Page:Miss Madelyn Mack Detective.pdf/31

"From the inside. Peters and the footman saw the key when they broke in this morning. . . . Peters swears he heard Mr. Marsh turn it when he left him writing at ten o'clock last night."

"The windows?"

"Fastened as tight as a drum—and, if they wasn't, it's a matter of a good thirty foot to the ground."

"The roof, perhaps?"

"A cat might get through it—if every part wasn't clamped as tight as the windows."

Mr. Peddicord spoke with a distinct inflection of triumph. Madelyn was still staring at the curtains.

"Isn't it rather odd," I ventured, "that the sounds of the struggle, or whatever it was, didn't alarm the house?"

Sheriff Peddicord plainly regarded me as an outsider. He answered my question with obvious shortness.

"You could fire a blunderbuss up here and no one would be the wiser. They say as how Mr. Marsh had the room made sound-proof. And, besides, the servants have a building to themselves, all except Miss Jansen's maid, who sleeps in a room next to her at the other end of the house."

My eyes circled back to Wendell Marsh's knotted figure—his shriveled face—horror-frozen eyes—the hand gripped about the fantastic pipe. I think