman thus significantly assailed noted
this and saw with what suspicion others noted it also, a decided change
took place in her aspect.
"I should like to sit down," she murmured. Possibly she was afraid she
might fall.
As some one brought a chair, she spoke, but very tremulously, to the
director:
"Are there no arrows in the rooms over there?"
"I am quite sure not."
"And no bows?"
"None."
"If--if anyone had been seen in the gallery----"

"No one was."
"You are sure of that?"
"You heard the question asked. It brought no answer."
"But--but these galleries are visible from below. Some one may have
been looking up from the court and----"
"If there was any such person in the building, he would have been here
by this time. People don't hold back such information."
"Then--then--" she stammered, her eyes taking on a hunted look, "you
conclude--these people conclude what?"
"Madam,"--the word came coldly, stinging her into drawing herself to
her full height,--"it is not for me to conclude in a case like this. That is
the business of the police."
At this word, with its suggestion of crime, her air of conscious power
vanished in sudden collapse. Possibly she had seen the significant
gesture with which the Curator pointed out a quiver from which one of
the arrows was missing. That this was so, was shown by her next
question:
"But where is the bow? Look about on the floor. You will find none.
How can an arrow be shot without a bow?"
"It cannot be," came from some one at her back. "But it can be driven
home like a dagger if the hand wielding it is sufficiently powerful."
A cry left her lips; she seemed to listen as for some echo; then in a wild
abandonment which ignored person and place she flung herself again at
the dead girl's side, and before the astonished people surrounding her
could intervene, she had caught up the body in her arms, and bending
over it, whispered word after word into the poor child's closed ear.

II
IN ROOM B
Five minutes later the Curator was at the 'phone calling up Police
Headquarters. A death had occurred at the museum. Would they send
over a capable detective?
"What kind of death?" was the harsh reply. "We don't send detectives
in cases of heart-failure or simple accident. Is it an accident?"
"No--no--hardly. It looks more like an insane woman's attack upon a
harmless stranger. It's the oddest sort of an affair, and we feel very
helpless. No common officer will do. We have one of that kind in the
building. What we want is a man of brains; he will need them."
A muffled sound at the other end--then a different voice asking some
half-dozen comprehensive questions--which, having been answered to
the best of the Curator's ability, were followed by the welcome
assurance that a man on whose experience he could rely would be at the
museum doors within five minutes.
With an air of relief Mr. Jewett stepped again into the court, and
repelling with hasty gestures the importunities of the small group of
men and women who had lacked the courage to