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THE BENSON MURDER CASE (Part 1)

“Mr. Mason,” he said, “I wish to thank you for my life.”

“Sir,” said Mason, “I had no interest in your life. The adjustment of your problem was the only thing of interest to me.”

—Randolph Mason: Corrector of Destinies

INTRODUCTORY

If you will refer to the municipal statistics of the City of New York, you will find that the number of unsolved major crimes during the four years that John F.-X. Markham was district attorney, was far smaller than under any of his predecessors’ administrations. Markham projected the district attorney’s office into all manner of criminal investigations; and, as a result, many abstruse crimes on which the police had hopelessly gone aground were eventually disposed of.

But although he was personally credited with the many important indictments and subsequent convictions that he secured, the truth is that he was only an instrument in many of his most famous cases. The man who actually solved them and supplied the evidence for their prosecution was in no way connected with the city’s administration and never once came into the public eye.

At that time I happened to be both legal advisor and personal friend of this other man, and it was thus that the strange and amazing facts of the situation became known to me. But not until recently have I been at liberty to make them public. Even now I am not permitted to divulge the man’s name, and for that reason I have chosen, arbitrarily, to refer to him throughout these ex officio reports as Philo Vance.

It is, of course, possible that some of his acquaintances may, through my revelations, be able to guess his identity; and if such should prove the case, I beg of them to guard that knowledge; for though he has now gone to Italy to live and has given me permission to record the exploits of which he was the unique central character, he has very emphatically imposed his anonymity upon me; and I should not like to feel that, through any lack of discretion or delicacy, I have been the cause of his secret becoming generally known.

The present chronicle has to do with Vance’s solution of the notorious Benson murder which, due to the unexpectedness of the crime, the prominence of the persons involved, and the startling evidence adduced, was invested with an interest rarely surpassed in the annals of New York’s criminal history.

This sensational case was the first of many in which Vance figured as a kind of amicus curiae in Markham’s investigations.

—S. S. VAN DINE

New York

CHARACTERS OF THE BOOK

PHILO VANCE

JOHN F.-X. MARKHAM

District Attorney of New York County

ALVIN H. BENSON

Well-known Wall Street broker and man-about-town, who was mysteriously murdered in his home

MAJOR ANTHONY BENSON

Brother of the murdered man

MRS. ANNA PLATZ

Housekeeper for Alvin Benson

MURIEL ST. CLAIR

A young singer

CAPTAIN PHILIP LEACOCK

Miss St. Clair’s fiancé

LEANDER PFYFE

Intimate friend of Alvin Benson’s

MRS. PAULA BANNING

A friend of Leander Pfyfe’s

ELSIE HOFFMAN

Secretary of the firm of Benson and Benson

COLONEL BIGSBY OSTRANDER

A retired army officer

WILLIAM H. MORIARTY

An alderman, Borough of the Bronx

JACK PRISCO

Elevator boy at the Chatham Arms

GEORGE G. STITT

Of the firm of Stitt and McCoy, Public Accountants

MAURICE DINWIDDIE

Assistant District Attorney

CHIEF INSPECTOR O’BRIEN

Of the Police Department of New York City

WILLIAM M. MORAN

Commanding Officer of the Detective Bureau

ERNEST HEATH

Sergeant of the Homicide Bureau

BURKE

Detective of the Homicide Bureau

SNITKIN

Detective of the Homicide Bureau

EMERY

Detective of the Homicide Bureau

BEN HANLON

Commanding Officer of Detectives assigned to District Attorney’s office

PHELPS

Detective assigned to District Attorney’s office

TRACY

Detective assigned to District Attorney’s office

SPRINGER

Detective assigned to District Attorney’s office

HIGGINBOTHAM

Detective assigned to District Attorney’s office

CAPTAIN CARL HAGEDORN

Firearms expert

DR. DOREMUS

Medical Examiner

FRANCIS SWACKER

Secretary to the District Attorney

CURRIE

Vance’s valet

CHAPTER 1

PHILO VANCE AT HOME

(Friday, June 14; 8:30 A.M.)

It happened that, on the morning of the momentous June the fourteenth when the discovery of the murdered body of Alvin H. Benson created a sensation which, to this day, has not entirely died away, I had breakfasted with Philo Vance in his apartment. It was not unusual for me to share Vance’s luncheons and dinners, but to have breakfast with him was something of an occasion. He was a late riser, and it was his habit to remain incommunicado until his midday meal.

“The reason for this early meeting was a matter of business—or, rather, of aesthetics. On the afternoon of the previous day Vance had attended a preview of Vollard’s collection of Cézanne watercolors at the Kessler Galleries and, having seen several pictures he particularly wanted, he had invited me to an early breakfast to give me instructions regarding their purchase.

A word concerning my relationship with Vance is necessary to clarify my role of narrator in this chronicle. The legal tradition is deeply imbedded in my family, and when my preparatory-school days were over, I was sent, almost as a matter of course, to Harvard to study law. It was there I met Vance, a reserved, cynical, and caustic freshman who was the bane of his professors and the fear of his fellow classmen. Why he should have chosen me, of all the students at the university, for his extrascholastic association, I have never been able to understand fully. My own liking for Vance was simply explained: he fascinated and interested me, and supplied me with a novel kind of intellectual diversion. In his liking for me, however, no such basis of appeal was present. I was (and am now) a commonplace fellow, possessed of a conservative and rather conventional mind. But, at least, my mentality was not rigid, and the ponderosity of the legal procedure did not impress me greatly—which is why, no doubt, I had little taste for my inherited profession—; and it is possible that these traits found certain affinities in Vance’s unconscious mind. There is, to be sure, the less consoling explanation that I appealed to Vance as a kind of foil, or anchorage, and that he sensed in my nature a complementary antithesis to his own. But whatever the explanation, we were much together; and, as the years went by, that association ripened into an inseparable friendship.

Upon graduation I entered my father’s law firm—Van Dine and Davis—and after five years of dull apprenticeship I was taken into the firm as the junior partner. At present I am the second Van Dine of Van Dine, Davis, and Van Dine, with offices at 120 Broadway. At about the time my name first appeared on the letterheads of the firm, Vance returned from Europe, where he had been living during my legal novitiate, and, an aunt of his having died and made him her principal beneficiary, I was called upon to discharge the technical obligations involved in putting him in possession of his inherited property.

This work was the beginning of a new and somewhat unusual relationship between us. Vance had a strong distaste for any kind of business transaction, and in time I became the custodian of all his monetary interests and his agent at large. I found that his affairs were various enough to occupy as much of my time as I cared to give to legal matters, and as Vance was able to indulge the luxury of having a personal legal factotum, so to speak, I permanently closed my desk at the office and devoted myself exclusively to his needs and whims.

If, up to the time when Vance summoned me to discuss the purchase of the Cézannes, I had harbored any secret or repressed regrets for having deprived the firm of Van Dine, Davis, and Van Dine of my modest legal talents, they were permanently banished on that eventful morning; for, beginning with the notorious Benson murder, and extending over a period of nearly four years, it was my privilege to be a spectator of what I believe was the most amazing series of criminal cases that ever passed before the eyes of a young lawyer. Indeed, the grim dramas I witnessed during that period constitute one of the most astonishing secret documents in the police history of this country.

Of these dramas Vance was the central character. By an analytical and interpretative process which, as far as I know, has never before been applied to criminal activities, he succeeded in solving many of the important crimes on which both the police and the district attorney’s office had hopelessly fallen down.

Due to my peculiar relations with Vance it happened that not only did I participate in all the cases with which he was connected but I was also present at most of the informal discussions concerning them which took place between him and the district attorney; and, being of methodical temperament, I kept a fairly complete record of them. In addition, I noted down (as accurately as memory permitted) Vance’s unique psychological methods of determining guilt, as he explained them from time to time. It is fortunate that I performed this gratuitous labor of accumulation and transcription, for now that circumstances have unexpectedly rendered possible my making the cases public, I am able to present them in full detail and with all their various sidelights and succeeding steps—a task that would be impossible were it not for my numerous clippings and adversaria.

Fortunately, too, the first case to draw Vance into its ramifications was that of Alvin Benson’s murder. Not only did it prove one of the most famous of New York’s causes célèbres, but it gave Vance an excellent opportunity of displaying his rare talents of deductive reasoning, and, by its nature and magnitude, aroused his interest in a branch of activity which heretofore had been alien to his temperamental promptings and habitual predilections.

The case intruded upon Vance’s life suddenly and unexpectedly, although he himself had, by a casual request made to the district attorney over a month before, been the involuntary agent of this destruction of his normal routine. The thing, in fact, burst upon us before we had quite finished our breakfast on that mid-June morning, and put an end temporarily to all business connected with the purchase of the Cézanne paintings. When, later in the day, I visited the Kessler Galleries, two of the watercolors that Vance had particularly desired had been sold; and I am convinced that, despite his success in the unraveling of the Benson murder mystery and his saving of at least one innocent person from arrest, he has never to this day felt entirely compensated for the loss of those two little sketches on which he had set his heart.

As I was ushered into the living room that morning by Currie, a rare old English servant who acted as Vance’s butler, valet, majordomo and, on occasions, specialty cook, Vance was sitting in a large armchair, attired in a surah silk dressing gown and gray suede slippers, with Vollard’s book on Cézanne open across his knees.

“Forgive my not rising, Van.” He greeted me casually. “I have the whole weight of the modern evolution in art resting on my legs. Furthermore, this plebeian early rising fatigues me, y’know.”

He riffled the pages of the volume, pausing here and there at a reproduction.

“This chap Vollard,” he remarked at length, “has been rather liberal with our art-fearing country. He has sent a really goodish collection of his Cézannes here. I viewed ’em yesterday with the proper reverence and, I might add, unconcern, for Kessler was watching me; and I’ve marked the ones I want you to buy for me as soon as the gallery opens this morning.”

He handed me a small catalog he had been using as a bookmark.

“A beastly assignment, I know,” he added, with an indolent smile. “These delicate little smudges with all their blank paper will prob’ly be meaningless to your legal mind—they’re so unlike a neatly typed brief, don’t y’ know. And you’ll no doubt think some of ’em are hung upside-down—one of ’em is, in fact, and even Kessler doesn’t know it. But don’t fret, Van old dear. They’re very beautiful and valuable little knickknacks, and rather inexpensive when one considers what they’ll be bringing in a few years. Really an excellent investment for some money-loving soul, y’ know—inf’nitely better than that Lawyer’s Equity Stock over which you grew so eloquent at the time of my dear Aunt Agatha’s death.”1

Vance’s one passion (if a purely intellectual enthusiasm may be called a passion) was art—not art in its narrow, personal aspects, but in its broader, more universal significance. And art was not only his dominating interest but his chief diversion. He was something of an authority on Japanese and Chinese prints; he knew tapestries and ceramics; and once I heard him give an impromptu causerie to a few guests on Tanagra figurines, which, had it been transcribed, would have made a most delightful and instructive monograph.

Vance had sufficient means to indulge his instinct for collecting, and possessed a fine assortment of pictures and objets d’art. His collection was heterogeneous only in its superficial characteristics: every piece he owned embodied some principle of form or line that related it to all the others. One who knew art could feel the unity and consistency in all the items with which he surrounded himself, however widely separated they were in point of time or métier or surface appeal. Vance, I have always felt, was one of those rare human beings, a collector with a definite philosophic point of view.

His apartment in East Thirty-eighth Street—actually the two top floors of an old mansion, beautifully remodeled and in part rebuilt to secure spacious rooms and lofty ceilings—was filled, but not crowded, with rare specimens of oriental and occidental, ancient and modern, art. His paintings ranged from the Italian primitives to Cézanne and Matisse; and among his collection of original drawings were works as widely separated as those of Michelangelo and Picasso. Vance’s Chinese prints constituted one of the finest private collections in this country. They included beautiful examples of the work of Ririomin, Rianchu, Jinkomin, Kakei, and Mokkei.

“The Chinese,” Vance once said to me, “are the truly great artists of the East. They were the men whose work expressed most intensely a broad philosophic spirit. By contrast the Japanese were superficial. It’s a long step between the little more than decorative souci of a Hokusai and the profoundly thoughtful and conscious artistry of a Ririomin. Even when Chinese art degenerated under the Manchus, we find in it a deep philosophic quality—a spiritual sensibilité, so to speak. And in the modern copies of copies—what is called the bunjinga style—we still have pictures of profound meaning.”

Vance’s catholicity of taste in art was remarkable. His collection was as varied as that of a museum. It embraced a black-figured amphora by Amasis, a proto-Corinthian vase in the Aegean style, Koubatcha and Rhodian plates, Athenian pottery, a sixteenth-century Italian holywater stoup of rock crystal, pewter of the Tudor period (several pieces bearing the double-rose hallmark), a bronze plaque by Cellini, a triptych of Limoges enamel, a Spanish retable of an altarpiece by Vallfogona, several Etruscan bronzes, an Indian Greco Buddhist, a statuette of the Goddess Kuan Yin from the Ming Dynasty, a number of very fine Renaissance woodcuts, and several specimens of Byzantine, Carolingian, and early French ivory carvings.

His Egyptian treasures included a gold jug from Zakazik, a statuette of the Lady Nai (as lovely as the one in the Louvre), two beautifully carved steles of the First Theban Age, various small sculptures comprising rare representations of Hapi and Amset, and several Arrentine bowls carved with Kalathiskos dancers. On top of one of his embayed Jacobean bookcases in the library, where most of his modern paintings and drawings were hung, was a fascinating group of African sculpture—ceremonial masks and statuette fetishes from French Guinea, the Sudan, Nigeria, the Ivory Coast, and the Congo.

A definite purpose has animated me in speaking at such length about Vance’s art instinct, for, in order to understand fully the melodramatic adventures which began for him on that June morning, one must have a general idea of the man’s penchants and inner promptings. His interest in art was an important—one might almost say the dominant—factor in his personality. I have never met a man quite like him—a man so apparently diversified and yet so fundamentally consistent.

Vance was what many would call a dilettante. But the designation does him injustice. He was a man of unusual culture and brilliance. An aristocrat by birth and instinct, he held himself severely aloof from the common world of men. In his manner there was an indefinable contempt for inferiority of all kinds. The great majority of those with whom he came in contact regarded him as a snob. Yet there was in his condescension and disdain no trace of spuriousness. His snobbishness was intellectual as well as social. He detested stupidity even more, I believe, than he did vulgarity or bad taste. I have heard him on several occasions quote Fouché’s famous line: C’est plus qu’un crime; c’est une faute. And he meant it literally.

Vance was frankly a cynic, but he was rarely bitter; his was a flippant, Juvenalian cynicism. Perhaps he may best be described as a bored and supercilious, but highly conscious and penetrating, spectator of life. He was keenly interested in all human reactions; but it was the interest of the scientist, not the humanitarian. Withal he was a man of rare personal charm. Even people who found it difficult to admire him found it equally difficult not to like him. His somewhat quixotic mannerisms and his slightly English accent and inflection—a heritage of his postgraduate days at Oxford—impressed those who did not know him well as affectations. But the truth is, there was very little of the poseur about him.

He was unusually good-looking, although his mouth was ascetic and cruel, like the mouths on some of the Medici portraits2; moreover, there was a slightly derisive hauteur in the lift of his eyebrows. Despite the aquiline severity of his lineaments, his face was highly sensitive. His forehead was full and sloping—it was the artist’s, rather than the scholar’s, brow. His cold gray eyes were widely spaced. His nose was straight and slender, and his chin narrow but prominent, with an unusually deep cleft. When I saw John Barrymore recently in Hamlet, I was somehow reminded of Vance; and once before, in a scene of Caesar and Cleopatra played by Forbes-Robertson, I received a similar impression.3

Vance was slightly under six feet, graceful, and giving the impression of sinewy strength and nervous endurance. He was an expert fencer and had been the captain of the university’s fencing team. He was mildly fond of outdoor sports and had a knack of doing things well without any extensive practice. His golf handicap was only three; and one season he had played on our championship polo team against England. Nevertheless, he had a positive antipathy to walking and would not go a hundred yards on foot if there was any possible means of riding.

In his dress he was always fashionable—scrupulously correct to the smallest detail—yet unobtrusive. He spent considerable time at his clubs; his favorite was the Stuyvesant, because, as he explained to me, its membership was drawn largely from the political and commercial ranks, and he was never drawn into a discussion which required any mental effort. He went occasionally to the more modern operas and was a regular subscriber to the symphony concerts and chamber music recitals.

Incidentally, he was one of the most unerring poker players I have ever seen. I mention this fact not merely because it was unusual and significant that a man of Vance’s type should have preferred so democratic a game to bridge or chess, for instance, but because his knowledge of the science of human psychology involved in poker had an intimate bearing on the chronicles I am about to set down.

Vance’s knowledge of psychology was indeed uncanny. He was gifted with an instinctively accurate judgment of people, and his study and reading had coordinated and rationalized this gift to an amazing extent. He was well grounded in the academic principles of psychology, and all his courses at college had either centered about this subject or been subordinated to it. While I was confining myself to a restricted area of torts and contracts, constitutional and common law, equity, evidence, and pleading, Vance was reconnoitering the whole field of cultural endeavor. He had courses in the history of religions, the Greek classics, biology, civics, and political economy, philosophy, anthropology, literature, theoretical and experimental psychology, and ancient and modern languages.4 But it was, I think, his courses under Münsterberg and William James that interested him the most.

Vance’s mind was basically philosophical—that is, philosophical in the more general sense. Being singularly free from the conventional sentimentalities and current superstitions, he could look beneath the surface of human acts into actuating impulses and motives. Moreover, he was resolute both in his avoidance of any attitude that savored of credulousness and in his adherence to cold, logical exactness in his mental processes.

“Until we can approach all human problems,” he once remarked, “with the clinical aloofness and cynical contempt of a doctor examining a guinea pig strapped to a board, we have little chance of getting at the truth.”

Vance led an active, but by no means animated, social life—a concession to various family ties. But he was not a social animal—I cannot remember ever having met a man with so undeveloped a gregarious instinct—and when he went forth into the social world, it was generally under compulsion. In fact, one of his “duty” affairs had occupied him on the night before that memorable June breakfast; otherwise, we would have consulted about the Cézannes the evening before; and Vance groused a good deal about it while Currie was serving our strawberries and eggs Bénédictine. Later on I was to give profound thanks to the God of Coincidence that the blocks had been arranged in just that pattern; for had Vance been slumbering peacefully at nine o’clock when the district attorney called, I would probably have missed four of the most interesting and exciting years of my life; and many of New York’s shrewdest and most desperate criminals might still be at large.

Vance and I had just settled back in our chairs for our second cup of coffee and a cigarette when Currie, answering an impetuous ringing of the front door bell, ushered the district attorney into the living room.

“By all that’s holy!” he exclaimed, raising his hands in mock astonishment. “New York’s leading flâneur and art connoisseur is up and about!”

“And I am suffused with blushes at the disgrace of it,” Vance replied.

It was evident, however, that the district attorney was not in a jovial mood. His face suddenly sobered. “Vance, a serious thing has brought me here. I’m in a great hurry and merely dropped by to keep my promise.… The fact is, Alvin Benson has been murdered.”

Vance lifted his eyebrows languidly. “Really, now,” he drawled. “How messy! But he no doubt deserved it. In any event, that’s no reason why you should repine. Take a chair and have a cup of Currie’s incomp’rable coffee.” And before the other could protest, he rose and pushed a bell-button.

Markham hesitated a second or two.

“Oh, well. A couple of minutes won’t make any difference. But only a gulp.” And he sank into a chair facing us.

CHAPTER 2

AT THE SCENE OF THE CRIME

(Friday, June 14; 9 A.M.)

John F.-X. Markham, as you remember, had been elected district attorney of New York County on the Independent Reform Ticket during one of the city’s periodical reactions against Tammany Hall. He served his four years and would probably have been elected to a second term had not the ticket been hopelessly split by the political juggling of his opponents. He was an indefatigable worker and projected the district attorney’s office into all manner of criminal and civil investigations. Being utterly incorruptible, he not only aroused the fervid admiration of his constituents but produced an almost unprecedented sense of security in those who had opposed him on partisan lines.

He had been in office only a few months when one of the newspapers referred to him as the Watch Dog; and the sobriquet clung to him until the end of his administration. Indeed, his record as a successful prosecutor during the four years of his incumbency was such a remarkable one that even today it is not infrequently referred to in legal and political discussions.

Markham was a tall, strongly built man in the middle forties, with a clean-shaven, somewhat youthful face which belied his uniformly gray hair. He was not handsome according to conventional standards, but he had an unmistakable air of distinction, and was possessed of an amount of social culture rarely found in our latter-day political officeholders. Withal he was a man of brusque and vindictive temperament; but his brusqueness was an incrustation on a solid foundation of good breeding, not—as is usually the case—the roughness of substructure showing through an inadequately superimposed crust of gentility.

When his nature was relieved of the stress of duty and care, he was the most gracious of men. But early in my acquaintance with him I had seen his attitude of cordiality suddenly displaced by one of grim authority. It was as if a new personality—hard, indomitable, symbolic of eternal justice—had in that moment been born in Markham’s body. I was to witness this transformation many times before our association ended. In fact, this very morning, as he sat opposite to me in Vance’s living room, there was more than a hint of it in the aggressive sternness of his expression; and I knew that he was deeply troubled over Alvin Benson’s murder.

He swallowed his coffee rapidly and was setting down the cup, when Vance, who had been watching him with quizzical amusement, remarked, “I say, why this sad preoccupation over the passing of one Benson? You weren’t, by any chance, the murderer, what?”

Markham ignored Vance’s levity. “I’m on my way to Benson’s. Do you care to come along? You asked for the experience, and I dropped in to keep my promise.”

I then recalled that several weeks before at the Stuyvesant Club, when the subject of the prevalent homicides in New York was being discussed, Vance had expressed a desire to accompany the district attorney on one of his investigations, and that Markham had promised to take him on his next important case. Vance’s interest in the psychology of human behavior had prompted the desire, and his friendship with Markham, which had been of long standing, had made the request possible.

“You remember everything, don’t you?” Vance replied lazily. “An admirable gift, even if an uncomfortable one.” He glanced at the clock on the mantel, it lacked a few minutes of nine. “But what an indecent hour! Suppose someone should see me.”

Markham moved forward impatiently in his chair. “Well, if you think the gratification of your curiosity would compensate you for the disgrace of being seen in public at nine o’clock in the morning, you’ll have to hurry. I certainly won’t take you in dressing gown and bedroom slippers. And I most certainly won’t wait over five minutes for you to get dressed.”

“Why the haste, old dear?” Vance asked, yawning. “The chap’s dead, don’t y’ know; he can’t possibly run away.”

“Come, get a move on, you orchid,” the other urged. “This affair is no joke. It’s damned serious, and from the looks of it, it’s going to cause an ungodly scandal. What are you going to do?”

“Do? I shall humbly follow the great avenger of the common people,” returned Vance, rising and making an obsequious bow.

He rang for Currie and ordered his clothes brought to him.

“I’m attending a levee which Mr. Markham is holding over a corpse and I want something rather spiffy. Is it warm enough for a silk suit?… And a lavender tie, by all means.”

“I trust you won’t also wear your green carnation,” grumbled Markham.

“Tut! Tut!” Vance chided him. “You’ve been reading Mr. Hitchens. Such heresy in a district attorney! Anyway, you know full well I never wear boutonnieres. The decoration has fallen into disrepute. The only remaining devotees of the practice are roués and saxophone players.… But tell me about the departed Benson.”

Vance was now dressing, with Currie’s assistance, at a rate of speed I had rarely seen him display in such matters. Beneath his bantering pose I recognized the true eagerness of the man for a new experience and one that promised such dramatic possibilities for his alert and observing mind.

“You knew Alvin Benson casually, I believe,” the district attorney said. “Well, early this morning his housekeeper phoned the local precinct station that she had found him shot through the head, fully dressed and sitting in his favorite chair in his living room. The message, of course, was put through at once to the telegraph bureau at headquarters, and my assistant on duty notified me immediately. I was tempted to let the case follow the regular police routine. But half an hour later Major Benson, Alvin’s brother, phoned me and asked me, as a special favor, to take charge. I’ve known the major for twenty years and I couldn’t very well refuse. So I took a hurried breakfast and started for Benson’s house. He lived in West Forty-eighth Street; and as I passed your corner I remembered your request and dropped by to see if you cared to go along.”

“Most consid’rate,” murmured Vance, adjusting his four-in-hand before a small polychrome mirror by the door. Then he turned to me. “Come, Van. We’ll all gaze upon the defunct Benson. I’m sure some of Markham’s sleuths will unearth the fact that I detested the bounder and accuse me of the crime; and I’ll feel safer, don’t y’ know, with legal talent at hand.… No objections—eh, what, Markham?”

“Certainly not,” the other agreed readily, although I felt that he would rather not have had me along. But I was too deeply interested in the affair to offer any ceremonious objections and I followed Vance and Markham downstairs.

As we settled back in the waiting taxicab and started up Madison Avenue, I marveled a little, as I had often done before, at the strange friendship of these two dissimilar men beside me—Markham forthright, conventional, a trifle austere, and overserious in his dealings with life; and Vance casual, mercurial, debonair, and whimsically cynical in the face of the grimmest realities. And yet this temperamental diversity seemed, in some wise, the very cornerstone of their friendship; it was as if each saw in the other some unattainable field of experience and sensation that had been denied himself. Markham represented to Vance the solid and immutable realism of life, whereas Vance symbolized for Markham the carefree, exotic, gypsy spirit of intellectual adventure. Their intimacy, in fact, was even greater than showed on the surface; and despite Markham’s exaggerated deprecations of the other’s attitudes and opinions, I believe he respected Vance’s intelligence more profoundly than that of any other man he knew.

As we rode uptown that morning Markham appeared preoccupied and gloomy. No word had been spoken since we left the apartment; but as we turned west into Forty-eighth Street Vance asked; “What is the social etiquette of these early-morning murder functions, aside from removing one’s hat in the presence of the body?”

“You keep your hat on,” growled Markham.

“My word! Like a synagogue, what? Most int’restin’! Perhaps one takes off one’s shoes so as not to confuse the footprints.”

“No,” Markham told him. “The guests remain fully clothed—in which the function differs from the ordinary evening affairs of your smart set.”

“My dear Markham!”—Vance’s tone was one of melancholy reproof—“The horrified moralist in your nature is at work again. That remark of yours was pos’tively Epworth Leaguish.”

Markham was too abstracted to follow up Vance’s badinage. “There are one or two things,” he said soberly, “that I think I’d better warn you about. From the looks of it, this case is going to cause considerable noise, and there’ll be a lot of jealousy and battling for honors. I won’t be fallen upon and caressed affectionately by the police for coming in at this stage of the game; so be careful not to rub their bristles the wrong way. My assistant, who’s there now, tells me he thinks the inspector has put Heath in charge. Heath’s a sergeant in the homicide bureau and is undoubtedly convinced at the present moment that I’m taking hold in order to get the publicity.”

“Aren’t you his technical superior?” asked Vance.

“Of course; and that makes the situation just so much more delicate.… I wish to God the major hadn’t called me up.”

“Eheu!” sighed Vance. “The world is full of Heaths. Beastly nuisances.”

“Don’t misunderstand me,” Markham hastened to assure him. “Heath is a good man—in fact, as good a man as we’ve got. The mere fact that he was assigned to the case shows how seriously the affair is regarded at headquarters. There’ll be no unpleasantness about my taking charge, you understand; but I want the atmosphere to be as halcyon as possible. Heath’ll resent my bringing along you two chaps as spectators, anyway; so I beg of you, Vance, emulate the modest violet.”

“I prefer the blushing rose, if you don’t mind,” Vance protested. “However, I’ll instantly give the hypersensitive Heath one of my choicest Régie cigarettes with the rose-petal tips.”

“If you do,” smiled Markham, “he’ll probably arrest you as a suspicious character.”

We had drawn up abruptly in front of an old brownstone residence on the upper side of Forty-eighth Street, near Sixth Avenue. It was a house of the better class, built on a twenty-five foot lot in a day when permanency and beauty were still matters of consideration among the city’s architects. The design was conventional, to accord with the other houses in the block, but a touch of luxury and individuality was to be seen in its decorative copings and in the stone carvings about the entrance and above the windows.

There was a shallow paved areaway between the street line and the front elevation of the house; but this was enclosed in a high iron railing, and the only entrance was by way of the front door, which was about six feet above the street level at the top of a flight of ten broad stone stairs. Between the entrance and the right-hand wall were two spacious windows covered with heavy iron grilles.

A considerable crowd of morbid onlookers had gathered in front of the house; and on the steps lounged several alert-looking young men whom I took to be newspaper reporters. The door of our taxicab was opened by a uniformed patrolman who saluted Markham with exaggerated respect and ostentatiously cleared a passage for us through the gaping throng of idlers. Another uniformed patrolman stood in the little vestibule and, on recognizing Markham, held the outer door open for us and saluted with great dignity.

“Ave, Caesar, te salutamus,” whispered Vance, grinning.

“Be quiet,” Markham grumbled. “I’ve got troubles enough without your garbled questions.”

As we passed through the massive carved-oak front door into the main hallway we were met by Assistant District Attorney Dinwiddie, a serious, swarthy young man with a prematurely lined face, whose appearance gave one the impression that most of the woes of humanity were resting upon his shoulders.

“Good morning, Chief,” he greeted Markham, with eager relief. “I’m damned glad you’ve got here. This case’ll rip things wide open. Cut-and-dried murder, and not a lead.”

Markham nodded gloomily and looked past him into the living room. “Who’s here?” he asked.

“The whole works, from the chief inspector down,” Dinwiddie told him, with a hopeless shrug, as if the fact boded ill for all concerned.

At that moment a tall, massive, middle-aged man with a pink complexion and a closely cropped white moustache, appeared in the doorway of the living room. On seeing Markham he came forward stiffly with outstretched hand. I recognized him at once as Chief Inspector O’Brien, who was in command of the entire police department. Dignified greetings were exchanged between him and Markham, and then Vance and I were introduced to him. Inspector O’Brien gave us each a curt, silent nod and turned back to the living room, with Markham, Dinwiddie, Vance, and myself following.

The room, which was entered by a wide double door about ten feet down the hall, was a spacious one, almost square, and with high ceilings. Two windows gave on the street; and on the extreme right of the north wall, opposite to the front of the house, was another window opening on a paved court. To the left of this window were the sliding doors leading into the dining room at the rear.

The room presented an appearance of garish opulence. About the walls hung several elaborately framed paintings of race horses and a number of mounted hunting trophies. A highly colored oriental rug covered nearly the entire floor. In the middle of the east wall, facing the door, was an ornate fireplace and carved marble mantel. Placed diagonally in the corner on the right stood a walnut upright piano with copper trimmings. Then there was a mahogany bookcase with glass doors and figured curtains, a sprawling tapestried davenport, a squat Venetian tabouret with inlaid mother-of-pearl, a teakwood stand containing a large brass samovar, and a buhl-topped center table nearly six feet long. At the side of the table nearest the hallway, with its back to the front windows, stood a large wicker lounge chair with a high, fan-shaped back.

In this chair reposed the body of Alvin Benson.

Though I had served two years at the front in the World War and had seen death in many terrible guises, I could not repress a strong sense of revulsion at the sight of this murdered man. In France death had seemed an inevitable part of my daily routine, but here all the organisms of environment were opposed to the idea of fatal violence. The bright June sunshine was pouring into the room, and through the open windows came the continuous din of the city’s noises, which, for all their cacophony, are associated with peace and security and the orderly social processes of life.

Benson’s body was reclining in the chair in an attitude so natural that one almost expected him to turn to us and ask why we were intruding upon his privacy. His head was resting against the chair’s back. His right leg was crossed over his left in a position of comfortable relaxation. His right arm was resting easily on the center table, and his left arm lay along the chair’s arm. But that which most strikingly gave his attitude its appearance of naturalness was a small book which he held in his right hand with his thumb still marking the place where he had evidently been reading.5

He had been shot through the forehead from in front; and the small circular bullet mark was now almost black as a result of the coagulation of the blood. A large dark spot on the rug at the rear of the chair indicated the extent of the hemorrhage caused by the grinding passage of the bullet through his brain. Had it not been for these grisly indications, one might have thought that he had merely paused momentarily in his reading to lean back and rest.

He was attired in an old smoking jacket and red felt bedroom slippers but still wore his dress trousers and evening shirt, though he was collarless, and the neckband of the shirt had been unbuttoned as if for comfort. He was not an attractive man physically, being almost completely bald and more than a little stout. His face was flabby, and the puffiness of his neck was doubly conspicuous without its confining collar. With a slight shudder of distaste I ended my brief contemplation of him and turned to the other occupants of the room.

Two burly fellows with large hands and feet, their black felt hats pushed far back on their heads, were minutely inspecting the iron grillwork over the front windows. They seemed to be giving particular attention to the points where the bars were cemented into the masonry; and one of them had just taken hold of a grille with both hands and was shaking it, simian-wise, as if to test its strength. Another man, of medium height and dapper appearance, with a small blond moustache, was bending over in front of the grate looking intently, so it seemed, at the dusty gas logs. On the far side of the table a thickset man in blue serge and a derby hat, stood with arms akimbo scrutinizing the silent figure in the chair. His eyes, hard and pale blue, were narrowed, and his square prognathous jaw was rigidly set. He was gazing with rapt intensity at Benson’s body, as though he hoped, by the sheer power of concentration, to probe the secret of the murder.

Another man, of unusual mien, was standing before the rear window, with a jeweler’s magnifying glass in his eye, inspecting a small object held in the palm of his hand. From pictures I had seen of him I knew he was Captain Carl Hagedorn, the most famous firearms expert in America. He was a large, cumbersome, broad-shouldered man of about fifty; and his black, shiny clothes were several sizes too large for him. His coat hitched up behind, and in front hung halfway down to his knees; and his trousers were baggy and lay over his ankles in grotesquely comic folds. His head was round and abnormally large, and his ears seemed sunken into his skull. His mouth was entirely hidden by a scraggly, gray-shot moustache, all the hairs of which grew downward, forming a kind of lambrequin to his lips. Captain Hagedorn had been connected with the New York Police Department for thirty years, and though his appearance and manner were ridiculed at headquarters, he was profoundly respected. His word on any point pertaining to firearms and gunshot wounds was accepted as final by headquarters men.

In the rear of the room, near the dining room door, stood two other men talking earnestly together. One was Inspector William M. Moran, commanding officer of the detective bureau; the other, Sergeant Ernest Heath of the homicide bureau, of whom Markham had already spoken to us.

As we entered the room in the wake of Chief Inspector O’Brien everyone ceased his occupation for a moment and looked at the district attorney in a spirit of uneasy, but respectful, recognition. Only Captain Hagedorn, after a cursory squint at Markham, returned to the inspection of the tiny object in his hand, with an abstracted unconcern which brought a faint smile to Vance’s lips.

Inspector Moran and Sergeant Heath came forward with stolid dignity; and after the ceremony of handshaking (which I later observed to be a kind of religious rite among the police and the members of the district attorney’s staff), Markham introduced Vance and me and briefly explained our presence. The inspector bowed pleasantly to indicate his acceptance of the intrusion, but I noticed that Heath ignored Markham’s explanation and proceeded to treat us as if we were nonexistent.

Inspector Moran was a man of different quality from the others in the room. He was about sixty, with white hair and a brown moustache, and was immaculately dressed. He looked more like a successful Wall Street broker of the better class than a police official.6

“I’ve assigned Sergeant Heath to the case, Mr. Markham,” he explained in a low, well-modulated voice. “It looks as though we are in for a bit of trouble before it’s finished. Even the chief inspector thought it warranted his lending the moral support of his presence to the preliminary rounds. He has been here since eight o’clock.”

Inspector O’Brien had left us immediately upon entering the room and now stood between the front windows, watching the proceedings with a grave, indecipherable face.

“Well, I think I’ll be going,” Moran added. “They had me out of bed at seven thirty, and I haven’t had any breakfast yet. I won’t be needed anyway now that you’re here.… Good morning.” And again he shook hands.

When he had gone, Markham turned to the assistant district attorney.

“Look after these two gentlemen, will you, Dinwiddie? They’re babes in the wood and want to see how these affairs work. Explain things to them while I have a little confab with Sergeant Heath.”

Dinwiddie accepted the assignment eagerly. I think he was glad of the opportunity to have someone to talk to by way of venting his pent-up excitement.

As the three of us turned rather instinctively toward the body of the murdered man—he was, after all, the hub of this tragic drama—I heard Heath say in a sullen voice:

“I suppose you’ll take charge now, Mr. Markham.”

Dinwiddie and Vance were talking together, and I watched Markham with interest after what he had told us of the rivalry between the police department and the district attorney’s office.

Markham looked at Heath with a slow, gracious smile and shook his head. “No, Sergeant,” he replied. “I’m here to work with you, and I want that relationship understood from the outset. In fact, I wouldn’t be here now if Major Benson hadn’t phoned me and asked me to lend a hand. And I particularly want my name kept out of it. It’s pretty generally known—and if it isn’t, it will be—that the major is an old friend of mine; so, it will be better all round if my connection with the case is kept quiet.”

Heath murmured something I did not catch, but I could see that he had, in large measure, been placated. He, in common with all other men who were acquainted with Markham, knew his word was good; and he personally liked the district attorney.

“If there’s any credit coming from this affair,” Markham went on, “the police department is to get it; therefore I think it best for you to see the report.… And, by the way,” he added good-naturedly, “if there’s any blame coming, you fellows will have to bear that, too.”

“Fair enough,” assented Heath.

“And now, Sergeant, let’s get to work,” said Markham.

CHAPTER 3

A LADY’S HANDBAG

(Friday, June 14; 9:30 A.M.)

The district attorney and Heath walked up to the body and stood regarding it.

“You see,” Heath explained; “he was shot directly from the front. A pretty powerful shot, too, for the bullet passed through the head and struck the woodwork over there by the window.” He pointed to a place on the wainscot a short distance from the floor near the drapery of the window nearest the hallway. “We found the expelled shell, and Captain Hagedorn’s got the bullet.”

He turned to the firearms expert. “How about it, Captain? Anything special?”

Hagedorn raised his head slowly and gave Heath a myopic frown. Then, after a few awkward movements, he answered with unhurried precision. “A .45 army bullet—Colt automatic.”

“Any idea how close to Benson the gun was held?” asked Markham.

“Yes, sir, I have,” Hagedorn replied, in his ponderous monotone. “Between five and six feet—probably.”

Heath snorted. “‘Probably,’” he repeated to Markham with good-natured contempt. “You can bank on it if the captain says so.… You see, sir, nothing smaller than a .44 or .45 will stop a man, and these steel-capped army bullets go through a human skull like it was cheese. But in order to carry straight to the woodwork the gun had to be held pretty close; and, as there aren’t any powder marks on the face, it’s a safe bet to take the captain’s figures as to distance.”

At this point we heard the front door open and close, and Dr. Doremus, the chief medical examiner, accompanied by his assistant, bustled in. He shook hands with Markham and Inspector O’Brien, and gave Heath a friendly salutation.

“Sorry I couldn’t get here sooner,” he apologized.

He was a nervous man with a heavily seamed face and the manner of a real estate salesman.

“What have we got here?” he asked, in the same breath, making a wry face at the body in the chair.

“You tell us, Doc,” retorted Heath.

Dr. Doremus approached the murdered man with a callous indifference indicative of a long process of hardening. He first inspected the face closely. He was, I imagine, looking for powder marks. Then he glanced at the bullet hole in the forehead and at the ragged wound in the back of the head. Next he moved the dead man’s arm, bent the fingers, and pushed the head a little to the side. Having satisfied himself as to the state of rigor mortis, he turned to Heath.

“Can we get him on the settee there?”

Heath looked at Markham inquiringly. “All through, sir?”

Markham nodded, and Heath beckoned to the two men at the front windows and ordered the body placed on the davenport. It retained its sitting posture, due to the hardening of the muscles after death, until the doctor and his assistant straightened out the limbs. The body was then undressed, and Dr. Doremus examined it carefully for other wounds. He paid particular attention to the arms; and he opened both hands wide and scrutinized the palms. At length he straightened up and wiped his hands on a large colored silk handkerchief.

“Shot through the left frontal,” he announced. “Direct angle of fire. Bullet passed completely through the skull. Exit wound in the left occipital region—base of skull. You found the bullet, didn’t you? He was awake when shot, and death was immediate—probably never knew what hit him.… He’s been dead about—well, I should judge, eight hours, maybe longer.”

“How about twelve thirty for the exact time?” asked Heath.

The doctor looked at his watch.

“Fits O.K.… Anything else?”

No one answered, and after a slight pause the chief inspector spoke. “We’d like a postmortem report today, Doctor.”

“That’ll be all right,” Dr. Doremus answered, snapping shut his medical case and handing it to his assistant. “But get the body to the mortuary as soon as you can.”

After a brief handshaking ceremony, he went out hurriedly.

Heath turned to the detective who had been standing by the table when we entered. “Burke, you phone headquarters to call for the body, and tell ’em to get a move on. Then go back to the office and wait for me.”

Burke saluted and disappeared.

Heath then addressed one of the two men who had been inspecting the grilles of the front windows. “How about that ironwork, Snitkin?”

“No chance, Sergeant,” was the answer. “Strong as a jail—both of ’em. Nobody never got in through those windows.”

“Very good,” Heath told him. “Now you two fellows chase along with Burke.”

When they had gone, the dapper man in the blue serge suit and derby, whose sphere of activity had seemed to be the fireplace, laid two cigarette butts on the table.

“I found these under the gas logs, Sergeant,” he explained unenthusiastically. “Not much, but there’s nothing else laying around.”

“All right, Emery.” Heath gave the butts a disgruntled look. “You needn’t wait, either. I’ll see you at the office later.”

Hagedorn came ponderously forward. “I guess I’ll be getting along, too,” he rumbled. “But I’m going to keep this bullet awhile. It’s got some peculiar rifling marks on it. You don’t want it specially, do you, Sergeant?”

Heath smiled tolerantly. “What’ll I do with it, Captain? You keep it. But don’t you dare lose it.”

“I won’t lose it,” Hagedorn assured him, with stodgy seriousness; and, without so much as a glance at either the district attorney or the chief inspector, he waddled from the room with a slightly rolling movement which suggested that of some huge amphibious mammal.

Vance, who was standing beside me near the door, turned and followed Hagedorn into the hall. The two stood talking in low tones for several minutes. Vance appeared to be asking questions, and although I was not close enough to hear their conversation, I caught several words and phrases—“trajectory,” “muzzle velocity,” “angle of fire,” “impetus,” “impact,” “deflection,” and the like—and wondered what on earth had prompted this strange interrogation.

As Vance was thanking Hagedorn for his information Inspector O’Brien entered the hall. “Learning fast?” he asked, smiling patronizingly at Vance. Then, without waiting for a reply: “Come along, Captain; I’ll drive you downtown.”

Markham heard him. “Have you got room for Dinwiddie, too, Inspector?”

“Plenty, Mr. Markham.”

The three of them went out.

Vance and I were now left alone in the room with Heath and the district attorney, and, as if by common impulse, we all settled ourselves in chairs, Vance taking one near the dining room door directly facing the chair in which Benson had been murdered.

I had been keenly interested in Vance’s manner and actions from the moment of his arrival at the house. When he had first entered the room he had adjusted his monocle carefully—an act which, despite his air of passivity, I recognized as an indication of interest. When his mind was alert and he wished to take on external impressions quickly, he invariably brought out his monocle. He could see adequately enough without it, and his use of it, I had observed, was largely the result of an intellectual dictate. The added clarity of vision it gave him seemed subtly to affect his clarity of mind.7

At first he had looked over the room incuriously and watched the proceedings with bored apathy; but during Heath’s brief questioning of his subordinates, an expression of cynical amusement had appeared on his face. Following a few general queries to Assistant District Attorney Dinwiddie, he had sauntered, with apparent aimlessness, about the room, looking at the various articles and occasionally shifting his gaze back and forth between different pieces of furniture. At length he had stooped down and inspected the mark made by the bullet on the wainscot; and once he had gone to the door and looked up and down the hall.

The only thing that had seemed to hold his attention to any extent was the body itself. He had stood before it for several minutes, studying its position, and had even bent over the outstretched arm on the table as if to see just how the dead man’s hand was holding the book. The crossed position of the legs, however, had attracted him most, and he had stood studying them for a considerable time. Finally, he had returned his monocle to his waistcoat pocket and joined Dinwiddie and me near the door, where he had stood, watching Heath and the other detectives with lazy indifference, until the departure of Captain Hagedorn.

The four of us had no more than taken seats when the patrolman stationed in the vestibule appeared at the door. “There’s a man from the local precinct station here, sir,” he announced, “who wants to see the officer in charge. Shall I send him in?”

Heath nodded curtly, and a moment later a large red-faced Irishman, in civilian clothes, stood before us. He saluted Heath, but on recognizing the district attorney, made Markham the recipient of his report.

“I’m Officer McLaughlin, sir—West Forty-seventh Street station,” he informed us; “and I was on duty on this beat last night. Around midnight, I guess it was, there was a big gray Cadillac standing in front of this house—I noticed it particular, because it had a lot of fishing tackle sticking out the back, and all of its lights were on. When I heard of the crime this morning, I reported the car to the station sergeant, and he sent me around to tell you about it.”

“Excellent,” Markham commented; and then, with a nod, referred the matter to Heath.

“May be something in it,” the latter admitted dubiously. “How long would you say the car was here, Officer?”

“A good half hour anyway. It was here before twelve, and when I come back at twelve thirty or thereabouts, it was still here. But the next time I come by, it was gone.”

“You saw nothing else? Nobody in the car, or anyone hanging around who might have been the owner?”

“No, sir, I did not.”

Several other questions of a similar nature were asked him; but nothing more could be learned, and he was dismissed.

“Anyway,” remarked Heath, “the car story will be good stuff to hand the reporters.”

Vance had sat through the questioning of McLaughlin with drowsy inattention—I doubt if he even heard more than the first few words of the officer’s report—and now, with a stifled yawn, he rose and, sauntering to the center table, picked up one of the cigarette butts that had been found in the fireplace. After rolling it between his thumb and forefinger and scrutinizing the tip, he ripped the paper open with his thumbnail and held the exposed tobacco to his nose.

Heath, who had been watching him gloweringly, leaned suddenly forward in his chair.

“What are you doing there?” he demanded, in a tone of surly truculence.

Vance lifted his eyes in decorous astonishment.

“Merely smelling of the tobacco,” he replied, with condescending unconcern. “It’s rather mild, y’ know, but delicately blended.”

The muscles in Heath’s cheeks worked angrily. “Well, you’d better put it down, sir,” he advised. Then he looked Vance up and down. “Tobacco expert?” he asked, with ill-disguised sarcasm.

“Oh, dear no.” Vance’s voice was dulcet. “My specialty is scarab-cartouches of the Ptolemaic dynasties.”

Markham interposed diplomatically. “You really shouldn’t touch anything around here, Vance, at this stage of the game. You never know what’ll turn out to be important. Those cigarette stubs may quite possibly be significant evidence.”

“Evidence?” repeated Vance sweetly. “My word! You don’t say, really! Most amusin’!”

Markham was plainly annoyed; and Heath was boiling inwardly but made no further comment; he even forced a mirthless smile. He evidently felt that he had been a little too abrupt with this friend of the district attorney’s, however much the friend might have deserved being reprimanded.

Heath, however, was no sycophant in the presence of his superiors. He knew his worth and lived up to it with his whole energy, discharging the tasks to which he was assigned with a dogged indifference to his own political wellbeing. This stubbornness of spirit, and the solidity of character it implied, were respected and valued by the men over him.

He was a large, powerful man but agile and graceful in his movements, like a highly trained boxer. He had hard blue eyes, remarkably bright and penetrating, a small nose, a broad, oval chin, and a stern, straight mouth with lips that appeared always compressed. His hair, which, though he was well along in his forties, was without a trace of grayness, was cropped about the edges and stood upright in a short bristly pompadour. His voice had an aggressive resonance, but he rarely blustered. In many ways he accorded with the conventional notion of what a detective is like. But there was something more to the man’s personality, an added capability and strength, as it were; and as I sat watching him that morning I felt myself unconsciously admiring him, despite his very obvious limitations.

“What’s the exact situation, Sergeant?” Markham asked. “Dinwiddie gave me only the barest facts.”

Heath cleared his throat. “We got the word a little before seven. Benson’s housekeeper, a Mrs. Platz, called up the local station and reported that she’d found him dead, and asked that somebody be sent over at once. The message, of course, was relayed to headquarters. I wasn’t there at the time, but Burke and Emery were on duty, and after notifying Inspector Moran, they came on up here. Several of the men from the local station were already on the job doing the usual nosing about. When the inspector had got here and looked the situation over, he telephoned me to hurry along. When I arrived, the local men had gone, and three more men from the homicide bureau had joined Burke and Emery. The inspector also phoned Captain Hagedorn—he thought the case big enough to call him in on it at once—and the captain had just got here when you arrived. Mr. Dinwiddie had come in right after the inspector and phoned you at once. Chief Inspector O’Brien came along a little ahead of me. I questioned the Platz woman right off; and my men were looking the place over when you showed up.”

“Where’s this Mrs. Platz now?” asked Markham.

“Upstairs being watched by one of the local men. She lives in the house.”

“Why did you mention the specific hour of twelve thirty to the doctor?”

“Platz told me she heard a report at that time, which I thought might have been the shot. I guess now it was the shot—it checks up with a number of things.”

“I think we’d better have another talk with Mrs. Platz,” Markham suggested. “But first: did you find anything suggestive in the room here—anything to go on?”

Heath hesitated almost imperceptibly; then he drew from his coat pocket a woman’s handbag and a pair of long white kid gloves, and tossed them on the table in front of the district attorney.

“Only these,” he said. “One of the local men found them on the end of the mantel over there.”

After a casual inspection of the gloves Markham opened the handbag and turned its contents out onto the table. I came forward and looked on, but Vance remained in his chair, placidly smoking a cigarette.

The handbag was of fine gold mesh with a catch set with small sapphires. It was unusually small and obviously designed only for evening wear. The objects which it had held, and which Markham was now inspecting, consisted of a flat watered-silk cigarette case, a small gold phial of Roger and Gallet’s Fleurs d’Amour perfume, a cloisonné vanity compact, a short delicate cigarette holder of inlaid amber, a gold-cased lipstick, a small embroidered French-linen handkerchief with “M. St.C.” monogrammed in the corner, and a Yale latchkey.

“This ought to give us a good lead,” said Markham, indicating the handkerchief. “I suppose you went over the articles carefully, Sergeant.”

Heath nodded. “Yes, and I imagine the bag belongs to the woman Benson was out with last night. The housekeeper told me he had an appointment and went out to dinner in his dress clothes. She didn’t hear Benson when he came back, though. Anyway, we ought to be able to run down ‘M. St.C.’ without much trouble.”

Markham had taken up the cigarette case again, and as he held it upside down a little shower of loose dried tobacco fell onto the table.

Heath stood up suddenly. “Maybe those cigarettes came out of that case,” he suggested. He picked up the intact butt and looked at it. “It’s a lady’s cigarette, all right. It looks as though it might have been smoked in a holder, too.”

“I beg to differ with you, Sergeant,” drawled Vance. “You’ll forgive me, I’m sure. But there’s a bit of lip rouge on the end of the cigarette. It’s hard to see, on account of the gold tip.”

Heath looked at Vance sharply; he was too much surprised to be resentful. After a closer inspection of the cigarette, he turned again to Vance.

“Perhaps you could also tell us from these tobacco grains, if the cigarettes came from this case,” he suggested, with gruff irony.

“One never knows, does one?” Vance replied, indolently rising.

Picking up the case, he pressed it wide open and tapped it on the table. Then he looked into it closely, and a humorous smile twitched the corners of his mouth. Putting his forefinger deep into the case, he drew out a small cigarette which had evidently been wedged flat along the bottom of the pocket.

“My olfact’ry gifts won’t be necess’ry now,” he said. “It is apparent even to the naked eye that the cigarettes are, to speak loosely, identical—eh what, Sergeant?”

Heath grinned good-naturedly. “That’s one on us, Mr. Markham.” And he carefully put the cigarette and the stub in an envelope, which he marked and pocketed.

“You now see, Vance,” observed Markham, “the importance of those cigarette butts.”

“Can’t say that I do,” responded the other. “Of what possible value is a cigarette butt? You can’t smoke it, y’ know.”

“It’s evidence, my dear fellow,” explained Markham patiently. “One knows that the owner of this bag returned with Benson last night and remained long enough to smoke two cigarettes.”

Vance lifted his eyebrows in mock amazement. “One does, does one? Fancy that, now.”

“It only remains to locate her,” interjected Heath.

“She’s a rather decided brunette, at any rate—if that fact will facilitate your quest any,” said Vance easily; “though why you should desire to annoy the lady, I can’t for the life of me imagine—really I can’t, don’t y’ know.”

“Why do you say she’s a brunette?” asked Markham.

“Well, if she isn’t,” Vance told him, sinking listlessly back in his chair, “then she should consult a cosmetician as to the proper way to make up. I see she uses ‘Rachel’ powder and Guerlain’s dark lipstick. And it simply isn’t done among blondes, old dear.”

“I defer, of course, to your expert opinion,” smiled Markham. Then, to Heath: “I guess we’ll have to look for a brunette, Sergeant.”

“It’s all right with me,” agreed Heath jocularly. By this time, I think, he had entirely forgiven Vance for destroying the cigarette butt.

CHAPTER 4

THE HOUSEKEEPER’S STORY

(Friday, June 14; 11 A.M.)

“Now,” suggested Markham, “suppose we take a look over the house. I imagine you’ve done that pretty thoroughly already, Sergeant, but I’d like to see the layout. Anyway, I don’t want to question the housekeeper until the body has been removed.”

Heath rose. “Very good, sir. I’d like another look myself.”

The four of us went into the hall and walked down the passageway to the rear of the house. At the extreme end, on the left, was a door leading downstairs to the basement; but it was locked and bolted.

“The basement is only used for storage now,” Heath explained; “and the door which opens from it into the street areaway is boarded up. The Platz woman sleeps upstairs—Benson lived here alone, and there’s plenty of spare room in the house—and the kitchen is on this floor.”

He opened a door on the opposite side of the passageway, and we stepped into a small, modern kitchen. Its two high windows, which gave into the paved rear yard at a height of about eight feet from the ground, were securely guarded with iron bars, and, in addition, the sashes were closed and locked. Passing through a swinging door, we entered the dining room, which was directly behind the living room. The two windows here looked upon a small stone court, really no more than a deep airwell between Benson’s house and the adjoining one; and these also were iron-barred and locked.

We now reentered the hallway and stood for a moment at the foot of the stairs leading above.

“You can see, Mr. Markham,” Heath pointed out, “that whoever shot Benson must have gotten in by the front door. There’s no other way he could have entered. Living alone, I guess Benson was a little touchy on the subject of burglars. The only window that wasn’t barred was the rear one in the living room; and that was shut and locked. Anyway, it only leads into the inside court. The front windows of the living room have that ironwork over them; so they couldn’t have been used even to shoot through, for Benson was shot from the opposite direction.… It’s pretty clear the gunman got in the front door.”

“Looks that way,” said Markham.

“And pardon me for saying so,” remarked Vance, “but Benson let him in.”

“Yes?” retorted Heath unenthusiastically. “Well, we’ll find all that out later, I hope.”

“Oh, doubtless,” Vance drily agreed.

We ascended the stairs and entered Benson’s bedroom, which was directly over the living room. It was severely but well furnished and in excellent order. The bed was made, showing it had not been slept in that night; and the window shades were drawn. Benson’s dinner jacket and white piqué waistcoat were hanging over a chair. A winged collar and a black bowtie were on the bed, where they had evidently been thrown when Benson had taken them off on returning home. A pair of low evening shoes were standing by the bench at the foot of the bed. In a glass of water on the night table was a platinum plate of four false teeth; and a toupee of beautiful workmanship was lying on the chiffonier.

This last item aroused Vance’s special interest. He walked up to it and regarded it closely.

“Most int’restin’,” he commented. “Our departed friend seems to have worn false hair; did you know that, Markham?”

“I always suspected it,” was the indifferent answer.

Heath, who had remained standing on the threshold, seemed a little impatient.

“There’s only one other room on this floor,” he said, leading the way down the hall. “It’s also a bedroom—for guests, so the housekeeper explained.”

Markham and I looked in through the door, but Vance remained lounging against the balustrade at the head of the stairs. He was manifestly uninterested in Alvin Benson’s domestic arrangements; and when Markham and Heath and I went up to the third floor, he sauntered down into the main hallway. When at length we descended from our tour of inspection he was casually looking over the titles in Benson’s bookcase.

We had just reached the foot of the stairs when the front door opened and two men with a stretcher entered. The ambulance from the Department of Welfare had arrived to take the corpse to the Morgue; and the brutal, businesslike way in which Benson’s body was covered up, lifted onto the stretcher, carried out and shoved into the wagon, made me shudder. Vance, on the other hand; after the merest fleeting glance at the two men, paid no attention to them. He had found a volume with a beautiful Humphrey-Milford binding, and was absorbed in its Roger Payne tooling and powdering.

“I think an interview with Mrs. Platz is indicated now,” said Markham; and Heath went to the foot of the stairs and gave a loud, brisk order.

Presently a gray-haired, middle-aged woman entered the living room accompanied by a plainclothesman smoking a large cigar. Mrs. Platz was of the simple, old-fashioned, motherly type, with a calm, benevolent countenance. She impressed me as highly capable, and as a woman given little to hysteria—an impression strengthened by her attitude of passive resignation. She seemed, however, to possess that taciturn shrewdness that is so often found among the ignorant.

“Sit down, Mrs. Platz.” Markham greeted her kindly. “I’m the district attorney, and there are some questions I want to ask you.”

She took a straight chair by the door and waited, gazing nervously from one to the other of us. Markham’s gentle, persuasive voice, though, appeared to encourage her; and her answers became more and more fluent.

The main facts that transpired from a quarter-of-an-hour’s examination may be summed up as follows:

Mrs. Platz had been Benson’s housekeeper for four years and was the only servant employed. She lived in the house, and her room was on the third, or top, floor in the rear.

On the afternoon of the preceding day Benson had returned from his office at an unusually early hour—around four o’clock—announcing to Mrs. Platz that he would not be home for dinner that evening. He had remained in the living room, with the hall door closed, until half past six and had then gone upstairs to dress.

He had left the house about seven o’clock but had not said where he was going. He had remarked casually that he would return in fairly good season but had told Mrs. Platz she need not wait up for him—which was her custom whenever he intended bringing guests home. This was the last she had seen him alive. She had not heard him when he returned that night.

She had retired about half past ten and, because of the heat, had left the door ajar. She had been awakened some time later by a loud detonation. It had startled her, and she had turned on the light by her bed, noting that it was just half past twelve by the small alarm clock she used for rising. It was, in fact, the early hour which had reassured her. Benson, whenever he went out for the evening, rarely returned home before two, and this fact, coupled with the stillness of the house, had made her conclude that the noise which had aroused her had been merely the backfiring of an automobile in Forty-ninth Street. Consequently, she had dismissed the matter from her mind, and gone back to sleep.

At seven o’clock the next morning she came downstairs as usual to begin her day’s duties and, on her way to the front door to bring in the milk and cream, had discovered Benson’s body. All the shades in the living room were down.

At first she thought Benson had fallen asleep in his chair, but when she saw the bullet hole and noticed that the electric lights had been switched off, she knew he was dead. She had gone at once to the telephone in the hall and, asking the operator for the police station, had reported the murder. She had then remembered Benson’s brother, Major Anthony Benson, and had telephoned him also. He had arrived at the house almost simultaneously with the detectives from the West Forty-seventh Street station. He had questioned her a little, talked with the plainclothesmen, and gone away before the men from headquarters arrived.

“And now, Mrs. Platz,” said Markham, glancing at the notes he had been making, “one or two more questions, and we won’t trouble you further.… Have you noticed anything in Mr. Benson’s actions lately that might lead you to suspect that he was worried—or, let us say, in fear of anything happening to him?”

“No sir,” the woman answered readily. “It looked like he was in special good humor for the last week or so.”

“I notice that most of the windows on this floor are barred. Was he particularly afraid of burglars, or of people breaking in?”

“Well—not exactly,” was the hesitant reply. “But he did use to say as how the police were no good—begging your pardon, sir—and how a man in this city had to look out for himself if he didn’t want to get held up.”

Markham turned to Heath with a chuckle. “You might make a special note of that for your files, Sergeant.” Then to Mrs. Platz: “Do you know of anyone who had a grudge against Mr. Benson?”

“Not a soul, sir,” the housekeeper answered emphatically. “He was a queer man in many ways, but everybody seemed to like him. He was all the time going to parties or giving parties. I just can’t see why anybody’d want to kill him.”

Markham looked over his notes again. “I don’t think there’s anything else for the present.… How about it, Sergeant? Anything further you want to ask?”

Heath pondered a moment. “No, I can’t think of anything more just now.… But you, Mrs. Platz,” he added, turning a cold glance on the woman, “will stay here in this house till you’re given permission to leave. We’ll want to question you later. But you’re not to talk to anyone else—understand? Two of my men will be here for a while yet.”

Vance, during the interview, had been jotting down something on the fly-leaf of a small pocket address book and as Heath was speaking he tore out the page and handed it to Markham. Markham glanced at it frowningly and pursed his lips. Then after a few moments’ hesitation, he addressed himself again to the housekeeper.

“You mentioned, Mrs. Platz, that Mr. Benson was liked by everyone. Did you yourself like him?”

The woman shifted her eyes to her lap. “Well, sir,” she replied reluctantly, “I was only working for him and I haven’t got any complaint about the way he treated me.”

Despite her words, she gave the impression that she either disliked Benson extremely or greatly disapproved of him. Markham, however, did not push the point.

“And, by the way, Mrs. Platz,” he said next, “did Mr. Benson keep any firearms about the house? For instance, do you know if he owned a revolver?”

For the first time during the interview, the woman appeared agitated, even frightened.

“Yes, sir, I—think he did,” she admitted, in an unsteady voice.

“Where did he keep it?”

The woman glanced up apprehensively and rolled her eyes slightly as if weighing the advisability of speaking frankly. Then she replied in a low voice, “In that hidden drawer there in the center table. You—you use that little brass button to open it with.”

Heath jumped up, and pressed the button she had indicated. A tiny, shallow drawer shot out; and in it lay a Smith and Wesson thirty-eight revolver with an inlaid pearl handle. He picked it up, broke the carriage, and looked at the head of the cylinder.

“Full,” he announced laconically.

An expression of tremendous relief spread over the woman’s features, and she sighed audibly.

Markham has risen and was looking at the revolver over Heath’s shoulder.

“You’d better take charge of it, Sergeant,” he said; “though I don’t see exactly how it fits in with the case.”

He resumed his seat and, glancing at the notation Vance had given him, turned again to the housekeeper.

“One more question, Mrs. Platz. You said Mr. Benson came home early and spent his time before dinner in this room. Did he have any callers during that time?”

I was watching the woman closely, and it seemed to me that she quickly compressed her lips. At any rate, she sat up a little straighter in her chair before answering.

“There wasn’t no one, as far as I know.”

“But surely you would have known if the bell rang,” insisted Markham. “You would have answered the door, wouldn’t you?”

“There wasn’t no one,” she repeated, with a trace of sullenness.

“And last night—did the doorbell ring at all after you had retired?”

“No, sir.”

“You would have heard it, even if you’d been asleep?”

“Yes, sir. There’s a bell just outside my door, the same as in the kitchen. It rings in both places. Mr. Benson had it fixed that way.”

Markham thanked her and dismissed her. When she had gone, he looked at Vance questioningly. “What idea did you have in your mind when you handed me those questions?”

“I might have been a bit presumptuous, y’ know,” said Vance; “but when the lady was extolling the deceased’s popularity, I rather felt she was overdoing it a bit. There was an unconscious implication of antithesis in her eulogy, which suggested to me that she herself was not ardently enamored of the gentleman.”

“And what put the notion of firearms into your mind?”

“That query,” explained Vance, “was a corollary of your own questions about barred windows and Benson’s fear of burglars. If he was in a funk about housebreakers or enemies, he’d be likely to have weapons at hand—eh, what?”

“Well, anyway, Mr. Vance,” put in Heath, “your curiosity unearthed a nice little revolver that’s probably never been used.”

“By the bye, Sergeant,” returned Vance, ignoring the other’s good-humored sarcasm, “just what do you make of that nice little revolver?”

“Well, now,” Heath replied, with ponderous facetiousness, “I deduct that Mr. Benson kept a pearl-handled Smith and Wesson in a secret drawer of his center table.”

“You don’t say—really!” exclaimed Vance in mock admiration. “Pos’tively illuminatin’!”

Markham broke up this raillery. “Why did you want to know about visitors, Vance? There obviously hadn’t been anyone here.”

“Oh, just a whim of mine. I was assailed by an impulsive yearning to hear what La Platz would say.”

Heath was studying Vance curiously. His first impressions of the man were being dispelled, and he had begun to suspect that beneath the other’s casual and debonair exterior there was something of a more solid nature than he had at first imagined. He was not altogether satisfied with Vance’s explanations to Markham and seemed to be endeavoring to penetrate to his real reasons for supplementing the district attorney’s interrogation of the housekeeper. Heath was astute, and he had the worldly man’s ability to read people; but Vance, being different from the men with whom he usually came in contact, was an enigma to him.

At length he relinquished his scrutiny and drew up his chair to the table with a spirited air.

“And now, Mr. Markham,” he said crisply, “we’d better outline our activities so as not to duplicate our efforts. The sooner I get my men started, the better.”

Markham assented readily. “The investigation is entirely up to you, Sergeant. I’m here to help wherever I’m needed.”

“That’s very kind of you, sir,” Heath returned. “But it looks to me as though there’d be enough work for all parties.… Suppose I get to work on running down the owner of the handbag, and send some men out scouting among Benson’s night-life cronies—I can pick up some names from the housekeeper, and they’ll be a good starting point. And I’ll get after that Cadillac, too.… Then we ought to look into his lady friends—I guess he had enough of ’em.”

“I may get something out of the major along that line,” supplied Markham. “He’ll tell me anything I want to know. And I can also look into Benson’s business associates through the same channel.”

“I was going to suggest that you could do that better than I could,” Heath rejoined. “We ought to run into something pretty quick that’ll give us a line to go on. And I’ve got an idea that when we locate the lady he took to dinner last night and brought back here, we’ll know a lot more than we do now.”

“Or a lot less,” murmured Vance.

Heath looked up quickly and grunted with an air of massive petulance.

“Let me tell you something, Mr. Vance,” he said, “since I understand you want to learn something about these affairs: when anything goes seriously wrong in this world, it’s pretty safe to look for a woman in the case.”

“Ah, yes,” smiled Vance. “Cherchez la femme—an aged notion. Even the Romans labored under the superstition. They expressed it with Dux femina facti.”

“However they expressed it,” retorted Heath, “they had the right idea. And don’t let ’em tell you different.”

Again Markham diplomatically intervened.

“That point will be settled very soon, I hope.… And now, Sergeant, if you’ve nothing else to suggest, I’ll be getting along. I told Major Benson I’d see him at lunchtime; and I may have some news for you by tonight.”

“Right,” assented Heath. “I’m going to stick around here awhile and see if there’s anything I overlooked. I’ll arrange for a guard outside and also for a man inside to keep an eye on the Platz woman. Then I’ll see the reporters and let them in on the disappearing Cadillac and Mr. Vance’s mysterious revolver in the secret drawer. I guess that ought to hold ’em. If I find out anything, I’ll phone you.”

When he had shaken hands with the district attorney, he turned to Vance. “Good-bye, sir,” he said pleasantly, much to my surprise, and to Markham’s, too, I imagine. “I hope you learned something this morning.”

“You’d be pos’tively dumfounded, Sergeant, at all I did learn,” Vance answered carelessly.

Again I noted the look of shrewd scrutiny in Heath’s eyes; but in a second it was gone. “Well, I’m glad of that,” was his perfunctory reply.

Markham, Vance, and I went out, and the patrolman on duty hailed a taxicab for us.

“So that’s the way our lofty gendarmerie approaches the mysterious wherefores of criminal enterprise—eh?” mused Vance, as we started on our way across town. “Markham, old dear, how do those robust lads ever succeed in running down a culprit?”

“You have witnessed only the barest preliminaries,” Markham explained. “There are certain things that must be done as a matter of routine—ex abundantia cautelae, as we lawyers say.”

“But, my word!—such technique!” sighed Vance. “Ah, well, quantum est in rubus inane! as we laymen say.”

“You don’t think much of Heath’s capacity, I know”—Markham’s voice was patient—“but he’s a clever man and one that it’s very easy to underestimate.”

“I daresay,” murmured Vance. “Anyway, I’m deuced grateful to you, and all that, for letting me behold the solemn proceedings. I’ve been vastly amused, even if not uplifted. Your official Aesculapius rather appealed to me, y’ know—such a brisk, unemotional chap, and utterly unimpressed with the corpse. He really should have taken up crime in a serious way, instead of studying medicine.”

Markham lapsed into gloomy silence and sat looking out of the window in troubled meditation until we reached Vance’s house.

“I don’t like the looks of things,” he remarked, as we drew up to the curb. “I have a curious feeling about this case.”

Vance regarded him a moment from the corner of his eye. “See here, Markham,” he said with unwonted seriousness; “haven’t you any idea who shot Benson?”

Markham forced a faint smile, “I wish I had. Crimes of willful murder are not so easily solved. And this case strikes me as a particularly complex one.”

“Fancy, now!” said Vance, as he stepped out of the machine. “And I thought it extr’ordin’rily simple.”

CHAPTER 5

GATHERING INFORMATION

(Saturday, June 15; forenoon.)

You will remember the sensation caused by Alvin Benson’s murder. It was one of those crimes that appeal irresistibly to the popular imagination. Mystery is the basis of all romance, and about the Benson case there hung an impenetrable aura of mystery. It was many days before any definite light was shed on the circumstances surrounding the shooting; but numerous ignes fatui arose to beguile the public’s imagination, and wild speculations were heard on all sides.

Alvin Benson, while not a romantic figure in any respect, had been well known; and his personality had been a colorful and spectacular one. He had been a member of New York’s wealthy bohemian social set—an avid sportsman, a rash gambler, and professional man-about-town; and his life, led on the borderland of the demimonde, had contained many highlights. His exploits in the nightclubs and cabarets had long supplied the subject matter for exaggerated stories and comments in the various local papers and magazines which batten on Broadway’s scandalmongers.

Benson and his brother, Anthony, had, at the time of the former’s sudden death, been running a brokerage office at 21 Wall Street, under the name of Benson and Benson. Both were regarded by the other brokers of the Street as shrewd businessmen, though perhaps a shade unethical when gauged by the constitution and bylaws of the New York Stock Exchange. They were markedly contrasted as to temperament and taste and saw little of each other outside the office. Alvin Benson devoted his entire leisure to pleasure-seeking and was a regular patron of the city’s leading cafés; whereas Anthony Benson, who was the older and had served as a major in the late war, followed a sedate and conventional existence, spending most of his evenings quietly at his clubs. Both, however, were popular in their respective circles, and between them they had built up a large clientele.

The glamour of the financial district had much to do with the manner in which the crime was handled by the newspapers. Moreover, the murder had been committed at a time when the metropolitan press was experiencing a temporary lull in sensationalism; and the story was spread over the front pages of the papers with a prodigality rarely encountered in such cases.8 Eminent detectives throughout the country were interviewed by enterprising reporters. Histories of famous unsolved murder cases were revived; and clairvoyants and astrologers were engaged by the Sunday editors to solve the mystery by various metaphysical devices. Photographs and detailed diagrams were the daily accompaniments of these journalistic outpourings.

In all the news stories the gray Cadillac and the pearl-handled Smith and Wesson were featured. There were pictures of Cadillac cars, “touched up” and reconstructed to accord with Patrolman McLaughlin’s description, some of them even showing the fishing tackle protruding from the tonneau. A photograph of Benson’s center table had been taken, with the secret drawer enlarged and reproduced in an “inset.” One Sunday magazine went so far as to hire an expert cabinetmaker to write a dissertation on secret compartments in furniture.

The Benson case from the outset had proved a trying and difficult one from the police standpoint. Within an hour of the time that Vance and I had left the scene of the crime a systematic investigation had been launched by the men of the homicide bureau in charge of Sergeant Heath. Benson’s house was again gone over thoroughly, and all his private correspondence read; but nothing was brought forth that could throw any light on the tragedy. No weapon was found aside from Benson’s own Smith and Wesson; and though all the window grilles were again inspected, they were found to be secure, indicating that the murderer had either let himself in with a key or else been admitted by Benson. Heath, by the way, was unwilling to admit this latter possibility despite Mrs. Platz’s positive assertion that no other person besides herself and Benson had a key.

Because of the absence of any definite clue, other than the handbag and the gloves, the only proceeding possible was the interrogating of Benson’s friends and associates in the hope of uncovering some fact which would furnish a trail. It was by this process also that Heath hoped to establish the identity of the owner of the handbag. A special effort was therefore made to ascertain where Benson had spent the evening; but though many of his acquaintances were questioned, and the cafés where he habitually dined were visited, no one could at once be found who had seen him that night; nor, as far as it was possible to learn, had he mentioned to anyone his plans for the evening. Furthermore, no general information of a helpful nature came to light immediately, although the police pushed their inquiry with the utmost thoroughness. Benson apparently had no enemies; he had not quarreled seriously with anyone; and his affairs were reported in their usual orderly shape.

Major Anthony Benson was naturally the principal person looked to for information, because of his intimate knowledge of his brother’s affairs; and it was in this connection that the district attorney’s office did its chief functioning at the beginning of the case. Markham had lunched with Major Benson the day the crime was discovered, and though the latter had shown a willingness to cooperate—even to the detriment of his brother’s character—his suggestions were of little value. He explained to Markham that, though he knew most of his brother’s associates, he could not name anyone who would have any reason for committing such a crime or anyone who, in his opinion, would be able to help in leading the police to the guilty person. He admitted frankly, however, that there was a side to his brother’s life with which he was unacquainted and regretted that he was unable to suggest any specific way of ascertaining the hidden facts. But he intimated that his brother’s relations with women were of a somewhat unconventional nature; and he ventured the opinion that there was a bare possibility of a motive being found in that direction.

Pursuant of the few indefinite and unsatisfactory suggestions of Major Benson, Markham had immediately put to work two good men from the detective division assigned to the district attorney’s office, with instructions to confine their investigations to Benson’s women acquaintances so as not to appear in any way to be encroaching upon the activities of the central office men. Also, as a result of Vance’s apparent interest in the housekeeper at the time of the interrogation, he had sent a man to look into the woman’s antecedents and relationships.

Mrs. Platz, it was learned, had been born in a small Pennsylvania town, of German parents both of whom were dead; and had been a widow for over sixteen years. Before coming to Benson, she had been with one family for twelve years and had left the position only because her mistress had given up housekeeping and moved into a hotel. Her former employer, when questioned, said she thought there had been a daughter but had never seen the child and knew nothing of it. In these facts there was nothing to take hold of, and Markham had merely filed the report as a matter of form.

Heath had instigated a citywide search for the gray Cadillac, although he had little faith in its direct connection with the crime; and in this the newspapers helped considerably by the extensive advertising given the car. One curious fact developed that fired the police with the hope that the Cadillac might indeed hold some clue to the mystery. A street cleaner, having read or heard about the fishing tackle in the machine, reported the finding of two jointed fishing rods, in good condition, at the side of one of the drives in Central Park near Columbus Circle. The question was: were these rods part of the equipment Patrolman McLaughlin had seen in the Cadillac? The owner of the car might conceivably have thrown them away in his flight; but, on the other hand, they might have been lost by someone else while driving through the park. No further information was forthcoming, and on the morning of the day following the discovery of the crime the case, so far as any definite progress toward a solution was concerned, had taken no perceptible forward step.

That morning Vance had sent Currie out to buy him every available newspaper; and he had spent over an hour perusing the various accounts of the crime. It was unusual for him to glance at a newspaper, even casually, and I could not refrain from expressing my amazement at his sudden interest in a subject so entirely outside his normal routine.

“No, Van old dear,” he explained languidly, “I am not becoming sentimental or even human, as that word is erroneously used today. I can not say with Terence, ‘Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto,’ because I regard most things that are called human as decidedly alien to myself. But, y’ know, this little flurry in crime has proved rather int’restin’, or, as the magazine writers say, intriguing—beastly word!… Van, you really should read this precious interview with Sergeant Heath. He takes an entire column to say, ‘I know nothing.’ A priceless lad! I’m becoming pos’tively fond of him.”

“It may be,” I suggested, “that Heath is keeping his true knowledge from the papers as a bit of tactical diplomacy.”

“No,” Vance returned, with a sad wag of the head, “no man has so little vanity that he would delib’rately reveal himself to the world as a creature with no perceptible powers of human reasoning—as he does in all these morning journals—for the mere sake of bringing one murderer to justice. That would be martyrdom gone mad.”

“Markham, at any rate, may know or suspect something that hasn’t been revealed,” I said.

Vance pondered a moment. “That’s not impossible,” he admitted. “He has kept himself modestly in the background in all this journalistic palaver. Suppose we look into the matter more thoroughly—eh, what?”

Going to the telephone, he called the district attorney’s office, and I heard him make an appointment with Markham for lunch at the Stuyvesant Club.

“What about that Nadelmann statuette at Stieglitz’s,” I asked, remembering the reason for my presence at Vance’s that morning.

“I ain’t9 in the mood for Greek simplifications today,” he answered, turning again to his newspapers.

To say that I was surprised at his attitude is to express it mildly. In all my association with him I had never known him to forgo his enthusiasm for art in favor of any other divertisement; and heretofore anything pertaining to the law and its operations had failed to interest him. I realized, therefore that something of an unusual nature was at work in his brain and I refrained from further comment.

Markham was a little late for the appointment at the club, and Vance and I were already at our favorite corner table when he arrived.

“Well, my good Lycurgus,” Vance greeted him, “aside from the fact that several new and significant clues have been unearthed and that the public may expect important developments in the very near future, and all that sort of tosh, how are things really going?”

Markham smiled. “I see you have been reading the newspapers. What do you think of the accounts?”

“Typical, no doubt,” replied Vance. “They carefully and painstakingly omit nothing but the essentials.”

“Indeed?” Markham’s tone was jocular. “And what, may I ask, do you regard as the essentials of the case?”

“In my foolish amateur way,” said Vance, “I looked upon dear Alvin’s toupee as a rather conspicuous essential, don’t y’ know.”

“Benson, at any rate, regarded it in that light, I imagine.… Anything else?”

“Well, there was the collar and the tie on the chiffonier.”

“And,” added Markham chaffingly, “don’t overlook the false teeth in the tumbler.”

“You’re pos’tively coruscatin’!” Vance exclaimed. “Yes, they, too, were an essential of the situation. And I’ll warrant the incomp’rable Heath didn’t even notice them. But the other Aristotles present were equally sketchy in their observations.”

“You weren’t particularly impressed by the investigation yesterday, I take it,” said Markham.

“On the contrary,” Vance assured him, “I was impressed to the point of stupefaction. The whole proceedings constituted a masterpiece of absurdity. Everything relevant was sublimely ignored. There were at least a dozen points de départ, all leading in the same direction, but not one of them apparently was even noticed by any of the officiating pourparleurs. Everybody was too busy at such silly occupations as looking for cigarette ends and inspecting the ironwork at the windows. Those grilles, by the way, were rather attractive—Florentine design.”

Markham was both amused and ruffled.

“One’s pretty safe with the police, Vance,” he said. “They get there eventually.”

“I simply adore your trusting nature,” murmured Vance. “But confide in me: what do you know regarding Benson’s murderer?”

Markham hesitated. “This is, of course, in confidence,” he said at length; “but this morning, right after you phoned, one of the men I had put to work on the amatory end of Benson’s life reported that he had found the woman who left her handbag and gloves at the house that night—the initials on the handkerchief gave him the clue. And he dug up some interesting facts about her. As I suspected, she was Benson’s dinner companion that evening. She’s an actress—musical comedy, I believe. Muriel St. Clair by name.”

“Most unfortunate,” breathed Vance. “I was hoping, y’ know, your myrmidons wouldn’t discover the lady. I haven’t the pleasure of her acquaintance or I’d send her a note of commiseration.… Now, I presume, you’ll play the juge d’instruction and chivvy her most horribly, what?”

“I shall certainly question her, if that’s what you mean.”

Markham’s manner was preoccupied, and during the rest of the lunch we spoke but little.

As we sat in the club’s lounge room later having our smoke, Major Benson, who had been standing dejectedly at a window close by, caught sight of Markham and came over to us. He was a full-faced man of about fifty, with grave, kindly features and a sturdy, erect body.

He greeted Vance and me with a casual bow and turned at once to the district attorney. “Markham, I’ve been thinking things over constantly since our lunch yesterday,” he said, “and there’s one other suggestion I think I might make. There’s a man named Leander Pfyfe who was very close to Alvin; and it’s possible he could give you some helpful information. His name didn’t occur to me yesterday, for he doesn’t live in the city; he’s on Long Island somewhere—Port Washington, I think. It’s just an idea. The truth is, I can’t seem to figure out anything that makes sense in this terrible affair.”

He drew a quick, resolute breath, as if to check some involuntary sign of emotion. It was evident that the man, for all his habitual passivity of nature, was deeply moved.

“That’s a good suggestion, Major,” Markham said, making a notation on the back of a letter. “I’ll get after it immediately.”

Vance, who, during this brief interchange, had been gazing unconcernedly out of the window, turned and addressed himself to the major. “How about Colonel Ostrander? I’ve seen him several times in the company of your brother.”

Major Benson made a slight gesture of depreciation.

“Only an acquaintance. He’d be of no value.” Then he turned to Markham. “I don’t imagine it’s time even to hope that you’ve run across anything.”

Markham took his cigar from his mouth and turning it about in his fingers, contemplated it thoughtfully.

“I wouldn’t say that,” he remarked, after a moment. “I’ve managed to find out whom your brother dined with Thursday night; and I know that this person returned home with him shortly after midnight.” He paused as if deliberating the wisdom of saying more. Then: “The fact is, I don’t need a great deal more evidence than I’ve got already to go before the grand jury and ask for an indictment.”

A look of surprised admiration flashed in the major’s sombre face.

“Thank God for that, Markham!” he said. Then, setting his heavy jaw, he placed his hand on the district attorney’s shoulder. “Go the limit—for my sake!” he urged. “If you want me for anything, I’ll be here at the club till late.”

With this he turned and walked from the room.

“It seems a bit cold-blooded to bother the major with questions so soon after his brother’s death,” commented Markham. “Still, the world has got to go on.”

Vance stifled a yawn. “Why—in Heaven’s name?” he murmured listlessly.

CHAPTER 6

VANCE OFFERS AN OPINION

(Saturday, June 15; 2 P.M.)

We sat for a while smoking in silence, Vance gazing lazily out into Madison Square, Markham frowning deeply at the faded oil portrait of old Peter Stuyvesant that hung over the fireplace.

Presently Vance turned and contemplated the district attorney with a faintly sardonic smile.

“I say, Markham,” he drawled; “it has always been a source of amazement to me how easily you investigators of crime are misled by what you call clues. You find a footprint, or a parked automobile, or a monogrammed handkerchief, and then dash off on a wild chase with your eternal Ecce signum! ’Pon my word, it’s as if you chaps were all under the spell of shillin’ shockers. Won’t you ever learn that crimes can’t be solved by deductions based merely on material clues and circumst’ntial evidence?”

I think Markham was as much surprised as I at this sudden criticism; yet we both knew Vance well enough to realize that, despite his placid and almost flippant tone, there was a serious purpose behind his words.

“Would you advocate ignoring all the tangible evidence of a crime?” asked Markham, a bit patronizingly.

“Most emphatically,” Vance declared calmly. “It’s not only worthless but dangerous.… The great trouble with you chaps, d’ ye see, is that you approach every crime with a fixed and unshakable assumption that the criminal is either half-witted or a colossal bungler. I say, has it never by any chance occurred to you that if a detective could see a clue, the criminal would also have seen it and would either have concealed it or disguised it, if he had not wanted it found? And have you never paused to consider that anyone clever enough to plan and execute a successful crime these days is, ipso facto, clever enough to manufacture whatever clues suit his purpose? Your detective seems wholly unwilling to admit that the surface appearance of a crime may be delib’rately deceptive or that the clues may have been planted for the def’nite purpose of misleading him.”

“I’m afraid,” Markham pointed out, with an air of indulgent irony, “that we’d convict very few criminals if we were to ignore all indicatory evidence, cogent circumstances, and irresistible inferences.… As a rule, you know, crimes are not witnessed by outsiders.”

“That’s your fundamental error, don’t y’ know,” Vance observed impassively. “Every crime is witnessed by outsiders, just as is every work of art. The fact that no one sees the criminal, or the artist, actu’lly at work, is wholly incons’quential. The modern investigator of crime would doubtless refuse to believe that Rubens painted the Descent from the Cross in the Cathedral at Antwerp if there was sufficient circumst’ntial evidence to indicate that he had been away on diplomatic business, for instance, at the time it was painted. And yet, my dear fellow, such a conclusion would be prepost’rous. Even if the inf’rences to the contr’ry were so irresistible as to be legally overpowering, the picture itself would prove conclusively that Rubens did paint it. Why? For the simple reason, d’ ye see, that no one but Rubens could have painted it. It bears the indelible imprint of his personality and genius—and his alone.”

“I’m not an aesthetician,” Markham reminded him, a trifle testily. “I’m merely a practical lawyer and when it comes to determining the authorship of a crime, I prefer tangible evidence to metaphysical hypotheses.”

“Your pref’rence, my dear fellow,” Vance returned blandly, “will inev’tably involve you in all manner of embarrassing errors.”

He slowly lit another cigarette and blew a wreath of smoke toward the ceiling. “Consider, for example, your conclusions in the present murder case,” he went on, in his emotionless drawl. “You are laboring under the grave misconception that you know the person who prob’bly killed the unspeakable Benson. You admitted as much to the major; and you told him you had nearly enough evidence to ask for an indictment. No doubt, you do possess a number of what the learned Solons of today regard as convincing clues. But the truth is, don’t y’ know, you haven’t your eye on the guilty person at all. You’re about to bedevil some poor girl who had nothing whatever to do with the crime.”

Markham swung about sharply.

“So!” he retorted. “I’m about to bedevil an innocent person, eh? Since my assistants and I are the only ones who happen to know what evidence we hold against her, perhaps you will explain by what occult process you acquired your knowledge of this person’s innocence.”

“It’s quite simple, y’ know,” Vance replied, with a quizzical twitch of the lips. “You haven’t your eye on the murderer for the reason that the person who committed this particular crime was sufficiently shrewd and perspicacious to see to it that no evidence which you or the police were likely to find would even remotely indicate his guilt.”

He had spoken with the easy assurance of one who enunciates an obvious fact—a fact which permits of no argument.

Markham gave a disdainful laugh. “No lawbreaker,” he asserted oracularly, “is shrewd enough to see all contingencies. Even the most trivial event has so many intimately related and serrated points of contact with other events which precede and follow, that it is a known fact that every criminal—however long and carefully he may plan—leaves some loose end to his preparations, which in the end betrays him.”

“A known fact?” Vance repeated. “No, my dear fellow—merely a conventional superstition, based on the childish idea of an implacable, avenging Nemesis. I can see how this esoteric notion of the inev’tability of divine punishment would appeal to the popular imagination, like fortune-telling and Ouija boards, don’t y’ know; but—my word!—it desolates me to think that you, old chap, would give credence to such mystical moonshine.”

“Don’t let it spoil your entire day,” said Markham acridly.

“Regard the unsolved, or successful, crimes that are taking place every day,” Vance continued, disregarding the other’s irony, “—crimes which completely baffle the best detectives in the business, what? The fact is, the only crimes that are ever solved are those planned by stupid people. That’s why, whenever a man of even mod’rate sagacity decides to commit a crime, he accomplishes it with but little diff’culty and fortified with the pos’tive assurance of his immunity to discovery.”

“Undetected crimes,” scornfully submitted Markham, “result, in the main, from official bad luck, not from superior criminal cleverness.”

“Bad luck”—Vance’s voice was almost dulcet—“is merely a defensive and self-consoling synonym for inefficiency. A man with ingenuity and brains is not harassed by bad luck.… No, Markham old dear; unsolved crimes are simply crimes which have been intelligently planned and executed. And, d’ ye see, it happens that the Benson murder falls into that categ’ry. Therefore, when, after a few hours’ investigation, you say you’re pretty sure who committed it, you must pardon me if I take issue with you.”

He paused and took a few meditative puffs on his cigarette. “The factitious and casuistic methods of deduction you chaps pursue are apt to lead almost anywhere. In proof of which assertion I point triumphantly to the unfortunate young lady whose liberty you are now plotting to take away.”

Markham, who had been hiding his resentment behind a smile of tolerant contempt, now turned on Vance and fairly glowered.

“It so happens—and I’m speaking ex cathedra,” he proclaimed defiantly, “that I come pretty near having the goods on your ‘unfortunate young lady.’”

Vance was unmoved. “And yet, y’ know,” he observed drily, “no woman could possibly have done it.”

I could see that Markham was furious. When he spoke he almost spluttered.

“A woman couldn’t have done it, eh—no matter what the evidence?”

“Quite so,” Vance rejoined placidly; “not if she herself swore to it and produced a tome of what you scions of the law term, rather pompously, incontrovertible evidence.”

“Ah!” There was no mistaking the sarcasm of Markham’s tone. “I am to understand, then, that you even regard confessions as valueless?”

“Yes, my dear Justinian,” the other responded, with an air of complacency; “I would have you understand precisely that. Indeed, they are worse than valueless—they’re downright misleading. The fact that occasionally they may prove to be correct—like woman’s prepost’rously overrated intuition—renders them just so much more unreliable.”

Markham grunted disdainfully.

“Why should any person confess something to his detriment unless he felt that the truth had been found out or was likely to be found out?”

“’Pon my word, Markham, you astound me! Permit me to murmur, privatissime et gratis, into your innocent ear that there are many other presumable motives for confessing. A confession may be the result of fear, or duress, or expediency, or mother-love, or chivalry, or what the psychoanalysts call the inferiority complex, or delusions, or a mistaken sense of duty, or a perverted egotism, or sheer vanity, or any other of a hundred causes. Confessions are the most treach’rous and unreliable of all forms of evidence; and even the silly and unscientific law repudiates them in murder cases unless substantiated by other evidence.”

“You are eloquent; you wring me,” said Markham. “But if the law threw out all confessions and ignored all material clues, as you appear to advise, then society might as well close down all its courts and scrap all its jails.”

“A typical non sequitur of legal logic,” Vance replied.

“But how would you convict the guilty, may I ask?”

“There is one infallible method of determining human guilt and responsibility,” Vance explained; “but as yet the police are as blissfully unaware of its possibilities as they are ignorant of its operations. The truth can be learned only by an analysis of the psychological factors of a crime and an application of them to the individual. The only real clues are psychological—not material. Your truly profound art expert, for instance, does not judge and authenticate pictures by an inspection of the underpainting and a chemical analysis of the pigments, but by studying the creative personality revealed in the picture’s conception and execution. He asks himself: Does this work of art embody the qualities of form and technique and mental attitude that made up the genius—namely, the personality—of Rubens, or Michelangelo, or Veronese, or Titian, or Tintoretto, or whoever may be the artist to whom the work has been tentatively credited.”

“My mind is, I fear,” Markham confessed, “still sufficiently primitive to be impressed by vulgar facts; and in the present instance—unfortunately for your most original and artistic analogy—I possess quite an array of such facts, all of which indicate that a certain young woman is the—shall we say?—creator of the criminal opus entitled The Murder of Alvin Benson.”

Vance shrugged his shoulders almost imperceptibly.

“Would you mind telling me—in confidence, of course—what these facts are?”

“Certainly not,” Markham acceded. “Imprimis: the lady was in the house at the time the shot was fired.”

Vance affected incredibility. “Eh—my word! She was actu’lly there? Most extr’ordin’ry!”

“The evidence of her presence is unassailable,” pursued Markham. “As you know, the gloves she wore at dinner and the handbag she carried with her were both found on the mantel in Benson’s living room.”

“Oh!” murmured Vance, with a faintly deprecating smile. “It was not the lady, then, but her gloves and bag which were present—a minute and unimportant distinction, no doubt, from the legal point of view.… Still,” he added, “I deplore the inability of my layman’s untutored mind to accept the two conditions as identical. My trousers are at the dry cleaners; therefore, I am at the dry cleaners, what?”

Markham turned on him with considerable warmth.

“Does it mean nothing in the way of evidence, even to your layman’s mind, that a woman’s intimate and necessary articles, which she has carried throughout the evening, are found in her escort’s quarters the following morning?”

“In admitting that it does not,” Vance acknowledged quietly, “I no doubt expose a legal perception lamentably inefficient.”

“But since the lady certainly wouldn’t have carried these particular objects during the afternoon, and since she couldn’t have called at the house that evening during Benson’s absence without the housekeeper knowing it, how, may one ask, did these articles happen to be there the next morning if she herself did not take them there late that night?”

“’Pon my word, I haven’t the slightest notion,” Vance rejoined. “The lady, herself could doubtless appease your curiosity. But there are any number of possible explanations, y’ know. Our departed Chesterfield might have brought them home in his coat pocket—women are eternally handing men all manner of gewgaws and bundles to carry for ’em, with the cooing request: ‘Can you put this in your pocket for me?’… Then again, there is the possibility that the real murderer secured them in some way and placed them on the mantel delib’rately to mislead the Polizei. Women, don’t y’ know, never put their belongings in such neat, out-of-the-way places as mantels and hatracks. They invariably throw them down on your fav’rite chair or your center table.”

“And, I suppose,” Markham interjected, “Benson also brought the lady’s cigarette butts home in his pocket?”

“Stranger things have happened,” returned Vance equably; “though I sha’n’t accuse him of it in this instance.… The cigarette butts may, y’ know, be evidence of a previous conversazione.”

“Even your despised Heath,” Markham informed him, “had sufficient intelligence to ascertain from the housekeeper that she sweeps out the grate every morning.”

Vance sighed admiringly. “You’re so thorough, aren’t you?… But, I say, that can’t be, by any chance, your only evidence against the lady?”

“By no means,” Markham assured him. “But, despite your superior distrust, it’s good corroboratory evidence nevertheless.”

“I daresay,” Vance agreed, “seeing with what frequency innocent persons are condemned in our courts.… But tell me more.”

Markham proceeded with an air of quiet self-assurance. “My man learned, first, that Benson dined alone with this woman at the Marseilles, a little bohemian restaurant in West Fortieth Street; secondly, that they quarreled; and thirdly, that they departed at midnight, entering a taxicab together.… Now, the murder was committed at twelve-thirty; but since the lady lives on Riverside Drive, in the Eighties, Benson couldn’t possibly have accompanied her home—which obviously he would have done had he not taken her to his own house—and returned by the time the shot was fired. But we have further proof pointing to her being at Benson’s. My man learned, at the woman’s apartment house, that actually she did not get home until shortly after one. Moreover, she was without gloves and handbag and had to be let in to her rooms with a passkey, because, as she explained, she had lost hers. As you remember, we found the key in her bag. And—to clinch the whole matter—the smoked cigarettes in the grate corresponded to the one you found in her case.”

Markham paused to relight his cigar.

“So much for that particular evening,” he resumed. “As soon as I learned the woman’s identity this morning, I put two more men to work on her private life. Just as I was leaving the office this noon the men phoned in their reports. They had learned that the woman has a fiancé, a chap named Leacock, who was a captain in the army, and who would be likely to own just such a gun as Benson was killed with. Furthermore, this Captain Leacock lunched with the woman the day of the murder and also called on her at her apartment the morning after.”

Markham leaned slightly forward, and his next words were emphasized by the tapping of his fingers on the arm of the chair.

“As you see, we have the motive, the opportunity, and the means.… Perhaps you will tell me now that I possess no incriminating evidence.”

“My dear Markham,” Vance affirmed calmly, “you haven’t brought out a single point which could not easily be explained away by any bright schoolboy.” He shook his head lugubriously. “And on such evidence people are deprived of their life and liberty! ’Pon my word, you alarm me. I tremble for my personal safety.”

Markham was nettled.

“Would you be so good as to point out, from your dizzy pinnacle of sapience, the errors in my reasoning?”

“As far as I can see,” returned Vance evenly, “your particularization concerning the lady is innocent of reasoning. You’ve simply taken several unaffined facts and jumped to a false conclusion. I happen to know the conclusion is false because all the psychological indications of the crime contradict it—that is to say, the only real evidence in the case points unmistakably in another direction.”

He made a gesture of emphasis, and his tone assumed an unwonted gravity.

“And if you arrest any woman for killing Alvin Benson, you will simply be adding another crime—a crime of delib’rate and unpardonable stupidity—to the one already committed. And between shooting a bounder like Benson and ruining an innocent woman’s reputation, I’m inclined to regard the latter as the more reprehensible.”

I could see a flash of resentment leap into Markham’s eyes; but he did not take offense. Remember: these two men were close friends; and, for all their divergency of nature, they understood and respected each other. Their frankness—severe and even mordant at times—was, indeed, a result of that respect.

There was a moment’s silence; then Markham forced a smile. “You fill me with misgivings,” he averred mockingly; but, despite the lightness of his tone, I felt that he was half in earnest. “However, I hadn’t exactly planned to arrest the lady just yet.”

“You reveal commendable restraint,” Vance complimented him. “But I’m sure you’ve already arranged to ballyrag the lady and perhaps trick her into one or two of those contradictions so dear to every lawyer’s heart—just as if any nervous or high-strung person could help indulging in apparent contradictions while being cross-questioned as a suspect in a crime they had nothing to do with.… To ‘put ’em on the grill’—a most accurate designation. So reminiscent of burning people at the stake, what?”

“Well, I’m most certainly going to question her,” replied Markham firmly, glancing at his watch. “And one of my men is escorting her to the office in half an hour; so I must break up this most delightful and edifying chat.”

“You really expect to learn something incriminating by interrogating her?” asked Vance. “Y’ know, I’d jolly well like to witness your humiliation. But I presume your heckling of suspects is a part of the legal arcana.”

Markham had risen and turned toward the door, but at Vance’s words he paused and appeared to deliberate. “I can’t see any particular objection to your being present,” he said, “if you really care to come.”

I think he had an idea that the humiliation of which the other had spoken would prove to be Vance’s own; and soon we were in a taxicab headed for the Criminal Courts Building.

CHAPTER 7

REPORTS AND AN INTERVIEW

(Saturday, June 15; 3 P.M.)

We entered the ancient building, with its discolored marble pillars and balustrades and its old-fashioned iron scrollwork, by the Franklin Street door and went directly to the district attorney’s office on the fourth floor. The office, like the building, breathed an air of former days. Its high ceilings, its massive golden-oak woodwork, its elaborate low-hung chandelier of bronze and china, its dingy bay walls of painted plaster, and its four high narrow windows to the south—all bespoke a departed era in architecture and decoration.

On the floor was a large velvet carpet-rug of dingy brown; and the windows were hung with velour draperies of the same color. Several large, comfortable chairs stood about the walls and before the long oak table in front of the district attorney’s desk. This desk, directly under the windows and facing the room, was broad and flat, with carved uprights and two rows of drawers extending to the floor. To the right of the high-backed swivel desk-chair, was another table of carved oak. There were also several filing cabinets in the room and a large safe. In the center of the east wall a leather-covered door, decorated with large brass nailheads, led into a long narrow room, between the office and the waiting room, where the district attorney’s secretary and several clerks had their desks. Opposite to this door was another one opening into the district attorney’s inner sanctum; and still another door, facing the windows, gave on the main corridor.

Vance glanced over the room casually.

“So this is the matrix of municipal justice—eh, what?” He walked to one of the windows and looked out upon the gray circular tower of the Tombs opposite. “And there, I take it, are the oubliettes where the victims of our law are incarc’rated so as to reduce the competition of criminal activity among the remaining citizenry. A most distressin’ sight, Markham.”

The district attorney had sat down at his desk and was glancing at several notations on his blotter.

“There are a couple of my men waiting to see me,” he remarked, without looking up; “so, if you’ll be good enough to take a chair over here, I’ll proceed with my humble efforts to undermine society still further.”

He pressed a button under the edge of his desk, and an alert young man with thick-lensed glasses appeared at the door.

“Swacker, tell Phelps to come in,” Markham ordered. “And also tell Springer, if he’s back from lunch, that I want to see him in a few minutes.”

The secretary disappeared, and a moment later a tall, hawk-faced man, with stoop shoulders and an awkward, angular gait, entered.

“What news?” asked Markham.

“Well, Chief,” the detective replied in a low, grating voice, “I just found out something I thought you could use right away. After I reported this noon, I ambled around to this Captain Leacock’s house, thinking I might learn something from the houseboys, and ran into the captain coming out. I tailed along; and he went straight up to the lady’s house on the Drive and stayed there over an hour. Then he went back home, looking worried.”

Markham considered a moment.

“It may mean nothing at all, but I’m glad to know it anyway. St. Clair’ll be here in a few minutes, and I’ll find out what she has to say. There’s nothing else for today.… Tell Swacker to send Tracy in.”

Tracy was the antithesis of Phelps. He was short, a trifle stout, and exuded an atmosphere of studied suavity. His face was rotund and genial; he wore a pince nez; and his clothes were modish and fitted him well.

“Good-morning, Chief.” He greeted Markham in a quiet, ingratiating tone. “I understand the St. Clair woman is to call here this afternoon, and there are a few things I’ve found out that may assist in your questioning.”

He opened a small notebook and adjusted his pince nez.

“I thought I might learn something from her singing teacher, an Italian formerly connected with the Metropolitan but now running a sort of choral society of his own. He trains aspiring prima donnas in their roles with a chorus and settings, and Miss St. Clair is one of his pet students. He talked to me without any trouble; and it seems he knew Benson well. Benson attended several of St. Clair’s rehearsals and sometimes called for her in a taxicab. Rinaldo—that’s the man’s name—thinks he had a bad crush on the girl. Last winter when she sang at the Criterion in a small part, Rinaldo was back stage coaching, and Benson sent her enough hothouse flowers to fill the star’s dressing room and have some left over. I tried to find out if Benson was playing ‘angel’ for her, but Rinaldo either didn’t know or pretended he didn’t.” Tracy closed his notebook and looked up. “That any good to you Chief?”

“First-rate,” Markham told him. “Keep at work along that line and let me hear from you again about this time Monday.”

Tracy bowed, and as he went out the secretary again appeared at the door. “Springer’s here now, sir,” he said. “Shall I send him in?”

Springer proved to be a type of detective quite different from either Phelps or Tracy. He was older, and had the gloomy capable air of a hardworking bookkeeper in a bank. There was no initiative in his bearing, but one felt that he could discharge a delicate task with extreme competency.

Markham took from his pocket the envelope on which he had noted the name given him by Major Benson.

“Springer, there’s a man down on Long Island that I want to interview as soon as possible. It’s in connection with the Benson case, and I wish you’d locate him and get him up here as soon as possible. If you can find him in the telephone book, you needn’t go down personally. His name is Leander Pfyfe, and he lives, I think, at Port Washington.”

Markham jotted down the name on a card and handed it to the detective. “This is Saturday, so if he comes to town tomorrow, have him ask for me at the Stuyvesant Club. I’ll be there in the afternoon.”

When Springer had gone, Markham again rang for his secretary and gave instructions that the moment Miss St. Clair arrived she was to be shown in.

“Sergeant Heath is here,” Swacker informed him, “and wants to see you if you’re not too busy.”

Markham glanced at the clock over the door. “I guess I’ll have time. Send him in.”

Heath was surprised to see Vance and me in the district attorney’s office, but after greeting Markham with the customary handshake, he turned to Vance with a good-natured smile.

“Still acquiring knowledge, Mr. Vance?”

“Can’t say that I am, Sergeant,” returned Vance lightly. “But I’m learning a number of most int’restin’ errors.… How goes the sleuthin’?”

Heath’s face became suddenly serious.

“That’s what I’m here to tell the chief about.” He addressed himself to Markham. “This case is a jawbreaker, sir. My men and myself have talked to a dozen of Benson’s cronies, and we can’t worm a single fact of any value out of ’em. They either don’t know anything or they’re giving a swell imitation of a lot of clams. They all appear to be greatly shocked—bowled over, floored, flabbergasted—by the news of the shooting. And have they got any idea as to why or how it happened? They’ll tell the world they haven’t. You know the line of talk: Who’d want to shoot good old Al? Nobody could’ve done it but a burglar who didn’t know good old Al. If he’d known good old Al, even the burglar wouldn’t have done it.… Hell! I felt like killing off a few of those birds myself so they could go and join their good old Al.”

“Any news of the car?” asked Markham.

Heath grunted his disgust. “Not a word. And that’s funny, too, seeing all the advertising it got. Those fishing rods are the only thing we’ve got.… The inspector, by the way, sent me the postmortem report this morning; but it didn’t tell us anything we didn’t know. Translated into human language, it said Benson died from a shot in the head, with all his organs sound. It’s a wonder, though, they didn’t discover that he’d been poisoned with a Mexican bean or bit by an African snake, or something, so’s to make the case a little more intrikkit than it already is.”

“Cheer up, Sergeant,” Markham exhorted him. “I’ve had a little better luck. Tracy ran down the owner of the handbag and found out she’d been to dinner with Benson that night. He and Phelps also learned a few other supplementary facts that fit in well; and I’m expecting the lady here at any minute. I’m going to find out what she has to say for herself.”

An expression of resentment came into Heath’s eyes as the district attorney was speaking, but he erased it at once and began asking questions. Markham gave him every detail and also informed him of Leander Pfyfe.

“I’ll let you know immediately how the interview comes out,” he concluded.

As the door closed on Heath, Vance looked up at Markham with a sly smile.

“Not exactly one of Nietzsche’s Übermenschen—eh, what? I fear the subtleties of this complex world bemuse him a bit, y’ know.… And he’s so disappointin’. I felt pos’tively elated when the bustling lad with the thick glasses announced his presence. I thought surely he wanted to tell you he had jailed at least six of Benson’s murderers.”

“Your hopes run too high, I fear,” commented Markham.

“And yet, that’s the usual procedure—if the headlines in our great moral dailies are to be credited. I always thought that the moment a crime was committed the police began arresting people promiscuously—to maintain the excitement, don’t y’ know. Another illusion gone!… Sad, sad,” he murmured. “I sha’n’t forgive our Heath; he has betrayed my faith in him.”

At this point Markham’s secretary came to the door and announced the arrival of Miss St. Clair.

I think we were all taken a little aback at the spectacle presented by this young woman as she came slowly into the room with a firm graceful step, and with her head held slightly to one side in an attitude of supercilious inquiry. She was small and strikingly pretty, although “pretty” is not exactly the word with which to describe her. She possessed that faintly exotic beauty that we find in the portraits of the Carracci, who sweetened the severity of Leonardo and made it at once intimate and decadent. Her eyes were dark and widely spaced; her nose was delicate and straight, and her forehead broad. Her full sensuous lips were almost sculpturesque in their linear precision, and her mouth wore an enigmatic smile, or hint of a smile. Her rounded, firm chin was a bit heavy when examined apart from the other features, but not in the ensemble. There was poise and a certain strength of character in her bearing; but one sensed the potentialities of powerful emotions beneath her exterior calm. Her clothes harmonized with her personality; they were quiet and apparently in the conventional style, but a touch of color and originality here and there conferred on them a fascinating distinction.

Markham rose and bowing, with formal courtesy, indicated a comfortable upholstered chair directly in front of his desk. With a barely perceptible nod, she glanced at the chair and then seated herself in a straight armless chair standing next to it.

“You won’t mind, I’m sure,” she said, “if I choose my own chair for the inquisition.”

Her voice was low and resonant—the speaking voice of the highly trained singer. She smiled as she spoke, but it was not a cordial smile; it was cold and distant, yet somehow indicative of levity.

“Miss St. Clair,” began Markham, in a tone of polite severity, “the murder of Mr. Alvin Benson has intimately involved yourself. Before taking any definite steps, I have invited you here to ask you a few questions. I can, therefore, advise you quite honestly that frankness will best serve your interests.”

He paused, and the woman looked at him with an ironically questioning gaze. “Am I supposed to thank you for your generous advice?”

Markham’s scowl deepened as he glanced down at a typewritten page on his desk.

“You are probably aware that your gloves and handbag were found in Mr. Benson’s house the morning after he was shot.”

“I can understand how you might have traced the handbag to me,” she said; “but how did you arrive at the conclusion that the gloves were mine?”

Markham looked up sharply. “Do you mean to say the gloves are not yours?”

“Oh, no.” She gave him another wintry smile. “I merely wondered how you knew they belonged to me, since you couldn’t have known either my taste in gloves or the size I wore.”

“They’re your gloves, then?”

“If they are Tréfousse, size five-and-three-quarters, of white kid and elbow length, they are certainly mine. And I’d so like to have them back, if you don’t mind.”

“I’m sorry,” said Markham, “but it is necessary that I keep them for the present.”

She dismissed the matter with a slight shrug of the shoulders. “Do you mind if I smoke?” she asked.

Markham instantly opened a drawer of his desk and took out a box of Benson and Hedges cigarettes.

“I have my own, thank you,” she informed him. “But I would so appreciate my holder. I’ve missed it horribly.”

Markham hesitated. He was manifestly annoyed by the woman’s attitude. “I’ll be glad to lend it to you,” he compromised; and reaching into another drawer of his desk, he laid the holder on the table before her.

“Now, Miss St. Clair,” he said, resuming his gravity of manner, “will you tell me how these personal articles of yours happened to be in Mr. Benson’s living room?”

“No, Mr. Markham, I will not,” she answered.

“Do you realize the serious construction your refusal places upon the circumstances?”

“I really hadn’t given it much thought.” Her tone was indifferent.

“It would be well if you did,” Markham advised her. “Your position is not an enviable one; and the presence of your belongings in Mr. Benson’s room is, by no means, the only thing that connects you directly with the crime.”

The woman raised her eyes inquiringly, and again the enigmatic smile appeared at the corners of her mouth. “Perhaps you have sufficient evidence to accuse me of the murder?”

Markham ignored this question. “You were well acquainted with Mr. Benson, I believe?”

“The finding of my handbag and gloves in his apartment might lead one to assume as much, mightn’t it?” she parried.

“He was, in fact, much interested in you?” persisted Markham.

She made a moue and sighed. “Alas, yes! Too much for my peace of mind.… Have I been brought here to discuss the attentions this gentleman paid me?”

Again Markham ignored her query. “Where were you, Miss St. Clair, between the time you left the Marseilles at midnight and the time you arrived home—which, I understand, was after one o’clock?”

“You are simply wonderful!” she exclaimed. “You seem to know everything.… Well, I can only say that during that time I was on my way home.”

“Did it take you an hour to go from Fortieth Street to Eighty-first and Riverside Drive?”

“Just about, I should say—a few minutes more or less, perhaps.”

“How do you account for that?” Markham was becoming impatient.

“I can’t account for it,” she said, “except by the passage of time. Time does fly, doesn’t it, Mr. Markham?”

“By your attitude you are only working detriment to yourself,” Markham warned her, with a show of irritation. “Can you not see the seriousness of your position? You are known to have dined with Mr. Benson, to have left the restaurant at midnight, and to have arrived at your own apartment after one o’clock. At twelve-thirty, Mr. Benson was shot; and your personal articles were found in the same room the morning after.”

“It looks terribly suspicious, I know,” she admitted, with whimsical seriousness. “And I’ll tell you this, Mr. Markham: if my thoughts could have killed Mr. Benson, he would have died long ago. I know I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead—there’s a saying about it beginning ‘de mortuis,’ isn’t there?—but the truth is, I had reason to dislike Mr. Benson exceedingly.”

“Then, why did you go to dinner with him?”

“I’ve asked myself the same question a dozen times since,” she confessed dolefully. “We women are such impulsive creatures—always doing things we shouldn’t.… But I know what you’re thinking: if I had intended to shoot him, that would have been a natural preliminary. Isn’t that what’s in your mind? I suppose all murderesses do go to dinner with their victims first.”

While she spoke she opened her vanity case and looked at her reflection in its mirror. She daintily adjusted several imaginary stray ends of her abundant dark brown hair, and touched her arched eyebrows gently with her little finger as if to rectify some infinitesimal disturbance in their penciled contour. Then she tilted her head, regarded herself appraisingly, and returned her gaze to the district attorney only as she came to the end of her speech. Her actions had perfectly conveyed to her listeners the impression that the subject of the conversation was, in her scheme of things, of secondary importance to her personal appearance. No words could have expressed her indifference so convincingly as had her little pantomime.

Markham was becoming exasperated. A different type of district attorney would no doubt have attempted to use the pressure of his office to force her into a more amenable frame of mind. But Markham shrank instinctively from the bludgeoning, threatening methods of the ordinary public prosecutor, especially in his dealings with women. In the present case, however, had it not been for Vance’s strictures at the club, he would no doubt have taken a more aggressive stand. But it was evident he was laboring under a burden of uncertainty superinduced by Vance’s words and augmented by the evasive deportment of the woman herself.

After a moment’s silence he asked grimly, “You did considerable speculating through the firm of Benson and Benson, did you not?”

A faint ring of musical laughter greeted this question. “I see that the dear major has been telling tales.… Yes, I’ve been gambling most extravagantly. And I had no business to do it. I’m afraid I’m avaricious.”

“And is it not true that you’ve lost heavily of late—that, in fact, Mr. Alvin Benson called upon you for additional margin and finally sold out your securities?”

“I wish to Heaven it were not true,” she lamented, with a look of simulated tragedy. Then: “Am I supposed to have done away with Mr. Benson out of sordid revenge or as an act of just retribution?” She smiled archly and waited expectantly, as if her question had been part of a guessing game.

Markham’s eyes hardened as he coldly enunciated his next words.

“Is it not a fact that Captain Philip Leacock owned just such a pistol as Mr. Benson was killed with—a .45 army Colt automatic?”

At the mention of her fiancé’s name she stiffened perceptibly and caught her breath. The part she had been playing fell from her, and a faint flush suffused her cheeks and extended to her forehead. But almost immediately she had reassumed her role of playful indifference.

“I never inquired into the make or caliber of Captain Leacock’s firearms,” she returned carelessly.

“And is it not a fact,” pursued Markham’s imperturbable voice, “that Captain Leacock lent you his pistol when he called at your apartment on the morning before the murder?”

“It’s most ungallant of you, Mr. Markham,” she reprimanded him coyly, “to inquire into the personal relations of an engaged couple; for I am betrothed to Captain Leacock—though you probably know it already.”

Markham stood up, controlling himself with effort.

“Am I to understand that you refuse to answer any of my questions, or to endeavor to extricate yourself from the very serious position you are in?”

She appeared to consider. “Yes,” she said slowly, “I haven’t anything I care especially to say just now.”

Markham leaned over and rested both hands on the desk. “Do you realize the possible consequences of your attitude?” he asked ominously. “The facts I know regarding your connection with the case, coupled with your refusal to offer a single extenuating explanation, give me more grounds than I actually need to order your being held.”

I was watching her closely as he spoke, and it seemed to me that her eyelids drooped involuntarily the merest fraction of an inch. But she gave no other indication of being affected by the pronouncement, and merely looked at the district attorney with an air of defiant amusement.

Markham, with a sudden contraction of the jaw, turned and reached toward a bell button beneath the edge of his desk. But, in doing so, his glance fell upon Vance; and he paused indecisively. The look he had encountered on the other’s face was one of reproachful amazement; not only did it express complete surprise at his apparent decision but it stated, more eloquently than words could have done, that he was about to commit an act of irreparable folly.

There were several moments of tense silence in the room. Then calmly and unhurriedly Miss St. Clair opened her vanity case and powdered her nose. When she had finished, she turned a serene gaze upon the district attorney.

“Well, do you want to arrest me now?” she asked.

Markham regarded her for a moment, deliberating. Instead of answering at once, he went to the window and stood for a full minute looking down upon the Bridge of Sighs which connects the Criminal Courts Building with the Tombs.

“No, I think not today,” he said slowly.

He stood awhile longer in absorbed contemplation; then, as if shaking off his mood of irresolution, he swung about and confronted the woman.

“I’m not going to arrest you—yet,” he reiterated, a bit harshly. “But I’m going to order you to remain in New York for the present. And if you attempt to leave, you will be arrested. I hope that is clear.”

He pressed a button, and his secretary entered.

“Swacker, please escort Miss St. Clair downstairs, and call a taxicab for her.… Then you can go home yourself.”

She rose and gave Markham a little nod.

“You were very kind to lend me my cigarette holder,” she said pleasantly, laying it on his desk.

Without another word, she walked calmly from the room.

The door had no more than closed behind her when Markham pressed another button. In a few moments the door leading into the outer corridor opened, and a white-haired, middle-aged man appeared.

“Ben,” ordered Markham hurriedly, “have that woman that Swacker’s taking downstairs followed. Keep her under surveillance and don’t let her get lost. She’s not to leave the city—understand? It’s the St. Clair woman Tracy dug up.”

When the man had gone, Markham turned and stood glowering at Vance.

“What do you think of your innocent young lady now?” he asked, with an air of belligerent triumph.

“Nice gel—eh, what?” replied Vance blandly. “Extr’ordin’ry control. And she’s about to marry a professional milit’ry man! Ah, well. De gustibus.… Y’ know, I was afraid for a moment you were actu’lly going to send for the manacles. And if you had, Markham old dear, you’d have regretted it to your dying day.”

Markham studied him for a few seconds. He knew there was something more than a mere whim beneath Vance’s certitude of manner; and it was this knowledge that had stayed his hand when he was about to have the woman placed in custody.

“Her attitude was certainly not conducive to one’s belief in her innocence,” Markham objected. “She played her part damned cleverly, though. But it was just the part a shrewd woman, knowing herself guilty, would have played.”

“I say, didn’t it occur to you,” asked Vance, “that perhaps she didn’t care a farthing whether you thought her guilty or not?—that, in fact, she was a bit disappointed when you let her go?”

“That’s hardly the way I read the situation,” returned Markham. “Whether guilty or innocent, a person doesn’t ordinarily invite arrest.”

“By the bye,” asked Vance, “where was the fortunate swain during the hour of Alvin’s passing?”

“Do you think we didn’t check up on that point?” Markham spoke with disdain. “Captain Leacock was at his own apartment that night from eight o’clock on.”

“Was he, really?” airily retorted Vance. “A most model young fella!”

Again Markham looked at him sharply. “I’d like to know what weird theory has been struggling in your brain today,” he mused. “Now that I’ve let the lady go temporarily—which is what you obviously wanted me to do—and have stultified my own better judgment in so doing, why not tell me frankly what you’ve got up your sleeve?”

“‘Up my sleeve?’ Such an inelegant metaphor! One would think I was a prestidig’tator, what?”

Whenever Vance answered in this fashion, it was a sign that he wished to avoid making a direct reply; and Markham dropped the matter.

“Anyway,” he submitted, “you didn’t have the pleasure of witnessing my humiliation, as you prophesied.”

Vance looked up in simulated surprise. “Didn’t I, now?” Then he added sorrowfully, “Life is so full of disappointments, y’ know.”

CHAPTER 8

VANCE ACCEPTS A CHALLENGE

(Saturday, June 15; 4 P.M.)

After Markham had telephoned Heath the details of the interview, we returned to the Stuyvesant Club. Ordinarily the district attorney’s office shuts down at one o’clock on Saturdays; but today the hour had been extended because of the importance attaching to Miss St. Clair’s visit. Markham had lapsed into an introspective silence which lasted until we were again seated in the alcove of the club’s lounge-room. Then he spoke irritably.

“Damn it! I shouldn’t have let her go.… I still have a feeling she’s guilty.”

Vance assumed an air of gushing credulousness.

“Oh, really? I daresay you’re so psychic. Been that way all your life, no doubt. And haven’t you had lots and lots of dreams that came true? I’m sure you’ve often had a phone call from someone you were thinking about at the moment. A delectable gift. Do you read palms, also?… Why not have the lady’s horoscope cast?”

“I have no evidence as yet,” Markham retorted, “that your belief in her innocence is founded on anything more substantial than your impressions.”

“Ah, but it is,” averred Vance. “I know she’s innocent. Furthermore, I know that no woman could possibly have fired the shot.”

“Don’t get the erroneous idea in your head that a woman couldn’t have manipulated a .45 army Colt.”

“Oh, that?” Vance dismissed the notion with a shrug. “The material indications of the crime don’t enter into my calculations, y’ know—I leave ’em entirely to you lawyers and the lads with the bulging deltoids. I have other, and surer, ways of reaching conclusions. That’s why I told you that if you arrested any woman for shooting Benson, you’d be blundering most shamefully.”

Markham grunted indignantly. “And yet you seem to have repudiated all processes of deduction whereby the truth may be arrived at. Have you, by any chance, entirely renounced your faith in the operations of the human mind?”

“Ah, there speaks the voice of God’s great common people!” exclaimed Vance. “Your mind is so typical, Markham. It works on the principle that what you don’t know isn’t knowledge, and that, since you don’t understand a thing there is no explanation. A comfortable point of view. It relieves one from all care and uncertainty. Don’t you find the world a very sweet and wonderful place?”

Markham adopted an attitude of affable forbearance. “You spoke at lunchtime, I believe, of one infallible method of detecting crime. Would you care to divulge this profound and priceless secret to a mere district attorney?”

Vance bowed with exaggerated courtesy.10

“Delighted, I’m sure,” he returned. “I referred to the science of individual character and the psychology of human nature. We all do things, d’ ye see, in a certain individual way, according to our temp’raments. Every human act, no matter how large or how small, is a direct expression of a man’s personality and bears the inev’table impress of his nature. Thus, a musician, by looking at a sheet of music, is able to tell at once whether it was composed, for example, by Beethoven, or Schubert, or Debussy, or Chopin. And an artist, by looking at a canvas, knows immediately whether it is a Corot, a Harpignies, a Rembrandt, or a Franz Hals. And just as no two faces are exactly alike, so no two natures are exactly alike; the combination of ingredients which go to make up our personalities, varies in each individual. That is why, when twenty artists, let us say, sit down to paint the same subject, each one conceives and executes it in a different manner. The result in each case is a distinct and unmistakable expression of the personality of the painter who did it.… It’s really rather simple, don’t y’ know.”

“Your theory, doubtless, would be comprehensible to an artist,” said Markham, in a tone of indulgent irony. “But its metaphysical refinements are, I admit, considerably beyond the grasp of a vulgar worldling like myself.”

“‘The mind inclined to what is false rejects the nobler course,’” murmured Vance, with a sigh.

“There is,” argued Markham, “a slight difference between art and crime.”

“Psychologically, old chap, there’s none,” Vance amended evenly. “Crimes possess all the basic factors of a work of art—approach, conception, technique, imagination, attack, method, and organization. Moreover, crimes vary fully as much in their manner, their aspects, and their general nature, as do works of art. Indeed, a carefully planned crime is just as direct an expression of the individual as is a painting, for instance. And therein lies the one great possibility of detection. Just as an expert aesthetician can analyze a picture and tell you who painted it, or the personality and temp’rament of the person who painted it, so can the expert psychologist analyze a crime and tell you who committed it—that is, if he happens to be acquainted with the person—or else can describe to you, with almost mathematical surety, the criminal’s nature and character.… And that, my dear Markham, is the only sure and inev’table means of determining human guilt. All others are mere guesswork, unscientific, uncertain, and—perilous.”

Throughout this explanation Vance’s manner had been almost casual; yet the very serenity and assurance of his attitude conferred upon his words a curious sense of authority. Markham had listened with interest, though it could be seen that he did not regard Vance’s theorizing seriously.

“Your system ignores motive altogether,” he objected.

“Naturally,” Vance replied, “since it’s an irrelevant factor in most crimes. Every one of us, my dear chap, has just as good a motive for killing at least a score of men as the motives which actuate ninety-nine crimes out of a hundred. And, when anyone is murdered, there are dozens of innocent people who had just as strong a motive for doing it as had the actual murderer. Really, y’ know, the fact that a man has a motive is no evidence whatever that he’s guilty—such motives are too universal a possession of the human race. Suspecting a man of murder because he has a motive is like suspecting a man of running away with another man’s wife because he has two legs. The reason that some people kill and others don’t, is a matter of temp’rament—of individual psychology. It all comes back to that.… And another thing: when a person does possess a real motive—something tremendous and overpowering—he’s pretty apt to keep it to himself, to hide it and guard it carefully—eh, what? He may even have disguised the motive through years of preparation; or the motive may have been born within five minutes of the crime through the unexpected discovery of facts a decade old.… So, d’ ye see, the absence of any apparent motive in a crime might be regarded as more incriminating than the presence of one.”

“You are going to have some difficulty in eliminating the idea of cui bono from the consideration of crime.”

“I daresay,” agreed Vance. “The idea of cui bono is just silly enough to be impregnable. And yet, many persons would be benefited by almost anyone’s death. Kill Sumner, and, on that theory, you could arrest the entire membership of the Authors’ League.”

“Opportunity, at any rate,” persisted Markham, “is an insuperable factor in crime—and by opportunity, I mean that affinity of circumstances and conditions which make a particular crime possible, feasible, and convenient for a particular person.”

“Another irrelevant factor,” asserted Vance. “Think of the opportunities we have every day to murder people we dislike! Only the other night I had ten insuff’rable bores to dinner in my apartment—a social devoir. But I refrained—with consid’rable effort, I admit—from putting arsenic in the Pontet Canet. The Borgias and I, y’ see, merely belong in different psychological categ’ries. On the other hand, had I been resolved to do murder, I would—like those resourceful cinquecenio patricians—have created my own opportunity.… And there’s the rub:—one can either make an opportunity or disguise the fact that he had it, with false alibis and various other tricks. You remember the case of the murderer who called the police to break into his victim’s house before the latter had been killed, saying he suspected foul play, and who then preceded the policemen indoors and stabbed the man as they were trailing up the stairs.”11

“Well, what of actual proximity, or presence—the proof of a person being on the scene of the crime at the time it was committed?”

“Again misleading,” Vance declared. “An innocent person’s presence is too often used as a shield by the real murderer, who is actu’lly absent. A clever criminal can commit a crime from a distance through an agency that is present. Also, a clever criminal can arrange an alibi and then go to the scene of the crime disguised and unrecognized. There are far too many convincing ways of being present when one is believed to be absent—and vice versa.… But we can never part from our individualities and our natures. And that is why all crime inev’tably comes back to human psychology—the one fixed, undisguisable basis of deduction.”

“It’s a wonder to me,” said Markham, “in view of your theories, that you don’t advocate dismissing nine-tenths of the police force and installing a gross or two of those psychological machines so popular with the Sunday Supplement editor.”

Vance smoked a minute meditatively.

“I’ve read about ’em. Int’restin’ toys. They can no doubt indicate a certain augmented emotional stress when the patient transfers his attention from the pious platitudes of Dr. Frank Crane to a problem in spherical trigonometry. But if an innocent person were harnessed up to the various tubes, galvanometers, electromagnets, glass plates, and brass knobs of one of these apparatuses, and then quizzed about some recent crime, your indicat’ry needle would cavort about like a Russian dancer as a result of sheer nervous panic on the patient’s part.”

Markham smiled patronizingly.

“And I suppose the needle would remain static with a guilty person in contact?”

“Oh, on the contr’ry,” Vance’s tone was unruffled. “The needle would bob up and down just the same—but not because he was guilty. If he was stupid, for instance, the needle would jump as a result of his resentment at a seemingly newfangled third-degree torture. And if he was intelligent, the needle would jump because of his suppressed mirth at the puerility of the legal mind for indulging in such nonsense.”

“You move me deeply,” said Markham. “My head is spinning like a turbine. But there are those of us poor worldlings who believe that criminality is a defect of the brain.”

“So it is,” Vance readily agreed. “But unfortunately the entire human race possesses the defect. The virtuous ones haven’t, so to speak, the courage of their defects.… However, if you were referring to a criminal type, then, alas! we must part company. It was Lombrosco, that darling of the yellow journals, who invented the idea of the congenital criminal. Real scientists like DuBois, Karl Pearson, and Goring have shot his idiotic theories full of holes.”12

“I am floored by your erudition,” declared Markham, as he signaled to a passing attendant and ordered another cigar. “I console myself, however, with the fact that, as a rule, murder will leak out.”

Vance smoked his cigarette in silence, looking thoughtfully out through the window up at the hazy June sky.

“Markham,” he said at length, “the number of fantastic ideas extant about criminals is pos’tively amazing. How a sane person can subscribe to that ancient hallucination that ‘murder will out’ is beyond me. It rarely ‘outs,’ old dear. And, if it did ‘out,’ why a homicide bureau? Why all this whirlin’-dervish activity by the police whenever a body is found?… The poets are to blame for this bit of lunacy. Chaucer probably started it with his ‘Mordre wol out,’ and Shakespeare helped it along by attributing to murder a miraculous organ that speaks in lieu of a tongue. It was some poet, too, no doubt, who conceived the fancy that carcasses bleed at the sight of the murderer.… Would you, as the great Protector of the Faithful, dare tell the police to wait calmly in their offices, or clubs, or favorite beauty parlors—or wherever policemen do their waiting—until a murder ‘outs’? Poor dear!—if you did, they’d ask the governor for your detention as particeps criminis, or apply for a de lunatico inquirendo.”13

Markham grunted good-naturedly. He was busy cutting and lighting his cigar.

“I believe you chaps have another hallucination about crime,” continued Vance, “namely, that the criminal always returns to the scene of the crime. This weird notion is even explained on some recondite and misty psychological ground. But, I assure you, psychology teaches no such prepost’rous doctrine. If ever a murderer returned to the body of his victim for any reason other than to rectify some blunder he had made, then he is a subject for Broadmoor—or Bloomingdale.… How easy it would be for the police if this fanciful notion were true! They’d merely have to sit down at the scene of the crime, play bezique or Mah Jongg until the murderer returned, and then escort him to the bastille, what? The true psychological instinct in anyone having committed a punishable act is to get as far away from the scene of it as the limits of this world will permit.”14

“In the present case, at any rate,” Markham reminded him, “we are neither waiting inactively for the murder to out, nor sitting in Benson’s living room trusting to the voluntary return of the criminal.”

“Either course would achieve success as quickly as the one you are now pursuing,” Vance said.

“Not being gifted with your singular insight,” retorted Markham, “I can only follow the inadequate processes of human reasoning.”

“No doubt,” Vance agreed commiseratingly. “And the results of your activities thus far force me to the conclusion that a man with a handful of legalistic logic can successfully withstand the most obst’nate and heroic assaults of ordin’ry common sense.”

Markham was piqued. “Still harping on the St. Clair woman’s innocence, eh? However, in view of the complete absence of any tangible evidence pointing elsewhere, you must admit I have no choice of courses.”

“I admit nothing of the kind,” Vance told him, “for, I assure you, there is an abundance of evidence pointing elsewhere. You simply failed to see it.”

“You think so!” Vance’s nonchalant cocksureness had at last overthrown Markham’s equanimity. “Very well, old man; I hereby enter an emphatic denial to all your fine theories; and I challenge you to produce a single piece of this evidence which you say exists.”

He threw his words out with asperity, and gave a curt, aggressive gesture with his extended fingers, to indicate that, as far as he was concerned, the subject was closed.

Vance, too, I think, was pricked a little.

“Y’know, Markham old dear, I’m no avenger of blood or vindicator of the honor of society. The role would bore me.”

Markham smiled loftily but made no reply.

Vance smoked meditatively for a while. Then, to my amazement, he turned calmly and deliberately to Markham, and said in a quiet, matter-of-fact voice, “I’m going to accept your challenge. It’s a bit alien to my tastes; but the problem, y’ know, rather appeals to me; it presents the same diff’culties as the Concert Champêtre affair—a question of disputed authorship, as it were.”15

Markham abruptly suspended the motion of lifting his cigar to his lips. He had scarcely intended his challenge literally; it had been uttered more in the nature of a verbal defiance; and he scrutinized Vance a bit uncertainly. Little did he realize that the other’s casual acceptance of his unthinking and but half-serious challenge was to alter the entire criminal history of New York.

“Just how do you intend to proceed?” he asked.

Vance waved his hand carelessly. “Like Napoleon, je m’en gage, et puis je vois. However, I must have your word that you’ll give me every possible assistance and will refrain from all profound legal objections.”

Markham pursed his lips. He was frankly perplexed by the unexpected manner in which Vance had met his defiance. But immediately he gave a good-natured laugh, as if, after all, the matter was of no serious consequence.

“Very well,” he assented. “You have my word.… And now what?”

After a moment Vance lit a fresh cigarette and rose languidly. “First,” he announced, “I shall determine the exact height of the guilty person. Such a fact will, no doubt, come under the head of indicat’ry evidence—eh, what?”

Markham stared at him incredulously.

“How, in Heaven’s name, are you going to do that?”

“By those primitive deductive methods to which you so touchingly pin your faith,” he answered easily. “But come; let us repair to the scene of the crime.”

He moved toward the door, Markham reluctantly following in a state of perplexed irritation. “But you know the body was removed,” the latter protested; “and the place by now has no doubt been straightened up.”

“Thank Heaven for that!” murmured Vance. “I’m not particularly fond of corpses; and untidiness, y’ know, annoys me frightfully.”

As we emerged into Madison Avenue, he signaled to the commissionnaire for a taxicab, and without a word, urged us into it.

“This is all nonsense,” Markham declared ill-naturedly, as we started on our journey uptown. “How do you expect to find any clues now? By this time everything has been obliterated.”

“Alas, my dear Markham,” lamented Vance, in a tone of mock solicitude, “how woefully deficient you are in philosophic theory! If anything, no matter how inf’nitesimal, could really be obliterated, the universe, y’ know, would cease to exist—the cosmic problem would be solved, and the Creator would write Q.E.D. across an empty firmament. Our only chance of going on with this illusion we call Life, d’ ye see, lies in the fact that consciousness is like an inf’nite decimal point. Did you, as a child, ever try to complete the decimal one-third by filling a whole sheet of paper with the numeral three? You always had the fraction one-third left, don’t y’ know. If you could have eliminated the smallest one-third, after having set down ten thousand threes, the problem would have ended. So with life, my dear fellow. It’s only because we can’t erase or obliterate anything that we go on existing.”

He made a movement with his fingers, putting a sort of tangible period to his remarks, and looked dreamily out of the window up at the fiery film of sky.

Markham had settled back into his corner and was chewing morosely at his cigar. I could see he was fairly simmering with impotent anger at having let himself be goaded into issuing his challenge. But there was no retreating now. As he told me afterward, he was fully convinced he had been dragged forth out of a comfortable chair on a patent and ridiculous fool’s errand.

CHAPTER 9

THE HEIGHT OF THE MURDERER

(Saturday, June 15; 5 P.M.)

When we arrived at Benson’s house, a patrolman leaning somnolently against the iron paling of the areaway came suddenly to attention and saluted. He eyed Vance and me hopefully, regarding us no doubt as suspects being taken to the scene of the crime for questioning by the district attorney. We were admitted by one of the men from the homicide bureau who had been in the house on the morning of the investigation.

Markham greeted him with a nod.

“Everything going all right?”

“Sure,” the man replied good-naturedly. “The old lady’s as meek as a cat—and a swell cook.”

“We want to be alone for a while, Sniffin,” said Markham, as we passed into the living room.

“The gastronome’s name is Snitkin, not Sniffin,” Vance corrected him, when the door had closed on us.

“Wonderful memory,” muttered Markham churlishly.

“A failing of mine,” said Vance. “I suppose you are one of those rare persons who never forget a face but just can’t recall names, what?”

But Markham was in no mood to be twitted. “Now that you’ve dragged me here, what are you going to do?” He waved his hand depreciatingly and sank into a chair with an air of contemptuous abdication.

The living room looked much the same as when we saw it last, except that it had been put neatly in order. The shades were up, and the late afternoon light was flooding in profusely. The ornateness of the room’s furnishings seemed intensified by the glare.

Vance glanced about him and gave a shudder. “I’m half inclined to turn back,” he drawled. “It’s a clear case of justifiable homicide by an outraged interior decorator.”

“My dear aesthete,” Markham urged impatiently, “be good enough to bury your artistic prejudices and to proceed with your problem.… Of course,” he added, with a malicious smile, “if you fear the result, you may still withdraw and thereby preserve your charming theories in their present virgin state.”

“And permit you to send an innocent maiden to the chair!” exclaimed Vance, in mock indignation. “Fie, fie! La politesse alone forbids my withdrawal. May I never have to lament, with Prince Henry, that ‘to my shame I have a truant been to chivalry.’”

Markham set his jaw and gave Vance a ferocious look. “I’m beginning to think that, after all, there is something in your theory that every man has some motive for murdering another.”

“Well,” replied Vance cheerfully, “now that you have begun to come round to my way of thinking, do you mind if I send Mr. Snitkin on an errand?”

Markham sighed audibly and shrugged his shoulders. “I’ll smoke during the opéra bouffe, if it won’t interfere with your performance.”

Vance went to the door and called Snitkin.

“I say, would you mind going to Mrs. Platz and borrowing a long tape measure and a ball of string.… The district attorney wants them,” he added, giving Markham a sycophantic bow.

“I can’t hope that you’re going to hang yourself, can I?” asked Markham. Vance gazed at him reprovingly. “Permit me,” he said sweetly, “to command Othello to your attention:

‘How poor are they that have not patience!

What wound did ever heal but by degrees?’

Or—to descend from a poet to a platitudinarian—let me present for your consid’ration a pentameter from Longfellow: ‘All things come round to him who will but wait.’ Untrue, of course, but consolin’. Milton said it much better in his ‘They also serve—.’ But Cervantes said it best: ‘Patience and shuffle the cards.’ Sound advice, Markham—and advice expressed rakishly, as all good advice should be.… To be sure, patience is a sort of last resort—a practice to adopt when there’s nothing else to do. Still, like virtue, it occasionally rewards the practitioner; although I’ll admit that, as a rule, it is—again like virtue—bootless. That is to say, it is its own reward. It has, however, been swathed in many verbal robes. It is ‘sorrows’s slave,’ and the ‘sov’reign o’er transmuted ills,’ as well as ‘all the passion of great hearts.’ Rousseau wrote, La patience est amère mais son fruit est doux. But perhaps your legal taste runs to Latin. Superanda omnis fortuna ferendo est, quoth Vergil. And Horace also spoke on the subject. Durum! said he, sed levius fit patientia—”

“Why the hell doesn’t Snitkin come?” growled Markham.

Almost as he spoke the door opened, and the detective handed Vance the tape measure and string.

“And now, Markham, for your reward!”

Bending over the rug Vance moved the large wicker chair into the exact position it had occupied when Benson had been shot. The position was easily determined, for the impressions of the chair’s castors on the deep nap of the rug were plainly visible. He then ran the string through the bullet hole in the back of the chair and directed me to hold one end of it against the place where the bullet had struck the wainscot. Next he took up the tape measure and, extending the string through the hole, measured a distance of five feet and six inches along it, starting at the point which corresponded to the location of Benson’s forehead as he sat in the chair. Tying a knot in the string to indicate the measurement, he drew the string taut, so that it extended in a straight line from the mark on the wainscot, through the hole in the back of the chair, to a point five feet and six inches in front of where Benson’s head had rested.

“This knot in the string,” he explained, “now represents the exact location of the muzzle of the gun that ended Benson’s career. You see the reasoning—eh, what? Having two points in the bullet’s course—namely, the hole in the chair and the mark on the wainscot—and also knowing the approximate vertical line of explosion, which was between five and six feet from the gentleman’s skull, it was merely necess’ry to extend the straight line of the bullet’s course to the vertical line of explosion in order to ascertain the exact point at which the shot was fired.”

“Theoretically very pretty,” commented Markham; “though why you should go to so much trouble to ascertain this point in space I can’t imagine.… Not that it matters, for you have overlooked the possibility of the bullet’s deflection.”

“Forgive me for contradicting you,”—Vance smiled—“but yesterday morning I questioned Captain Hagedorn at some length and learned that there had been no deflection of the bullet. Hagedorn had inspected the wound before we arrived; and he was really pos’tive on that point. In the first place, the bullet struck the frontal bone at such an angle as to make deflection practically impossible even had the pistol been of smaller caliber. And in the second place, the pistol with which Benson was shot was of so large a bore—a point-forty-five—and the muzzle velocity was so great, that the bullet would have taken a straight course even had it been held at a greater distance from the gentleman’s brow.”

“And how,” asked Markham, “did Hagedorn know what the muzzle velocity was?”

“I was inquis’tive on that point myself,” answered Vance; “and he explained that the size and character of the bullet and the expelled shell told him the whole tale. That’s how he knew the gun was an army Colt automatic—I believe he called it a U.S. Government Colt—and not the ordinary Colt automatic. The weight of the bullets of these two pistols is slightly different: the ordinary Colt bullet weighs 200 grains, whereas the army Colt bullet weighs 230 grains. Hagedorn, having a hypersensitive tactile sense, was able, I presume, to distinguish the diff’rence at once, though I didn’t go into his physiological gifts with him—my reticent nature, you understand.… However, he could tell it was a .45 army Colt automatic bullet; and knowing this, he knew that the muzzle velocity was 809 feet, and that the striking energy was 329—which gives a six-inch penetration in white pine at a distance of twenty-five yards.… An amazin’ creature, this Hagedorn. Imagine having one’s head full of such entrancing information! The old mysteries of why a man should take up the bass fiddle as a life work and where all the pins go are babes’ conundrums compared with the one of why a human being should devote his years to the idiosyncrasies of bullets.”

“The subject is not exactly an enthralling one,” said Markham wearily; “so, for the sake of argument, let us admit that you have now found the precise point of the gun’s explosion. Where do we go from there?”

“While I hold the string on a straight line,” directed Vance, “be good enough to measure the exact distance from the floor to the knot. Then my secret will be known.”

“This game doesn’t enthrall me, either,” Markham protested. “I’d much prefer ‘London Bridge’”

Nevertheless he made the measurement.

“Four feet, eight and a half inches,” he announced indifferently.

Vance laid a cigarette on the rug at a point directly beneath the knot.

“We now know the exact height at which the pistol was held when it was fired.… You grasp the process by which this conclusion was reached, I’m sure.”

“It seems rather obvious,” answered Markham.

Vance again went to the door and called Snitkin.

“The district attorney desires the loan of your gun for a moment,” he said. “He wishes to make a test.”

Snitkin stepped up to Markham and held out his pistol wonderingly.

“The safety’s on, sir. Shall I shift it?”

Markham was about to refuse the weapon when Vance interposed.

“That’s quite all right. Mr. Markham doesn’t intend to fire it—I hope.”

When the man had gone, Vance seated himself in the wicker chair and placed his head in juxaposition with the bullet hole.

“Now, Markham,” he requested, “will you please stand on the spot where the murderer stood, holding the gun directly above that cigarette on the floor, and aim delib’rately at my left temple.… Take care,” he cautioned, with an engaging smile, “not to pull the trigger, or you will never learn who killed Benson.”

Reluctantly Markham complied. As he stood taking aim Vance asked me to measure the height of the gun muzzle from the floor.

The distance was four feet and nine inches.

“Quite so,” he said, rising. “Y’ see, Markham, you are five feet, eleven inches tall; therefore the person who shot Benson was very nearly your own height—certainly not under five feet, ten.… That, too, is rather obvious, what?”

His demonstration had been simple and clear. Markham was frankly impressed; his manner had become serious. He regarded Vance for a moment with a meditative frown; then he said, “That’s all very well; but the person who fired the shot might have held the pistol relatively higher than I did.”

“Not tenable,” returned Vance. “I’ve done too much shooting myself not to know that when an expert takes delib’rate aim with a pistol at a small target, he does it with a stiff arm and with a slightly raised shoulder, so as to bring the sight on a straight line between his eye and the object at which he aims. The height at which one holds a revolver, under such conditions, pretty accurately determines his own height.”

“Your argument is based on the assumption that the person who killed Benson was an expert taking deliberate aim at a small target?”

“Not an assumption, but a fact,” declared Vance. “Consider: had the person not been an expert shot, he would not—at a distance of five or six feet—have selected the forehead but a larger target—namely, the breast. And having selected the forehead, he most certainly took delib’rate aim, what? Furthermore, had he not been an expert shot, and had he pointed the gun at the breast without taking delib’rate aim, he would, in all prob’bility, have fired more than one shot.”

Markham pondered. “I’ll grant that, on the face of it, your theory sounds plausible,” he conceded at length. “On the other hand, the guilty man could have been almost any height over five feet, ten; for certainly a man may crouch as much as he likes and still take deliberate aim.”

“True,” agreed Vance. “But don’t overlook the fact that the murderer’s position, in this instance, was a perfectly natural one. Otherwise, Benson’s attention would have been attracted, and he would not have been taken unawares. That he was shot unawares was indicated by his attitude. Of course, the assassin might have stooped a little without causing Benson to look up.… Let us say, therefore, that the guilty person’s height is somewhere between five feet, ten, and six feet, two. Does that appeal to you?”

Markham was silent.

“The delightful Miss St. Clair, y’ know,” remarked Vance, with a japish smile, “can’t possibly be over five feet, five or six.”

Markham grunted and continued to smoke abstractedly.

“This Captain Leacock, I take it,” said Vance, “is over six feet—eh, what?”

Markham’s eyes narrowed. “What makes you think so?”

“You just told me, don’t y’ know.”

“I told you!”

“Not in so many words,” Vance pointed out. “But after I had shown you the approximate height of the murderer, and it didn’t correspond at all to that of the young lady you suspected, I knew your active mind was busy looking around for another possibility. And, as the lady’s inamorato was the only other possibility on your horizon, I concluded that you were permitting your thoughts to play about the captain. Had he, therefore, been the stipulated height, you would have said nothing; but when you argued that the murderer might have stooped to fire the shot, I decided that the captain was inord’nately tall.… Thus, in the pregnant silence that emanated from you, old dear, your spirit held sweet communion with mine and told me that the gentleman was a six-footer no less.”

“I see that you include mind reading among your gifts,” said Markham. “I now await an exhibition of slate writing.”

His tone was irritable, but his irritation was that of a man reluctant to admit the alteration of his beliefs. He felt himself yielding to Vance’s guiding rein, but he still held stubbornly to the course of his own previous convictions.

“Surely you don’t question my demonstration of the guilty person’s height?” asked Vance mellifluously.

“Not altogether,” Markham replied. “It seems colorable enough.… But why, I wonder, didn’t Hagedorn work the thing out, if it was so simple?”

“Anaxagoras said that those who have occasion for a lamp supply it with oil. A profound remark, Markham—one of those seemingly simple quips that contain a great truth. A lamp without oil, y’ know, is useless. The police always have plenty of lamps—every variety, in fact—but no oil, as it were. That’s why they never find anyone unless it’s broad daylight.”

Markham’s mind was now busy in another direction, and he rose and began to pace the floor. “Until now I hadn’t thought of Captain Leacock as the actual agent of the crime.”

“Why hadn’t you thought of him? Was it because one of your sleuths told you he was at home like a good boy that night?”

“I suppose so.” Markham continued pacing thoughtfully. Then suddenly he swung about. “That wasn’t it, either. It was the amount of damning circumstantial evidence against the St. Clair woman.… And, Vance, despite your demonstration here today, you haven’t explained away any of the evidence against her. Where was she between twelve and one? Why did she go with Benson to dinner? How did her handbag get here? And what about those burned cigarettes of hers in the grate?—they’re the obstacle, those cigarette butts; and I can’t admit that your demonstration wholly convinces me—despite the fact that it is convincing—as long as I’ve got the evidence of those cigarettes to contend with, for that evidence is also convincing.”

“My word!” sighed Vance. “You’re in a pos’tively ghastly predic’ment. However, maybe I can cast illumination on those disquietin’ cigarette butts.”

Once more he went to the door and, summoning Snitkin, returned the pistol.

“The district attorney thanks you,” he said. “And will you be good enough to fetch Mrs. Platz. We wish to chat with her.”

Turning back to the room, he smiled amiably at Markham. “I desire to do all the conversing with the lady this time, if you don’t mind. There are potentialities in Mrs. Platz which you entirely overlooked when you questioned her yesterday.”

Markham was interested, though sceptical. “You have the floor,” he said.

CHAPTER 10

ELIMINATING A SUSPECT

(Saturday, June 15, 5:30 P.M.)

When the housekeeper entered, she appeared even more composed than when Markham had first questioned her. There was something at once sullen and indomitable in her manner, and she looked at me with a slightly challenging expression. Markham merely nodded to her, but Vance stood up and indicated a low tufted Morris chair near the fireplace, facing the front windows. She sat down on the edge of it, resting her elbows on its broad arms.

“I have some questions to ask you, Mrs. Platz,” Vance began, fixing her sharply with his gaze; “and it will be best for everyone if you tell the whole truth. You understand me—eh, what?”

The easygoing, half-whimsical manner he had taken with Markham had disappeared. He stood before the woman, stern and implacable.

At his words she lifted her head. Her face was blank, but her mouth was set stubbornly, and a smouldering look in her eyes told of a suppressed anxiety.

Vance waited a moment and then went on, enunciating each word with distinctness.

“At what time, on the day Mr. Benson was killed, did the lady call here?”

The woman’s gaze did not falter, but the pupils of her eyes dilated. “There was nobody here.”

“Oh, yes, there was, Mrs. Platz.” Vance’s tone was assured. “What time did she call?”

“Nobody was here, I tell you,” she persisted.

Vance lit a cigarette with interminable deliberation, his eyes resting steadily on hers. He smoked placidly until her gaze dropped. Then he stepped nearer to her, and said firmly, “If you tell the truth, no harm will come to you. But if you refuse any information you will find yourself in trouble. The withholding of evidence is a crime, y’ know, and the law will show you no mercy.”

He made a sly grimace at Markham, who was watching the proceedings with interest.

The woman now began to show signs of agitation. She drew in her elbows, and her breathing quickened. “In God’s name, I swear it!—there wasn’t anybody here.” A slight hoarseness gave evidence of her emotion.

“Let us not invoke the Deity,” suggested Vance carelessly. “What time was the lady here?”

She set her lips stubbornly, and for a whole minute there was silence in the room. Vance smoked quietly, but Markham held his cigar motionless between his thumb and forefinger in an attitude of expectancy.

Again Vance’s impassive voice demanded: “What time was she here?”

The woman clinched her hands with a spasmodic gesture, and thrust her head forward.

“I tell you—I swear it—”

Vance made a peremptory movement of his hand and smiled coldly. “It’s no go,” he told her. “You’re acting stupidly. We’re here to get the truth—and you’re going to tell us.”

“I’ve told you the truth.”

“Is it going to be necess’ry for the district attorney here to order you placed in custody?”

“I’ve told you the truth,” she repeated.

Vance crushed out his cigarette decisively in an ash receiver on the table.

“Right-o, Mrs. Platz. Since you refuse to tell me about the young woman who was here that afternoon, I’m going to tell you about her.”

His manner was easy and cynical, and the woman watched him suspiciously.

“Late in the afternoon of the day your employer was shot the doorbell rang. Perhaps you had been informed by Mr. Benson that he was expecting a caller, what? Anyhow, you answered the door and admitted a charming young lady. You showed her into this room…and—what do you think, my dear Madam!—she took that very chair on which you are resting so uncomfortably.”

He paused and smiled tantalizingly.

“Then,” he continued, “you served tea to the young lady and Mr. Benson. After a bit she departed, and Mr. Benson went upstairs to dress for dinner.… Y’ see, Mrs. Platz, I happen to know.”

He lit another cigarette.

“Did you notice the young lady particularly? If not, I’ll describe her to you. She was rather short—petite is the word. She had dark hair and dark eyes and she was dressed quietly.”

A change had come over the woman. Her eyes stared; her cheeks were now gray; and her breathing had become audible.

“Now, Mrs. Platz,” demanded Vance sharply, “what have you to say?”

She drew a deep breath. “There wasn’t anybody here,” she said doggedly. There was something almost admirable in her obstinacy.

Vance considered a moment. Markham was about to speak but evidently thought better of it and sat watching the woman fixedly.

“Your attitude is understandable,” Vance observed finally. “The young lady, of course, was well known to you, and you had a personal reason for not wanting it known she was here.”

At these words she sat up straight, a look of terror in her face. “I never saw her before!” she cried, then stopped abruptly.

“Ah!” Vance gave her an amused leer. “You had never seen the young lady before—eh, what?… That’s quite possible. But it’s immaterial. She’s a nice girl, though, I’m sure—even if she did have a dish of tea with your employer alone in his home.”

“Did she tell you she was here?” The woman’s voice was listless. The reaction to her tense obduracy had left her apathetic.

“Not exactly,” Vance replied. “But it wasn’t necess’ry. I knew without her informing me.… Just when did she arrive, Mrs. Platz?”

“About a half hour after Mr. Benson got here from the office.” She had at last given over all denials and evasions. “But he didn’t expect her—that is, he didn’t say anything to me about her coming; and he didn’t order tea until after she came.”

Markham thrust himself forward. “Why didn’t you tell me she’d been here when I asked you yesterday morning?”

The woman cast an uneasy glance about the room.

“I rather fancy,” Vance intervened pleasantly, “that Mrs. Platz was afraid you might unjustly suspect the young lady.”

She grasped eagerly at his words. “Yes sir—that was all. I was afraid you might think she—did it. And she was such a quiet, sweet-looking girl.… That was the only reason, sir.”

“Quite so,” agreed Vance consolingly. “But tell me: did it not shock you to see such a quiet, sweet-looking young lady smoking cigarettes?”

Her apprehension gave way to astonishment. “Why—yes, sir, it did.… But she wasn’t a bad girl—I could tell that. And most girls smoke nowadays. They don’t think anything of it, like they used to.”

“You’re quite right,” Vance assured her. “Still young ladies really shouldn’t throw their cigarettes in tiled, gas-log fireplaces, should they, now?”

The woman regarded him uncertainly; she suspected him of jesting. “Did she do that?” She leaned over and looked into the fireplace. “I didn’t see any cigarettes there this morning.”

“No, you wouldn’t have,” Vance informed her. “One of the district attorney’s sleuths, d’ ye see, cleaned it all up nicely for you yesterday.”

She shot Markham a questioning glance. She was not sure whether Vance’s remark was to be taken seriously; but his casualness of manner and pleasantness of voice tended to put her at ease.

“Now that we understand each other, Mrs. Platz,” he was saying, “was there anything else you particularly noticed when the young lady was here? You will be doing her a good service by telling us, because both the district attorney and I happen to know she is innocent.”

She gave Vance a long, shrewd look, as if appraising his sincerity. Evidently the results of her scrutiny were favorable, for her answer left no doubt as to her complete frankness.

“I don’t know if it’ll help, but when I came in with the toast, Mr. Benson looked like he was arguing with her. She seemed worried about something that was going to happen and asked him not to hold her to some promise she’d made. I was only in the room a minute and I didn’t hear much. But just as I was going out he laughed and said it was only a bluff and that nothing was going to happen.”

She stopped and waited anxiously. She seemed to fear that her revelation might, after all, prove injurious rather than helpful to the girl.

“Was that all?” Vance’s tone indicated that the matter was of no consequence.

The woman demurred.

“That was all I heard; but…there was a small blue box of jewelry sitting on the table.”

“My word!—a box of jewelry! Do you know whose it was?”

“No, sir, I don’t. The lady hadn’t brought it, and I never saw it in the house before.”

“How did you know it was jewelry?”

“When Mr. Benson went upstairs to dress, I came in to clear the tea things away, and it was still sitting on the table.”

Vance smiled. “And you played Pandora and took a peep—eh, what? Most natural—I’d have done it myself.”

He stepped back and bowed politely.

“That will be all, Mrs. Platz.… And you needn’t worry about the young lady. Nothing is going to happen to her.”

When she had left us, Markham leaned forward and shook his cigar at Vance. “Why didn’t you tell me you had information about the case unknown to me?”

“My dear chap!” Vance lifted his eyebrows in protestation. “To what do you refer specifically?”

“How did you know this St. Clair woman had been here in the afternoon?”

“I didn’t; but I surmised it. There were cigarette butts of hers in the grate; and, as I knew she hadn’t been here on the night Benson was shot, I thought it rather likely she had been here earlier in the day. And since Benson didn’t arrive from his office until four, I whispered into my ear that she had called sometime between four and the hour of his departure for dinner.… An element’ry syllogism, what?”

“How did you know she wasn’t here that night?”

“The psychological aspects of the crime left me in no doubt. As I told you, no woman committed it—my metaphysical hypotheses again; but never mind.… Furthermore, yesterday morning I stood on the spot where the murderer stood and sighted with my eye along the line of fire, using Benson’s head and the mark on the wainscot as my points of coinc’dence. It was evident to me then, even without measurements, that the guilty person was rather tall.”

“Very well.… But how did you know she left here that afternoon before Benson did?” persisted Markham.

“How else could she have changed into an evening gown? Really, y’ know, ladies don’t go about décolletées in the afternoon.”

“You assume, then, that Benson himself brought her gloves and handbag back here that night?”

“Someone did—and it certainly wasn’t Miss St. Clair.”

“All right,” conceded Markham. “And what about this Morris chair?—how did you know she sat in it?”

“What other chair could she have sat in and still thrown her cigarettes into the fireplace? Women are notoriously poor shots, even if they were given to hurling their cigarette stubs across the room.”

“That deduction is simple enough,” admitted Markham. “But suppose you tell me how you know she had tea here unless you were privy to some information on the point?”

“It pos’tively shames me to explain it. But the humiliating truth is that I inferred the fact from the condition of yon samovar. I noted yesterday that it had been used and had not been emptied or wiped off.”

Markham nodded with contemptuous elation.

“You seem to have sunk to the despised legal level of material clues.”

“That’s why I’m blushing so furiously.… However, psychological deductions alone do not determine facts in esse, but only in posse. Other conditions must, of course, be considered. In the present instance the indications of the samovar served merely as the basis for an assumption, or guess, with which to draw out the housekeeper.”

“Well, I won’t deny that you succeeded,” said Markham. “I’d like to know, though, what you had in mind when you accused the woman of a personal interest in the girl. That remark certainly indicated some preknowledge of the situation.”

Vance’s face became serious.

“Markham, I give you my word,” he said earnestly, “I had nothing in mind. I made the accusation, thinking it was false, merely to trap her into a denial. And she fell into the trap. But—deuce take it!—I seemed to hit some nail squarely on the head, what? I can’t for the life of me imagine why she was frightened. But it really doesn’t matter.”

“Perhaps not,” agreed Markham, but his tone was dubious. “What do you make of the box of jewelry and the disagreement between Benson and the girl?”

“Nothing yet. They don’t fit in, do they?”

He was silent a moment. Then he spoke with unusual seriousness. “Markham, take my advice and don’t bother with these side issues. I’m telling you the girl had no part in the murder. Let her alone—you’ll be happier in your old age if you do.”

Markham sat scowling, his eyes in space. “I’m convinced that you think you know something.”

“Cogito, ergo sum,” murmured Vance. “Y’ know, the naturalistic philosophy of Descartes has always rather appealed to me. It was a departure from universal doubt and a seeking for positive knowledge in self-consciousness. Spinoza in his pantheism, and Berkeley in his idealism, quite misunderstood the significance of their precursor’s favorite enthymeme. Even Descartes’ errors were brilliant. His method of reasoning, for all its scientific inaccuracies, gave new signif’cation to the symbols of the analyst. The mind, after all, if it is to function effectively, must combine the mathematical precision of a natural science with such pure speculations as astronomy. For instance, Descartes’ doctrine of Vortices—”

“Oh, be quiet,” growled Markham. “I’m not insisting that you reveal your precious information. So why burden me with a dissertation on seventeenth-century philosophy?”

“Anyhow, you’ll admit, won’t you,” asked Vance lightly, “that, in elim’nating those disturbing cigarette butts, so to speak, I’ve elim’nated Miss St. Clair as a suspect?”

Markham did not answer at once. There was no doubt that the developments of the past hour had made a decided impression upon him. He did not underestimate Vance, despite his persistent opposition; and he knew that, for all his flippancy, Vance was fundamentally serious. Furthermore, Markham had a finely developed sense of justice. He was not narrow, even though obstinate at times; and I have never known him to close his mind to the possibilities of truth, however opposed to his own interests. It did not, therefore, surprise me in the least when, at last, he looked up with a gracious smile of surrender.

“You’ve made your point,” he said; “and I accept it with proper humility. I’m most grateful to you.”

Vance walked indifferently to the window and looked out. “I am happy to learn that you are capable of accepting such evidence as the human mind could not possibly deny.”

I had always noticed, in the relationship of these two men, that whenever either made a remark that bordered on generosity, the other answered in a manner which ended all outward show of sentiment. It was as if they wished to keep this more intimate side of their mutual regard hidden from the world.

Markham therefore ignored Vance’s thrust. “Have you perhaps any enlightening suggestions, other than negative ones, to offer as to Benson’s murderer?” he asked.

“Rather!” said Vance. “No end of suggestions.”

“Could you spare me a good one?” Markham imitated the other’s playful tone.

Vance appeared to reflect. “Well, I should advise that, as a beginning, you look for a rather tall man, cool-headed, familiar with firearms, a good shot, and fairly well known to the deceased—a man who was aware that Benson was going to dinner with Miss St. Clair, or who had reason to suspect the fact.”

Markham looked narrowly at Vance for several moments.

“I think I understand.… Not a bad theory, either. You know, I’m going to suggest immediately to Heath that he investigate more thoroughly Captain Leacock’s activities on the night of the murder.”

“Oh, by all means,” said Vance carelessly, going to the piano.

Markham watched him with an expression of puzzled interrogation. He was about to speak when Vance began playing a rollicking French café song which opens, I believe, with “Ils sont dans les vignes les moineaux.”

CHAPTER 11

A MOTIVE AND A THREAT

(Sunday, June 16; afternoon.)

The following day, which was Sunday, we lunched with Markham at the Stuyvesant Club. Vance had suggested the appointment the evening before; for, as he explained to me, he wished to be present in case Leander Pfyfe should arrive from Long Island.

“It amuses me tremendously,” he had said, “the way human beings delib’rately complicate the most ordin’ry issues. They have a downright horror of anything simple and direct. The whole modern commercial system is nothing but a colossal mechanism for doing things in the most involved and roundabout way. If one makes a ten-cent purchase at a department store nowadays, a complete history of the transaction is written out in triplicate, checked by a dozen floorwalkers and clerks, signed and countersigned, entered into innum’rable ledgers with various colored inks, and then elab’rately secreted in steel filing cabinets. And not content with all this superfluous chinoiserie, our businessmen have created a large and expensive army of efficiency experts whose sole duty it is to complicate and befuddle this system still further.… It’s the same with everything else in modern life. Regard that insup’rable mania called golf. It consists merely of knocking a ball into a hole with a stick. But the devotees of this pastime have developed a unique and distinctive livery in which to play it. They concentrate for twenty years on the correct angulation of their feet and the proper method of entwining their fingers about the stick. Moreover, in order to discuss the pseudointr’cacies of this idiotic sport, they’ve invented an outlandish vocabulary which is unintelligible even to an English scholar.”

He pointed disgustedly at a pile of Sunday newspapers.

“Then here’s this Benson murder—a simple and incons’quential affair. Yet the entire machinery of the law is going at high pressure and blowing off jets of steam all over the community, when the matter could be settled quietly in five minutes with a bit of intelligent thinking.”

At lunch, however, he did not refer to the crime; and, as if by tacit agreement, the subject was avoided. Markham had merely mentioned casually to us as we went into the dining room that he was expecting Heath a little later.

The sergeant was waiting for us when we retired to the lounge room for our smoke, and by his expression it was evident he was not pleased with the way things were going.

“I told you, Mr. Markham,” he said, when he had drawn up our chairs, “that this case was going to be a tough one.… Could you get any kind of a lead from the St. Clair woman?”

Markham shook his head.

“She’s out of it.” And he recounted briefly the happenings at Benson’s house the preceding afternoon.

“Well, if you’re satisfied,” was Heath’s somewhat dubious comment, “that’s good enough for me. But what about this Captain Leacock?”

“That’s what I asked you here to talk about,” Markham told him. “There’s no direct evidence against him, but there are several suspicious circumstances that tend to connect him with the murder. He seems to meet the specifications as to height; and we mustn’t overlook the fact that Benson was shot with just such a gun as Leacock would be likely to possess. He was engaged to the girl, and a motive might be found in Benson’s attentions to her.”

“And ever since the big scrap,” supplemented Heath, “these Army boys don’t think anything of shooting people. They got used to blood on the other side.”

“The only hitch,” resumed Markham, “is that Phelps, who had the job of checking up on the captain, reported to me that he was home that night from eight o’clock on. Of course, there may be a loophole somewhere, and I was going to suggest that you have one of your men go into the matter thoroughly and see just what the situation is. Phelps got his information from one of the hallboys; and I think it might be well to get hold of the boy again and apply a little pressure. If it was found that Leacock was not at home at twelve-thirty that night, we might have the lead you’ve been looking for.”

“I’ll attend to it myself,” said Heath. “I’ll go round there tonight, and if this boy knows anything, he’ll spill it before I’m through with him.”

We had talked but a few minutes longer when a uniformed attendant bowed deferentially at the district attorney’s elbow and announced that Mr. Pfyfe was calling.

Markham requested that his visitor be shown into the lounge room, and then added to Heath, “You’d better remain, and hear what he has to say.”

Leander Pfyfe was an immaculate and exquisite personage. He approached us with a mincing gate of self-approbation. His legs, which were very long and thin, with knees that seemed to bend slightly inward, supported a short bulging torso; and his chest curved outward in a generous arc, like that of a pouter pigeon. His face was rotund, and his jowls hung in two loops over a collar too tight for comfort. His blond sparse hair was brushed back sleekly; and the ends of his narrow, silken moustache were waxed into needlepoints. He was dressed in light gray summer flannels and wore a pale turquoise-green silk shirt, a vivid foulard tie, and gray suede Oxfords. A strong odor of oriental perfume was given off by the carefully arranged batiste handkerchief in his breast pocket.

He greeted Markham with viscid urbanity and acknowledged his introduction to us with a patronizing bow. After posing himself in a chair the attendant placed for him, he began polishing a gold-rimmed eyeglass which he wore on a ribbon, and fixed Markham with a melancholy gaze.

“A very sad occasion, this,” he sighed.

“Realizing your friendship for Mr. Benson,” said Markham, “I deplore the necessity of appealing to you at this time. It was very good of you, by the way, to come to the city today.”

Pfyfe made a mildly deprecating movement with his carefully manicured fingers. He was, he explained with an air of ineffable self-complacency, only too glad to discommode himself to give aid to servants of the public. A distressing necessity, to be sure; but his manner conveyed unmistakably that he knew and recognized the obligations attaching to the dictum of noblesse oblige and was prepared to meet them.

He looked at Markham with a self-congratulatory air, and his eyebrows queried: “What can I do for you?” though his lips did not move.

“I understand from Major Anthony Benson,” Markham said, “that you were very close to his brother and therefore might be able to tell us something of his personal affairs, or private social relationships, that would indicate a line of investigation.”

Pfyfe gazed sadly at the floor. “Ah, yes. Alvin and I were very close—we were, in fact, the most intimate of friends. You can not imagine how broken up I was at hearing of the dear fellow’s tragic end.” He gave the impression that here was a modern instance of Aeneas and Achates. “And I was deeply grieved at not being able to come at once to New York to put myself at the service of those that needed me.”

“I’m sure it would have been a comfort to his other friends,” remarked Vance, with cool politeness. “But in the circumst’nces you will be forgiven.”

Pfyfe blinked regretfully. “Ah, but I shall never forgive myself—though I cannot hold myself altogether blameworthy. Only the day before the tragedy I had started on a trip to the Catskills. I had even asked dear Alvin to go along; but he was too busy.” Pfyfe shook his head as if lamenting the incomprehensible irony of life. “How much better—ah, how infinitely much better—if only—”

“You were gone a very short time,” commented Markham, interrupting what promised to be a homily on perverse providence.

“True,” Pfyfe indulgently admitted. “But I met with a most unfortunate accident.” He polished his eyeglass a moment. “My car broke down, and I was necessitated to return.”

“What road did you take?” asked Heath.

Pfyfe delicately adjusted his eyeglass and regarded the sergeant with an intimation of boredom.

“My advice, Mr.—ah—Sneed—”

“Heath,” the other corrected him surlily.

“Ah, yes—Heath.… My advice, Mr. Heath, is that if you are contemplating a motor trip to the Catskills, you apply to the Automobile Club of America for a roadmap. My choice of itinerary might very possibly not suit you.”

He turned back to the district attorney with an air that implied he preferred talking to an equal.

“Tell me, Mr. Pfyfe,” Markham asked; “did Mr. Benson have any enemies?”

The other appeared to think the matter over. “No-o. Not one, I should say, who would actually have killed him as a result of animosity.”

“You imply nevertheless that he had enemies. Could you not tell us a little more?”

Pfyfe passed his hand gracefully over the tips of his golden moustache and then permitted his index-finger to linger on his cheek in an attitude of meditative indecision.

“Your request, Mr. Markham,”—he spoke with pained reluctance—“brings up a matter which I hesitate to discuss. But perhaps it is best that I confide in you—as one gentleman to another. Alvin, in common with many other admirable fellows, had a—what shall I say?—a weakness let me put it that way—for the fair sex.”

He looked at Markham, seeking approbation for his extreme tact in stating an indelicate truth.

“You understand,” he continued, in answer to the other’s sympathetic nod, “Alvin was not a man who possessed the personal characteristics that women hold attractive. (I somehow got the impression that Pfyfe considered himself as differing radically from Benson in this respect.) Alvin was aware of his physical deficiency, and the result was—I trust you will understand my hesitancy in mentioning this distressing fact—but the result was that Alvin used certain—ah—methods in his dealings with women, which you and I could never bring ourselves to adopt. Indeed—though it pains me to say it—he often took unfair advantage of women. He used underhand methods, as it were.”

He paused, apparently shocked by this heinous imperfection of his friend and by the necessity of his own seemingly disloyal revelation.

“Was it one of these women whom Benson had dealt with unfairly that you had in mind?” asked Markham.

“No—not the woman herself,” Pfyfe replied; “but a man who was interested in her. In fact, this man threatened Alvin’s life. You will appreciate my reluctance in telling you this; but my excuse is that the threat was made quite openly. There were several others besides myself who heard it.”

“That, of course, relieves you from any technical breach of confidence,” Markham observed.

Pfyfe acknowledged the other’s understanding with a slight bow.

“It happened at a little party of which I was the unfortunate host,” he confessed modestly.

“Who was the man?” Markham’s tone was polite but firm.

“You will comprehend my reticence.…” Pfyfe began. Then, with an air of righteous frankness, he leaned forward. “It might prove unfair to Alvin to withhold the gentleman’s name.… He was Captain Philip Leacock.”

He allowed himself the emotional outlet of a sigh.

“I trust you won’t ask me for the lady’s name.”

“It won’t be necessary,” Markham assured him. “But I’d appreciate your telling us a little more of the episode.”

Pfyfe complied with an expression of patient resignation.

“Alvin was considerably taken with the lady in question and showed her many attentions which were, I am forced to admit, unwelcome. Captain Leacock resented these attentions; and at the little affair to which I had invited him and Alvin some unpleasant and, I must say, unrefined words passed between them. I fear the wine had been flowing too freely, for Alvin was always punctilious—he was a man, indeed, skilled in the niceties of social intercourse; and the captain, in an outburst of temper, told Alvin that, unless he left the lady strictly alone in the future, he would pay with his life. The captain even went so far as to draw a revolver halfway out of his pocket.”

“Was it a revolver or an automatic pistol?” asked Heath.

Pfyfe gave the district attorney a faint smile of annoyance, without deigning even to glance at the sergeant.

“I misspoke myself; forgive me. It was not a revolver. It was, I believe, an automatic army pistol—though, you understand, I didn’t see it in its entirety.”

“You say there were others who witnessed the altercation?”

“Several of my guests were standing about,” Pfyfe explained; “but, on my word, I couldn’t name them. The fact is, I attached little importance to the threat—indeed, it had entirely slipped my memory until I read the account of poor Alvin’s death. Then I thought at once of the unfortunate incident and said to myself: Why not tell the district attorney…?”

“Thoughts that breathe and words that burn,” murmured Vance, who had been sitting through the interview in oppressive boredom.

Pfyfe once more adjusted his eyeglass and gave Vance a withering look.

“I beg your pardon, sir?”

Vance smiled disarmingly. “Merely a quotation from Gray. Poetry appeals to me in certain moods, don’t y’ know.… Do you, by any chance, know Colonel Ostrander?”

Pfyfe looked at him coldly, but only a vacuous countenance met his gaze. “I am acquainted with the gentleman,” he replied haughtily.

“Was Colonel Ostrander present at this delightful little social affair of yours?” Vance’s tone was artlessly innocent.

“Now that you mention it, I believe he was,” admitted Pfyfe, and lifted his eyebrows inquisitively.

But Vance was again staring disinterestedly out of the window.

Markham, annoyed at the interruption, attempted to reestablish the conversation on a more amiable and practical basis. But Pfyfe, though loquacious, had little more information to give. He insisted constantly on bringing the talk back to Captain Leacock, and, despite his eloquent protestations, it was obvious he attached more importance to the threat than he chose to admit. Markham questioned him for fully an hour but could learn nothing else of a suggestive nature.

When Pfyfe rose to go, Vance turned from his contemplation of the outside world and, bowing affably, let his eyes rest on the other with ingenuous good nature.

“Now that you are in New York, Mr. Pfyfe, and were so unfortunate as to be unable to arrive earlier, I assume that you will remain until after the investigation.”

Pfyfe’s studied and habitual calm gave way to a look of oily astonishment. “I hadn’t contemplated doing so.”

“It would be most desirable if you could arrange it,” urged Markham; though I am sure he had no intention of making the request until Vance suggested it.

Pfyfe hesitated and then made an elegant gesture of resignation. “Certainly I shall remain. When you have further need of my services, you will find me at the Ansonia.”

He spoke with exalted condescension and magnanimously conferred upon Markham a parting smile. But the smile did not spring from within. It appeared to have been adjusted upon his features by the unseen hands of a sculptor; and it affected only the muscles about his mouth.

When he had gone, Vance gave Markham a look of suppressed mirth.

“‘Elegancy, facility, and golden cadence.’… But put not your faith in poesy, old dear. Our Ciceronian friend is an unmitigated fashioner of deceptions.”

“If you’re trying to say that he’s a smooth liar,” remarked Heath, “I don’t agree with you. I think that story about the captain’s threat is straight goods.”

“Oh, that! Of course, it’s true.… And, y’ know, Markham, the knightly Mr. Pfyfe was frightfully disappointed when you didn’t insist on his revealing Miss St. Clair’s name. This Leander, I fear, would never have swum the Hellespont for a lady’s sake.”

“Whether he’s a swimmer or not,” said Heath impatiently, “he’s given us something to go on.”

Markham agreed that Pfyfe’s recital had added materially to the case against Leacock.

“I think I’ll have the captain down to my office tomorrow, and question him,” he said.

A moment later Major Benson entered the room, and Markham invited him to join us.

“I just saw Pfyfe get into a taxi,” he said, when he had sat down. “I suppose you’ve been asking him about Alvin’s affairs.… Did he help you any?”

“I hope so, for all our sakes,” returned Markham kindly. “By the way, Major, what do you know about a Captain Philip Leacock?”

Major Benson lifted his eyes to Markham’s in surprise. “Didn’t you know? Leacock was one of the captains in my regiment—a first-rate man. He knew Alvin pretty well, I think; but my impression is they didn’t hit it off very chummily.… Surely you don’t connect him with this affair?”

Markham ignored the question. “Did you happen to attend a party of Pfyfe’s the night the captain threatened your brother?”

“I went, I remember, to one or two of Pfyfe’s parties,” said the major. “I don’t, as a rule, care for such gatherings, but Alvin convinced me it was a good business policy.”

He lifted his head and frowned fixedly into space, like one searching for an elusive memory.

“However, I don’t recall—By George! Yes, I believe I do.… But if the instance I am thinking of is what you have in mind, you can dismiss it. We were all a little moist that night.”

“Did you see the gun?” pursued Heath.

The major pursed his lips. “Now that you mention it, I think he did make some motion of the kind.”

“Did you see the gun?” pursued Heath.

“No, I can’t say that I did.”

Markham put the next question. “Do you think Captain Leacock capable of the act of murder?”

“Hardly,” Major Benson answered with emphasis. “Leacock isn’t cold-blooded. The woman over whom the tiff occurred is more capable of such an act than he is.”

A short silence followed, broken by Vance.

“What do you know, Major, about this glass of fashion and mold of form, Pfyfe? He appears a rare bird. Has he a history, or is his presence his life’s document?”

“Leander Pfyfe,” said the major, “is a typical specimen of the modern young do-nothing—I say young, though I imagine he’s around forty. He was pampered in his upbringing—had everything he wanted, I believe; but he became restless and followed several different fads till he tired of them. He was two years in South Africa hunting big game and, I think, wrote a book recounting his adventures. Since then he has done nothing that I know of. He married a wealthy shrew some years ago—for her money, I imagine. But the woman’s father controls the purse strings and holds him down to a rigid allowance.… Pfyfe’s a waster and an idler, but Alvin seemed to find some attraction in the man.”

The major’s words had been careless in inflection and undeliberated, like those of a man discussing a neutral matter; but all of us, I think, received the impression that he had a strong personal dislike for Pfyfe.

“Not a ravishing personality, what?” remarked Vance. “And he uses far too much Jicky.”

“Still,” supplied Heath, with a puzzled frown, “a fellow’s got to have a lot of nerve to shoot big game.… And, speaking of nerve, I’ve been thinking that the guy who shot your brother, Major, was a mighty cool-headed proposition. He did it from the front when his man was wide awake and with a servant upstairs. That takes nerve.”

“Sergeant, you’re pos’tively brilliant!” exclaimed Vance.

CHAPTER 12

THE OWNER OF A COLT .45

(Monday, June 17; forenoon.)

Though Vance and I arrived at the district attorney’s office the following morning a little after nine, the captain had been waiting twenty minutes; and Markham directed Swacker to send him in at once.

Captain Philip Leacock was a typical army officer, very tall—fully six feet, two inches—clean-shaven, straight, and slender. His face was grave and immobile; and he stood before the district attorney in the erect, earnest attitude of a soldier awaiting orders from his superior officer.

“Take a seat, Captain,” said Markham, with a formal bow. “I have asked you here, as you probably know, to put a few questions to you concerning Mr. Alvin Benson. There are several points regarding your relationship with him which I want you to explain.”

“Am I suspected of complicity in the crime?” Leacock spoke with a slight southern accent.

“That remains to be seen,” Markham told him coldly. “It is to determine that point that I wish to question you.”

The other sat rigidly in his chair and waited.

Markham fixed him with a direct gaze.

“You recently made a threat on Mr. Alvin Benson’s life, I believe.”

Leacock started, and his fingers tightened over his knees. But before he could answer, Markham continued: “I can tell you the occasion on which the threat was made—it was at a party given by Mr. Leander Pfyfe.”

Leacock hesitated, then thrust forward his jaw. “Very well, sir; I admit I made the threat. Benson was a cad—he deserved shooting.… That night he had become more obnoxious than usual. He’d been drinking too much—and so had I, I reckon.”

He gave a twisted smile and looked nervously past the district attorney out of the window.

“But I didn’t shoot him, sir. I didn’t even know he’d been shot until I read the paper next day.”

“He was shot with an army Colt, the kind you fellows carried in the war,” said Markham, keeping his eyes on the man.

“I know,” Leacock replied. “The papers said so.”

“You have such a gun, haven’t you, Captain?”

Again the other hesitated. “No, sir.” His voice was barely audible.

“What became of it?”

The man glanced at Markham and then quickly shifted his eyes. “I—I lost it…in France.”

Markham smiled faintly.

“Then how do you account for the fact that Mr. Pfyfe saw the gun the night you made the threat?”

“Saw the gun?” He looked blankly at the district attorney.

“Yes, saw it and recognized it as an army gun,” persisted Markham, in a level voice. “Also, Major Benson saw you make a motion as if to draw a gun.”

Leacock drew a deep breath, and set his mouth doggedly.

“I tell you sir, I haven’t a gun.… I lost it in France.”

“Perhaps you didn’t lose it, Captain. Perhaps you lent it to someone.”

“I didn’t sir!” the words burst from his lips.

“Think a minute, Captain.… Didn’t you lend it to someone?”

“No—I did not!”

“You paid a visit—yesterday—to Riverside Drive.… Perhaps you took it there with you.”

Vance had been listening closely. “Oh, deuced clever!” he now murmured in my ear.

Captain Leacock moved uneasily. His face, even with its deep coat of tan, seemed to pale, and he sought to avoid the implacable gaze of his questioner by concentrating his attention upon some object on the table. When he spoke his voice, heretofore truculent, was colored by anxiety.

“I didn’t have it with me.… And I didn’t lend it to anyone.”

Markham sat leaning forward over the desk, his chin on his hand, like a minatory graven image. “It may be you lent it to someone prior to that morning.”

“Prior to…?” Leacock looked up quickly and paused, as if analyzing the other’s remark.

Markham took advantage of his perplexity.

“Have you lent your gun to anyone since you returned from France?”

“No, I’ve never lent it—” he began, but suddenly halted and flushed. Then he added hastily, “How could I lend it? I just told you, sir—”

“Never mind that!” Markham cut in. “So you had a gun, did you, Captain?… Have you still got it?”

Leacock opened his lips to speak but closed them again tightly.

Markham relaxed and leaned back in his chair.

“You were aware, of course, that Benson had been annoying Miss St. Clair with his attentions?”

At the mention of the girl’s name the captain’s body became rigid; his face turned a dull red, and he glared menacingly at the district attorney. At the end of a slow, deep inhalation he spoke through clenched teeth.

“Suppose we leave Miss St. Clair out of this.” He looked as though he might spring at Markham.

“Unfortunately, we can’t.” Markham’s words were sympathetic but firm. “Too many facts connect her with the case. Her handbag, for instance, was found in Benson’s living room the morning after the murder.”

“That’s a lie, sir!”

Markham ignored the insult.

“Miss St. Clair herself admits the circumstance.” He held up his hand, as the other was about to answer. “Don’t misinterpret my mentioning the fact. I am not accusing Miss St. Clair of having anything to do with the affair. I’m merely endeavoring to get some light on your own connection with it.”

The captain studied Markham with an expression that clearly indicated he doubted these assurances. Finally he set his mouth and announced with determination:

“I haven’t anything more to say on the subject, sir.”

“You knew, didn’t you,” continued Markham, “that Miss St. Clair dined with Benson at the Marseilles on the night he was shot?”

“What of it?” retorted Leacock sullenly.

“And you knew, didn’t you, that they left the restaurant at midnight, and that Miss St. Clair did not reach home until after one?”

A strange look came into the man’s eyes. The ligaments of his neck tightened, and he took a deep, resolute breath. But he neither glanced at the district attorney nor spoke.

“You know, of course,” pursued Markham’s monotonous voice, “that Benson was shot at half past twelve?” He waited, and for a whole minute there was silence in the room.

“You have nothing more to say, Captain?” he asked at length; “no further explanations to give me?”

Leacock did not answer. He sat gazing imperturbably ahead of him; and it was evident he had sealed his lips for the time being.

Markham rose.

“In that case, let us consider the interview at an end.”

The moment Captain Leacock had gone, Markham rang for one of his clerks.

“Tell Ben to have that man followed. Find out where he goes and what he does. I want a report at the Stuyvesant Club tonight.”

When we were alone, Vance gave Markham a look of half-bantering admiration.

“Ingenious, not to say artful.… But, y’ know, your questions about the lady were shocking bad form.”

“No doubt,” Markham agreed. “But it looks now as if we were on the right track. Leacock didn’t create an impression of unassailable innocence.”

“Didn’t he?” asked Vance. “Just what were the signs of his assailable guilt?”

“You saw him turn white when I questioned him about the weapon. His nerves were on edge—he was genuinely frightened.”

Vance sighed. “What a perfect ready-made set of notions you have, Markham! Don’t you know that an innocent man, when he comes under suspicion, is apt to be more nervous than a guilty one, who, to begin with, had enough nerve to commit the crime and, secondly, realizes that any show of nervousness is regarded as guilt by you lawyer chaps? ‘My strength is as the strength of ten because my heart is pure’ is a mere Sunday school pleasantry. Touch almost any innocent man on the shoulder and say ‘You’re arrested,’ and his pupils will dilate, he’ll break out in a cold sweat, the blood will rush from his face, and he’ll have tremors and dyspnea. If he’s a hystérique, or a cardiac neurotic, he’ll probably collapse completely. It’s the guilty person who, when thus accosted, lifts his eyebrows in bored surprise and says, ‘You don’t mean it, really—here have a cigar.’”

“The hardened criminal may act as you say,” Markham conceded; “but an honest man who’s innocent doesn’t go to pieces, even when accused.”

Vance shook his head hopelessly. “My dear fellow, Crile and Voronoff might have lived in vain for all of you. Manifestations of fear are the result of glandular secretions—nothing more. All they prove is that the person’s thyroid is undeveloped or that his adrenals are subnormal. A man accused of a crime, or shown the bloody weapon with which it was committed, will either smile serenely, or scream, or have hysterics, or faint, or appear disint’rested according to his hormones and irrespective of his guilt. Your theory, d’ ye see, would be quite all right if everyone had the same amount of the various internal secretions. But they haven’t.… Really, y’ know, you shouldn’t send a man to the electric chair simply because he’s deficient in endocrines. It isn’t cricket.”

Before Markham could reply, Swacker appeared at the door and said Heath had arrived.

The sergeant, beaming with satisfaction, fairly burst into the room. For once he forgot to shake hands. “Well, it looks like we’ve got hold of something workable. I went to this Captain Leacock’s apartment house last night, and here’s the straight of it:—Leacock was at home the night of the thirteenth all right; but shortly after midnight he went out, headed west—get that!—and he didn’t return till about quarter of one!”

“What about the hallboy’s original story?” asked Markham.

“That’s the best part of it. Leacock had the boy fixed. Gave him money to swear he hadn’t left the house that night. What do you think of that, Mr. Markham? Pretty crude—huh?… The kid loosened up when I told him I was thinking of sending him up the river for doing the job himself.” Heath laughed unpleasantly. “And he won’t spill anything to Leacock, either.”

Markham nodded his head slowly.

“What you tell me, Sergeant, bears out certain conclusions I arrived at when I talked to Captain Leacock this morning. Ben put a man on him when he left here, and I’m to get a report tonight. Tomorrow may see this thing through. I’ll get in touch with you in the morning, and if anything’s to be done, you understand, you’ll have the handling of it.”

When Heath had left us, Markham folded his hands behind his head and leaned back contentedly.

“I think I’ve got the answer,” he said. “The girl dined with Benson and returned to his house afterward. The captain, suspecting the fact, went out, found her there, and shot Benson. That would account not only for her gloves and handbag but for the hour it took her to go from the Marseilles to her home. It would also account for her attitude here Saturday and for the captain’s lying about the gun.… There. I believe, I have my case. The smashing of the captain’s alibi about clinches it.”

“Oh, quite,” said Vance airily. “‘Hope springs exulting on triumphant wing.’”

Markham regarded him a moment. “Have you entirely forsworn human reason as a means of reaching a decision? Here we have an admitted threat, a motive, the time, the place, the opportunity, the conduct, and the criminal agent.”

“Those words sound strangely familiar,” Vance smiled. “Didn’t most of ’em fit the young lady also?… And you really haven’t got the criminal agent, y’ know. But it’s no doubt floating about the city somewhere. A mere detail, however.”

“I may not have it in my hand,” Markham countered. “But with a good man on watch every minute, Leacock won’t find much opportunity of disposing of the weapon.”

Vance shrugged indifferently.

“In any event, go easy,” he admonished. “My humble opinion is that you’ve merely unearthed a conspiracy.”

“Conspiracy?… Good Lord! What kind?”

“A conspiracy of circumst’nces, don’t y’ know.”

“I’m glad, at any rate, it hasn’t to do with international politics,” returned Markham good-naturedly.

He glanced at the clock. “You won’t mind if I get to work? I’ve a dozen things to attend to and a couple of committees to see.… Why don’t you go across the hall and have a talk with Ben Hanlon and then come back at twelve thirty? We’ll have lunch together at the Bankers’ Club. Ben’s our greatest expert on foreign extradition and has spent most of his life chasing about the world after fugitives from justice. He’ll spin you some good yarns.”

“How perfectly fascinatin’!” exclaimed Vance, with a yawn. But instead of taking the suggestion, he walked to the window and lit a cigarette. He stood for a while puffing at it, rolling it between his fingers, and inspecting it critically.

“Y’know, Markham,” he observed, “everything’s going to pot these days. It’s this silly democracy. Even the nobility is degen’rating. These Régie cigarettes, now; they’ve fallen off frightfully. There was a time when no self-respecting potentate would have smoked such inferior tobacco.”

Markham smiled. “What’s the favor you want to ask?”

“Favor? What has that to do with the decay of Europe’s aristocracy?”

“I’ve noticed that whenever you want to ask a favor which you consider questionable etiquette, you begin with a denunciation of royalty.”

“Observin’ fella,” commented Vance dryly. Then he, too, smiled. “Do you mind if I invite Colonel Ostrander along to lunch?”

Markham gave him a sharp look. “Bigsby Ostrander, you mean?… Is he the mysterious colonel you’ve been asking people about for the past two days?”

“That’s the lad. Pompous ass and that sort of thing. Might prove a bit edifyin’, though. He’s the papa of Benson’s crowd, so to speak; knows all parties. Regular old scandalmonger.”

“Have him along, by all means,” agreed Markham. Then he picked up the telephone. “Now I’m going to tell Ben you’re coming over for an hour or so.”

1 As a matter of fact, the same watercolors that Vance obtained for $250 and $300 were bringing three times as much four years later.

2 I am thinking particularly of Bronzino’s portraits of Pietro de’ Medici and Cosimo de’ Medici, in the National Gallery, and of Vasari’s medallion portrait of Lorenzo de’ Medici in the Vecchio Palazzo, Florence.

3 Once when Vance was suffering from sinusitis, he had an X-ray photograph of his head made; and the accompanying chart described him as a “marked dolichocephalic” and a “disharmonious Nordic.” It also contained the following data:—cephalic index 75; nose, leptorhine, with an index of 48; facial angle, 85º; vertical index, 72; upper facial index, 54; interpupilary width, 67; chin, masognathous, with an index of 103; sella turcica, abnormally large.

4 “Culture,” Vance said to me shortly after I had met him, “is polyglot; and the knowledge of many tongues is essential to an understanding of the world’s intellectual and aesthetic achievements. Especially are the Greek and Latin classics vitiated by translation.” I quote the remark here because his omnivorous reading in languages other than English, coupled with his amazingly retentive memory, had a tendency to affect his own speech. And while it may appear to some that his speech was at times pedantic, I have tried, throughout these chronicles to quote him literally, in the hope of presenting a portrait of the man as he was.

5 The book was O. Henry’s Strictly Business, and the place at which it was being held open was, curiously enough, the story entitled “A Municipal Report.”

6 Inspector Moran (as I learned later) had once been the president of a large upstate bank that had failed during the panic of 1907, and during the Gaynor Administration had been seriously considered for the post of Police Commissioner.

7 Vance’s eyes were slightly bifocal. His right eye was 1.2 astigmatic, whereas his left eye was practically normal.

8 Even the famous Elwell case, which came several years later and bore certain points of similarity to the Benson case, created no greater sensation, despite the fact that Elwell was more widely known than Benson, and the persons involved were more prominent socially. Indeed, the Benson case was referred to several times in descriptions of the Elwell case; and one anti-administration paper regretted editorially that John F.-X. Markham was no longer district attorney of New York.

9 Vance, who had lived many years in England, frequently said “ain’t”—a contraction which is regarded there more leniently than in this country. He also pronounced ate as if it were spelled et; and I can not remember his ever using the word “stomach” or “bug,” both of which are under the social ban in England.

10 The following conversation in which Vance explains his psychological methods of criminal analysis, is, of course, set down from memory. However, a proof of this passage was sent to him with a request that he revise and alter it in whatever manner he chose; so that, as it now stands, it describes Vance’s theory in practically his own words.

11 I don’t know what case Vance was referring to; but there are several instances of this device on record, and writers of detective fiction have often used it. The latest instance is to be found in G. K. Chesterton’s The Innocence of Father Brown, in the story entitled “The Wrong Shape.”

12 It was Pearson and Goring who, about twenty years ago, made an extensive investigation and tabulation of professional criminals in England, the results of which showed (1) that criminal careers began mostly between the ages of 16 and 21; (2) that over ninety percent of criminals were mentally normal; and (3) that more criminals had criminal older brothers than criminal fathers.

13 Sir Basil Thomson, K.C.B., former Assistant Commissioner of Metropolitan Police, London, writing in the Saturday Evening Post several years after this conversation, said: “Take, for example, the proverb that murder will out, which is employed whenever one out of many thousands of undiscovered murderers is caught through a chance coincidence that captures the popular imagination. It is because murder will not out that the pleasant shock of surprise when it does out calls for a proverb to enshrine the phenomenon. The poisoner who is brought to justice has almost invariably proved to have killed other victims without exciting suspicion until he has grown careless.”

14 In “Popular Fallacies About Crime” (Saturday Evening Post; April 21, 1923, p. 8) Sir Basil Thomson also upheld this point of view.

15 For years the famous Concert Champêtre in the Louvre was officially attributed to Titian. Vance, however, took it upon himself to convince the Curator, M. Lepelletier, that it was a Giorgione, with the result that the painting is now credited to that artist.