Title: The "Canary" Murder Case (A Philo Vance Story) (1927)
Author: S. S. Van Dine
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Title: The "Canary" Murder Case (A Philo Vance Story) (1927)
Author: S. S. Van Dine
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
1 THE "CANARY"
2 FOOTPRINTS IN THE SNOW
3 THE MURDER
4 THE PRINT OF A HAND
5 THE BOLTED DOOR
6 A CALL FOR HELP
7 A NAMELESS VISITOR
8 THE INVISIBLE MURDERER
9 THE PACK IN FULL CRY
10 A FORCED INTERVIEW
11 SEEKING INFORMATION
12 CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE
13 AN ERSTWHILE GALLANT
14 VANCE OUTLINES A THEORY
15 FOUR POSSIBILITIES
16 SIGNIFICANT DISCLOSURES
17 CHECKING AN ALIBI
18 THE TRAP
19 THE DOCTOR EXPLAINS
20 A MIDNIGHT WITNESS
21 A CONTRADICTION IN DATES
22 A TELEPHONE CALL
23 THE TEN-O'CLOCK APPOINTMENT
24 AN ARREST
25 VANCE DEMONSTRATES
26 RECONSTRUCTING THE CRIME
27 A GAME OF POKER
28 THE GUILTY MAN
29 BEETHOVEN'S "ANDANTE"
30 THE END
CHARACTERS OF THE BOOK
PHILO VANCE
JOHN F.-X. MARKHAM
District Attorney of New York County
MARGARET ODELL (THE "CANARY")
Famous Broadway beauty and ex-Follies girl, who was mysteriously
murdered in her apartment
AMY GIBSON
Margaret Odell's maid
CHARLES CLEAVER
A man-about-town
KENNETH SPOTSWOODE
A manufacturer
LOUIS MANNIX
An importer
DR. AMBROISE LINDQUIST
A fashionable neurologist
TONY SKEEL
A professional burglar
WILLIAM ELMER JESSUP
Telephone operator
HARRY SPIVELY
Telephone operator
ALYS LA FOSSE
A musical-comedy actress
WILEY ALLEN
A gambler
POTTS
A street cleaner
AMOS FEATHERGILL
Assistant District Attorney
WILLIAM M. MORAN
Commanding Officer of the Detective Bureau
ERNEST HEATH
Sergeant of the Homicide Bureau
SNITKIN
Detective of the Homicide Bureau
GUILFOYLE
Detective of the Homicide Bureau
BURKE
Detective of the Homicide Bureau
TRACY
Detective assigned to District Attorney's office
DEPUTY INSPECTOR CONRAD BRENNER
Burglar-tools expert
CAPTAIN DUBOIS
Fingerprint expert
DETECTIVE BELLAMY
Fingerprint expert
PETER QUACKENBUSH
Official photographer
DR. DOREMUS
Medical examiner
SWACKER
Secretary to the district attorney
CURRIE
Vance's valet
1
THE "CANARY"
In the offices of the Homicide Bureau of the Detective Division of
the New York Police Department, on the third floor of the police
headquarters building in Centre Street, there is a large steel
filing cabinet; and within it, among thousands of others of its
kind, there reposes a small green index card on which is typed:
"ODELL, MARGARET. 184 West 71st Street. Sept. 10. Murder:
Strangled about 11 P.M. Apartment ransacked. Jewelry stolen.
Body found by Amy Gibson, maid."
Here, in a few commonplace words, is the bleak, unadorned statement
of one of the most astonishing crimes in the police annals of this
country--a crime so contradictory, so baffling, so ingenious, so
unique, that for many days the best minds of the police department
and the district attorney's office were completely at a loss as to
even a method of approach. Each line of investigation only tended
to prove that Margaret Odell could not possibly have been murdered.
And yet, huddled on the great silken davenport in her living room
lay the girl's strangled body, giving the lie to so grotesque a
conclusion.
The true story of this crime, as it eventually came to light after a
disheartening period of utter darkness and confusion, revealed many
strange and bizarre ramifications, many dark recesses of man's
unexplored nature, and the uncanny subtlety of a human mind
sharpened by desperate and tragic despair. And it also revealed a
hidden page of passional melodrama which, in its essence and
organisms, was no less romantic and fascinating than that vivid,
theatrical section of the Comédie Humaine which deals with the
fabulous love of Baron Nucingen for Esther van Gobseck, and with the
unhappy Torpille's tragic death.
Margaret Odell was a product of the bohemian demimonde of Broadway--
a scintillant figure who seemed somehow to typify the gaudy and
spurious romance of transient gaiety. For nearly two years before
her death she had been the most conspicuous and, in a sense, popular
figure of the city's night life. In our grandparents' day she might
have had conferred upon her that somewhat questionable designation
"the toast of the town"; but today there are too many aspirants for
this classification, too many cliques and violent schisms in the
Lepidoptera of our cafe life, to permit of any one competitor being
thus singled out. But, for all the darlings of both professional
and lay press agents, Margaret Odell was a character of unquestioned
fame in her little world.
Her notoriety was due in part to certain legendary tales of her
affairs with one or two obscure potentates in the backwashes of
Europe. She had spent two years abroad after her first success in
The Bretonne Maid--a popular musical comedy in which she had been
mysteriously raised from obscurity to the rank of "star"--and, one
may cynically imagine, her press agent took full advantage of her
absence to circulate vermilion tales of her conquests.
Her appearances went far toward sustaining her somewhat equivocal
fame. There was no question that she was beautiful in a hard,
slightly flamboyant way. I remember seeing her dancing one night at
the Antlers Club--a famous rendezvous for postmidnight pleasure-
seekers, run by the notorious Red Raegan.* She impressed me then as
a girl of uncommon loveliness, despite the calculating, predatory
cast of her features. She was of medium height, slender, graceful
in a leonine way, and, I thought, a trifle aloof and even haughty in
manner--a result, perhaps, of her reputed association with European
royalty. She had the traditional courtesan's full, red lips, and
the wide, mongoose eyes of Rossetti's "Blessed Damozel." There was
in her face that strange combination of sensual promise and
spiritual renunciation with which the painters of all ages have
sought to endow their conceptions of the Eternal Magdalene. Hers
was the type of face, voluptuous and with a hint of mystery, which
rules man's emotions and, by subjugating his mind, drives him to
desperate deeds.
* The Antlers Club has since been closed by the police; and Red
Raegan is now serving a long term in Sing Sing for grand larceny.
Margaret Odell had received the sobriquet of Canary as a result of a
part she had played in an elaborate ornithological ballet of the
Follies, in which each girl had been gowned to represent a variety
of bird. To her had fallen the role of canary; and her costume of
white and yellow satin, together with her mass of shining golden
hair and pink and white complexion, had distinguished her in the
eyes of the spectators as a creature of outstanding charm. Before a
fortnight had passed--so eulogistic were her press notices, and so
unerringly did the audience single her out for applause--the "Bird
Ballet" was changed to the "Canary Ballet," and Miss Odell was
promoted to the rank of what might charitably be called premiere
danseuse, at the same time having a solo waltz and a song*
interpolated for the special display of her charms and talents.
* Written especially for her by B. G. De Sylva.
She had quitted the Follies at the close of the season, and during
her subsequent spectacular career in the haunts of Broadway's night
life she had been popularly and familiarly called the Canary. Thus
it happened that when her dead body was found, brutally strangled,
in her apartment, the crime immediately became known, and was always
thereafter referred to, as the Canary murder.
My own participation in the investigation of the Canary murder case--
or rather my role of Boswellian spectator--constituted one of the
most memorable experiences of my life. At the time of Margaret
Odell's murder John F.-X. Markham was district attorney of New York,
having taken office the preceding January. I need hardly remind you
that during the four years of his incumbency he distinguished
himself by his almost uncanny success as a criminal investigator.
The praise which was constantly accorded him, however, was highly
distasteful to him; for, being a man with a keen sense of honor, he
instinctively shrank from accepting credit for achievements not
wholly his own. The truth is that Markham played only a subsidiary
part in the majority of his most famous criminal cases. The credit
for their actual solution belonged to one of Markham's very close
friends, who refused, at the time, to permit the facts to be made
public.
This man was a young social aristocrat, whom, for purposes of
anonymity, I have chosen to call Philo Vance.
Vance had many amazing gifts and capabilities. He was an art
collector in a small way, a fine amateur pianist, and a profound
student of aesthetics and psychology. Although an American, he had
largely been educated in Europe, and still retained a slight English
accent and intonation. He had a liberal independent income, and
spent considerable time fulfilling the social obligations which
devolved on him as a result of family connections; but he was
neither an idler nor a dilettante. His manner was cynical and
aloof; and those who met him only casually set him down as a snob.
But knowing Vance, as I did, intimately, I was able to glimpse the
real man beneath the surface indications; and I knew that his
cynicism and aloofness, far from being a pose, sprang instinctively
from a nature which was at once sensitive and solitary.
Vance was not yet thirty-five, and, in a cold, sculptural fashion,
was impressively good-looking. His face was slender and mobile; but
there was a stern, sardonic expression to his features, which acted
as a barrier between him and his fellows. He was not emotionless,
but his emotions were, in the main, intellectual. He was often
criticized for his asceticism, yet I have seen him exhibit rare
bursts of enthusiasm over an aesthetic or psychological problem.
However, he gave the impression of remaining remote from all mundane
matters; and, in truth, he looked upon life like a dispassionate and
impersonal spectator at a play, secretly amused and debonairly
cynical at the meaningless futility of it all. Withal, he had a
mind avid for knowledge, and few details of the human comedy that
came within his sphere of vision escaped him.
It was as a direct result of this intellectual inquisitiveness that
he became actively, though unofficially, interested in Markham's
criminal investigations.
I kept a fairly complete record of the cases in which Vance
participated as a kind of amicus curiae, little thinking that I
would ever be privileged to make them public; but Markham, after
being defeated, as you remember, on a hopelessly split ticket at the
next election, withdrew from politics; and last year Vance went
abroad to live, declaring he would never return to America. As a
result, I obtained permission from both of them to publish my notes
in full. Vance stipulated only that I should not reveal his name;
but otherwise no restrictions were placed upon me.
I have related elsewhere* the peculiar circumstances which led to
Vance's participation in criminal research, and how, in the face of
almost insuperable contradictory evidence, he solved the mysterious
shooting of Alvin Benson. The present chronical deals with his
solution of Margaret Odell's murder, which took place in the early
fall of the same year, and which, you will recall, created an even
greater sensation than its predecessor.#
* "The Benson Murder Case"
# The Loeb-Leopold crime, the Dorothy King case, and the Hall-Mills
murder came later; but the Canary murder proved fully as conspicuous
a case as the Nan Patterson-"Caesar" Young affair, Durant's murder
of Blanche Lamont and Minnie Williams in San Francisco, the Molineux
arsenic-poisoning case, and the Carlyle Harris morphine murder. To
find a parallel in point of public interest one must recall the
Borden double-murder in Fall River, the Thaw case, the shooting of
Elwell, and the Rosenthal murder.
A curious set of circumstances was accountable for the way in which
Vance was shouldered with this new investigation. Markham for weeks
had been badgered by the antiadministration newspapers for the
signal failures of his office in obtaining convictions against
certain underworld offenders whom the police had turned over to him
for prosecution. As a result of prohibition a new and dangerous,
and wholly undesirable, kind of night life had sprung up in New
York. A large number of well-financed cabarets, calling themselves
nightclubs, had made their appearance along Broadway and in its side
streets; and already there had been an appalling number of serious
crimes, both passional and monetary, which, it was said, had had
their inception in these unsavory resorts.
At last, when a case of murder accompanying a holdup and jewel
robbery in one of the family hotels uptown was traced directly to
plans and preparations made in one of the nightclubs, and when two
detectives of the Homicide Bureau investigating the case were found
dead one morning in the neighborhood of the club, with bullet wounds
in their backs, Markham decided to pigeonhole the other affairs of
his office and take a hand personally in the intolerable criminal
conditions that had arisen.*
* The case referred to here was that of Mrs. Elinor Quiggly, a
wealthy widow living at the Adlon Hotel in West 96th Street. She
was found on the morning of September 5 suffocated by a gag which
had been placed on her by robbers who had evidently followed her
home from the Club Turque--a small but luxurious all-night cafe at
89 West 48th Street. The killing of the two detectives, McQuade and
Cannison, was, the police believe, due to the fact that they were in
possession of incriminating evidence against the perpetrators of the
crime. Jewelry amounting to over $50,000 was stolen from the
Quiggly apartment.
2
FOOTPRINTS IN THE SNOW
(Sunday, September 9)
On the day following his decision, Markham and Vance and I were
sitting in a secluded corner of the lounge room of the Stuyvesant
Club. We often came together there, for we were all members of the
club, and Markham frequently used it as a kind of unofficial uptown
headquarters.*
* The Stuyvesant was a large club, somewhat in the nature of a
glorified hotel; and its extensive membership was drawn largely from
the political, legal, and financial ranks.
"It's bad enough to have half the people in this city under the
impression that the district attorney's office is a kind of high-
class collection agency," he remarked that night, "without being
necessitated to turn detective because I'm not given sufficient
evidence, or the right kind of evidence, with which to secure
convictions."
Vance looked up with a slow smile and regarded him quizzically.
"The difficulty would seem to be," he returned, with an indolent
drawl, "that the police, being unversed in the exquisite abracadabra
of legal procedure, labor under the notion that evidence which would
convince a man of ordin'ry intelligence, would also convince a court
of law. A silly notion, don't y' know. Lawyers don't really want
evidence; they want erudite technicalities. And the average
policeman's brain is too forthright to cope with the pedantic
demands of jurisprudence."
"It's not as bad as that," Markham retorted, with an attempt at good
nature, although the strain of the past few weeks had tended to
upset his habitual equanimity. "If there weren't rules of evidence,
grave injustice would too often be done innocent persons. And even
a criminal is entitled to protection in our courts."
Vance yawned mildly.
"Markham, you should have been a pedagogue. It's positively amazin'
how you've mastered all the standard oratorical replies to
criticism. And yet, I'm unconvinced. You remember the Wisconsin
case of the kidnapped man whom the courts declared presumably dead.
Even when he reappeared, hale and hearty, among his former
neighbors, his status of being presumably dead was not legally
altered. The visible and demonstrable fact that he was actually
alive was regarded by the court as an immaterial and impertinent
side issue.* . . . Then there's the touchin' situation--so
prevalent in this fair country--of a man being insane in one state
and sane in another. . . . Really, y' know, you can't expect a mere
lay intelligence, unskilled in the benign processes of legal logic,
to perceive such subtle nuances. Your layman, swaddled in the
darkness of ordin'ry common sense, would say that a person who is a
lunatic on one bank of a river would still be a lunatic if he was on
the opposite bank. And he'd also hold--erroneously, no doubt--that
if a man was living, he would presumably be alive."
* The case to which Vance referred, I ascertained later, was
Shatterham v. Shatterham, 417 Mich., 79--a testamentary case.
"Why this academic dissertation?" asked Markham, this time a bit
irritably.
"It seems to touch rather vitally on the source of your present
predicament," Vance explained equably. "The police, not being
lawyers, have apparently got you into hot water, what? . . . Why
not start an agitation to send all detectives to law school?"
"You're a great help," retorted Markham.
Vance raised his eyebrows slightly.
"Why disparage my suggestion? Surely you must perceive that it has
merit. A man without legal training, when he knows a thing to be
true, ignores all incompetent testimony to the contr'ry, and clings
to the facts. A court of law listens solemnly to a mass of
worthless testimony, and renders a decision not on the facts but
according to a complicated set of rules. The result, d' ye see, is
that a court often acquits a prisoner, realizing full well that he
is guilty. Many a judge has said, in effect, to a culprit, 'I know,
and the jury knows, that you committed the crime, but in view of the
legally admissible evidence, I declare you innocent. Go and sin
again.'"
Markham grunted. "I'd hardly endear myself to the people of this
country if I answered the current strictures against me by
recommending law courses for the police department."
"Permit me, then, to suggest the alternative of Shakespeare's
butcher: 'Let's kill all the lawyers.'"
"Unfortunately, it's a situation, not a utopian theory, that has to
be met."
"And just how," asked Vance lazily, "do you propose to reconcile the
sensible conclusions of the police with what you touchingly call
correctness of legal procedure?"
"To begin with," Markham informed him, "I've decided henceforth to
do my own investigating of all important nightclub criminal cases.
I called a conference of the heads of my departments yesterday, and
from now on there's going to be some real activity radiating direct
from my office. I intend to produce the kind of evidence I need for
convictions."
Vance slowly took a cigarette from his case and tapped it on the arm
of his chair. "Ah! So you are going to substitute the conviction
of the innocent for the acquittal of the guilty?"
Markham was nettled; turning in his chair, he frowned at Vance. "I
won't pretend not to understand your remark," he said acidulously.
"You're back again on your favorite theme of the inadequacy of
circumstantial evidence as compared with your psychological theories
and aesthetic hypotheses."
"Quite so," agreed Vance carelessly. "Y' know, Markham, your sweet
and charmin' faith in circumstantial evidence is positively
disarming. Before it, the ordin'ry powers of ratiocination are
benumbed. I tremble for the innocent victims you are about to
gather into your legal net. You'll eventually make the mere
attendance at any cabaret a frightful hazard."
Markham smoked awhile in silence. Despite the seeming bitterness at
times in the discussions of these two men, there was at bottom no
animosity in their attitude toward each other. Their friendship
was of long standing, and, despite the dissimilarity of their
temperaments and the marked difference in their points of view,
a profound mutual respect formed the basis of their intimate
relationship.
At length Markham spoke. "Why this sweeping deprecation of
circumstantial evidence? I admit that at times it may be
misleading; but it often forms powerful presumptive proof of guilt.
Indeed, Vance, one of our greatest legal authorities has
demonstrated that it is the most powerful actual evidence in
existence. Direct evidence, in the very nature of crime, is almost
always unavailable. If the courts had to depend on it, the great
majority of criminals would still be at large."
"I was under the impression that this precious majority had always
enjoyed its untrammeled freedom."
Markham ignored the interruption. "Take this example: A dozen
adults see an animal running across the snow, and testify that it
was a chicken; whereas a child sees the same animal, and declares it
was a duck. They thereupon examine the animal's footprints and find
them to be the webfooted tracks made by a duck. Is it not
conclusive, then, that the animal was a duck and not a chicken,
despite the preponderance of direct evidence?"
"I'll grant you your duck," acceded Vance indifferently.
"And having gratefully accepted the gift," pursued Markham, "I
propound a corollary: A dozen adults see a human figure crossing
the snow, and take oath it was a woman; whereas a child asserts that
the figure was a man. Now, will you not also grant that the
circumstantial evidence of a man's footprints in the snow would
supply incontrovertible proof that it was, in fact, a man, and not a
woman?"
"Not at all, my dear Justinian," replied Vance, stretching his legs
languidly in front of him; "unless, of course, you could show that a
human being possesses no higher order of brain than a duck."
"What have brains to do with it?" Markham asked impatiently.
"Brains don't affect one's footprints."
"Not those of a duck, certainly. But brains might very well--and,
no doubt, often do--affect the footprints of a human being."
"Am I having a lesson in anthropology, Darwinian adaptability, or
merely metaphysical speculation?"
"In none of those abstruse subjects," Vance assured him. "I'm
merely stating a simple fact culled from observation."
"Well, according to your highly and peculiarly developed processes
of reasoning, would the circumstantial evidence of those masculine
footprints indicate a man or a woman?"
"Not necessarily either," Vance answered, "or, rather, a possibility
of each. Such evidence, when applied to a human being--to a
creature, that is, with a reasoning mind--would merely mean to me
that the figure crossing the snow was either a man in his own shoes
or a woman in man's shoes; or perhaps, even, a long-legged child.
In short, it would convey to my purely unlegal intelligence only
that the tracks were made by some descendant of the Pithecanthropus
erectus wearing men's shoes on his nether limbs--sex and age
unknown. A duck's spoors, on the other hand, I might be tempted to
take at their face value."
"I'm delighted to observe," said Markham, "that at least you
repudiate the possibility of a duck dressing itself up in the
gardener's boots."
Vance was silent for a moment; then he said, "The trouble with you
modern Solons, d' ye see, is that you attempt to reduce human nature
to a formula; whereas the truth is that man, like life, is
infinitely complex. He's shrewd and tricky--skilled for centuries
in all the most diabolical chicaneries. He is a creature of low
cunning, who, even in the normal course of his vain and idiotic
struggle for existence, instinctively and deliberately tells ninety-
nine lies to one truth. A duck, not having had the heaven-kissing
advantages of human civilization, is a straightforward and eminently
honest bird."
"How," asked Markham, "since you jettison all the ordinary means of
arriving at a conclusion, would you decide the sex or species of
this person who left the masculine footprints in the snow?"
Vance blew a spiral of smoke toward the ceiling.
"First, I'd repudiate all the evidence of the twelve astigmatic
adults and the one bright-eyed child. Next, I'd ignore the
footprints in the snow. Then, with a mind unprejudiced by dubious
testimony and uncluttered with material clues, I'd determine the
exact nature of the crime which this fleeing person had committed.
After having analyzed its various factors, I could infallibly tell
you not only whether the culprit was a man or a woman, but I could
describe his habits, character, and personality. And I could do all
this whether the fleeing figure left male or female or kangaroo
tracks, or used stilts, or rode off on a velocipede, or levitated
without leaving tracks at all."
Markham smiled broadly. "You'd be worse than the police in the
matter of supplying me legal evidence, I fear."
"I, at least, wouldn't procure evidence against some unsuspecting
person whose boots had been appropriated by the real culprit,"
retorted Vance. "And, y' know, Markham, as long as you pin your
faith to footprints, you'll inevitably arrest just those persons
whom the actual criminals want you to--namely, persons who have had
nothing to do with the criminal conditions you're about to
investigate."
He became suddenly serious.
"See here, old man; there are some shrewd intelligences at present
allied with what the theologians call the powers of darkness. The
surface appearances of many of these crimes that are worrying you
are palpably deceptive. Personally, I don't put much stock in the
theory that a malevolent gang of cutthroats have organized an
American camorra and made the silly nightclubs their headquarters.
The idea is too melodramatic. It smacks too much of the gaudy
journalistic imagination; it's too Eugène Sue-ish. Crime isn't a
mass instinct except during wartime, and then it's merely an obscene
sport. Crime, d' ye see, is a personal and individual business.
One doesn't make up a partie carée for a murder as one does for a
bridge game. . . . Markham, old dear, don't let this romantic
criminological idea lead you astray. And don't scrutinize the
figurative footprints in the snow too closely. They'll confuse you
most horribly--you're far too trustin' and literal for this wicked
world. I warn you that no clever criminal is going to leave his own
footprints for your tape measure and calipers."
He sighed deeply and gave Markham a look of bantering commiseration.
"And have you paused to consider that your first case may even be
devoid of footprints? . . . Alas! What, then, will you do?"
"I could overcome that difficulty by taking you along with me,"
suggested Markham, with a touch of irony. "How would you like to
accompany me on the next important case that breaks?"
"I am ravished by the idea," said Vance.
Two days later the front pages of our metropolitan press carried
glaring headlines telling of the murder of Margaret Odell.
3
THE MURDER
(Tuesday, September 11; 8:30 A.M.)
It was barely half past eight on that momentous morning of September
the 11th when Markham brought word to us of the event.
I was living temporarily with Vance at his home in East 38th Street--
a large remodeled apartment occupying the two top floors of a
beautiful mansion. For several years I had been Vance's personal
legal representative and adviser, having resigned from my father's
law firm of Van Dine, Davis, and Van Dine to devote myself to his
needs and interests. His affairs were by no means voluminous, but
his personal finances, together with his numerous purchases of
paintings and objets d'art, occupied my full time without burdening
me. This monetary and legal stewardship was eminently congenial to
my tastes; and my friendship with Vance, which had dated from our
undergraduate days at Harvard, supplied the social and human element
in an arrangement which otherwise might easily have degenerated into
one of mere drab routine.
On this particular morning I had risen early and was working in the
library when Currie, Vance's valet and majordomo, announced
Markham's presence in the living room. I was considerably
astonished at this early morning visit, for Markham well knew that
Vance, who rarely rose before noon, resented any intrusion upon his
matutinal slumbers. And in that moment I received the curious
impression that something unusual and portentous was toward.
I found Markham pacing restlessly up and down, his hat and gloves
thrown carelessly on the center table. As I entered he halted and
looked at me with harassed eyes. He was a moderately tall man,
clean-shaven, gray-haired, and firmly set up. His appearance was
distinguished, and his manner courteous and kindly. But beneath his
gracious exterior there was an aggressive sternness, an indomitable,
grim strength, that gave one the sense of dogged efficiency and
untiring capability.
"Good morning, Van," he greeted me, with impatient perfunctoriness.
"There's been another half-world murder--the worst and ugliest thus
far. . . ." He hesitated and regarded me searchingly. "You recall
my chat with Vance at the club the other night? There was something
damned prophetic in his remarks. And you remember I half promised
to take him along on the next important case. Well, the case has
broken--with a vengeance. Margaret Odell, whom they called the
Canary, has been strangled in her apartment; and from what I just
got over the phone, it looks like another nightclub affair. I'm
headed for the Odell apartment now. . . . What about rousing out
the sybarite?"
"By all means," I agreed, with an alacrity which, I fear, was in
large measure prompted by purely selfish motives. The Canary! If
one had sought the city over for a victim whose murder would stir up
excitement, there could have been but few selections better
calculated to produce this result.
Hastening to the door, I summoned Currie and told him to call Vance
at once.
"I'm afraid, sir--" began Currie, politely hesitant.
"Calm your fears," cut in Markham. "I'll take all responsibility
for waking him at this indecent hour."
Currie sensed an emergency and departed.
A minute or two later Vance, in an elaborately embroidered silk
kimono and sandals, appeared at the living room door.
"My word!" he greeted us, in mild astonishment, glancing at the
clock. "Haven't you chaps gone to bed yet?"
He strolled to the mantel and selected a gold-tipped Régie cigarette
from a small Florentine humidor.
Markham's eyes narrowed; he was in no mood for levity.
"The Canary has been murdered," I blurted out.
Vance held his wax vesta poised and gave me a look of indolent
inquisitiveness. "Whose canary?"
"Margaret Odell was found strangled this morning," amended Markham
brusquely. "Even YOU, wrapped in your scented cotton-wool, have
heard of her. And you can realize the significance of the crime.
I'm personally going to look for those footprints in the snow; and
if you want to come along, as you intimated the other night, you'll
have to get a move on."
Vance crushed out his cigarette.
"Margaret Odell, eh?--Broadway's blond Aspasia--or was it Phryne who
had the coiffure d'or? . . . Most distressin'!" Despite his
offhand manner, I could see he was deeply interested. "The base
enemies of law and order are determined to chivvy you most horribly,
aren't they, old dear? Deuced inconsiderate of 'em! . . . Excuse
me while I seek habiliments suitable to the occasion."
He disappeared into his bedroom, while Markham took out a large
cigar and resolutely prepared it for smoking, and I returned to the
library to put away the papers on which I had been working.
In less than ten minutes Vance reappeared, dressed for the street.
"Bien, mon vieux," he announced gaily, as Currie handed him his hat
and gloves and a malacca cane. "Allons-y!"
We rode uptown along Madison Avenue, turned into Central Park, and
came out by the West 72d Street entrance. Margaret Odell's
apartment was at 184 West 71st Street, near Broadway; and as we drew
up to the curb, it was necessary for the patrolman on duty to make a
passage for us through the crowd that had already gathered as a
result of the arrival of the police.
Feathergill, an assistant district attorney, was waiting in the main
hall for his chief's arrival.
"It's too bad, sir," he lamented. "A rotten show all round. And
just at this time! . . ." He shrugged his shoulders discouragingly.
"It may collapse quickly," said Markham, shaking the other's hand.
"How are things going? Sergeant Heath phoned me right after you
called, and said that, at first glance, the case looked a bit
stubborn."
"Stubborn?" repeated Feathergill lugubriously. "It's downright
impervious. Heath is spinning round like a turbine. He was called
off the Boyle case, by the way, to devote his talents to this new
shocker. Inspector Moran arrived ten minutes ago and gave him the
official imprimatur."
"Well, Heath's a good man," declared Markham. "We'll work it
out. . . . Which is the apartment?"
Feathergill led the way to a door at the rear of the main hall.
"Here you are, sir," he announced. "I'll be running along now.
I need sleep. Good luck!" And he was gone.
It will be necessary to give a brief description of the house and
its interior arrangement, for the somewhat peculiar structure of the
building played a vital part in the seemingly insoluble problem
posed by the murder.
The house, which was a four-story stone structure originally built
as a residence, had been remodeled, both inside and outside, to meet
the requirements of an exclusive individual apartment dwelling.
There were, I believe, three or four separate suites on each floor;
but the quarters upstairs need not concern us. The main floor was
the scene of the crime, and here there were three apartments and a
dentist's office.
The main entrance to the building was directly on the street, and
extending straight back from the front door was a wide hallway.
Directly at the rear of this hallway, and facing the entrance, was
the door to the Odell apartment, which bore the numeral "3." About
halfway down the front hall, on the right-hand side, was the
stairway leading to the floors above; and directly beyond the
stairway, also on the right, was a small reception room with a wide
archway instead of a door. Directly opposite to the stairway, in a
small recess, stood the telephone switchboard. There was no
elevator in the house.
Another important feature of this ground-floor plan was a small
passageway at the rear of the main hall and at right angles to it,
which led past the front walls of the Odell apartment to a door
opening on a court at the west side of the building. This court was
connected with the street by an alley four feet wide.
In the accompanying diagram this arrangement of the ground floor
can be easily visualized, and I suggest that the reader fix it in
his mind; for I doubt if ever before so simple and obvious an
architectural design played such an important part in a criminal
mystery. By its very simplicity and almost conventional familiarity--
indeed, by its total lack of any puzzling complications--it proved
so baffling to the investigators that the case threatened, for many
days, to remain forever insoluble.
[Diagram of ground floor--Map1.gif]
As Markham entered the Odell apartment that morning Sergeant Ernest
Heath came forward at once and extended his hand. A look of relief
passed over his broad, pugnacious features and it was obvious that
the animosity and rivalry which always exist between the detective
division and the district attorney's office during the investigation
of any criminal case had no place in his attitude on this occasion.
"I'm glad you've come, sir," he said, and meant it.
He then turned to Vance with a cordial smile, and held out his
hand.*
* Heath had become acquainted with Vance during the investigation of
the Benson murder case two months previously.
"So the amachoor sleuth is with us again!" His tone held a friendly
banter.
"Oh, quite," murmured Vance. "How's your induction coil working
this beautiful September morning, Sergeant?"
"I'd hate to tell you!" Then Heath's face grew suddenly grave, and
he turned to Markham. "It's a raw deal, sir. Why in hell couldn't
they have picked someone besides the Canary for their dirty work?
There's plenty of Janes on Broadway who coulda faded from the
picture without causing a second alarm; but they gotta go and bump
off the Queen of Sheba!"
As he spoke, William M. Moran, the commanding officer of the
detective bureau, came into the little foyer and performed the usual
handshaking ceremony. Though he had met Vance and me but once
before, and then casually, he remembered us both and addressed us
courteously by name.
"Your arrival," he said to Markham, in a well-bred, modulated voice,
"is very welcome. Sergeant Heath will give you what preliminary
information you want. I'm still pretty much in the dark myself--
only just arrived."
"A lot of information I'VE got to give," grumbled Heath, as he led
the way into the living room.
Margaret Odell's apartment was a suite of two fairly large rooms
connected by a wide archway draped with heavy damask portieres. The
entrance door from the main hall of the building led into a small
rectangular foyer about eight feet long and four feet deep, with
double Venetian-glass doors opening into the main room beyond.
There was no other entrance to the apartment, and the bedroom could
be reached only through the archway from the living room.
There was a large davenport, covered with brocaded silk, in front of
the fireplace in the left-hand wall of the living room, with a long
narrow library table of inlaid rosewood extending along its back.
On the opposite wall, between the foyer and the archway into the
bedroom, hung a triplicate Marie Antoinette mirror, beneath which
stood a mahogany gate-legged table. On the far side of the archway,
near the large oriel window, was a baby grand Steinway piano with a
beautifully designed and decorated case of Louis-Seize ornamentation.
In the corner to the right of the fireplace was a spindle-legged
escritoire and a square hand-painted wastepaper basket of vellum.
To the left of the fireplace stood one of the loveliest Boule
cabinets I have ever seen. Several excellent reproductions of
Boucher, Fragonard, and Watteau hung about the walls. The bedroom
contained a chest of drawers, a dressing table, and several gold-
leaf chairs. The whole apartment seemed eminently in keeping with
the Canary's fragile and evanescent personality.
[Diagram of Margaret Odell's apartment--Map2.gif]
As we stepped from the little foyer into the living room and stood
for a moment looking about, a scene bordering on wreckage met our
eyes. The rooms had apparently been ransacked by someone in a
frenzy of haste, and the disorder of the place was appalling.
"They didn't exactly do the job in dainty fashion," remarked
Inspector Moran.
"I suppose we oughta be grateful they didn't blow the joint up with
dynamite," returned Heath acridly.
But it was not the general disorder that most attracted us. Our
gaze was almost immediately drawn and held by the body of the dead
girl, which rested in an unnatural, semirecumbent attitude in the
corner of the davenport nearest to where we stood. Her head was
turned backward, as if by force, over the silken tufted upholstery;
and her hair had come unfastened and lay beneath her head and over
her bare shoulder like a frozen cataract of liquid gold. Her face,
in violent death, was distorted and unlovely. Her skin was
discolored; her eyes were staring; her mouth was open, and her lips
were drawn back. Her neck, on either side of the thyroid cartilage,
showed ugly dark bruises. She was dressed in a flimsy evening gown
of black Chantilly lace over cream-colored chiffon, and across the
arm of the davenport had been thrown an evening cape of cloth-of-
gold trimmed with ermine.
There were evidences of her ineffectual struggle with the person who
had strangled her. Besides the disheveled condition of her hair,
one of the shoulder straps of her gown had been severed, and there
was a long rent in the fine lace across her breast. A small corsage
of artificial orchids had been torn from her bodice, and lay
crumpled in her lap. One satin slipper had fallen off, and her
right knee was twisted inward on the seat of the davenport, as if
she had sought to lift herself out of the suffocating clutches of
her antagonist. Her fingers were still flexed, no doubt as they had
been at the moment of her capitulation to death, when she had
relinquished her grip upon the murderer's wrists.
The spell of horror cast over us by the sight of the tortured body
was broken by the matter-of-fact tones of Heath.
"You see, Mr. Markham, she was evidently sitting in the corner of
this settee when she was grabbed suddenly from behind."
Markham nodded. "It must have taken a pretty strong man to strangle
her so easily."
"I'll say!" agreed Heath. He bent over and pointed to the girl's
fingers, on which showed several abrasions. "They stripped her
rings off, too; and they didn't go about it gentle, either." Then
he indicated a segment of fine platinum chain, set with tiny pearls,
which hung over one of her shoulders. "And they grabbed whatever it
was hanging around her neck, and broke the chain doing it. They
weren't overlooking anything, or losing any time. . . . A swell,
gentlemanly job. Nice and refined."
"Where's the medical examiner?" asked Markham.
"He's coming," Heath told him. "You can't get Doc Doremus to go
anywheres without his breakfast."
"He may find something else--something that doesn't show."
"There's plenty showing for me," declared Heath. "Look at this
apartment. It wouldn't be much worse if a Kansas cyclone had struck
it."
We turned from the depressing spectacle of the dead girl and moved
toward the center of the room.
"Be careful not to touch anything, Mr. Markham," warned Heath.
"I've sent for the fingerprint experts--they'll be here any minute
now."
Vance looked up in mock astonishment.
"Fingerprints? You don't say--really! How delightful!--Imagine a
johnnie in this enlightened day leaving his fingerprints for you to
find."
"All crooks aren't clever, Mr. Vance," declared Heath combatively.
"Oh, dear, no! They'd never be apprehended if they were. But,
after all, Sergeant, even an authentic fingerprint merely means that
the person who made it was dallying around at some time or other.
It doesn't indicate guilt."
"Maybe so," conceded Heath doggedly. "But I'm here to tell you that
if I get any good honest-to-God fingerprints outa this devastated
area, it's not going so easy with the bird that made 'em."
Vance appeared to be shocked. "You positively terrify me, Sergeant.
Henceforth I shall adopt mittens as a permanent addition to my
attire. I'm always handling the furniture and the teacups and the
various knickknacks in the houses where I call, don't y' know."
Markham interposed himself at this point and suggested they make a
tour of inspection while waiting for the medical examiner.
"They didn't add anything much to the usual methods," Heath pointed
out. "Killed the girl, and then ripped things wide open."
The two rooms had apparently been thoroughly ransacked. Clothes and
various articles were strewn about the floor. The doors of both
clothes closets (there was one in each room) were open, and to judge
from the chaos in the bedroom closet, it had been hurriedly
searched; although the closet off the living room, which was given
over to the storage of infrequently used items, appeared to have
been ignored. The drawers of the dressing table and chest had been
partly emptied on to the floor, and the bedclothes had been snatched
away and the mattress turned back. Two chairs and a small
occasional table were upset; several vases were broken, as if they
had been searched and then thrown down in the wrath of disappointment;
and the Marie Antoinette mirror had been broken. The escritoire was
open, and its pigeonholes had been emptied in a jumbled pile upon
the blotter. The doors of the Boule cabinet swung wide, and inside
there was the same confusion of contents that marked the interior of
the escritoire. The bronze-and-porcelain lamp on the end of the
library table was lying on its side, its satin shade torn where it
had struck the sharp corner of a silver bonbonnière.
Two objects in the general disarray particularly attracted my
attention--a black metal document box of the kind purchasable at any
stationery store, and a large jewel case of sheet steel with a
circular inset lock. The latter of these objects was destined to
play a curious and sinister part in the investigation to follow.
The document box, which was now empty, had been placed on the
library table, next to the overturned lamp. Its lid was thrown
back, and the key was still in the lock. In all the litter and
disorganization of the room, this box seemed to be the one
outstanding indication of calm and orderly activity on the part of
the wrecker.
The jewel case, on the other hand, had been violently wrenched open.
It sat on the dressing table in the bedroom, dented and twisted out
of shape by the terrific leverage that had been necessary to force
it, and beside it lay a brass-handled, cast iron poker which had
evidently been brought from the living room and used as a makeshift
chisel with which to prize open the lock.
Vance had glanced but casually at the different objects in the rooms
as we made our rounds, but when he came to the dressing table, he
paused abruptly. Taking out his monocle, he adjusted it carefully,
and leaned over the broken jewel case.
"Most extr'ordin'ry!" he murmured, tapping the edge of the lid with
his gold pencil. "What do you make of that, Sergeant?"
Heath had been eyeing Vance with narrowed lids as the latter bent
over the dressing table.
"What's in your mind, Mr. Vance?" he, in turn, asked.
"Oh, more than you could ever guess," Vance answered lightly. "But
just at the moment I was toying with the idea that this steel case
was never torn open by that wholly inadequate iron poker, what?"
Heath nodded his head approvingly. "So you, too, noticed that, did
you? . . . And you're dead right. That poker might've twisted the
box a little, but it never snapped that lock."
He turned to Inspector Moran.
"That's the puzzler I've sent for 'Prof' Brenner to clean up--IF
he can. The jimmying of that jewel case looks to me like a high-
class professional job. No Sunday school superintendent did it."
Vance continued for a while to study the box, but at length he
turned away with a perplexed frown.
"I say!" he commented. "Something devilish queer took place here
last night."
"Oh, not so queer," Heath amended. "It was a thorough job, all
right, but there's nothing mysterious about it."
Vance polished his monocle and put it away.
"If you go to work on that basis, Sergeant," he returned carelessly,
"I greatly fear you'll run aground on a reef. And may kind Heaven
bring you safe to shore!"
4
THE PRINT OF A HAND
(Tuesday, September 11, 9:30 A.M.)
A few minutes after we had returned to the living room Doctor
Doremus, the chief medical examiner, arrived, jaunty and energetic.
Immediately in his train came three other men, one of whom carried a
bulky camera and a folded tripod. These were Captain Dubois and
Detective Bellamy, fingerprint experts, and Peter Quackenbush, the
official photographer.
"Well, well, well!" exclaimed Doctor Doremus. "Quite a gathering of
the clans. More trouble, eh? . . . I wish your friends, Inspector,
would choose a more respectable hour for their little differences.
This early rising upsets my liver."
He shook hands with everybody in a brisk, businesslike manner.
"Where's the body?" he demanded breezily, looking about the room.
He caught sight of the girl on the davenport. "Ah! A lady."
Stepping quickly forward, he made a rapid examination of the dead
girl, scrutinizing her neck and fingers, moving her arms and head to
determine the condition of rigor mortis, and finally unflexing her
stiffened limbs and laying her out straight on the long cushions,
preparatory to a more detailed necropsy.
The rest of us moved toward the bedroom, and Heath motioned to the
fingerprint men to follow.
"Go over everything," he told them. "But take a special look at
this jewel case and the handle of this poker, and give that document
box in the other room a close up--and--down."
"Right," assented Captain Dubois. "We'll begin in here while the
doc's busy in the other room." And he and Bellamy set to work.
Our interest naturally centered on the captain's labors. For fully
five minutes we watched him inspecting the twisted steel sides of
the jewel case and the smooth, polished handle of the poker. He
held the objects gingerly by their edges, and, placing a jeweler's
glass in his eye, flashed his pocket light on every square inch of
them. At length he put them down, scowling.
"No fingerprints here," he announced. "Wiped clean."
"I mighta known it," grumbled Heath. "It was a professional job,
all right." He turned to the other expert. "Found anything,
Bellamy?"
"Nothing to help," was the grumpy reply. "A few old smears with
dust over 'em."
"Looks like a washout," Heath commented irritably; "though I'm
hoping for something in the other room."
At this moment Doctor Doremus came into the bedroom and, taking a
sheet from the bed, returned to the davenport and covered the body
of the murdered girl. Then he snapped shut his case and, putting on
his hat at a rakish angle, stepped forward with the air of a man in
great haste to be on his way.
"Simple case of strangulation from behind," he said, his words
running together. "Digital bruises about the front of the throat;
thumb bruises in the suboccipital region. Attack must have been
unexpected. A quick, competent job though deceased evidently
battled a little."
"How do you suppose her dress became torn, Doctor?" asked Vance.
"Oh, that? Can't tell. She may have done it herself--instinctive
motions of clutching for air."
"Not likely though, what?"
"Why not? The dress was torn and the bouquet was ripped off, and
the fellow who was choking her had both hands on her throat. Who
else could've done it?"
Vance shrugged his shoulders and began lighting a cigarette.
Heath, annoyed by his apparently inconsequential interruption, put
the next question.
"Don't those marks on the fingers mean that her rings were stripped
off?"
"Possibly. They're fresh abrasions. Also, there's a couple of
lacerations on the left wrist and slight contusions on the thenar
eminence, indicating that a bracelet may have been forcibly pulled
over her hand."
"That fits O.K.," pronounced Heath, with satisfaction. "And it
looks like they snatched a pendant of some kind off her neck."
"Probably," indifferently agreed Doctor Doremus. "The piece of
chain had cut into her flesh a little behind the right shoulder."
"And the time?"
"Nine or ten hours ago. Say, about eleven thirty--maybe a little
before. Not after midnight, anyway." He had been teetering
restlessly on his toes. "Anything else?"
Heath pondered.
"I guess that's all, doc," he decided. "I'll get the body to the
mortuary right away. Let's have the postmortem as soon as you can."
"You'll get a report in the morning." And despite his apparent
eagerness to be off, Doctor Doremus stepped into the bedroom and
shook hands with Heath and Markham and Inspector Moran before he
hurried out.
Heath followed him to the door, and I heard him direct the officer
outside to telephone the Department of Public Welfare to send an
ambulance at once for the girl's body.
"I positively adore that official archiater of yours," Vance said to
Markham. "Such detachment! Here are you stewing most distressingly
over the passing of one damsel fair and frail, and that blithe
medicus is worrying only over a sluggish liver brought on by early
rising."
"What has he to be upset over?" complained Markham. "The newspapers
are not riding him with spurs. . . . And by the way, what was the
point of your questions about the torn dress?"
Vance lazily inspected the tip of his cigarette. "Consider," he
said. "The lady was evidently taken by surprise; for, had there
been a struggle beforehand, she would not have been strangled from
behind while sitting down. Therefore, her gown and corsage were
undoubtedly intact at the time she was seized. But, despite the
conclusion of your dashing Paracelsus, the damage to her toilet was
not of a nature that could have been self-inflicted in her struggle
for air. If she had felt the constriction of the gown across her
breast, she would have snatched the bodice itself by putting her
fingers inside the band. But, if you noticed, her bodice was
intact; the only thing that had been torn was the deep lace flounce
on the outside; and it had been torn, or rather ripped, by a strong
lateral pull; whereas, in the circumstances, any wrench on her part
would have been downward or outward."
Inspector Moran was listening intently, but Heath seemed restless
and impatient; apparently he regarded the torn gown as irrelevant to
the simple main issue.
"Moreover," Vance went on, "there is the corsage. If she herself
had torn it off while being strangled, it would doubtless have
fallen to the floor; for, remember, she offered considerable
resistance. Her body was twisted sidewise; her knee was drawn up,
and one slipper had been kicked off. Now, no bunch of silken posies
is going to remain in a lady's lap during such a commotion. Even
when ladies sit still, their gloves and handbags and handkerchiefs
and programs and serviettes are forever sliding off of their laps
onto the floor, don't y' know."
"But if your argument's correct," protested Markham, "then, the
tearing of the lace and the snatching off of the corsage could have
been done only after she was dead. And I can't see any object in
such senseless vandalism."
"Neither can I," sighed Vance. "It's all devilish queer."
Heath looked up at him sharply. "That's the second time you've said
that. But there's nothing what you'd call queer about this mess.
It is a straightaway case." He spoke with an overtone of
insistence, like a man arguing against his own insecurity of
opinion. "The dress might've been torn almost anytime," he went on
stubbornly. "And the flower might've got caught in the lace of her
skirt so it couldn't roll off."
"And how would you explain the jewel case, Sergeant?" asked Vance.
"Well, the fellow might've tried the poker and then, finding it
wouldn't work, used his jimmy."
"If he had the efficient jimmy," countered Vance, "why did he go to
the trouble of bringing the silly poker from the living room?"
The sergeant shook his head perplexedly.
"You never can tell why some of these crooks act the way they do."
"Tut, tut!" Vance chided him. "There should be no such word as
NEVER in the bright lexicon of detecting."
Heath regarded him sharply. "Was there anything else that struck
you as queer?" His subtle doubts were welling up again.
"Well, there's the lamp on the table in the other room."
We were standing near the archway between the two rooms, and Heath
turned quickly and looked blankly at the fallen lamp.
"I don t see anything queer about that."
"It has been upset--eh, what?" suggested Vance.
"What if it has?" Health was frankly puzzled. "Damn near
everything in this apartment has been knocked crooked."
"Ah! But there's a reason for most of the other things having been
disturbed--like the drawers and pigeonholes and closets and vases.
They all indicate a search; they're consistent with a raid for loot.
But that lamp, now, d' ye see, doesn't fit into the picture. It's a
false note. It was standing on the opposite end of the table to
where the murder was committed, at least five feet away; and it
couldn't possibly have been knocked over in the struggle. . . . No,
it won't do. It's got no business being upset, any more than that
pretty mirror over the gate-legged table has any business being
broken. That's why it's queer."
"What about those chairs and the little table?" asked Heath,
pointing to two small gilded chairs which had been overturned, and a
fragile tip-table that lay on its side near the piano.
"Oh, they fit into the ensemble," returned Vance. "They're all
light pieces of furniture which could easily have been knocked over,
or thrown aside, by the hasty gentleman who rifled these rooms."
"The lamp might've been knocked over in the same way," argued Heath.
Vance shook his head. "Not tenable, Sergeant. It has a solid
bronze base and isn't at all top-heavy; and, being set well back on
the table, it wasn't in anyone's way. . . . That lamp was upset
deliberately."
The sergeant was silent for a while. Experience had taught him not
to underestimate Vance's observations; and, I must confess, as I
looked at the lamp lying on its side on the end of the library
table, well removed from any of the other disordered objects in the
room, Vance's argument seemed to possess considerable force. I
tried hard to fit it into a hasty reconstruction of the crime but
was utterly unable to do so.
"Anything else that don't seem to fit into the picture?" Heath at
length asked.
Vance pointed with his cigarette toward the clothes closet in the
living room. This closet was alongside of the foyer, in the corner
near the Boule cabinet, directly opposite to the end of the
davenport.
"You might let your mind dally a moment with the condition of that
clothes press," suggested Vance carelessly. "You will note that,
though the door's ajar, the contents have not been touched. And
it's about the only area in the apartment that hasn't been
disturbed."
Heath walked over and looked into the closet.
"Well, anyway, I'll admit that's queer," he finally conceded.
Vance had followed him indolently and stood gazing over his
shoulder.
"And my word!" he exclaimed suddenly. "The key's on the inside of
the lock. Fancy that, now! One can't lock a closet door with the
key on the inside--can one, Sergeant?"
"The key may not mean anything," Heath observed hopefully. "Maybe
the door was never locked. Anyhow, we'll find out about that pretty
soon. I'm holding the maid outside, and I'm going to have her on
the carpet as soon as the captain finishes his job here."
He turned to Dubois, who, having completed his search for
fingerprints in the bedroom, was now inspecting the piano.
"Any luck yet?"
The captain shook his head.
"Gloves," he answered succinctly.
"Same here," supplemented Bellamy gruffly, on his knees before the
escritoire.
Vance, with a sardonic smile, turned and walked to the window, where
he stood looking out and smoking placidly, as if his entire interest
in the case had evaporated.
At this moment the door from the main hall opened, and a short, thin
little man, with gray hair and a scraggly gray beard, stepped inside
and stood blinking against the vivid sunlight.
"Good morning, Professor," Heath greeted the newcomer. "Glad to see
you. I've got something nifty, right in your line."
Deputy Inspector Conrad Brenner was one of that small army of
obscure, but highly capable, experts who are connected with the New
York Police Department, and who are constantly being consulted on
abstruse technical problems, but whose names and achievements rarely
get into the public prints. His specialty was locks and burglars'
tools; and I doubt if, even among those exhaustively painstaking
criminologists of the University of Lausanne, there was a more
accurate reader of the evidential signs left by the implements of
housebreakers. In appearance and bearing he was like a withered
little college professor.* His black, unpressed suit was old-
fashioned in cut; and he wore a very high stiff collar, like a fin-
de-siècle clergyman, with a narrow black string tie. His gold-
rimmed spectacles were so thick-lensed that the pupils of his eyes
gave the impression of acute belladonna poisoning.
* It is an interesting fact that for the nineteen years he had been
connected with the New York Police Department, he had been referred
to, by his superiors and subordinates alike, as "the Professor."
When Heath had spoken to him, he merely stood staring with a sort of
detached expectancy; he seemed utterly unaware that there was anyone
else in the room. The sergeant, evidently familiar with the little
man's idiosyncrasies of manner, did not wait for a response, but
started at once for the bedroom.
"This way, please, Professor," he directed cajolingly, going to the
dressing table and picking up the jewel case. "Take a squint at
this and tell me what you see."
Inspector Brenner followed Heath, without looking to right or left,
and, taking the jewel case, went silently to the window and began to
examine it. Vance, whose interest seemed suddenly to be reawakened,
came forward and stood watching him.
For fully five minutes the little expert inspected the case, holding
it within a few inches of his myopic eyes. Then he lifted his
glance to Heath and winked several times rapidly.
"Two instruments were used in opening this case." His voice was
small and high-pitched, but there was in it an undeniable quality
of authority. "One bent the lid and made several fractures on the
baked enamel. The other was, I should say, a steel chisel of some
kind, and was used to break the lock. The first instrument, which
was blunt, was employed amateurishly, at the wrong angle of
leverage; and the effort resulted only in twisting the overhang of
the lid. But the steel chisel was inserted with a knowledge of the
correct point of oscillation, where a minimum of leverage would
produce the counteracting stress necessary to displace the
lockbolts."
"A professional job?" suggested Heath.
"Highly so," answered the inspector, again blinking. "That is to
say, the forcing of the lock was professional. And I would even go
so far as to advance the opinion that the instrument used was one
especially constructed for such illegal purposes."
"Could this have done the job?" Heath held out the poker.
The other looked at it closely and turned it over several times.
"It might have been the instrument that bent the cover, but it was
not the one used for prying open the lock. This poker is cast iron
and would have snapped under any great pressure; whereas this box is
of cold rolled eighteen-gauge steel plate, with an inset cylinder
pin-tumbler lock taking a paracentric key. The leverage force
necessary to distort the flange sufficiently to lift the lid could
have been made only by a steel chisel."
"Well, that's that." Heath seemed well satisfied with Inspector
Brenner's conclusion. "I'll send the box down to you, Professor,
and you can let me know what else you find out."
"I'll take it along, if you have no objection." And the little man
tucked it under his arm and shuffled out without another word.
Heath grinned at Markham. "Queer bird. He ain't happy unless he's
measuring jimmy marks on doors and windows and things. He couldn't
wait till I sent him the box. He'll hold it lovingly on his lap all
the way down in the subway, like a mother with a baby."
Vance was still standing near the dressing table, gazing perplexedly
into space. "Markham," he said, "the condition of that jewel case
is positively astounding. It's unreasonable, illogical--insane. It
complicates the situation most damnably. That steel box simply
couldn't have been chiseled open by a professional burglar . . . and
yet, don't y' know, it actually was."
Before Markham could reply, a satisfied grunt from Captain Dubois
attracted our attention. "I've got something for you, Sergeant," he
announced.
We moved expectantly into the living room. Dubois was bending over
the end of the library table almost directly behind the place where
Margaret Odell's body had been found. He took out an insufflator,
which was like a very small hand bellows, and blew a fine light-
yellow powder evenly over about a square foot of the polished
rosewood surface of the table top. Then he gently blew away the
surplus powder, and there appeared the impression of a human hand
distinctly registered in saffron. The bulb of the thumb and each
fleshy hummock between the joints of the fingers and around the palm
stood out like tiny circular islands. All the papillary ridges were
clearly discernible. The photographer then hooked his camera to a
peculiar adjustable tripod and, carefully focusing his lens, took
two flashlight pictures of the hand mark.
"This ought to do." Dubois was pleased with his find. "It's the
right hand--a clear print--and the guy who made it was standing
right behind the dame. . . . And it's the newest print in the
place."
"What about this box?" Heath pointed to the black document box on
the table near the overturned lamp.
"Not a mark--wiped clean."
Dubois began putting away his paraphernalia.
"I say, Captain Dubois," interposed Vance, "did you take a good look
at the inside doorknob of that clothes press?"
The man swung about abruptly and gave Vance a glowering look.
"People ain't in the habit of handling the inside knobs of closet
doors. They open and shut closets from the outside."
Vance raised his eyebrows in simulated astonishment.
"Do they, now, really?--Fancy that! . . . Still, don't y' know, if
one were inside the closet, one couldn't reach the outside knob."
"The people _I_ know don't shut themselves in clothes closets."
Dubois' tone was ponderously sarcastic.
"You positively amaze me!" declared Vance. "All the people I know
are addicted to the habit--a sort of daily pastime, don't y' know."
Markham, always diplomatic, intervened. "What idea have you about
that closet, Vance?"
"Alas! I wish I had one," was the dolorous answer. "It's because I
can't, for the life of me, make sense of its neat and orderly
appearance that I'm so interested in it. Really, y' know, it should
have been artistically looted."
Heath was not entirely free from the same vague misgivings that were
disturbing Vance, for he turned to Dubois and said, "You might go
over the knob, Captain. As this gentleman says, there's something
funny about the condition of that closet."
Dubois, silent and surly, went to the closet door and sprayed his
yellow powder over the inside knob. When he had blown the loose
particles away, he bent over it with his magnifying glass. At
length he straightened up and gave Vance a look of ill-natured
appraisal.
"There's fresh prints on it, all right," he grudgingly admitted;
"and, unless I'm mistaken, they were made by the same hand as those
on the table. Both thumb marks are ulnar loops, and the index
fingers are both whorl patterns. . . . Here, Pete," he ordered the
photographer, "make some shots of that knob."
When this had been done, Dubois, Bellamy, and the photographer left
us. A few minutes later, after an interchange of pleasantries,
Inspector Moran also departed. At the door he passed two men in the
white uniforms of interns, who had come to take away the girl's
body.
5
THE BOLTED DOOR
(Tuesday, September 11; 10:30 A.M.)
Markham and Heath and Vance and I were now alone in the apartment.
Dark, low-hanging clouds had drifted across the sun, and the gray
spectral light intensified the tragic atmosphere of the rooms.
Markham had lighted a cigar, and stood leaning against the piano,
looking about him with a disconsolate but determined air. Vance had
moved over to one of the pictures on the side wall of the living
room--Boucher's "La Bergère Endormie" I think it was--and stood
looking at it with cynical contempt.
"Dimpled nudities, gamboling Cupids and woolly clouds for royal
cocottes," he commented. His distaste for all the painting of the
French decadence under Louis XV was profound. "One wonders what
pictures courtesans hung in their boudoirs before the invention of
these amorous eclogues, with their blue verdure and beribboned
sheep."
"I'm more interested at present in what took place in this
particular boudoir last night," retorted Markham impatiently.
"There's not much doubt about that, sir," said Heath encouragingly.
"And I've an idea that when Dubois checks up those fingerprints with
our files, we'll about know who did it."
Vance turned toward him with a rueful smile. "You're so trusting,
Sergeant. I, in turn, have an idea that, long before this touchin'
case is clarified, you'll wish the irascible captain with the insect
powder had never found those fingerprints." He made a playful
gesture of emphasis. "Permit me to whisper into your ear that the
person who left his sign manuals on yonder rosewood table and
cutglass doorknob had nothing whatever to do with the precipitate
demise of the fair Mademoiselle Odell."
"What is it you suspect?" demanded Markham sharply.
"Not a thing, old dear," blandly declared Vance. "I'm wandering
about in a mental murk as empty of signposts as interplanetary
space. The jaws of darkness do devour me up; I'm in the dead vast
and middle of the night. My mental darkness is Egyptian, Stygian,
Cimmerian--I'm in a perfect Erebus of tenebrosity."
Markham's jaw tightened in exasperation; he was familiar with this
evasive loquacity of Vance's. Dismissing the subject, he addressed
himself to Heath.
"Have you done any questioning of the people in the house here?"
"I talked to Odell's maid and to the janitor and the switchboard
operators, but I didn't go much into details--I was waiting for you.
I'll say this, though: what they did tell me made my head swim. If
they don't back down on some of their statements, we're up against
it."
"Let's have them in now, then," suggested Markham; "the maid first."
He sat down on the piano bench with his back to the keyboard.
Heath rose but, instead of going to the door, walked to the oriel
window. "There's one thing I want to call your attention to, sir,
before you interview these people, and that's the matter of
entrances and exits in this apartment."
He drew aside the gold-gauze curtain. "Look at that iron grating.
All the windows in this place, including the ones in the bathroom,
are equipped with iron bars just like these. It's only eight or ten
feet to the ground here, and whoever built this house wasn't taking
any chances of burglars getting in through the windows."
He released the curtain and strode into the foyer. "Now, there's
only one entrance to this apartment, and that's this door here
opening off the main hall. There isn't a transom or an airshaft or
a dumbwaiter in the place, and that means that the only way--THE
ONLY WAY--that anybody can get in or out of this apartment is
through this door. Just keep that fact in your mind, sir, while
you're listening to the stories of these people. . . . Now, I'll
have the maid brought in."
In response to Heath's order a detective led in a mulatto woman
about thirty years old. She was neatly dressed and gave one the
impression of capability. When she spoke, it was with a quiet,
clear enunciation which attested to a greater degree of education
than is ordinarily found in members of her class.
Her name, we learned, was Amy Gibson; and the information elicited
by Markham's preliminary questioning consisted of the following
facts:
She had arrived at the apartment that morning a few minutes after
seven, and, as was her custom, had let herself in with her own key,
as her mistress generally slept till late.
Once or twice a week she came early to do sewing and mending for
Miss Odell before the latter arose. On this particular morning she
had come early to make an alteration in a gown.
As soon as she had opened the door, she had been confronted by the
disorder of the apartment, for the Venetian-glass doors of the foyer
were wide open; and almost simultaneously she had noticed the body
of her mistress on the davenport.
She had called at once to Jessup, the night telephone operator then
on duty, who, after one glance into the living room, had notified
the police. She had then sat down in the public reception room and
waited for the arrival of the officers.
Her testimony had been simple and direct and intelligently stated.
If she was nervous or excited, she managed to keep her feelings well
under control.
"Now," continued Markham, after a short pause, "let us go back to
last night. At what time did you leave Miss Odell?"
"A few minutes before seven, sir," the woman answered, in a
colorless, even tone which seemed to be characteristic of her
speech.
"Is that your usual hour for leaving?"
"No; I generally go about six. But last night Miss Odell wanted me
to help her dress for dinner."
"Don't you always help her dress for dinner?"
"No, sir. But last night she was going with some gentleman to
dinner and the theater, and wanted to look specially nice."
"Ah!" Markham leaned forward. "And who was this gentleman?"
"I don't know, sir--Miss Odell didn't say."
"And you couldn't suggest who it might have been?"
"I couldn't say, sir."
"And when did Miss Odell tell you that she wanted you to come early
this morning?"
"When I was leaving last night."
"So she evidently didn't anticipate any danger, or have any fear of
her companion."
"It doesn't look that way." The woman paused, as if considering.
"No, I know she didn't. She was in good spirits."
Markham turned to Heath.
"Any other questions you want to ask, Sergeant?"
Heath removed an unlighted cigar from his mouth, and bent forward,
resting his hands on his knees.
"What jewelry did this Odell woman have on last night?" he demanded
gruffly.
The maid's manner became cool and a bit haughty.
"Miss Odell"--she emphasized the "Miss," by way of reproaching him
for the disrespect implied in his omission--"wore all her rings,
five or six of them, and three bracelets--one of square diamonds,
one of rubies, and one of diamonds and emeralds. She also had on a
sunburst of pear-shaped diamonds on a chain round her neck, and she
carried a platinum lorgnette set with diamonds and pearls."
"Did she own any other jewelry?"
"A few small pieces, maybe, but I'm not sure."
"And did she keep 'em in the steel jewel case in the room?"
"Yes--when she wasn't wearing them." There was more than a
suggestion of sarcasm in the reply.
"Oh, I thought maybe she kept 'em locked up when she had 'em on."
Heath's antagonism had been aroused by the maid's attitude; he could
not have failed to note that she had consistently omitted the
punctilious "sir" when answering him. He now stood up and pointed
loweringly to the black document box on the rosewood table.
"Ever see that before?"
The woman nodded indifferently. "Many times."
"Where was it generally kept?"
"In that thing." She indicated the Boule cabinet with a motion of
the head.
"What was in the box?"
"How should I know?"
"You don't know--huh?" Heath thrust out his jaw, but his bullying
attitude had no effect upon the impassive maid.
"I've got no idea," she replied calmly. "It was always kept locked,
and I never saw Miss Odell open it."
The sergeant walked over to the door of the living room closet.
"See that key?" he asked angrily.
Again the woman nodded; but this time I detected a look of mild
astonishment in her eyes.
"Was that key always kept on the inside of the door?"
"No, it was always on the outside."
Heath shot Vance a curious look. Then, after a moment's frowning
contemplation of the knob, he waved his hand to the detective who
had brought the maid in.
"Take her back to the reception room, Snitkin, and get a detailed
description from her of all the Odell jewelry. . . . And keep her
outside; I'll want her again."
When Snitkin and the maid had gone out, Vance lay back lazily on the
davenport, where he had sat during the interview, and sent a spiral
of cigarette smoke toward the ceiling.
"Rather illuminatin', what?" he remarked. "The dusky demoiselle got
us considerably forrader. Now we know that the closet key is on the
wrong side of the door, and that our fille de joie went to the
theater with one of her favorite inamorati, who presumably brought
her home shortly before she took her departure from this wicked
world."
"You think that's helpful, do you?" Heath's tone was contemptuously
triumphant. "Wait till you hear the crazy story the telephone
operator's got to tell."
"All right, Sergeant," put in Markham impatiently. "Suppose we get
on with the ordeal."
"I'm going to suggest, Mr. Markham, that we question the janitor
first. And I'll show you why." Heath went to the entrance door of
the apartment, and opened it. "Look here for just a minute, sir."
He stepped out into the main hall and pointed down the little
passageway on the left. It was about ten feet in length and ran
between the Odell apartment and the blank rear wall of the reception
room. At the end of it was a solid oak door which gave on the court
at the side of the house.
"That door," explained Heath, "is the only side or rear entrance to
this building; and when that door is bolted, nobody can get into the
house except by the front entrance. You can't even get into the
building through the other apartments, for every window on this
floor is barred. I checked up on that point as soon as I got here."
He led the way back into the living room.
"Now, after I'd looked over the situation this morning," he went on,
"I figured that our man had entered through that side door at the
end of the passageway, and had slipped into this apartment without
the night operator seeing him. So I tried the side door to see if
it was open. But it was bolted on the inside--not locked, mind you,
but bolted. And it wasn't a slip bolt, either, that could have been
jimmied or worked open from the outside, but a tough old-fashioned
turn bolt of solid brass. . . . And now I want you to hear what the
janitor's got to say about it."
Markham nodded acquiescence, and Heath called an order to one of the
officers in the hall. A moment later a stolid, middle-aged German,
with sullen features and high cheekbones, stood before us. His jaw
was clamped tight, and he shifted his eyes from one to the other of
us suspiciously.
Heath straightway assumed the role of inquisitor. "What time do
you leave here at night?" He had, for some reason, assumed a
belligerent manner.
"Six o'clock--sometimes earlier, sometimes later." The man spoke in
a surly monotone. He was obviously resentful at this unexpected
intrusion upon his orderly routine.
"And what time do you get here in the morning?"
"Eight o'clock, regular."
"What time did you go home last night?"
"About six--maybe quarter past."
Heath paused and finally lighted the cigar on which he had been
chewing at intervals during the past hour.
"Now, tell me about that side door," he went on, with undiminished
aggressiveness. "You told me you lock it every night before you
leave--is that right?"
"Ja--that's right." The man nodded his head affirmatively several
times. "Only I don't lock it--I bolt it."
"All right, you bolt it, then." As Heath talked his cigar bobbed up
and down between his lips; smoke and words came simultaneously from
his mouth. "And last night you bolted it as usual about six
o'clock?"
"Maybe a quarter past," the janitor amended, with Germanic
precision.
"You're sure you bolted it last night?" The question was almost
ferocious.
"Ja, ja. Sure, I am. I do it every night. I never miss."
The man's earnestness left no doubt that the door in question had
indeed been bolted on the inside at about six o'clock of the
previous evening. Heath, however, belabored the point for several
minutes, only to be reassured doggedly that the door had been
bolted. At last the janitor was dismissed.
"Really, y' know, Sergeant," remarked Vance with an amused smile,
"that honest Rheinlander bolted the door."
"Sure, he did," spluttered Heath, "and I found it still bolted this
morning at quarter of eight. That's just what messes things up so
nice and pretty. If that door was bolted from six o'clock last
evening until eight o'clock this morning, I'd appreciate having
someone drive up in a hearse and tell me how the Canary's little
playmate got in here last night. And I'd also like to know how he
got out."
"Why not through the main entrance?" asked Markham. "It seems the
only logical way left, according to your own findings."
"That's how I had it figured out, sir," returned Heath. "But wait
till you hear what the phone operator has to say."
"And the phone operator's post," mused Vance, "is in the main hall
halfway between the front door and this apartment. Therefore, the
gentleman who caused all the disturbance hereabouts last night would
have had to pass within a few feet of the operator both on arriving
and departing--eh, what?"
"That's it!" snapped Heath. "And, according to the operator, no
such person came or went."
Markham seemed to have absorbed some of Heath's irritability. "Get
the fellow in here, and let me question him," he ordered.
Heath obeyed with a kind of malicious alacrity.
6
A CALL FOR HELP
(Tuesday, September 11; 11 A.M.)
Jessup made a good impression from the moment he entered the room.
He was a serious, determined-looking man in his early thirties,
rugged and well built; and there was a squareness to his shoulders
that carried a suggestion of military training. He walked with a
decided limp--his right foot dragged perceptibly--and I noted that
his left arm had been stiffened into a permanent arc, as if by an
unreduced fracture of the elbow. He was quiet and reserved, and his
eyes were steady and intelligent. Markham at once motioned him to a
wicker chair beside the closet door, but he declined it, and stood
before the district attorney in a soldierly attitude of respectful
attention. Markham opened the interrogation with several personal
questions. It transpired that Jessup had been a sergeant in the
World War,* had twice been seriously wounded, and had been invalided
home shortly before the armistice. He had held his present post of
telephone operator for over a year.
* His full name was William Elmer Jessup, and he had been attached
to the 308th Infantry of the 77th Division of the Overseas Forces.
"Now, Jessup," continued Markham, "there are things connected with
last night's tragedy that you can tell us."
"Yes, sir." There was no doubt that this ex-soldier would tell us
accurately anything he knew, and also that, if he had any doubt as
to the correctness of his information, he would frankly say so. He
possessed all the qualities of a careful and well-trained witness.
"First of all, what time did you come on duty last night?"
"At ten o'clock, sir." There was no qualification to this blunt
statement; one felt that Jessup would arrive punctually at whatever
hour he was due. "It was my short shift. The day man and myself
alternate in long and short shifts."
"And did you see Miss Odell come in last night after the theater?"
"Yes, sir. Everyone who comes in has to pass the switchboard."
"What time did she arrive?"
"It couldn't have been more than a few minutes after eleven."
"Was she alone?"
"No, sir. There was a gentleman with her."
"Do you know who he was?"
"I don't know his name, sir. But I have seen him several times
before when he has called on Miss Odell."
"You could describe him, I suppose."
"Yes, sir. He's tall and clean-shaven except for a very short gray
moustache, and is about forty-five, I should say. He looks--if you
understand me, sir--like a man of wealth and position."
Markham nodded. "And now, tell me: did he accompany Miss Odell into
her apartment or did he go immediately away?"
"He went in with Miss Odell and stayed about half an hour."
Markham's eyes brightened, and there was a suppressed eagerness in
his next words. "Then he arrived about eleven, and was alone with
Miss Odell in her apartment until about half past eleven. You're
sure of these facts?"
"Yes, sir, that's correct," the man affirmed.
Markham paused and leaned forward.
"Now, Jessup, think carefully before answering: did any one else
call on Miss Odell at any time last night?"
"No one, sir," was the unhesitating reply.
"How can you be so sure?"
"I would have seen them, sir. They would have had to pass the
switchboard in order to reach this apartment."
"And don't you ever leave the switchboard?" asked Markham.
"No, sir," the man assured him vigorously, as if protesting against
the implication that he would desert a post of duty. "When I want a
drink of water, or go to the toilet, I use the little lavatory in
the reception room; but I always hold the door open and keep my eye
on the switchboard in case the pilot light should show up for a
telephone call. Nobody could walk down the hall, even if I was in
the lavatory, without my seeing them."
One could well believe that the conscientious Jessup kept his eye at
all times on the switchboard lest a call should flash and go
unanswered. The man's earnestness and reliability were obvious; and
there was no doubt in any of our minds, I think, that if Miss Odell
had had another visitor that night, Jessup would have known of it.
But Heath, with the thoroughness of his nature, rose quickly and
stepped out into the main hall. In a moment he returned, looking
troubled but satisfied.
"Right!" He nodded to Markham. "The lavatory door's on a direct
unobstructed line with the switchboard."
Jessup took no notice of this verification of his statement, and
stood, his eyes attentively on the district attorney, awaiting any
further questions that might be asked him. There was something both
admirable and confidence-inspiring in his unruffled demeanor.
"What about last night?" resumed Markham. "Did you leave the
switchboard often, or for long?"
"Just once, sir; and then only to go to the lavatory for a minute or
two. But I watched the board the whole time."
"And you'd be willing to state on oath that no one else called on
Miss Odell from ten o'clock on, and that no one, except her escort,
left her apartment after that hour?"
"Yes, sir, I would."
He was plainly telling the truth, and Markham pondered several
moments before proceeding.
"What about the side door?"
"That's kept locked all night, sir. The janitor bolts it when he
leaves and unbolts it in the morning. I never touch it."
Markham leaned back and turned to Heath.
"The testimony of the janitor and Jessup here," he said, "seems to
limit the situation pretty narrowly to Miss Odell's escort. If, as
seems reasonable to assume, the side door was bolted all night, and
if no other caller came or went through the front door, it looks as
if the man we wanted to find was the one who brought her home."
Heath gave a short, mirthless laugh. "That would be fine, sir, if
something else hadn't happened around here last night." Then to
Jessup: "Tell the district attorney the rest of the story about
this man."
Markham looked toward the operator with expectant interest; and
Vance, lifting himself on one elbow, listened attentively.
Jessup spoke in a level voice, with the alert and careful manner of
a soldier reporting to his superior officer.
"It was just this, sir. When the gentleman came out of Miss Odell's
apartment at about half past eleven, he stopped at the switchboard
and asked me to get him a Yellow Taxicab. I put the call through,
and while he was waiting for the car, Miss Odell screamed and called
for help. The gentleman turned and rushed to the apartment door,
and I followed quickly behind him. He knocked; but at first there
was no answer. Then he knocked again, and at the same time called
out to Miss Odell and asked her what was the matter. This time she
answered. She said everything was all right, and told him to go
home and not to worry. Then he walked back with me to the
switchboard, remarking that he guessed Miss Odell must have fallen
asleep and had a nightmare. We talked for a few minutes about the
war, and then the taxicab came. He said good night and went out,
and I heard the car drive away."
It was plain to see that this epilogue of the departure of Miss
Odell's anonymous escort completely upset Markham's theory of the
case. He looked down at the floor with a baffled expression and
smoked vigorously for several moments. At last he said:
"How long was it after this man came out of the apartment that you
heard Miss Odell scream?"
"About five minutes. I had put my connection through to the taxicab
company, and it was a minute or so later that she screamed."
"Was the man near the switchboard?"
"Yes, sir. In fact, he had one arm resting on it."
"How many times did Miss Odell scream? And just what did she say
when she called for help?"
"She screamed twice and then cried, 'Help! Help!'"
"And when the man knocked on the door the second time, what did he
say?"
"As near as I can recollect, sir, he said, 'Open the door, Margaret!
What's the trouble?'"
"And can you remember her exact words when she answered him?"
Jessup hesitated and frowned reflectively. "As I recall, she said,
'There's nothing the matter. I'm sorry I screamed. Everything's
all right, so please go home, and don't worry.' . . . Of course,
that may not be exactly what she said, but it was something very
close to it."
"You could hear her plainly through the door, then?"
"Oh, yes. These doors are not very thick."
Markham rose and began pacing meditatively. At length, halting in
front of the operator, he asked another question:
"Did you hear any other suspicious sounds in this apartment after
the man left?"
"Not a sound of any kind, sir," Jessup declared. "Someone from
outside the building, however, telephoned Miss Odell about ten
minutes later, and a man's voice answered from her apartment."
"What's this!" Markham spun round, and Heath sat up at attention,
his eyes wide. "Tell me every detail of that call."
Jessup complied unemotionally.
"About twenty minutes to twelve a trunk light flashed on the board,
and when I answered it, a man asked for Miss Odell. I plugged the
connection through, and after a short wait the receiver was lifted
from her phone--you can tell when a receiver's taken off the hook,
because the guide light on the board goes out--and a man's voice
answered 'Hello.' I pulled the listening-in key over, and, of
course, didn't hear any more."
There was silence in the apartment for several minutes. Then Vance,
who had been watching Jessup closely during the interview, spoke.
"By the bye, Mr. Jessup," he asked carelessly, "were you yourself,
by any chance, a bit fascinated--let us say--by the charming Miss
Odell?"
For the first time since entering the room the man appeared ill at
ease. A dull flush overspread his cheeks. "I thought she was a
very beautiful lady," he answered resolutely.
Markham gave Vance a look of disapproval, and then addressed himself
abruptly to the operator. "That will be all for the moment,
Jessup."
The man bowed stiffly and limped out.
"This case is becoming positively fascinatin'," murmured Vance,
relaxing once more upon the davenport.
"It's comforting to know that someone's enjoying it." Markham's
tone was irritable. "And what, may I ask, was the object of your
question concerning Jessup's sentiments toward the dead woman?"
"Oh, just a vagrant notion struggling in my brain," returned Vance.
"And then, y' know, a bit of boudoir racontage always enlivens a
situation, what?"
Heath, rousing himself from gloomy abstraction, spoke up.
"We've still got the fingerprints, Mr. Markham. And I'm thinking
that they're going to locate our man for us."
"But even if Dubois does identify those prints," said Markham,
"we'll have to show how the owner of them got into this place last
night. He'll claim, of course, they were made prior to the crime."
"Well, it's a sure thing," declared Heath stubbornly, "that there
was some man in here last night when Odell got back from the
theater, and that he was still here until after the other man left
at half past eleven. The woman's screams and the answering of that
phone call at twenty minutes to twelve prove it. And since Doc
Doremus said that the murder took place before midnight, there's no
getting away from the fact that the guy who was hiding in here did
the job."
"That appears incontrovertible," agreed Markham. "And I'm inclined
to think it was someone she knew. She probably screamed when he
first revealed himself, and then, recognizing him, calmed down and
told the other man out in the hall that nothing was the matter. . . .
Later on he strangled her."
"And, I might suggest," added Vance, "that his place of hiding was
that clothes press."
"Sure," the sergeant concurred. "But what's bothering me is how he
got in here. The day operator who was at the switchboard until ten
last night told me that the man who called and took Odell out to
dinner was the only visitor she had."
Markham gave a grunt of exasperation.
"Bring the day man in here," he ordered. "We've got to straighten
this thing out. SOMEBODY got in here last night, and before I
leave, I'm going to find out how it was done."
Vance gave him a look of patronizing amusement.
"Y' know, Markham," he said, "I'm not blessed with the gift of
psychic inspiration, but I have one of those strange, indescribable
feelings, as the minor poets say, that if you really contemplate
remaining in this bestrewn boudoir till you've discovered how the
mysterious visitor gained admittance here last night, you'd do jolly
well to send for your toilet access'ries and several changes of
fresh linen--not to mention your pyjamas. The chap who engineered
this little soiree planned his entrance and exit most carefully and
perspicaciously."
Markham regarded Vance dubiously but made no reply.
7
A NAMELESS VISITOR
(Tuesday, September 11; 11:15 A.M.)
Heath had stepped out into the hall, and now returned with the day
telephone operator, a sallow, thin young man who, we learned, was
named Spively. His almost black hair, which accentuated the pallor
of his face, was sleeked back from his forehead with pomade; and he
wore a very shallow moustache which barely extended beyond the alae
of his nostrils. He was dressed in an exaggeratedly dapper fashion,
in a dazzling chocolate-colored suit cut very close to his figure, a
pair of cloth-topped buttoned shoes, and a pink shirt with a stiff
turn-over collar to match. He appeared nervous, and immediately sat
down in the wicker chair by the door, fingering the sharp creases of
his trousers, and running the tip of his tongue over his lips.
Markham went straight to the point.
"I understand you were at the switchboard yesterday afternoon and
last night until ten o'clock. Is that correct?"
Spively swallowed hard and nodded his head. "Yes, sir."
"What time did Miss Odell go out to dinner?"
"About seven o'clock. I'd just sent to the restaurant next door for
some sandwiches--"
"Did she go alone?" Markham interrupted his explanation.
"No. A fella called for her."
"Did you know this 'fella'?"
"I'd seen him a couple of times calling on Miss Odell, but I didn't
know who he was."
"What did he look like?" Markham's question was uttered with
hurried impatience.
Spively's description of the girl's escort tallied with Jessup's
description of the man who had accompanied her home, though Spively
was more voluble and less precise than Jessup had been. Patently,
Miss Odell had gone out at seven and returned at eleven with the
same man.
"Now," resumed Markham, putting an added stress on his words, "I
want to know who else called on Miss Odell between the time she went
out to dinner and ten o'clock when you left the switchboard."
Spively was puzzled by the question, and his thin arched eyebrows
lifted and contracted. "I--don't understand," he stammered. "How
could any one call on Miss Odell when she was out?"
"Someone evidently did," said Markham. "And he got into her
apartment and was there when she returned at eleven."
The youth's eyes opened wide, and his lips fell apart. "My God,
sir!" he exclaimed. "So that's how they murdered her!--laid in wait
for her! . . ." He stopped abruptly, suddenly realizing his own
proximity to the mysterious chain of events that had led up to the
crime. "But nobody got into her apartment while I was on duty," he
blurted, with frightened emphasis. "Nobody! I never left the board
from the time she went out until quitting time."
"Couldn't anyone have come in the side door?"
"What! Was it unlocked?" Spively's tone was startled. "It never
is unlocked at night. The janitor bolts it when he leaves at six."
"And you didn't unbolt it last night for any purpose? Think!"
"No, sir, I didn't!" He shook his head earnestly.
"And you are positive that no one got into the apartment through the
front door after Miss Odell left?"
"Positive! I tell you I didn't leave the board the whole time, and
nobody could've got by me without my knowing it. There was only one
person that called and asked for her--"
"Oh! So someone did call!" snapped Markham. "When was it? And
what happened?--Jog your memory before you answer."
"It wasn't anything important," the youth assured him, genuinely
frightened. "Just a fella who came in and rang her bell and went
right out again."
"Never mind whether it was important or not." Markham's tone was
cold and peremptory. "What time did he call?"
"About half past nine."
"And who was he?"
"A young fella I've seen come here several times to see Miss Odell.
I don't know his name."
"Tell me exactly what took place," pursued Markham.
Again Spively swallowed hard and wetted his lips.
"It was like this," he began, with effort. "The fella came in and
started walking down the hall and I said to him, 'Miss Odell isn't
in.' But he kept on going and said, 'Oh, well, I'll ring the bell
anyway to make sure.' A telephone call came through just then, and
I let him go on. He rang the bell and knocked on the door, but of
course there wasn't any answer; and pretty soon he came on back and
said, 'I guess you were right.' Then he tossed me half a dollar and
went out."
"You actually saw him go out?" There was a note of disappointment
in Markham's voice.
"Sure, I saw him go out. He stopped just inside the front door and
lit a cigarette. Then he opened the door and turned toward
Broadway."
"'One by one the rosy petals fall,'" came Vance's indolent voice.
"A most amusin' situation!"
Markham was loath to relinquish his hope in the criminal
possibilities of this one caller who had come and gone at half past
nine.
"What was this man like?" he asked. "Can you describe him?"
Spively sat up straight, and when he answered, it was with an
enthusiasm that showed he had taken special note of the visitor.
"He was good-looking, not so old--maybe thirty. And he had on a
full-dress suit and patent-leather pumps, and a pleated silk shirt--"
"What, what?" demanded Vance, in simulated unbelief, leaning over
the back of the davenport. "A silk shirt with evening dress! Most
extr'ordin'ry!"
"Oh, a lot of the best dressers are wearing them," Spively
explained, with condescending pride. "It's all the fashion for
dancing."
"You don't say--really!" Vance appeared dumbfounded. "I must look
into this. . . . And, by the bye, when this Beau Brummel of the
silk shirt paused by the front door, did he take his cigarette from
a long flat silver case carried in his lower waistcoat pocket?"
The youth looked at Vance in admiring astonishment.
"How did you know?" he exclaimed.
"Simple deduction," Vance explained, resuming his recumbent posture.
"Large metal cigarette cases carried in the waistcoat pocket somehow
go with silk shirts for evening wear."
Markham, clearly annoyed at the interruption, cut in sharply with a
demand for the operator to proceed with his description.
"He wore his hair smoothed down," Spively continued, "and you could
see it was kind of long; but it was cut in the latest style. And he
had a small waxed moustache; and there was a big carnation in the
lapel of his coat, and he had on chamois gloves. . . ."
"My word!" murmured Vance. "A gigolo!"
Markham, with the incubus of the nightclubs riding him heavily,
frowned and took a deep breath. Vance's observation evidently had
launched him on an unpleasant train of thought.
"Was this man short or tall?" he asked next.
"He wasn't so tall--about my height," Spively explained. "And he
was sort of thin."
There was an easily recognizable undercurrent of admiration in his
tone, and I felt that this youthful telephone operator had seen in
Miss Odell's caller a certain physical and sartorial ideal. This
palpable admiration, coupled with the somewhat outré clothes
affected by the youth, permitted us to read between the lines of
his remarks a fairly accurate description of the man who had
unsuccessfully rung the dead girl's bell at half past nine the night
before.
When Spively had been dismissed, Markham rose and strode about the
room, his head enveloped in a cloud of cigar smoke, while Heath sat
stolidly watching him, his brows knit.
Vance stood up and stretched himself.
"The absorbin' problem, it would seem, remains in statu quo," he
remarked airily. "How, oh, how, did the fair Margaret's executioner
get in?"
"You know, Mr. Markham," rumbled Heath sententiously, "I've been
thinking that the fellow may have come here earlier in the
afternoon--say, before that side door was locked. Odell herself may
have let him in and hidden him when the other man came to take her
to dinner."
"It looks that way," Markham admitted. "Bring the maid in here
again, and we'll see what we can find out."
When the woman had been brought in, Markham questioned her as to her
actions during the afternoon, and learned that she had gone out at
about four to do some shopping and had returned about half past
five.
"Did Miss Odell have any visitor with her when you got back?"
"No, sir," was the prompt answer. "She was alone."
"Did she mention that anyone had called?"
"No, sir."
"Now," continued Markham, "could anyone have been hidden in this
apartment when you went home at seven?"
The maid was frankly astonished and even a little horrified. "Where
could anyone hide?" she asked, looking round the apartment.
"There are several possible places," Markham suggested: "in the
bathroom, in one of the clothes closets, under the bed, behind the
window draperies. . . ."
The woman shook her head decisively. "No one could have been
hidden," she declared. "I was in the bathroom half a dozen times,
and I got Miss Odell's gown out of the clothes closet in the
bedroom. As soon as it began to get dark, I drew all the window
shades myself. And as for the bed, it's built almost down to the
floor; no one could squeeze under it." (I glanced closely at the
bed and realized that this statement was quite true.)
"What about the clothes closet in this room?" Markham put the
question hopefully, but again the maid shook her head.
"Nobody was in there. That's where I keep my own hat and coat, and
I took them out myself when I was getting ready to go. I even put
away one of Miss Odell's old dresses in that closet before I left."
"And you are absolutely certain," reiterated Markham, "that no one
could have been hidden anywhere in these rooms at the time you went
home?"
"Absolutely, sir."
"Do you happen to remember if the key of this clothes closet was on
the inside or the outside of the lock when you opened the door to
get your hat?"
The woman paused and looked thoughtfully at the closet door. "It
was on the outside, where it always was," she announced, after
several moments' reflection. "I remember because it caught in the
chiffon of the old dress I put away."
Markham frowned and then resumed his questioning. "You say you
don't know the name of Miss Odell's dinner companion last night.
Can you tell us the names of any men she was in the habit of going
out with?"
"Miss Odell never mentioned any names to me," the woman said. "She
was very careful about it, too--secretive, you might say. You see,
I'm only here in the daytime, and the gentlemen she knew generally
came in the evening."
"And you never heard her speak of anyone of whom she was frightened--
anyone she had reason to fear?"
"No, sir--although there was one man she was trying to get rid of.
He was a bad character--I wouldn't have trusted him anywhere--and I
told Miss Odell she'd better look out for him. But she'd known him
a long time, I guess, and had been pretty soft on him once."
"How do you happen to know this?"
"One day, about a week ago," the maid explained, "I came in after
lunch, and he was with her in the other room. They didn't hear me,
because the portieres were drawn. He was demanding money, and when
she tried to put him off, he began threatening her. And she said
something that showed she'd given him money before. I made a noise,
and then they stopped arguing; and pretty soon he went out."
"What did this man look like?" Markham's interest was reviving.
"He was kind of thin--not very tall--and I'd say he was around
thirty. He had a hard face--good-looking, some would say--and pale
blue eyes that gave you the shivers. He always wore his hair
greased back, and he had a little yellow moustache pointed at the
ends."
"Ah!" said Vance. "Our gigolo!"
"Has this man been here since?" asked Markham.
"I don't know, sir--not when I was here."
"That will be all," said Markham; and the woman went out.
"She didn't help us much," complained Heath.
"What!" exclaimed Vance. "I think she did remarkably well. She
cleared up several moot points."
"And just what portions of her information do you consider
particularly illuminating?" asked Markham, with ill-concealed
annoyance.
"We now know, do we not," rejoined Vance serenely, "that no one was
lying perdu in here when the bonne departed yesterevening."
"Instead of that fact being helpful," retorted Markham, "I'd say it
added materially to the complications of the situation."
"It would appear that way, wouldn't it, now? But, then--who knows?--
it may prove to be your brightest and most comfortin' clue. . . .
Furthermore, we learned that someone evidently locked himself in
that clothes press, as witness the shifting of the key, and that,
moreover, this occulation did not occur until the abigail had gone,
or, let us say, after seven o'clock."
"Sure," said Heath with sour facetiousness; "when the side door was
bolted and an operator was sitting in the front hall, who swears
nobody came in that way."
"It is a bit mystifyin'," Vance conceded sadly.
"Mystifying? It's impossible!" grumbled Markham.
Heath, who was now staring with meditative pugnacity into the
closet, shook his head helplessly.
"What I don't understand," he ruminated, "is why, if the fellow was
hiding in the closet, he didn't ransack it when he came out, like he
did all the rest of the apartment."
"Sergeant," said Vance, "you've put your finger on the crux of the
matter. . . . Y' know, the neat, undisturbed aspect of that closet
rather suggests that the crude person who rifled these charming
rooms omitted to give it his attention because it was locked on the
inside and he couldn't open it."
"Come, come!" protested Markham. "That theory implies that there
were two unknown persons in here last night."
Vance sighed. "Harrow and alas! I know it. And we can't introduce
even one into this apartment logically. . . . Distressin', ain't
it?"
Heath sought consolation in a new line of thought.
"Anyway," he submitted, "we know that the fancy fellow with the
patent-leather pumps who called here last night at half past nine
was probably Odell's lover, and was grafting on her."
"And in just what recondite way does that obvious fact help to roll
the clouds away?" asked Vance. "Nearly every modern Delilah has an
avaricious amoroso. It would be rather singular if there wasn't
such a chap in the offing, what?"
"That's all right, too," returned Heath. "But I'll tell you
something, Mr. Vance, that maybe you don't know. The men that these
girls lose their heads over are generally crooks of some kind--
professional criminals, you understand. That's why, knowing that
this job was the work of a professional, it don't leave me cold, as
you might say, to learn that this fellow who was threatening Odell
and grafting on her was the same one who was prowling round here
last night. . . . And I'll say this, too: the description of him
sounds a whole lot like the kind of high-class burglars that hang
out at these swell all-night cafes."
"You're convinced, then," asked Vance mildly, "that this job, as you
call it, was done by a professional criminal?"
Heath was almost contemptuous in his reply. "Didn't the guy wear
gloves and use a jimmy? It was a yeggman's job, all right."
8
THE INVISIBLE MURDERER
(Tuesday, September 11; 11:45 A.M.)
Markham went to the window and stood, his hands behind him, looking
down into the little paved rear yard. After several minutes he
turned slowly.
"The situation, as I see it," he said, "boils down to this:--The
Odell girl has an engagement for dinner and the theater with a man
of some distinction. He calls for her a little after seven, and
they go out together. At eleven o'clock they return. He goes with
her into her apartment and remains half an hour. He leaves at half
past eleven and asks the phone operator to call him a taxi. While
he is waiting the girl screams and calls for help, and, in response
to his inquiries, she tells him nothing is wrong and bids him go
away. The taxi arrives, and he departs in it. Ten minutes later
someone telephones her, and a man answers from her apartment. This
morning she is found murdered, and the apartment ransacked."
He took a long draw on his cigar.
"Now, it is obvious that when she and her escort returned last
night, there was another man in this place somewhere; and it is also
obvious that the girl was alive after her escort had departed.
Therefore, we must conclude that the man who was already in the
apartment was the person who murdered her. This conclusion is
further corroborated by Doctor Doremus's report that the crime
occurred between eleven and twelve. But since her escort did not
leave till half past eleven, and spoke with her after that time, we
can put the actual hour of the murder as between half past eleven
and midnight. . . . These are the inferable facts from the evidence
thus far adduced."
"There's not much getting away from 'em," agreed Heath.
"At any rate, they're interestin'," murmured Vance.
Markham, walking up and down earnestly, continued: "The features of
the situation revolving round these inferable facts are as follows:--
There was no one hiding in the apartment at seven o'clock--the hour
the maid went home. Therefore, the murderer entered the apartment
later. First, then, let us consider the side door. At six o'clock,
an hour before the maid's departure, the janitor bolted it on the
inside, and both operators disavow emphatically that they went near
it. Moreover, you, Sergeant, found it bolted this morning. Hence,
we may assume that the door was bolted on the inside all night, and
that nobody could have entered that way. Consequently, we are
driven to the inevitable alternative that the murderer entered by
the front door. Now, let us consider this other means of entry.
The phone operator who was on duty until ten o'clock last night
asserts positively that the only person who entered the front door
and passed down the main hall to this apartment was a man who rang
the bell and, getting no answer, immediately walked out again. The
other operator, who was on duty from ten o'clock until this morning,
asserts with equal positiveness that no one entered the front door
and passed the switchboard coming to this apartment. Add to all
this the fact that every window on this floor is barred, and that no
one from upstairs can descend into the main hall without coming face
to face with the operator, and we are, for the moment, confronted
with an impasse."
Heath scratched his head and laughed mirthlessly. "It don't make
sense, does it, sir?"
"What about the next apartment?" asked Vance, "the one with the door
facing the rear passageway--No. 2, I think?"
Heath turned to him patronizingly. "I looked into that the first
thing this morning. Apartment No. 2 is occupied by a single woman;
and I woke her up at eight o'clock and searched the place. Nothing
there. Anyway, you have to walk past the switchboard to reach her
apartment the same as you do to reach this one; and nobody called on
her or left her apartment last night. What's more, Jessup, who's a
shrewd sound lad, told me this woman is a quiet, ladylike sort, and
that she and Odell didn't even know each other."
"You're so thorough, Sergeant!" murmured Vance.
"Of course," put in Markham, "it would have been possible for
someone from the other apartment to have slipped in here behind the
operator's back between seven and eleven, and then to have slipped
back after the murder. But as Sergeant Heath's search this morning
failed to uncover anyone, we can eliminate the possibility of our
man having operated from that quarter."
"I dare say you're right," Vance indifferently admitted. "But it
strikes me, Markham old dear, that your own affectin' recapitulation
of the situation jolly well eliminates the possibility of your man's
having operated from any quarter. . . . And yet he came in,
garroted the unfortunate damsel, and departed--eh, what? . . . It's
a charmin' little problem. I wouldn't have missed it for worlds."
"It's uncanny," pronounced Markham gloomily.
"It's positively spiritualistic," amended Vance. "It has the
caressin' odor of a séance. Really, y' know, I'm beginning to
suspect that some medium was hovering in the vicinage last night
doing some rather tip-top materializations. . . . I say, Markham,
could you get an indictment against an ectoplasmic emanation?"
"It wasn't no spook that made those fingerprints," growled Heath,
with surly truculence.
Markham halted his nervous pacing and regarded Vance irritably.
"Damn it! This is rank nonsense. The man got in some way, and he
got out, too. There's something wrong somewhere. Either the maid
is mistaken about someone being here when she left, or else one of
those phone operators went to sleep and won't admit it."
"Or else one of 'em's lying," supplemented Heath.
Vance shook his head. "The dusky fille de chambre, I'd say, is
eminently trustworthy. And if there was any doubt about anyone's
having come in the front door unnoticed, the lads on the switchboard
would, in the present circumstances, be only too eager to admit
it. . . . No, Markham, you'll simply have to approach this affair
from the astral plane, so to speak."
Markham grunted his distaste of Vance's jocularity. "That line of
investigation I leave to you with your metaphysical theories and
esoteric hypotheses."
"But, consider," protested Vance banteringly. "You've proved
conclusively--or, rather, you've demonstrated legally--that no one
could have entered or departed from this apartment last night; and,
as you've often told me, a court of law must decide all matters, not
in accord with the known or suspected facts, but according to the
evidence; and the evidence in this case would prove a sound alibi
for every corporeal being extant. And yet, it's not exactly
tenable, d' ye see, that the lady strangled herself. If only it had
been poison, what an exquisite and satisfyin' suicide case you'd
have! . . . Most inconsiderate of her homicidal visitor not to have
used arsenic instead of his hands!"
"Well, he strangled her," pronounced Heath. "Furthermore, I'll lay
my money on the fellow who called here last night at half past nine
and couldn't get in. He's the bird I want to talk to."
"Indeed?" Vance produced another cigarette. "I shouldn't say, to
judge from our description of him, that his conversation would prove
particularly fascinatin'."
An ugly light came into Heath's eyes. "We've got ways," he said
through his teeth, "of getting damn interesting conversation outta
people who haven't no great reputation for repartee."
Vance sighed. "How the Four Hundred needs you, my Sergeant!"
Markham looked at his watch.
"I've got pressing work at the office," he said, "and all this talk
isn't getting us anywhere." He put his hand on Heath's shoulder.
"I leave you to go ahead. This afternoon I'll have these people
brought down to my office for another questioning--maybe I can jog
their memories a bit. . . . You've got some line of investigation
planned?"
"The usual routine," replied Heath drearily. "I'll go through
Odell's papers, and I'll have three or four of my men check up on
her."
"You'd better get after the Yellow Taxicab Company right away,"
Markham suggested. "Find out, if you can, who the man was who left
here at half past eleven last night, and where he went."
"Do you imagine for one moment," asked Vance, "that if this man knew
anything about the murder, he would have stopped in the hall and
asked the operator to call a taxi for him?"
"Oh, I don't look for much in that direction." Markham's tone was
almost listless. "But the girl may have said something to him
that'll give us a lead."
Vance shook his head facetiously. "O welcome pure-ey'd Faith,
white-handed Hope, thou hovering angel, girt with golden wings!"
Markham was in no mood for chaffing. He turned to Heath, and spoke
with forced cheeriness. "Call me up later this afternoon. I may
get some new evidence out of the outfit we've just interviewed. . . .
And," he added, "be sure to put a man on guard here. I want this
apartment kept just as it is until we see a little more light."
"I'll attend to that," Heath assured him.
Markham and Vance and I went out and entered the car. A few minutes
later we were winding rapidly across town through Central Park.
"Recall our recent conversazione about footprints in the snow?"
asked Vance, as we emerged into Fifth Avenue and headed south.
Markham nodded abstractedly.
"As I remember," mused Vance, "in the hypothetical case you
presented there were not only footprints but a dozen or more
witnesses--including a youthful prodigy--who saw a figure of some
kind cross the hibernal landscape. . . . Grau, teurer Freund, ist
alle Theorie! Here you are in a most beastly pother because of the
disheartenin' fact that there are neither footprints in the snow nor
witnesses who saw a fleeing figure. In short, you are bereft of
both direct and circumstantial evidence. . . . Sad, sad."
He wagged his head dolefully.
"Y' know, Markham, it appears to me that the testimony in this case
constitutes conclusive legal proof that no one could have been with
the deceased at the hour of her passing, and that, ergo, she is
presumably alive. The strangled body of the lady is, I take it,
simply an irrelevant circumstance from the standpoint of legal
procedure. I know that you learned lawyers won't admit a murder
without a body; but how, in sweet Heaven's name, do you get around a
corpus delicti without a murder?"
"You're talking nonsense," Markham rebuked him, with a show of
anger.
"Oh, quite," agreed Vance. "And yet, it's a distressin' thing for a
lawyer not to have footprints of some kind, isn't it, old dear? It
leaves one so up in the air."
Suddenly Markham swung round. "YOU, of course, don't need
footprints, or any other kind of material clues," he flung at Vance
tauntingly. "YOU have powers of divination such as are denied
ordinary mortals. If I remember correctly, you informed me,
somewhat grandiloquently, that, knowing the nature and conditions of
a crime, you could lead me infallibly to the culprit, whether he
left footprints or not. You recall that boast? . . . Well, here's
a crime, and the perpetrator left no footprints coming or going. Be
so kind as to end my suspense by confiding in me who killed the
Odell girl."
Vance's serenity was not ruffled by Markham's ill-humored challenge.
He sat smoking lazily for several minutes; then he leaned over and
flicked his cigarette ash out of the window.
"'Pon my word, Markham," he rejoined evenly, "I'm half inclined to
look into this silly murder. I think I'll wait, though, and see
whom the nonplussed Heath turns up with his inquiries."
Markham grunted scoffingly and sank back on the cushions. "Your
generosity wrings me," he said.
9
THE PACK IN FULL CRY
(Tuesday, September 11; afternoon)
On our way downtown that morning we were delayed for a considerable
time in the traffic congestion just north of Madison Square, and
Markham anxiously looked at his watch.
"It's past noon," he said. "I think I'll stop at the club and have
a bite of lunch. . . . I presume that eating at this early hour
would be too plebeian for so exquisite a hothouse flower as you."
Vance considered the invitation.
"Since you deprived me of my breakfast," he decided, "I'll permit
you to buy me some eggs Bénédictine."
A few minutes later we entered the almost empty grill of the
Stuyvesant Club and took a table near one of the windows looking
southward over the treetops of Madison Square.
Shortly after we had given our order a uniformed attendant entered
and, bowing deferentially at the district attorney's elbow, held out
an unaddressed communication sealed in one of the club's envelopes.
Markham read it with an expression of growing curiosity, and as he
studied the signature a look of mild surprise came into his eyes.
At length he looked up and nodded to the waiting attendant. Then,
excusing himself, he left us abruptly. It was fully twenty minutes
before he returned.
"Funny thing," he said. "That note was from the man who took the
Odell woman to dinner and the theater last night. . . . A small
world," he mused. "He's staying here at the club--he's a
nonresident member and makes it his headquarters when he's in town."
"You know him?" Vance put the question disinterestedly.
"I've met him several times--chap named Spotswoode." Markham seemed
perplexed. "He's a man of family, lives in a country house on Long
Island, and is regarded generally as a highly respectable member of
society--one of the last persons I'd suspect of being mixed up with
the Odell girl. But, according to his own confession, he played
around a good deal with her during his visits to New York--'sowing a
few belated wild oats,' as he expressed it--and last night took her
to Francelle's for dinner and to the Winter Garden afterwards."
"Not my idea of an intellectual, or even edifyin', evening,"
commented Vance. "And he selected a deuced unlucky day for it I
say, imagine opening the morning paper and learning that your petite
dame of the preceding evening had been strangled! Disconcertin',
what?"
"He's certainly disconcerted," said Markham. "The early afternoon
papers were out about an hour ago, and he'd been phoning my office
every ten minutes, when I suddenly walked in here. He's afraid his
connection with the girl will leak out and disgrace him."
"And won't it?"
"I hardly see the necessity. No one knows who her escort was last
evening; and since he obviously had nothing to do with the crime,
what's to be gained by dragging him into it? He told me the whole
story, and offered to stay in the city as long as I wanted him to."
"I infer, from the cloud of disappointment that enveloped you when
you returned just now, that his story held nothing hopeful for you
in the way of clues."
"No," Markham admitted. "The girl apparently never spoke to him of
her intimate affairs; and he couldn't give me a single helpful
suggestion. His account of what happened last night agreed
perfectly with Jessup's. He called for the girl at seven, brought
her home at about eleven, stayed with her half an hour or so, and
then left her. When he heard her call for help, he was frightened,
but on being assured by her there was nothing wrong, he concluded
she had dozed off into a nightmare, and thought no more of it. He
drove direct to the club here, arriving about ten minutes to twelve.
Judge Redfern, who saw him descend from the taxi, insisted on his
coming upstairs and playing poker with some men who were waiting in
the judge's rooms for him. They played until three o'clock this
morning."
"Your Long Island Don Juan has certainly not supplied you with any
footprints in the snow."
"Anyway, his coming forward at this time closes one line of inquiry
over which we might have wasted considerable time."
"If many more lines of inquiry are closed," remarked Vance dryly,
"you'll be in a distressin' dilemma, don't y' know."
"There are enough still open to keep me busy," said Markham, pushing
back his plate and calling for the check. He rose; then pausing,
regarded Vance meditatingly. "Are you sufficiently interested to
want to come along?"
"Eh, what? My word! . . . Charmed, I'm sure. But, I say, sit down
just a moment--there's a good fellow!--till I finish my coffee."
I was considerably astonished at Vance's ready acceptance, careless
and bantering though it was, for there was an exhibition of old
Chinese prints at the Montross Galleries that afternoon, which he
had planned to attend. A Riokai and a Moyeki, said to be very fine
examples of Sung painting, were to be shown; and Vance was
particularly eager to acquire them for his collection.
We rode with Markham to the Criminal Courts building and, entering
by the Franklin Street door, took the pr