Murder on the Blackboard Read Online Free PDF

face her.
    “Oh,” she remarked, in a disappointed tone. “It’s only you.”
    He wore a heartfelt look of relief. “Thank God it’s you,” he told her fervently. “Say, what have you been doing up here alone? I thought you were coming with us …”
    “Never mind that,” Miss Withers interrupted. “Did you find anything in that grave?”
    Sergeant Taylor shook his head. “It wasn’t very deep,” he admitted. “But it was a good beginning. Six feet long, two feet wide, and about two or three feet deep, cut down into the soft dirt under the pillars in the unfinished part of the cellar. There’s no flooring there, you know.”
    Miss Withers nodded, thoughtfully. “Anything else?”
    “Nothing to speak of. No sign of that janitor fellow. They did come on a box half filled with women’s wornout shoes, hidden in the clothes closet of the janitor’s room under the stairs. And that’s a funny thing for a man to collect.”
    Miss Withers moved back and forth, restlessly. “It doesn’t make sense!” she protested. “Oh, I wish Oscar Piper were here. He was almost always wrong, but he was so positive about everything that it was almost as good as being right. He’d have some explanation for this. An hour ago I saw a body here—now there’s a grave and the body is gone.”
    “Come on down and have a look at the grave,” invited Taylor. “I’d feel better about this if you stuck with us until we find the guy we’re looking for.”
    “Then you’ll stick with me,” Hildegarde Withers told him. “Because I’m going to go through the one remaining room on this floor if it kills me.” She led the way to the door nearest the staircase, which bore the joint labels 3A and 3B. They came into a long, bare room partially filled with benches and littered with tools. “Mr. Stevenson, the assistant principal, teaches shopwork and science to the older boys in this room,” she explained. “That door farther on is his private office.”
    Taylor nodded. He crossed over to a bench and picked up a shining chisel. “Now do you suppose the Inspector was beaned with one of these?”
    Miss Withers hesitated. “Maybe. You’d better have McTeague check over these tools and see if anything is missing.”
    Taylor nodded. “Yes, ma’am. Shall I have him do it now? I ordered him to patrol the stairs and the upper hall here until we got through….”
    “Later will do,” Miss Withers decided. “I don’t want him poking around here until we see all there is to be seen.”
    The end of the room used for the science classes boasted only of a double row of chairs facing a long table against the windows, which was littered with aquaria, plant specimens, cases containing frogs and turtles, and a hutch containing nothing but sodden straw.
    “You are standing on the scene of a recent tragedy,” Miss Withers remarked as she paused before the hutch. “Amos and Andy, two guinea pigs, used to live here, the pets of the school. They were purchased for dissection purposes, I suppose, but the children got to love them so much that Mr. Stevenson didn’t have the heart to use them in his demonstrations. For some reason or other, they up and died a few days ago. That is, Amos died. Andy was sick, but he lingered on and had to be put out of his misery.”
    Taylor scented a mystery. “Say! Do you think they could have been poisoned?”
    Miss Withers was dubious. “I’m afraid it’s nothing exciting like that, Sergeant. They were fine and fat and healthy looking, but they gradually grew too weak to stand up. Something deficient in their diet, I suppose, or else lack of sunlight. Mr. Stevenson explained it to the children, but I don’t remember. It doesn’t matter. Shall we go on into his office?”
    Sergeant Taylor followed her, but he was puzzled. “See here,” he said, “I don’t get this straight. Are we hunting for clues in desk drawers, or for a murderer that’s supposed to be hiding somewhere in this