Young Mr. Oakes was not enjoying himself. For the first time in his life,
the self-confidence which characterized all his actions seemed to be failing
him. The change had taken place almost overnight. The fact that the case
had the appearance of presenting the unusual had merely stimulated him
at first. But then doubts had crept in and the problem had begun to appear
insoluble.
True, he had only just taken it up, but something told him that, for all
the progress he was likely to make, he might just as well have been working
on it steadily for a month. He was completely baffled. And every moment
which he spent in the Excelsior Boarding-House made it clearer to him that
that infernal old woman with the pale eyes thought him an incompetent fool.
It was that, more than anything, which made him acutely conscious of his
lack of success. His nerves were being sorely troubled by the quiet scorn
of Mrs. Pickett's gaze. He began to think that perhaps he had been a shade
too self-confident and abrupt in the short interview which he had had with
her on his arrival. As might have been expected, his first act, after his
brief interview with Mrs. Pickett, was to examine the room where the tragedy
had taken place. The body was gone, but otherwise nothing had been moved.
Oakes belonged to the magnifying-glass school of detection. The first thing
he did on entering the room was to make a careful examination of the floor,
the walls, the furniture, and the windowsill. He would have hotly denied
the assertion that he did this because it looked well, but he would have
been hard put to it to advance any other reason.
If he discovered anything, his discoveries were entirely negative, and
served only to deepen the mystery of the case. As Mr. Snyder had said,
there was no chimney, and nobody could have entered through the locked
door.
There remained the window. It was small, and apprehensiveness, perhaps,
of the possibility of burglars, had caused the proprietress to make it
doubly secure with an iron bar. No human being could have squeezed his
way through it.
It was late that night that he wrote and dispatched to headquarters the
report which had amused Mr. Snyder.
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