The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow | Page 3

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 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