WAS CARRIE RIGHT? Had Violetta just pushed a man out a window?

“She was talking to that tall man with the beard,” hissed Carrie from atop the ladder. “They were standing by the window. He was there one moment and gone the next.”

I let go of the ladder & ran to the corner of the building & peeped around it.

Sure enough, three men were crouched over something on the ground. It was the body of a man. The cloth awning between the window and the pavement was torn where he had fallen through.

I remembered the mental picture I had made of legislators on the ledge, being forced to jump and go splat if they did not make good laws.

“Who is it?” asked one of the men bending over him.

“Abram Benway,” said another one. “He just got himself proposed for a Toll Road Franchise. Guess he was celebrating too hard.” It was the Sergeant at Arms from the Council. He had been taking people’s tickets at the door. Now he knelt down and put his ear to Benway’s mouth. “I think he is still breathing,” he cried. He stood up and pointed to the nearby Magnolia Saloon. “Lay him out on one of the billiard tables. And one of you fetch a doctor!”

One of the other men said, “I will fetch Doc Pugh from upstairs.”

“Good,” said the Sergeant at Arms. “But for God’s sake don’t cause a commotion. People have paid their five dollars and some are still arriving. This fellow may yet live. No point spoiling the Ball. It is for a Good Cause.”

There was a squeal from above and behind me. I whirled to see Miss Carrie Pixley hanging from the windowsill by her fingers. That lofty ladder was listing to one side & her kicking feet were trying to find a rung.

“P.K.!” she gasped. “Help!”

I ran to the ladder & caught it just as it was about to fall. I righted it & put it under Carrie’s feet & held it steady as she shakily descended.

“How could you do that?” she cried. “You left me up there on my own.”

“I am sorry,” I said.

“Look!” She held out her trembling hand. “I’m all aquiver! Is the man who fell out the window all right?” she added.

“No, he is in a bad way.”

She ran to the corner & peeped around it. I saw her open her mouth to scream.

Quick as a telegram, I clapped my gloved hand over her mouth.

“Shush!” I hissed in her ear. “Don’t give us away!”

Two men were carrying a body away from a spreading pool of blood on the pavement.

“Is he dead?” said Carrie in a choking voice. In the flickering yellow light of the torches her face looked almost green. I pulled her back into the shadows.

“I hope he ain’t dead,” I said, “so he can say if she pushed him or not.”

“Oh, P.K.,” whimpered Carrie. “I don’t like being a Detective. Here!” She took off my stovepipe hat and thrust it into my hands. Then she stumbled off down shadowy Musser Street, her long hair swinging and the hem of her pa’s coat dragging on the ground behind her.

I watched her disappear into the night.

Then I ventured out into Carson Street, keeping out of the circle of torchlight, and looked up at the brightly lit ballroom windows.

Had petite Violetta really pushed tall Abram Benway from the upper window?

If so, she did not seem worried. I saw her magenta-clad figure twirl past the window as she danced with a gray-haired man. On a billiard table in the Magnolia Saloon below her, Mr. Abram Benway was dying, never to recover consciousness.

• • •

Next morning, all of Carson buzzed with the tragic news.

Some people were scandalized because one of the bands had continued playing till the wee hours. A respected member of the community had died, where was their respect?

Other people were upset because the other band had refused to keep playing above the still-cooling corpse on the billiard table. But people had paid $5 for a ticket and some had come for miles and it was for a Good Cause.

Nobody even mentioned the possibility that Benway’s death might not have been an accident.

The awning below the French doors on the upper floor of the legislature should have held him, they said, but it was cotton or rotten—or both—so he went right through it. If he had fallen onto a boardwalk of wooden planks, they said, he might have bounced. But the pavement out front of the Great Basin Hotel was one of the few made of sandstone. That was what killed Abram Benway, they said: bad luck.

Had Carrie been right?

Had Violetta really pushed Abram Benway out of the window?

Both houses of the legislature met the next day, but they adjourned early to attend Benway’s funeral. I took advantage of the deserted streets to go to the telegraph office. I found E.B. and gave him a telegram addressed to Miss Jane Loveless aka Miss Opal Blossom: J at Sanitary Ball last night. He danced with Widow named Violetta De Baskerville. They talked about Toll Road Franchises. She also danced with a man called Abram Benway before he tumbled out window to his death.

Within a few hours, I got a strangely terse reply from Opal. Good work. Keep reports coming. She did not even ask for more information about Violetta nor about Abram Benway’s death!

I wrote Jace a short account of the Sanitary Ball. In my report I said that Mrs. Violetta De Baskerville had been talking to Abram Benway right before he fell out the window but I did not accuse her. I only stated the facts. I also included a copy of my telegram to Opal Blossom and her strange reply.

Still dressed in my Jewish Phonographic Boy Disguise, I took my report down to the St. Charles Hotel and watched the desk clerk put it in the pigeonhole. It was about 4¹/₂ in the afternoon.

As I was turning to go, I saw Jace and Violetta coming in together. They were arm in arm, both in black. She had been weeping. I reckon they were returning from Abram Benway’s funeral.

I shrank back behind the potted fern and tried the Fern Trick. If they saw me, neither of them showed it.

• • •

That Sunday Mrs. Violetta De Baskerville did not come to Smith’ s Stable for her ride to scout out Toll Roads. Mrs. Murphy said she’d heard a rumor that Violetta had taken to her bed with grief and shock. Her story was that Mr. Abram Benway had been chatting to her and made a joke and turned and disappeared out the window. She thought it a prank until she learned that he had died.

The next day, on Monday December 1st, a man named Richardson was arrested on suspicion of murdering Con Mason, the young man with the floppy chestnut hair. Richardson was Con’s “pal” and the one who had found the body.

So I had almost convinced myself that Violetta was innocent, when something happened to show me her true nature.