Читать книгу The Greatest Works of S. S. Van Dine (Illustrated Edition) - S.S. Van Dine - Страница 74

Table of Contents

(Tuesday, November 9; 11 a. m.)

When Chester Greene entered it was obvious he was under a nervous strain; but his nervousness evoked no sympathy in me. From the very first I disliked the man. He was of medium height and was bordering on corpulence. There was something soft and flabby in his contours; and, though he was dressed with studied care, there were certain signs of overemphasis about his clothes. His cuffs were too tight; his collar was too snug; and the colored silk handkerchief hung too far out of his breast pocket. He was slightly bald, and the lids of his close-set eyes projected like those of a man with Bright’s disease. His mouth, surmounted by a close-cropped blond moustache, was loose; and his chin receded slightly and was deeply creased below the under lip. He typified the pampered idler.

When he had shaken hands with Markham, and Vance and I had been introduced, he seated himself and meticulously inserted a brown Russian cigarette in a long amber-and-gold holder.

“I’d be tremendously obliged, Markham,” he said, lighting his cigarette from an ivory pocket-lighter, “if you’d make a personal investigation of the row that occurred at our diggin’s last night. The police will never get anywhere the way they’re going about it. Good fellows, you understand—the police. But . . . well, there’s something about this affair—don’t know just how to put it. Anyway, I don’t like it.”

Markham studied him closely for several moments.

“Just what’s on your mind, Greene?”

The other crushed out his cigarette, though he had taken no more than half a dozen puffs, and drummed indecisively on the arm of his chair.

“Wish I knew. It’s a rum affair—damned rum. There’s something back of it, too—something that’s going to raise the very devil if we don’t stop it. Can’t explain it. It’s a feeling I’ve got.”

“Perhaps Mr. Greene is psychic,” commented Vance, with a look of bland innocence.

The man swung about and scrutinized Vance with aggressive condescension. “Tosh!” He brought out another Russian cigarette, and turned again to Markham: “I do wish you’d take a peep at the situation.”

Markham hesitated. “Surely you’ve some reason for disagreeing with the police and appealing to me.”

“Funny thing, but I haven’t.” (It seemed to me Greene’s hand shook slightly as he lit his second cigarette.) “I simply know that my mind rejects the burglar story automatically.”

It was difficult to tell if he were being frank or deliberately hiding something. I did feel, however, that some sort of fear lurked beneath his uneasiness; and I also got the impression that he was far from being heart-broken over the tragedy.

“It seems to me,” declared Markham, “that the theory of the burglar is entirely consistent with the facts. There have been many other cases of a housebreaker suddenly taking alarm, losing his head, and needlessly shooting people.”

Greene rose abruptly and began pacing up and down.

“I can’t argue the case,” he muttered. “It’s beyond all that, if you understand me.” He looked quickly at the District Attorney with staring eyes. “Gad! It’s got me in a cold sweat.”

“It’s all too vague and intangible,” Markham observed kindly. “I’m inclined to think the tragedy has upset you. Perhaps after a day or two——”

Greene lifted a protesting hand.

“It’s no go. I’m telling you, Markham, the police will never find their burglar. I feel it—here.” He mincingly laid a manicured hand on his breast.

Vance had been watching him with a faint suggestion of amusement. Now he stretched his legs before him and gazed up at the ceiling.

“I say, Mr. Greene—pardon the intrusion on your esoteric gropings—but do you know of any one with a reason for wanting your two sisters out of the way?”

The man looked blank for a moment.

“No,” he answered finally; “can’t say that I do. Who, in Heaven’s name, would want to kill two harmless women?”

“I haven’t the groggiest notion. But, since you repudiate the burglar theory, and since the two ladies were undoubtedly shot, it’s inferable that some one sought their demise; and it occurred to me that you, being their brother and domiciled en famille, might know of some one who harbored homicidal sentiments toward them.”

Greene bristled, and thrust his head forward. “I know of no one,” he blurted. Then, turning to Markham, he continued wheedlingly: “If I had the slightest suspicion, don’t you think I’d come out with it? This thing has got on my nerves. I’ve been mulling over it all night, and it’s—it’s bothersome, frightfully bothersome.”

Markham nodded non-committally, and rising, walked to the window, where he stood, his hands behind him, gazing down on the gray stone masonry of the Tombs.

Vance, despite his apparent apathy, had been studying Greene closely; and, as Markham turned to the window, he straightened up slightly in his chair.

“Tell me,” he began, an ingratiating note in his voice; “just what happened last night? I understand you were the first to reach the prostrate women.”

“I was the first to reach my sister Julia,” retorted Greene, with a hint of resentment. “It was Sproot, the butler, who found Ada unconscious, bleeding from a nasty wound in her back.”

“Her back, eh?” Vance leaned forward, and lifted his eyebrows. “She was shot from behind, then?”

“Yes.” Greene frowned and inspected his fingernails, as if he too sensed something disturbing in the fact.

“And Miss Julia Greene: was she too shot from behind?”

“No—from the front.”

“Extr’ordin’ry!” Vance blew a ring of smoke toward the dusty chandelier. “And had both women retired for the night?”

“An hour before. . . . But what has all that got to do with it?”

“One never knows, does one? However, it’s always well to be in possession of these little details when trying to run down the elusive source of a psychic seizure.”

“Psychic seizure be damned!” growled Greene truculently. “Can’t a man have a feeling about something without——?”

“Quite—quite. But you’ve asked for the District Attorney’s assistance, and I’m sure he would like a few data before making a decision.”

Markham came forward and sat down on the edge of the table. His curiosity had been aroused, and he indicated to Greene his sympathy with Vance’s interrogation.

Greene pursed his lips, and returned his cigarette-holder to his pocket.

“Oh, very well. What else do you want to know?”

“You might relate for us,” dulcetly resumed Vance, “the exact order of events after you heard the first shot. I presume you did hear the shot.”

“Certainly I heard it—couldn’t have helped hearing it. Julia’s room is next to mine, and I was still awake. I jumped into my slippers and pulled on my dressing-gown; then I went out into the hall. It was dark, and I felt my way along the wall until I reached Julia’s door. I opened it and looked in—didn’t know who might be there waiting to pop me—and I saw her lying in bed, the front of her nightgown covered with blood. There was no one else in the room, and I went to her immediately. Just then I heard another shot which sounded as if it came from Ada’s room. I was a bit muzzy by this time—didn’t know what I’d better do; and as I stood by Julia’s bed in something of a funk—oh, I was in a funk all right. . .”

“Can’t say that I blame you,” Vance encouraged him.

Greene nodded. “A damned ticklish position to be in. Well, anyway, as I stood there, I heard some one coming down the stairs from the servants’ quarters on the third floor, and recognized old Sproot’s tread. He fumbled along in the dark, and I heard him enter Ada’s door. Then he called to me, and I hurried over. Ada was lying in front of the dressing-table; and Sproot and I lifted her on the bed. I’d gone a bit weak in the knees; was expecting any minute to hear another shot—don’t know why. Anyway, it didn’t come; and then I heard Sproot’s voice at the hall telephone calling up Doctor Von Blon.”

“I see nothing in your account, Greene, inconsistent with the theory of a burglar,” observed Markham. “And furthermore, Feathergill, my assistant, says there were two sets of confused footprints in the snow outside the front door.”

Greene shrugged his shoulders, but did not answer.

“By the by, Mr. Greene,”—Vance had slipped down in his chair and was staring into space—“you said that when you looked into Miss Julia’s room you saw her in bed. How was that? Did you turn on the light?”

“Why, no!” The man appeared puzzled by the question. “The light was on.”

There was a flutter of interest in Vance’s eyes.

“And how about Miss Ada’s room? Was the light on there also?”

“Yes.”

Vance reached into his pocket, and, drawing out his cigarette-case, carefully and deliberately selected a cigarette. I recognized in the action an evidence of repressed inner excitement.

“So the lights were on in both rooms. Most interestin’.”

Markham, too, recognized the eagerness beneath his apparent indifference, and regarded him expectantly.

“And,” pursued Vance, after lighting his cigarette leisurely, “how long a time would you say elapsed between the two shots?”

Greene was obviously annoyed by this cross-examination, but he answered readily.

“Two or three minutes—certainly no longer.”

“Still,” ruminated Vance, “after you heard the first shot you rose from your bed, donned slippers and robe, went into the hall, felt along the wall to the next room, opened the door cautiously, peered inside, and then crossed the room to the bed—all this, I gather, before the second shot was fired. Is that correct?”

“Certainly it’s correct.”

“Well, well! As you say, two or three minutes. Yes, at least that. Astonishin’!” Vance turned to Markham. “Really, y’ know, old man, I don’t wish to influence your judgment, but I rather think you ought to accede to Mr. Greene’s request to take a hand in this investigation. I too have a psychic feeling about the case. Something tells me that your eccentric burglar will prove an ignis fatuus.”

Markham eyed him with meditative curiosity. Not only had Vance’s questioning of Greene interested him keenly, but he knew, as a result of long experience, that Vance would not have made the suggestion had he not had a good reason for doing so. I was in no wise surprised, therefore, when he turned to his restive visitor and said:

“Very well, Greene, I’ll see what I can do in the matter. I’ll probably be at your house early this afternoon. Please see that every one is present, as I’ll want to question them.”

Greene held out a trembling hand. “The domestic roster—family and servants—will be complete when you arrive.”

He strode pompously from the room.

Vance sighed. “Not a nice creature, Markham—not at all a nice creature. I shall never be a politician if it involves an acquaintance with such gentlemen.”

Markham seated himself at his desk with a disgruntled air.

“Greene is highly regarded as a social—not a political—decoration,” he said maliciously. “He belongs to your totem, not mine.”

“Fancy that!” Vance stretched himself luxuriously. “Still, it’s you who fascinate him. Intuition tells me he is not overfond of me.”

“You did treat him a bit cavalierly. Sarcasm is not exactly a means of endearment.”

“But, Markham old thing, I wasn’t pining for Chester’s affection.”

“You think he knows, or suspects, something?”

Vance gazed through the long window into the bleak sky beyond.

“I wonder,” he murmured. Then: “Is Chester, by any chance, a typical representative of the Greene family? Of recent years I’ve done so little mingling with the élite that I’m woefully ignorant of the East Side nabobs.”

Markham nodded reflectively.

“I’m afraid he is. The original Greene stock was sturdy, but the present generation seems to have gone somewhat to pot. Old Tobias the Third—Chester’s father—was a rugged and, in many ways, admirable character. He appears, however, to have been the last heir of the ancient Greene qualities. What’s left of the family has suffered some sort of disintegration. They’re not exactly soft, but tainted with patches of incipient decay, like fruit that’s lain on the ground too long. Too much money and leisure, I imagine, and too little restraint. On the other hand, there’s a certain intellectuality lurking in the new Greenes. They all seem to have good minds, even if futile and misdirected. In fact, I think you underestimate Chester. For all his banalities and effeminate mannerisms, he’s far from being as stupid as you regard him.”

“I regard Chester as stupid! My dear Markham! You wrong me abominably. No, no. There’s nothing of the anointed ass about our Chester. He’s shrewder even than you think him. Those œdematous eyelids veil a pair of particularly crafty eyes. Indeed, it was largely his studied pose of fatuousness that led me to suggest that you aid and abet in the investigation.”

Markham leaned back and narrowed his eyes.

“What’s in your mind, Vance?”

“I told you. A psychic seizure—same like Chester’s subliminal visitation.”

Markham knew, by this elusive answer, that for the moment Vance had no intention of being more definite; and after a moment of scowling silence he turned to the telephone.

“If I’m to take on this case, I’d better find out who has charge of it and get what preliminary information I can.”

He called up Inspector Moran, the commanding officer of the Detective Bureau. After a brief conversation he turned to Vance with a smile.

“Your friend, Sergeant Heath, has the case in hand. He happened to be in the office just now, and is coming here immediately.”⁶

In less than fifteen minutes Heath arrived. Despite the fact that he had been up most of the night, he appeared unusually alert and energetic. His broad, pugnacious features were as imperturbable as ever, and his pale-blue eyes held their habitual penetrating intentness. He greeted Markham with an elaborate, though perfunctory, handshake; and then, seeing Vance, relaxed his features into a good-natured smile.

“Well, if it isn’t Mr. Vance! What have you been up to, sir?”

Vance rose and shook hands with him.

“Alas, Sergeant, I’ve been immersed in the terra-cotta ornamentation of Renaissance façades, and other such trivialities, since I saw you last.⁷ But I’m happy to note that crime is picking up again. It’s a deuced drab world without a nice murky murder now and then, don’t y’ know.”

Heath cocked an eye, and turned inquiringly to the District Attorney. He had long since learned how to read between the lines of Vance’s badinage.

“It’s this Greene case, Sergeant,” said Markham.

“I thought so.” Heath sat down heavily, and inserted a black cigar between his lips. “But nothing’s broken yet. We’re rounding up all the regulars, and looking into their alibis for last night. But it’ll take several days before the check-up’s complete. If the bird who did the job hadn’t got scared before he grabbed the swag, we might be able to trace him through the pawnshops and fences. But something rattled him, or he wouldn’t have shot up the works the way he did. And that’s what makes me think he may be a new one at the racket. If he is, it’ll make our job harder.” He held a match in cupped hands to his cigar, and puffed furiously. “What did you want to know about the prowl, sir?”

Markham hesitated. The Sergeant’s matter-of-fact assumption that a common burglar was the culprit disconcerted him.

“Chester Greene was here,” he explained presently; “and he seems convinced that the shooting was not the work of a thief. He asked me, as a special favor, to look into the matter.”

Heath gave a derisive grunt.

“Who but a burglar in a panic would shoot down two women?”

“Quite so, Sergeant.” It was Vance who answered. “Still, the lights were turned on in both rooms, though the women had gone to bed an hour before; and there was an interval of several minutes between the two shots.”

“I know all that.” Heath spoke impatiently. “But if an amachoor did the job, we can’t tell exactly what did happen up-stairs there last night. When a bird loses his head——”

“Ah! There’s the rub. When a thief loses his head, d’ye see, he isn’t apt to go from room to room turning on the lights, even assuming he knows where and how to turn them on. And he certainly isn’t going to dally around for several minutes in a black hall between such fantastic operations, especially after he has shot some one and alarmed the house, what? It doesn’t look like panic to me; it looks strangely like design. Moreover, why should this precious amateur of yours be cavorting about the boudoirs up-stairs when the loot was in the dining-room below?”

“We’ll learn all about that when we’ve got our man,” countered Heath doggedly.

“The point is, Sergeant,” put in Markham, “I’ve given Mr. Greene my promise to look into the matter, and I wanted to get what details I could from you. You understand, of course,” he added mollifyingly, “that I shall not interfere with your activities in any way. Whatever the outcome of the case, your department will receive entire credit.”

“Oh, that’s all right, sir.” Experience had taught Heath that he had nothing to fear in the way of lost kudos when working with Markham. “But I don’t think, in spite of Mr. Vance’s ideas, that you’ll find much in the Greene case to warrant attention.”

“Perhaps not,” Markham admitted. “However, I’ve committed myself, and I think I’ll run out this afternoon and look over the situation, if you’ll give me the lie of the land.”

“There isn’t much to tell.” Heath chewed on his cigar cogitatingly. “A Doctor Von Blon—the Greene family physician—phoned Headquarters about midnight. I’d just got in from an up-town stick-up call, and I hopped out to the house with a couple of the boys from the Bureau. I found the two women, like you know, one dead and the other unconscious—both shot. I phoned Doc Doremus,⁸ and then looked the place over. Mr. Feathergill came along and lent a hand; but we didn’t find much of anything. The fellow that did the job musta got in by the front door some way, for there was a set of footprints in the snow coming and going, besides Doctor Von Blon’s. But the snow was too flaky to get any good impressions. It stopped snowing along about eleven o’clock last night; and there’s no doubt that the prints belonged to the burglar, for no one else, except the doctor, had come or gone after the storm.”

“An amateur housebreaker with a front-door key to the Greene mansion,” murmured Vance. “Extr’ordin’ry!”

“I’m not saying he had a key, sir,” protested Heath. “I’m simply telling you what we found. The door mighta been unlatched by mistake; or some one mighta opened it for him.”

“Go on with the story, Sergeant,” urged Markham, giving Vance a reproving look.

“Well, after Doc Doremus got there and made an examination of the older woman’s body and inspected the younger one’s wound, I questioned all the family and the servants—a butler, two maids, and a cook. Chester Greene and the butler were the only ones who had heard the first shot, which was fired about half past eleven. But the second shot roused old Mrs. Greene—her room adjoins the younger daughter’s. The rest of the household had slept through all the excitement; but this Chester fellow had woke ’em all up by the time I got there. I talked to all of ’em, but nobody knew anything. After a coupla hours I left a man inside and another outside, and came away. Then I set the usual machinery going; and this morning Captain Dubois went over the place the best he could for finger-prints. Doc Doremus has got the body for an autopsy, and we’ll get a report to-night. But there’ll be nothing helpful from that quarter. She was fired on from in front at close range—almost a contact shot. And the other woman—the young one—was all powder-marked, and her nightgown was burnt. She was shot from behind.—That’s about all the dope.”

“Have you been able to get any sort of a statement from the younger one?”

“Not yet. She was unconscious last night, and this morning she was too weak to talk. But the doctor—Von Blon—said we could probably question her this afternoon. We may get something out of her, in case she got a look at the bird before he shot her.”

“That suggests something to me, Sergeant.” Vance had been listening passively to the recital, but now he drew in his legs, and lifted himself a little. “Did any member of the Greene household possess a gun?”

Heath gave him a sharp look.

“This Chester Greene said he had an old .32 revolver he used to keep in a desk drawer in his bedroom.”

“Oh, did he, now? And did you see the gun?”

“I asked him for it, but he couldn’t find it. Said he hadn’t seen it for years, but that probably it was around somewheres. Promised to dig it up for me to-day.”

“Don’t hang any fond hopes on his finding it, Sergeant.” Vance looked at Markham musingly. “I begin to comprehend the basis of Chester’s psychic perturbation. I fear he’s a crass materialist after all. . . . Sad, sad.”

“You think he missed the gun, and took fright?”

“Well—something like that . . . perhaps. One can’t tell. It’s deuced confusin’.” He turned an indolent eye on the Sergeant. “By the by, what sort of gun did your burglar use?”

Heath gave a gruff, uneasy laugh.

“You score there, Mr. Vance. I’ve got both bullets—thirty-twos, fired from a revolver, not an automatic. But you’re not trying to intimate——”

“Tut, tut, Sergeant. Like Goethe, I’m merely seeking for more illumination, if one may translate Licht——”

Markham interrupted this garrulous evasion.

“I’m going to the Greene house after lunch, Sergeant. Can you come along?”

“Sure I can, sir. I was going out anyway.”

“Good.” Markham brought forth a box of cigars. “Meet me here at two. . . . And take a couple of these Perfectos before you go.”

Heath selected the cigars, and put them carefully into his breast pocket. At the door he turned with a bantering grin.

“You coming along with us, Mr. Vance—to guide our erring footsteps, as they say?”

“Nothing could keep me away,” declared Vance.

6. It was Sergeant Ernest Heath, of the Homicide Bureau, who had been in charge of both the Benson and the Canary cases; and, although he had been openly antagonistic to Vance during the first of these investigations, a curious good-fellowship had later grown up between them. Vance admired the Sergeant’s dogged and straightforward qualities; and Heath had developed a keen respect—with certain reservations, however—for Vance’s abilities.

7. Vance, after reading proof of this sentence, requested me to make mention here of that beautiful volume, “Terra Cotta of the Italian Renaissance,” recently published by the National Terra Cotta Society, New York.

8. Doctor Emanuel Doremus, the Chief Medical Examiner.