The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow | Page 4

follow the more
adventurous ones upstairs, crossed to where the door-man stood on
guard over the main entrance.
"Locked?" he asked.
"Yes, sir. Such were the orders. Didn't you give them?"
"No, but I should have done so, had I known. No one's to go out, and
no one's to come in but the detective whom I am expecting any
moment."
They had not long to wait. Before their suspense had reached
fever-point, a tap was heard on the great door. It was opened, and a

young man stepped in.
"Coast clear?" he sang out with a humorous twist of his jaw as he noted
the Curator's evident chagrin at his meager and unsatisfactory
appearance. "Oh, I'm not your man," he added as his eye ran over the
whole place with a look which seemed to take in every detail in an
instant. "Mr. Gryce is in the automobile. Wait till I help him up."
He was gone before the Curator could utter a word, only to reappear in
a few minutes with a man in his wake whom the former at first blush
thought to be as much past the age where experience makes for
efficiency as the other seemed to be short of it.
But this impression, if impression it were, was of short duration. No
sooner had this physically weak but extremely wise old man entered
upon the scene than his mental power became evident to every person
there. Timorous hearts regained their composure, and the Curator--who
in his ten years of service had never felt the burden of his position so
acutely as in the last ten minutes--showed his relief by a volubility
quite unnatural to him under ordinary conditions. As he conducted the
detectives across the court, he talked not of the victim, as might
reasonably be expected, but of the woman who had been found leaning
over her with her hand on the arrow.
"We think her some escaped lunatic," he remarked. "Only a demented
woman would act as she does. First she denied all knowledge of the girl.
Then when she was made to see that the arrow sticking in the girl's
breast had been taken from a quiver hanging within arm's reach on the
wall and used as lances are used, she fell a-moaning and crying, and
began to whisper in the poor child's senseless ear."
"A common woman? One of a low-down type?"
"Not at all. A lady, and an impressive one, at that. You seldom see her
equal. That's what has upset us so. The crime and the criminal do not
seem to fit."
The detective blinked. Then suddenly he seemed to grow an inch taller.

"Where is she now?" he asked.
"In Room B, away from the crowd. She is not alone. A young lady
detained with the rest of the people here is keeping her company, to say
nothing of an officer we have put on guard."
"And the victim?"
"Lies where she fell, in Section II on the upper floor. There was no call
to move her. She was dead when we came upon the scene. She does not
look to be more than sixteen years old."
"Let's go up. But wait--can we see that section from here?"
They were standing at the foot of the great staircase connecting the two
floors. Above them, stretching away on either side, ran the two famous,
highly ornamented galleries, with their row of long, low arches
indicating the five compartments into which they were severally
divided. Pointing to the second one on the southern side, the Curator
replied:
"That's it--the one where you see the Apache relics hanging high on the
rear wall. We shall have to shift those to some other place just as soon
as we can recover from this horror. I don't want the finest spot in the
whole museum made a Mecca for the morbid and the curious."
The remark fell upon unheeding ears. Detective Gryce was looking, not
in the direction named, but in the one directly opposite to it.
"I see," he quietly observed, "that there is a clear view across. Was
there no one in the right-hand gallery to see what went on in the left?"
"Not that I have heard of. It's the dullest hour of the day, and not only
this gallery but many of the rooms were entirely empty."
"I see. And now, what about the persons who were here? How many of
them have you let go?"
"Not one; the doors have been opened twice only--once to admit the

officer you will find on guard, and the other to let in yourself."
"Good! And how many have you here, all told?"
"I have not had time to count them, but I should say less than thirty.
This includes myself, as well as