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“WHO KILLED COCK ROBIN?”

(Saturday, April 2; noon)

Of all the criminal cases in which Philo Vance participated as an unofficial investigator, the most sinister, the most bizarre, the seemingly most incomprehensible, and certainly the most terrifying, was the one that followed the famous Greene murders.^[1] The orgy of horror at the old Greene mansion had been brought to its astounding close in December; and after the Christmas holidays Vance had gone to Switzerland for the winter sports. Returning to New York at the end of February he had thrown himself into some literary work he had long had in mind—the uniform translation of the principal fragments of Menander found in the Egyptian papyri during the early years of the present century; and for over a month he had devoted himself sedulously to this thankless task.

Whether or not he would have completed the translations, even had his labors not been interrupted, I do not know; for Vance was a man of cultural ardencies, in whom the spirit of research and intellectual adventure was constantly at odds with the drudgery necessary to scholastic creation. I remember that only the preceding year he had begun writing a life of Xenophon—the result of an enthusiasm inherited from his university days when he had first read the Anabasis and the Memorabilia—and had lost interest in it at the point where Xenophon’s historic march led the Ten Thousand back to the sea. However, the fact remains that Vance’s translation of Menander was rudely interrupted in early April; and for weeks he became absorbed in a criminal mystery which threw the entire country into a state of gruesome excitement.

This new criminal investigation, in which he acted as a kind of amicus curiæ for John F.-X. Markham, the District Attorney of New York, at once became known as the Bishop murder case. The designation—the result of our journalistic instinct to attach labels to every cause célèbre—was, in a sense, a misnomer. There was nothing ecclesiastical about that ghoulish saturnalia of crime which set an entire community to reading the “Mother Goose Melodies” with fearful apprehension;^[2] and no one of the name of Bishop was, as far as I know, even remotely connected with the monstrous events which bore that appellation. But, withal, the word “Bishop” was appropriate, for it was an alias used by the murderer for the grimmest of purposes. Incidentally it was this name that eventually led Vance to the almost incredible truth, and ended one of the most ghastly multiple crimes in police history.

The series of uncanny and apparently unrelated events which constituted the Bishop murder case and drove all thought of Menander and Greek monostichs from Vance’s mind, began on the morning of April 2, less than five months after the double shooting of Julia and Ada Greene. It was one of those warm luxurious spring days which sometimes bless New York in early April; and Vance was breakfasting in his little roof garden atop his apartment in East 38th Street. It was nearly noon—for Vance worked or read until all hours, and was a late riser—and the sun, beating down from a clear blue sky, cast a mantle of introspective lethargy over the city. Vance sprawled in an easy chair, his breakfast on a low table beside him, gazing with cynical, regretful eyes down at the treetops in the rear yard.

I knew what was in his mind. It was his custom each spring to go to France; and it had long since come to him to think, as it came to George Moore, that Paris and May were one. But the great trek of the post-war American nouveaux riches to Paris had spoiled his pleasure in this annual pilgrimage; and, only the day before, he had informed me that we were to remain in New York for the summer.

For years I had been Vance’s friend and legal adviser—a kind of monetary steward and agent-companion. I had quitted my father’s law firm of Van Dine, Davis & Van Dine to devote myself wholly to his interests—a post I found far more congenial than that of general attorney in a stuffy office—and though my own bachelor quarters were in a hotel on the West Side, I spent most of my time at Vance’s apartment.

I had arrived early that morning, long before Vance was up, and, having gone over the first-of-the-month accounts, now sat smoking my pipe idly as he breakfasted.

“Y’ know, Van,” he said to me, in his emotionless drawl; “the prospect of spring and summer in New York is neither excitin’ nor romantic. It’s going to be a beastly bore. But it’ll be less annoyin’ than travelin’ in Europe with the vulgar hordes of tourists jostlin’ one at every turn.... It’s very distressin’.”

Little did he suspect what the next few weeks held in store for him. Had he known I doubt if even the prospect of an old pre-war spring in Paris would have taken him away; for his insatiable mind liked nothing better than a complicated problem; and even as he spoke to me that morning the gods that presided over his destiny were preparing for him a strange and fascinating enigma—one which was to stir the nation deeply and add a new and terrible chapter to the annals of crime.

Vance had scarcely poured his second cup of coffee when Currie, his old English butler and general factotum, appeared at the French doors bearing a portable telephone.

“It’s Mr. Markham, sir,” the old man said apologetically. “As he seemed rather urgent, I took the liberty of informing him you were in.” He plugged the telephone into a baseboard switch, and set the instrument on the breakfast table.

“Quite right, Currie,” Vance murmured, taking off the receiver. “Anything to break this deuced monotony.” Then he spoke to Markham. “I say, old man, don’t you ever sleep? I’m in the midst of an omelette aux fines herbes. Will you join me? Or do you merely crave the music of my voice——?”

He broke off abruptly, and the bantering look on his lean features disappeared. Vance was a marked Nordic type, with a long, sharply chiselled face; gray, wide-set eyes; a narrow aquiline nose; and a straight oval chin. His mouth, too, was firm and clean-cut, but it held a look of cynical cruelty which was more Mediterranean than Nordic. His face was strong and attractive, though not exactly handsome. It was the face of a thinker and recluse; and its very severity—at once studious and introspective—acted as a barrier between him and his fellows.

Though he was immobile by nature and sedulously schooled in the repression of his emotions, I noticed that, as he listened to Markham on the phone that morning, he could not entirely disguise his eager interest in what was being told him. A slight frown ruffled his brow; and his eyes reflected his inner amazement. From time to time he gave vent to a murmured “Amazin’!” or “My word!” or “Most extr’ordin’ry!”—his favorite expletives—and when at the end of several minutes he spoke to Markham, a curious excitement marked his manner.

“Oh, by all means!” he said. “I shouldn’t miss it for all the lost comedies of Menander.... It sounds mad.... I’ll don fitting raiment immediately.... Au revoir.”

Replacing the receiver, he rang for Currie.

“My gray tweeds,” he ordered. “A sombre tie, and my black Homburg hat.” Then he returned to his omelet with a preoccupied air.

After a few moments he looked at me quizzically.

“What might you know of archery, Van?” he asked.

I knew nothing of archery, save that it consisted of shooting arrows at targets, and I confessed as much.

“You’re not exactly revealin’, don’t y’ know.” He lighted one of his Régie cigarettes indolently. “However, we’re in for a little flutter of toxophily, it seems. I’m no leading authority on the subject myself, but I did a bit of potting with the bow at Oxford. It’s not a passionately excitin’ pastime—much duller than golf and fully as complicated.” He smoked a while dreamily. “I say, Van; fetch me Doctor Elmer’s tome on archery from the library—there’s a good chap.”^[3]

I brought the book, and for nearly half an hour he dipped into it, tarrying over the chapters on archery associations, tournaments and matches, and scanning the long tabulation of the best American scores. At length he settled back in his chair. It was obvious he had found something that caused him troubled concern and set his sensitive mind to work.

“It’s quite mad, Van,” he remarked, his eyes in space. “A mediæval tragedy in modern New York! We don’t wear buskins and leathern doublets, and yet—By Jove!” He suddenly sat upright. “No—no! It’s absurd. I’m letting the insanity of Markham’s news affect me....” He drank some more coffee, but his expression told me that he could not rid himself of the idea that had taken possession of him.

“One more favor, Van,” he said at length. “Fetch me my German diction’ry and Burton E. Stevenson’s ‘Home Book of Verse.’”

When I had brought the volumes, he glanced at one word in the dictionary, and pushed the book from him.

“That’s that, unfortunately—though I knew it all the time.”

Then he turned to the section in Stevenson’s gigantic anthology which included the rhymes of the nursery and of childhood. After several minutes he closed that book, too, and, stretching himself out in his chair, blew a long ribbon of smoke toward the awning overhead.

“It can’t be true,” he protested, as if to himself. “It’s too fantastic, too fiendish, too utterly distorted. A fairy tale in terms of blood—a world in anamorphosis—a perversion of all rationality.... It’s unthinkable, senseless, like black magic and sorcery and thaumaturgy. It’s downright demented.”

He glanced at his watch and, rising, went indoors, leaving me to speculate vaguely on the cause of his unwonted perturbation. A treatise on archery, a German dictionary, a collection of children’s verses, and Vance’s incomprehensible utterances regarding insanity and fantasy—what possible connection could these things have? I attempted to find a least common denominator, but without the slightest success. And it was no wonder I failed. Even the truth, when it came out weeks later bolstered up by an array of incontestable evidence, seemed too incredible and too wicked for acceptance by the normal mind of man.

Vance shortly broke in on my futile speculations. He was dressed for the street, and seemed impatient at Markham’s delay in arriving.

“Y’ know, I wanted something to interest me—a nice fascinatin’ crime, for instance,” he remarked; “but—my word!—I wasn’t exactly longin’ for a nightmare. If I didn’t know Markham so well I’d suspect him of spoofing.”

When Markham stepped into the roof garden a few minutes later it was only too plain that he had been in deadly earnest. His expression was sombre and troubled, and his usual cordial greeting he reduced to the merest curt formality. Markham and Vance had been intimate friends for fifteen years. Though of antipodal natures—the one sternly aggressive, brusque, forthright, and almost ponderously serious; the other whimsical, cynical, debonair, and aloof from the transient concerns of life—they found in each other that attraction of complementaries which so often forms the basis of an inseparable and enduring companionship.

During Markham’s year and four months as District Attorney of New York he had often called Vance into conference on matters of grave importance, and in every instance Vance had justified the confidence placed in his judgments. Indeed, to Vance almost entirely belongs the credit for solving the large number of major crimes which occurred during Markham’s four years’ incumbency. His knowledge of human nature, his wide reading and cultural attainments, his shrewd sense of logic, and his flair for the hidden truth beneath misleading exteriors, all fitted him for the task of criminal investigator—a task which he fulfilled unofficially in connection with the cases which came under Markham’s jurisdiction.

Vance’s first case, it will be remembered, had to do with the murder of Alvin Benson;^[4] and had it not been for his participation in that affair I doubt if the truth concerning it would ever have come to light. Then followed the notorious strangling of Margaret Odell^[5]—a murder mystery in which the ordinary methods of police detection would inevitably have failed. And last year the astounding Greene murders (to which I have already referred) would undoubtedly have succeeded had not Vance been able to frustrate their final intent.

It was not surprising, therefore, that Markham should have turned to Vance at the very beginning of the Bishop murder case. More and more, I had noticed, he had come to rely on the other’s help in his criminal investigations; and in the present instance it was particularly fortunate that he appealed to Vance, for only through an intimate knowledge of the abnormal psychological manifestations of the human mind, such as Vance possessed, could that black, insensate plot have been contravened and the perpetrator unearthed.

“This whole thing may be a mare’s-nest,” said Markham, without conviction. “But I thought you might want to come along....”

“Oh, quite!” Vance gave Markham a sardonic smile. “Sit down a moment and tell me the tale coherently. The corpse won’t run away. And it’s best to get our facts in some kind of order before we view the remains.—Who are the parties of the first part, for instance? And why the projection of the District Attorney’s office into a murder case within an hour of the deceased’s passing? All that you’ve told me so far resolves itself into the utterest nonsense.”

Markham sat down gloomily on the edge of a chair and inspected the end of his cigar.

“Damn it, Vance! Don’t start in with a mysteries-of-Udolpho attitude. The crime—if it is a crime—seems clear-cut enough. It’s an unusual method of murder, I’ll admit; but it’s certainly not senseless. Archery has become quite a fad of late. Bows and arrows are in use to-day in practically every city and college in America.”

“Granted. But it’s been a long time since they were used to kill persons named Robin.”

Markham’s eyes narrowed, and he looked at Vance searchingly.

“That idea occurred to you, too, did it?”

“Occurred to me? It leapt to my brain the moment you mentioned the victim’s name.” Vance puffed a moment on his cigarette. “‘Who Killed Cock Robin?’ And with a bow and arrow! ... Queer how the doggerel learned in childhood clings to the memory.—By the by, what was the unfortunate Mr. Robin’s first name?”

“Joseph, I believe.”

“Neither edifyin’ nor suggestive.... Any middle name?”

“See here, Vance!” Markham rose irritably. “What has the murdered man’s middle name to do with the case?”

“I haven’t the groggiest. Only, as long as we’re going insane we may as well go the whole way. A mere shred of sanity is of no value.”

He rang for Currie and sent him for the telephone directory. Markham protested, but Vance pretended not to hear; and when the directory arrived he thumbed its pages for several moments.

“Did the departed live on Riverside Drive?” he asked finally, holding his finger on a name he had found.

“I think he did.”

“Well, well.” Vance closed the book, and fixed a quizzically triumphant gaze on the District Attorney. “Markham,” he said slowly, “there’s only one Joseph Robin listed in the telephone direct’ry. He lives on Riverside Drive, and his middle name is—Cochrane!”

“What rot is this?” Markham’s tone was almost ferocious. “Suppose his name was Cochrane: are you seriously suggesting that the fact had anything to do with his being murdered?”

“’Pon my word, old man, I’m suggesting nothing.” Vance shrugged his shoulders slightly. “I’m merely jotting down, so to speak, a few facts in connection with the case. As the matter stands now: a Mr. Joseph Cochrane Robin—to wit: Cock Robin—has been killed by a bow and arrow.—Doesn’t that strike even your legal mind as deuced queer?”

“No!” Markham fairly spat the negative. “The name of the dead man is certainly common enough; and it’s a wonder more people haven’t been killed or injured with all this revival of archery throughout the country. Moreover, it’s wholly possible that Robin’s death was the result of an accident.”

“Oh, my aunt!” Vance wagged his head reprovingly. “That fact, even were it true, wouldn’t help the situation any. It would only make it queerer. Of the thousands of archery enthusiasts in these fair states, the one with the name of Cock Robin should be accidentally killed with an arrow! Such a supposition would lead us into spiritism and demonology and whatnot. Do you, by any chance, believe in Eblises and Azazels and jinn who go about playing Satanic jokes on mankind?”

“Must I be a Mohammedan mythologist to admit coincidences?” returned Markham tartly.

“My dear fellow! The proverbial long arm of coincidence doesn’t extend to infinity. There are, after all, laws of probability, based on quite definite mathematical formulas. It would make me sad to think that such men as Laplace^[6] and Czuber and von Kries had lived in vain.—The present situation, however, is even more complicated than you suspect. For instance, you mentioned over the phone that the last person known to have been with Robin before his death is named Sperling.”

“And what esoteric significance lies in that fact?”

“Perhaps you know what Sperling means in German,” suggested Vance dulcetly.

“I’ve been to High School,” retorted Markham. Then his eyes opened slightly, and his body became tense.

Vance pushed the German dictionary toward him.

“Well, anyway, look up the word. We might as well be thorough. I looked it up myself. I was afraid my imagination was playing tricks on me, and I had a yearnin’ to see the word in black and white.”

Markham opened the book in silence, and let his eye run down the page. After staring at the word for several moments he drew himself up resolutely, as if fighting off a spell. When he spoke his voice was defiantly belligerent.

“Sperling means ‘sparrow.’ Any school boy knows that. What of it?”

“Oh, to be sure.” Vance lit another cigarette languidly. “And any school boy knows the old nursery rhyme entitled ‘The Death and Burial of Cock Robin,’ what?” He glanced tantalizingly at Markham, who stood immobile, staring out into the spring sunshine. “Since you pretend to be unfamiliar with that childhood classic, permit me to recite the first stanza.”

A chill, as of some unseen spectral presence, passed over me as Vance repeated those old familiar lines:

“Who killed Cock Robin?

‘I,’ said the sparrow,

‘With my bow and arrow.

I killed Cock Robin.’”

[1]	“The Greene Murder Case” (Scribners, 1928).

[2]

Mr. Joseph A. Margolies of Brentano’s told me that for a period of several weeks during the Bishop murder case more copies of “Mother Goose Melodies” were sold than of any current novel. And one of the smaller publishing houses reprinted and completely sold out an entire edition of those famous old nursery rhymes.

[3]	The book Vance referred to was that excellent and comprehensive treatise, “Archery,” by Robert P. Elmer, M.D.

[4]	“The Benson Murder Case” (Scribners, 1926).

[5]	“The ‘Canary’ Murder Case” (Scribners, 1927).

[6]	Though Laplace is best known for his “Méchanique Célestee,” Vance was here referring to his masterly work, “Théorie Analytique des Probabilités,” which Herschel called “the ne plus ultra of mathematical skill and power.”