Picture Play Magazine (Oct-Nov 1915)

PICTURE-PLAY WEEKLY 11 with a businesslike nod toward the door of the adjoining room. "Go in and see him," he ordered curtly. Duvall crossed to the door, taking the key which the ambassador handed him, and, turning it in the lock, stepped into the next room. The valet, who, according to the ambassador's account of what had happened, had been locked up there for hours, was seated in front of a table, with his arms crossed upon it and his head upon his arms — apparently asleep. He did not look up, as Duvall opened and closed the door behind him. His slumber, evidently, was the deep one of utter exhaustion. Crossing to the valet's side, Duvall laid his hand on his shoulder — and started back with an involuntary gasp of amazement. The valet was dead! Squarely in the center of his %forehead, Duvall looked at a round, black hole that had been drilled there by a revolver bullet. Sweeping the floor with his eyes, Duvall stooped and picked up a card. It read : "Doctor Hartmann. Brussels." But there was no sign of the pistol with which the valet had met his death, and for which Duvall had been looking, anywhere upon the rug that covered the floor of the room. The man must have been murdered, then. But why, since a shot had ended his life, hadn't the report alarmed the ambassador in the adjoining library? Duvall opened the door and stepped back into that room. "Well?" both Monsieur Lefevre and the ambassador inquired of him eagerly. "Your valet is dead," Duvall quietly informed Monsieur de Grissac. The latter rose from his chair with a cry of astonishment. "He has been murdered," Duvall quickly went on. "And that not more than ten minutes ago. It is my belief that whoever killed him now has the snuffbox — which you were right in suspecting your manservant of having stolen. For, unless he had it in his possession, there would have been no motive for any one's murdering him." "But how do you know that he was murdered?" exclaimed Monsieur Lefevre. "Because the bullet that entered his brain must have killed him instantly," replied Duvall, "and if he had taken his own life, the revolver would have been found on the floor, at his feet. There is no sign of the weapon in the room." "You say," put in Monsieur de Grissac, "that he has been dead not more than ten minutes. But for double that length of time I have been here in this library, within hearing of such a shot — and yet I heard nothing !" "A Maxim silencer was probably used on the pistol," explained Duvall. "We are evidently dealing with a powerful clique of criminals, chief," he turned to address Monsieur Lefevre briskly. "Do you recall the smooth-shaven, thickset man with the German cast of countenance we saw leaving this house as we and ran from the room, to descend the front steps of the embassy two at a time, and hurry across the street toward the striped pole that stood at the corner. As he entered the barber shop, Duvall saw that his man was there, all right. But he was not in a chair, receiving either a shave, hair cut, or massage at the hands of one of the tonsorialists. The smooth-shaven, stockily built man with the German cast of countenance whom Duvall had seen departing from the French ambassador's house as he and Monsieur Lefevre had been about to enter it, was now clad in a white jacket and engaged in applying the lather from = ! It was the smooth-shaven, stockily built man with the German cast of countenance. came up the steps just now? I noticed that he went into the barber shop on the corner. I have a "hunch," as we Americans say, that he was the one who killed the ambassador's valet — it's just a hunch, but I'm going after him. No man yet, in this country or any other, ever got out of a barber shop in anything less than a quarter of an hour, and he's doubtless still there." Snatching up his hat from the ambassador's library table, Duvall wheeled the brush in his hand to the chin of a customer who sat in the chair before him. He had not entered the place as a patron, but as one of the barbers returning there to resume his labors — which he had interrupted, if Duvall's "hunch" was correct, to commit both a murder and a theft in the embassy, across the street. "Neat," commented Duvall to himself, as he removed his collar and sat down in the first chair, in acceptance of the