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- Herausgeber: Musaicum Books
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017
The Complete Philo Vance Murder Mystery Series (Illustrated Edition) by S.S. Van Dine is a literary masterpiece that revolutionized the detective genre in the early 20th century. The book consists of a collection of intricate murder mysteries featuring the enigmatic detective Philo Vance, known for his astute intellect and unconventional methods of deduction. Van Dine's writing style is characterized by its detailed descriptions, complex plotlines, and witty dialogue, which captivate readers from start to finish. The illustrations included in this edition enhance the reading experience, bringing the characters and settings to life. S.S. Van Dine, a pseudonym for Willard Huntington Wright, was influenced by his background in art, literature, and criminology when creating the character of Philo Vance. Through his works, Van Dine sought to elevate the detective genre by incorporating intellectual puzzles and psychological depth into his stories. His innovative approach to crime fiction paved the way for future writers and continues to inspire readers and writers alike. I highly recommend The Complete Philo Vance Murder Mystery Series to fans of classic detective fiction and those interested in exploring the evolution of the genre. Van Dine's intricate plots, engaging characters, and timeless storytelling make this collection a must-read for mystery enthusiasts.
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The Complete Philo Vance Murder Mystery Series (Illustrated Edition)
Table of Contents
THE BENSON MURDER CASE
“Mr. Mason,” he said, “I wish to thank you for my life.” “Sir,” said Mason, “I had no interest in your life. The adjustment of your problem was the only thing of interest to me.”
—
INTRODUCTORY
If you will refer to the municipal statistics of the City of New York, you will find that the number of unsolved major crimes during the four years that John F.-X. Markham was District Attorney, was far smaller than under any of his predecessors’ administrations. Markham projected the District Attorney’s office into all manner of criminal investigations; and, as a result, many abstruse crimes on which the Police had hopelessly gone aground, were eventually disposed of.
But although he was personally credited with the many important indictments and subsequent convictions that he secured, the truth is that he was only an instrument in many of his most famous cases. The man who actually solved them and supplied the evidence for their prosecution, was in no way connected with the city’s administration, and never once came into the public eye.
At that time I happened to be both legal advisor and personal friend of this other man; and it was thus that the strange and amazing facts of the situation became known to me. But not until recently have I been at liberty to make them public. Even now I am not permitted to divulge the man’s name, and, for that reason, I have chosen, arbitrarily, to refer to him throughout these ex-officio reports as Philo Vance.
It is, of course, possible that some of his acquaintances may, through my revelations, be able to guess his identity; and if such should prove the case, I beg of them to guard that knowledge; for though he has now gone to Italy to live, and has given me permission to record the exploits of which he was the unique central character, he has very emphatically imposed his anonymity upon me; and I should not like to feel that, through any lack of discretion or delicacy, I have been the cause of his secret becoming generally known.
The present chronicle has to do with Vance’s solution of the notorious Benson murder which, due to the unexpectedness of the crime, the prominence of the persons involved, and the startling evidence adduced, was invested with an interest rarely surpassed in the annals of New York’s criminal history.
This sensational case was the first of many in which Vance figured as a kind of amicus curiæ in Markham’s investigations.
S. S. Van Dine.
New York.
Table of Contents
CHARACTERS OF THE BOOK
Philo Vance
John F.-X. Markham
District Attorney of New York County.
Alvin H. Benson
Well-known Wall Street broker and man-about-town, who was mysteriously murdered in his home.
Major Anthony Benson
Brother of the murdered man.
Mrs. Anna Platz
Housekeeper for Alvin Benson.
Muriel St. Clair
A young singer.
Captain Philip Leacock
Miss St. Clair’s fiancé.
Leander Pfyfe
Intimate friend of Alvin Benson’s.
Mrs. Paula Banning
A friend of Leander Pfyfe’s.
Elsie Hoffman
Secretary of the firm of Benson and Benson.
Colonel Bigsby Ostrander
A retired army officer.
William H. Moriarty
An alderman, Borough of the Bronx.
Jack Prisco
Elevator-boy at the Chatham Arms.
George G. Stitt
Of the firm of Stitt and McCoy, Public Accountants.
Maurice Dinwiddie
Assistant District Attorney.
Chief Inspector O’Brien
Of the Police Department of New York City.
William M. Moran
Commanding Officer of the Detective Bureau.
Ernest Heath
Sergeant of the Homicide Bureau.
Burke
Detective of the Homicide Bureau.
Snitkin
Detective of the Homicide Bureau.
Emery
Detective of the Homicide Bureau.
Ben Hanlon
Commanding Officer of Detectives assigned to District Attorney’s office.
Phelps
Detective assigned to District Attorney’s office.
Tracy
Detective assigned to District Attorney’s office.
Springer
Detective assigned to District Attorney’s office.
Higginbotham
Detective assigned to District Attorney’s office.
Captain Carl Hagedorn
Fire-arms expert.
Dr. Doremus
Medical Examiner.
Francis Swacker
Secretary to the District Attorney.
Currie
Vance’s valet.
CHAPTER I PHILO VANCE AT HOME
(Friday, June 14; 8.30 a.m.)
It happened that, on the morning of the momentous June the fourteenth when the discovery of the murdered body of Alvin H. Benson created a sensation which, to this day, has not entirely died away, I had breakfasted with Philo Vance in his apartment. It was not unusual for me to share Vance’s luncheons and dinners, but to have breakfast with him was something of an occasion. He was a late riser, and it was his habit to remain incommunicado until his midday meal.
The reason for this early meeting was a matter of business—or, rather, of æsthetics. On the afternoon of the previous day Vance had attended a preview of Vollard’s collection of Cézanne water-colors at the Kessler Galleries, and having seen several pictures he particularly wanted, he had invited me to an early breakfast to give me instructions regarding their purchase.
A word concerning my relationship with Vance is necessary to clarify my rôle of narrator in this chronicle. The legal tradition is deeply imbedded in my family, and when my preparatory-school days were over, I was sent, almost as a matter of course, to Harvard to study law. It was there I met Vance, a reserved, cynical and caustic freshman who was the bane of his professors and the fear of his fellow-classmen. Why he should have chosen me, of all the students at the University, for his extra-scholastic association, I have never been able to understand fully. My own liking for Vance was simply explained: he fascinated and interested me, and supplied me with a novel kind of intellectual diversion. In his liking for me, however, no such basis of appeal was present. I was (and am now) a commonplace fellow, possessed of a conservative and rather conventional mind. But, at least, my mentality was not rigid, and the ponderosity of the legal procedure did not impress me greatly—which is why, no doubt, I had little taste for my inherited profession—; and it is possible that these traits found certain affinities in Vance’s unconscious mind. There is, to be sure, the less consoling explanation that I appealed to Vance as a kind of foil, or anchorage, and that he sensed in my nature a complementary antithesis to his own. But whatever the explanation, we were much together; and, as the years went by, that association ripened into an inseparable friendship.
Upon graduation I entered my father’s law firm—Van Dine and Davis—and after five years of dull apprenticeship I was taken into the firm as the junior partner. At present I am the second Van Dine of Van Dine, Davis and Van Dine, with offices at 120 Broadway. At about the time my name first appeared on the letter-heads of the firm, Vance returned from Europe, where he had been living during my legal novitiate, and, an aunt of his having died and made him her principal beneficiary, I was called upon to discharge the technical obligations involved in putting him in possession of his inherited property.
This work was the beginning of a new and somewhat unusual relationship between us. Vance had a strong distaste for any kind of business transaction, and in time I became the custodian of all his monetary interests and his agent at large. I found that his affairs were various enough to occupy as much of my time as I cared to give to legal matters, and as Vance was able to indulge the luxury of having a personal legal factotum, so to speak, I permanently closed my desk at the office, and devoted myself exclusively to his needs and whims.
If, up to the time when Vance summoned me to discuss the purchase of the Cézannes, I had harbored any secret or repressed regrets for having deprived the firm of Van Dine, Davis and Van Dine of my modest legal talents, they were permanently banished on that eventful morning; for, beginning with the notorious Benson murder, and extending over a period of nearly four years, it was my privilege to be a spectator of what I believe was the most amazing series of criminal cases that ever passed before the eyes of a young lawyer. Indeed, the grim dramas I witnessed during that period constitute one of the most astonishing secret documents in the police history of this country.
Of these dramas Vance was the central character. By an analytical and interpretative process which, as far as I know, has never before been applied to criminal activities, he succeeded in solving many of the important crimes on which both the police and the District Attorney’s office had hopelessly fallen down.
Due to my peculiar relations with Vance it happened that not only did I participate in all the cases with which he was connected, but I was also present at most of the informal discussions concerning them which took place between him and the District Attorney; and, being of methodical temperament, I kept a fairly complete record of them. In addition, I noted down (as accurately as memory permitted) Vance’s unique psychological methods of determining guilt, as he explained them from time to time. It is fortunate that I performed this gratuitous labor of accumulation and transcription, for now that circumstances have unexpectedly rendered possible my making the cases public, I am able to present them in full detail and with all their various side-lights and succeeding steps—a task that would be impossible were it not for my numerous clippings and adversaria.
Fortunately, too, the first case to draw Vance into its ramifications was that of Alvin Benson’s murder. Not only did it prove one of the most famous of New York’s causes célèbres, but it gave Vance an excellent opportunity of displaying his rare talents of deductive reasoning, and, by its nature and magnitude, aroused his interest in a branch of activity which heretofore had been alien to his temperamental promptings and habitual predilections.
The case intruded upon Vance’s life suddenly and unexpectedly, although he himself had, by a casual request made to the District Attorney over a month before, been the involuntary agent of this destruction of his normal routine. The thing, in fact, burst upon us before we had quite finished our breakfast on that mid-June morning, and put an end temporarily to all business connected with the purchase of the Cézanne paintings. When, later in the day, I visited the Kessler Galleries, two of the water-colors that Vance had particularly desired had been sold; and I am convinced that, despite his success in the unravelling of the Benson murder mystery and his saving of at least one innocent person from arrest, he has never to this day felt entirely compensated for the loss of those two little sketches on which he had set his heart.
As I was ushered into the living-room that morning by Currie, a rare old English servant who acted as Vance’s butler, valet, major-domo and, on occasions, specialty cook, Vance was sitting in a large armchair, attired in a surah silk dressing-gown and grey suède slippers, with Vollard’s book on Cézanne open across his knees.
“Forgive my not rising, Van,” he greeted me casually. “I have the whole weight of the modern evolution in art resting on my legs. Furthermore, this plebeian early rising fatigues me, y’ know.”
He riffled the pages of the volume, pausing here and there at a reproduction.
“This chap Vollard,” he remarked at length, “has been rather liberal with our art-fearing country. He has sent a really goodish collection of his Cézannes here. I viewed ’em yesterday with the proper reverence and, I might add, unconcern, for Kessler was watching me; and I’ve marked the ones I want you to buy for me as soon as the Gallery opens this morning.”
He handed me a small catalogue he had been using as a book-mark.
“A beastly assignment, I know,” he added, with an indolent smile. “These delicate little smudges with all their blank paper will prob’bly be meaningless to your legal mind—they’re so unlike a neatly-typed brief, don’t y’ know. And you’ll no doubt think some of ’em are hung upside-down,—one of ’em is, in fact, and even Kessler doesn’t know it. But don’t fret, Van old dear. They’re very beautiful and valuable little knickknacks, and rather inexpensive when one considers what they’ll be bringing in a few years. Really an excellent investment for some money-loving soul, y’ know—inf’nitely better than that Lawyer’s Equity Stock over which you grew so eloquent at the time of my dear Aunt Agatha’s death.”1
Vance’s one passion (if a purely intellectual enthusiasm may be called a passion) was art—not art in its narrow, personal aspects, but in its broader, more universal significance. And art was not only his dominating interest, but his chief diversion. He was something of an authority on Japanese and Chinese prints; he knew tapestries and ceramics; and once I heard him give an impromptu causerie to a few guests on Tanagra figurines, which, had it been transcribed, would have made a most delightful and instructive monograph.
Vance had sufficient means to indulge his instinct for collecting, and possessed a fine assortment of pictures and objets d’art. His collection was heterogeneous only in its superficial characteristics: every piece he owned embodied some principle of form or line that related it to all the others. One who knew art could feel the unity and consistency in all the items with which he surrounded himself, however widely separated they were in point of time or métier or surface appeal. Vance, I have always felt, was one of those rare human beings, a collector with a definite philosophic point of view.
His apartment in East Thirty-eighth Street—actually the two top floors of an old mansion, beautifully remodelled and in part rebuilt to secure spacious rooms and lofty ceilings—was filled, but not crowded, with rare specimens of oriental and occidental, ancient and modern, art. His paintings ranged from the Italian primitives to Cézanne and Matisse; and among his collection of original drawings were works as widely separated as those of Michelangelo and Picasso. Vance’s Chinese prints constituted one of the finest private collections in this country. They included beautiful examples of the work of Ririomin, Rianchu, Jinkomin, Kakei and Mokkei.
“The Chinese,” Vance once said to me, “are the truly great artists of the East. They were the men whose work expressed most intensely a broad philosophic spirit. By contrast the Japanese were superficial. It’s a long step between the little more than decorative souci of a Hokusai and the profoundly thoughtful and conscious artistry of a Ririomin. Even when Chinese art degenerated under the Manchus, we find in it a deep philosophic quality—a spiritual sensibilité, so to speak. And in the modern copies of copies—what is called the bunjinga style—we still have pictures of profound meaning.”
Vance’s catholicity of taste in art was remarkable. His collection was as varied as that of a museum. It embraced a black-figured amphora by Amasis, a proto-Corinthian vase in the Ægean style, Koubatcha and Rhodian plates, Athenian pottery, a sixteenth-century Italian holy-water stoup of rock crystal, pewter of the Tudor period (several pieces bearing the double-rose hall-mark), a bronze plaque by Cellini, a triptych of Limoges enamel, a Spanish retable of an altar-piece by Vallfogona, several Etruscan bronzes, an Indian Greco Buddhist, a statuette of the Goddess Kuan Yin from the Ming Dynasty, a number of very fine Renaissance wood-cuts, and several specimens of Byzantine, Carolingian and early French ivory carvings.
His Egyptian treasures included a gold jug from Zakazik, a statuette of the Lady Nai (as lovely as the one in the Louvre), two beautifully carved steles of the First Theban Age, various small sculptures comprising rare representations of Hapi and Amset, and several Arrentine bowls carved with Kalathiskos dancers. On top of one of his embayed Jacobean book cases in the library, where most of his modern paintings and drawings were hung, was a fascinating group of African sculpture—ceremonial masks and statuette-fetishes from French Guinea, the Sudan, Nigeria, the Ivory Coast, and the Congo.
A definite purpose has animated me in speaking at such length about Vance’s art instinct, for, in order to understand fully the melodramatic adventures which began for him on that June morning, one must have a general idea of the man’s penchants and inner promptings. His interest in art was an important—one might almost say the dominant—factor in his personality. I have never met a man quite like him—a man so apparently diversified, and yet so fundamentally consistent.
Vance was what many would call a dilettante. But the designation does him injustice. He was a man of unusual culture and brilliance. An aristocrat by birth and instinct, he held himself severely aloof from the common world of men. In his manner there was an indefinable contempt for inferiority of all kinds. The great majority of those with whom he came in contact regarded him as a snob. Yet there was in his condescension and disdain no trace of spuriousness. His snobbishness was intellectual as well as social. He detested stupidity even more, I believe, than he did vulgarity or bad taste. I have heard him on several occasions quote Fouché’s famous line: C’est plus qu’un crime; c’est une faute. And he meant it literally.
Vance was frankly a cynic, but he was rarely bitter: his was a flippant, Juvenalian cynicism. Perhaps he may best be described as a bored and supercilious, but highly conscious and penetrating, spectator of life. He was keenly interested in all human reactions; but it was the interest of the scientist, not the humanitarian. Withal he was a man of rare personal charm. Even people who found it difficult to admire him, found it equally difficult not to like him. His somewhat quixotic mannerisms and his slightly English accent and inflection—a heritage of his post-graduate days at Oxford—impressed those who did not know him well, as affectations. But the truth is, there was very little of the poseur about him.
He was unusually good-looking, although his mouth was ascetic and cruel, like the mouths on some of the Medici portraits2; moreover, there was a slightly derisive hauteur in the lift of his eyebrows. Despite the aquiline severity of his lineaments his face was highly sensitive. His forehead was full and sloping—it was the artist’s, rather than the scholar’s, brow. His cold grey eyes were widely spaced. His nose was straight and slender, and his chin narrow but prominent, with an unusually deep cleft. When I saw John Barrymore recently in Hamlet I was somehow reminded of Vance; and once before, in a scene of Cæsar and Cleopatra played by Forbes-Robertson, I received a similar impression.3
Vance was slightly under six feet, graceful, and giving the impression of sinewy strength and nervous endurance. He was an expert fencer, and had been the Captain of the University’s fencing team. He was mildly fond of outdoor sports, and had a knack of doings things well without any extensive practice. His golf handicap was only three; and one season he had played on our championship polo team against England. Nevertheless, he had a positive antipathy to walking, and would not go a hundred yards on foot if there was any possible means of riding.
In his dress he was always fashionable—scrupulously correct to the smallest detail—yet unobtrusive. He spent considerable time at his clubs: his favorite was the Stuyvesant, because, as he explained to me, its membership was drawn largely from the political and commercial ranks, and he was never drawn into a discussion which required any mental effort. He went occasionally to the more modern operas, and was a regular subscriber to the symphony concerts and chamber-music recitals.
Incidentally, he was one of the most unerring poker players I have ever seen. I mention this fact not merely because it was unusual and significant that a man of Vance’s type should have preferred so democratic a game to bridge or chess, for instance, but because his knowledge of the science of human psychology involved in poker had an intimate bearing on the chronicles I am about to set down.
Vance’s knowledge of psychology was indeed uncanny. He was gifted with an instinctively accurate judgment of people, and his study and reading had co-ordinated and rationalized this gift to an amazing extent. He was well grounded in the academic principles of psychology, and all his courses at college had either centered about this subject or been subordinated to it. While I was confining myself to a restricted area of torts and contracts, constitutional and common law, equity, evidence and pleading, Vance was reconnoitring the whole field of cultural endeavor. He had courses in the history of religions, the Greek classics, biology, civics and political economy, philosophy, anthropology, literature, theoretical and experimental psychology, and ancient and modern languages.4 But it was, I think, his courses under Münsterberg and William James that interested him the most.
Vance’s mind was basically philosophical—that is, philosophical in the more general sense. Being singularly free from the conventional sentimentalities and current superstitions, he could look beneath the surface of human acts into actuating impulses and motives. Moreover, he was resolute both in his avoidance of any attitude that savored of credulousness, and in his adherence to cold, logical exactness in his mental processes.
“Until we can approach all human problems,” he once remarked, “with the clinical aloofness and cynical contempt of a doctor examining a guinea-pig strapped to a board, we have little chance of getting at the truth.”
Vance led an active, but by no means animated, social life—a concession to various family ties. But he was not a social animal.—I can not remember ever having met a man with so undeveloped a gregarious instinct,—and when he went forth into the social world it was generally under compulsion. In fact, one of his “duty” affairs had occupied him on the night before that memorable June breakfast; otherwise, we would have consulted about the Cézannes the evening before; and Vance groused a good deal about it while Currie was serving our strawberries and eggs Bénédictine. Later on I was to give profound thanks to the God of Coincidence that the blocks had been arranged in just that pattern; for had Vance been slumbering peacefully at nine o’clock when the District Attorney called, I would probably have missed four of the most interesting and exciting years of my life; and many of New York’s shrewdest and most desperate criminals might still be at large.
Vance and I had just settled back in our chairs for our second cup of coffee and a cigarette when Currie, answering an impetuous ringing of the front-door bell, ushered the District Attorney into the living-room.
“By all that’s holy!” he exclaimed, raising his hands in mock astonishment. “New York’s leading flâneur and art connoisseur is up and about!”
“And I am suffused with blushes at the disgrace of it,” Vance replied.
It was evident, however, that the District Attorney was not in a jovial mood. His face suddenly sobered.
“Vance, a serious thing has brought me here. I’m in a great hurry, and merely dropped by to keep my promise. . . . The fact is, Alvin Benson has been murdered.”
Vance lifted his eyebrows languidly.
“Really, now,” he drawled. “How messy! But he no doubt deserved it. In any event, that’s no reason why you should repine. Take a chair and have a cup of Currie’s incomp’rable coffee.” And before the other could protest, he rose and pushed a bell-button.
Markham hesitated a second or two.
“Oh, well. A couple of minutes won’t make any difference. But only a gulp.” And he sank into a chair facing us.
1. As a matter of fact, the same water-colors that Vance obtained for $250 and $300, were bringing three times as much four years later.
2. I am thinking particularly of Bronzino’s portraits of Pietro de’ Medici and Cosimo de’ Medici, in the National Gallery, and of Vasari’s medallion portrait of Lorenzo de’ Medici in the Vecchio Palazzo, Florence.
3. Once when Vance was suffering from sinusitis, he had an X-ray photograph of his head made; and the accompanying chart described him as a “marked dolichocephalic” and a “disharmonious Nordic.” It also contained the following data:—cephalic index 75; nose, leptorhine, with an index of 48; facial angle, 85°; vertical index, 72; upper facial index, 54; interpupilary width, 67; chin, masognathous, with an index of 103; sella turcica, abnormally large.
4. “Culture,” Vance said to me shortly after I had met him, “is polyglot; and the knowledge of many tongues is essential to an understanding of the world’s intellectual and æsthetic achievements. Especially are the Greek and Latin classics vitiated by translation.” I quote the remark here because his omnivorous reading in languages other than English, coupled with his amazingly retentive memory, had a tendency to affect his own speech. And while it may appear to some that his speech was at times pedantic, I have tried, throughout these chronicles to quote him literally, in the hope of presenting a portrait of the man as he was.
CHAPTER II AT THE SCENE OF THE CRIME
(Friday, June 14; 9 a.m.)
John F.-X. Markham, as you remember, had been elected District Attorney of New York County on the Independent Reform Ticket during one of the city’s periodical reactions against Tammany Hall. He served his four years, and would probably have been elected to a second term had not the ticket been hopelessly split by the political juggling of his opponents. He was an indefatigable worker, and projected the District Attorney’s office into all manner of criminal and civil investigations. Being utterly incorruptible, he not only aroused the fervid admiration of his constituents, but produced an almost unprecedented sense of security in those who had opposed him on partisan lines.
He had been in office only a few months when one of the newspapers referred to him as the Watch Dog; and the sobriquet clung to him until the end of his administration. Indeed, his record as a successful prosecutor during the four years of his incumbency was such a remarkable one that even to-day it is not infrequently referred to in legal and political discussions.
Markham was a tall, strongly-built man in the middle forties, with a clean-shaven, somewhat youthful face which belied his uniformly grey hair. He was not handsome according to conventional standards, but he had an unmistakable air of distinction, and was possessed of an amount of social culture rarely found in our latter-day political office-holders. Withal he was a man of brusque and vindictive temperament; but his brusqueness was an incrustation on a solid foundation of good-breeding, not—as is usually the case—the roughness of substructure showing through an inadequately superimposed crust of gentility.
When his nature was relieved of the stress of duty and care, he was the most gracious of men. But early in my acquaintance with him I had seen his attitude of cordiality suddenly displaced by one of grim authority. It was as if a new personality—hard, indomitable, symbolic of eternal justice—had in that moment been born in Markham’s body. I was to witness this transformation many times before our association ended. In fact, this very morning, as he sat opposite to me in Vance’s living-room, there was more than a hint of it in the aggressive sternness of his expression; and I knew that he was deeply troubled over Alvin Benson’s murder.
He swallowed his coffee rapidly, and was setting down the cup, when Vance, who had been watching him with quizzical amusement, remarked:
“I say; why this sad preoccupation over the passing of one Benson? You weren’t, by any chance, the murderer, what?”
Markham ignored Vance’s levity.
“I’m on my way to Benson’s. Do you care to come along? You asked for the experience, and I dropped in to keep my promise.”
I then recalled that several weeks before at the Stuyvesant Club, when the subject of the prevalent homicides in New York was being discussed, Vance had expressed a desire to accompany the District Attorney on one of his investigations; and that Markham had promised to take him on his next important case. Vance’s interest in the psychology of human behavior had prompted the desire, and his friendship with Markham, which had been of long standing, had made the request possible.
“You remember everything, don’t you?” Vance replied lazily. “An admirable gift, even if an uncomfortable one.” He glanced at the clock on the mantel: it lacked a few minutes of nine. “But what an indecent hour! Suppose someone should see me.”
Markham moved forward impatiently in his chair.
“Well, if you think the gratification of your curiosity would compensate you for the disgrace of being seen in public at nine o’clock in the morning, you’ll have to hurry. I certainly won’t take you in dressing-gown and bed-room slippers. And I most certainly won’t wait over five minutes for you to get dressed.”
“Why the haste, old dear?” Vance asked, yawning. “The chap’s dead, don’t y’ know; he can’t possibly run away.”
“Come, get a move on, you orchid,” the other urged. “This affair is no joke. It’s damned serious; and from the looks of it, it’s going to cause an ungodly scandal.—What are you going to do?”
“Do? I shall humbly follow the great avenger of the common people,” returned Vance, rising and making an obsequious bow.
He rang for Currie, and ordered his clothes brought to him.
“I’m attending a levee which Mr. Markham is holding over a corpse, and I want something rather spiffy. Is it warm enough for a silk suit? . . . And a lavender tie, by all means.”
“I trust you won’t also wear your green carnation,” grumbled Markham.
“Tut! Tut!” Vance chided him. “You’ve been reading Mr. Hichens. Such heresy in a district attorney! Anyway, you know full well I never wear boutonnières. The decoration has fallen into disrepute. The only remaining devotees of the practice are roués and saxophone players. . . . But tell me about the departed Benson.”
Vance was now dressing, with Currie’s assistance, at a rate of speed I had rarely seen him display in such matters. Beneath his bantering pose I recognized the true eagerness of the man for a new experience and one that promised such dramatic possibilities for his alert and observing mind.
“You knew Alvin Benson casually, I believe,” the District Attorney said. “Well, early this morning his housekeeper ’phoned the local precinct station that she had found him shot through the head, fully dressed and sitting in his favorite chair in his living-room. The message, of course, was put through at once to the Telegraph Bureau at Headquarters, and my assistant on duty notified me immediately. I was tempted to let the case follow the regular police routine. But half an hour later Major Benson, Alvin’s brother, ’phoned me and asked me, as a special favor, to take charge. I’ve known the Major for twenty years, and I couldn’t very well refuse. So I took a hurried breakfast and started for Benson’s house. He lived in West Forty-eighth Street; and as I passed your corner I remembered your request, and dropped by to see if you cared to go along.”
“Most consid’rate,” murmured Vance, adjusting his four-in-hand before a small polychrome mirror by the door. Then he turned to me. “Come, Van. We’ll all gaze upon the defunct Benson. I’m sure some of Markham’s sleuths will unearth the fact that I detested the bounder and accuse me of the crime; and I’ll feel safer, don’t y’ know, with legal talent at hand. . . . No objections—eh, what, Markham?”
“Certainly not,” the other agreed readily, although I felt that he would rather not have had me along. But I was too deeply interested in the affair to offer any ceremonious objections, and I followed Vance and Markham downstairs.
As we settled back in the waiting taxicab and started up Madison Avenue, I marvelled a little, as I had often done before, at the strange friendship of these two dissimilar men beside me—Markham forthright, conventional, a trifle austere, and over-serious in his dealings with life; and Vance casual, mercurial, debonair, and whimsically cynical in the face of the grimmest realities. And yet this temperamental diversity seemed, in some wise, the very cornerstone of their friendship: it was as if each saw in the other some unattainable field of experience and sensation that had been denied himself. Markham represented to Vance the solid and immutable realism of life, whereas Vance symbolized for Markham the care-free, exotic, gypsy spirit of intellectual adventure. Their intimacy, in fact, was even greater than showed on the surface; and despite Markham’s exaggerated deprecations of the other’s attitudes and opinions, I believe he respected Vance’s intelligence more profoundly than that of any other man he knew.
As we rode up town that morning Markham appeared preoccupied and gloomy. No word had been spoken since we left the apartment; but as we turned west into Forty-eighth Street Vance asked:
“What is the social etiquette of these early-morning murder functions, aside from removing one’s hat in the presence of the body?”
“You keep your hat on,” growled Markham.
“My word! Like a synagogue, what? Most int’restin’! Perhaps one takes off one’s shoes so as not to confuse the footprints.”
“No,” Markham told him. “The guests remain fully clothed—in which the function differs from the ordinary evening affairs of your smart set.”
“My dear Markham!”—Vance’s tone was one of melancholy reproof—“The horrified moralist in your nature is at work again. That remark of yours was pos’tively Epworth Leaguish.”
Markham was too abstracted to follow up Vance’s badinage.
“There are one or two things,” he said soberly, “that I think I’d better warn you about. From the looks of it, this case is going to cause considerable noise, and there’ll be a lot of jealousy and battling for honors. I won’t be fallen upon and caressed affectionately by the police for coming in at this stage of the game; so be careful not to rub their bristles the wrong way. My assistant, who’s there now, tells me he thinks the Inspector has put Heath in charge. Heath’s a sergeant in the Homicide Bureau, and is undoubtedly convinced at the present moment that I’m taking hold in order to get the publicity.”
“Aren’t you his technical superior?” asked Vance.
“Of course; and that makes the situation just so much more delicate. . . . I wish to God the Major hadn’t called me up.”
“Eheu!” sighed Vance. “The world is full of Heaths. Beastly nuisances.”
“Don’t misunderstand me,” Markham hastened to assure him. “Heath is a good man—in fact, as good a man as we’ve got. The mere fact that he was assigned to the case shows how seriously the affair is regarded at Headquarters. There’ll be no unpleasantness about my taking charge, you understand; but I want the atmosphere to be as halcyon as possible. Heath’ll resent my bringing along you two chaps as spectators, anyway; so I beg of you, Vance, emulate the modest violet.”
“I prefer the blushing rose, if you don’t mind,” Vance protested. “However, I’ll instantly give the hypersensitive Heath one of my choicest Régie cigarettes with the rose-petal tips.”
“If you do,” smiled Markham, “he’ll probably arrest you as a suspicious character.”
We had drawn up abruptly in front of an old brownstone residence on the upper side of Forty-eighth Street, near Sixth Avenue. It was a house of the better class, built on a twenty-five-foot lot in a day when permanency and beauty were still matters of consideration among the city’s architects. The design was conventional, to accord with the other houses in the block, but a touch of luxury and individuality was to be seen in its decorative copings and in the stone carvings about the entrance and above the windows.
There was a shallow paved areaway between the street line and the front elevation of the house; but this was enclosed in a high iron railing, and the only entrance was by way of the front door, which was about six feet above the street level at the top of a flight of ten broad stone stairs. Between the entrance and the right-hand wall were two spacious windows covered with heavy iron grilles.
A considerable crowd of morbid onlookers had gathered in front of the house; and on the steps lounged several alert-looking young men whom I took to be newspaper reporters. The door of our taxicab was opened by a uniformed patrolman who saluted Markham with exaggerated respect and ostentatiously cleared a passage for us through the gaping throng of idlers. Another uniformed patrolman stood in the little vestibule, and on recognizing Markham, held the outer door open for us and saluted with great dignity.
“Ave, Cæsar, te salutamus,” whispered Vance, grinning.
“Be quiet,” Markham grumbled. “I’ve got troubles enough without your garbled quotations.”
As we passed through the massive carved-oak front door into the main hallway, we were met by Assistant District Attorney Dinwiddie, a serious, swarthy young man with a prematurely lined face, whose appearance gave one the impression that most of the woes of humanity were resting upon his shoulders.
“Good morning, Chief,” he greeted Markham, with eager relief. “I’m damned glad you’ve got here. This case’ll rip things wide open. Cut-and-dried murder, and not a lead.”
Markham nodded gloomily, and looked past him into the living-room.
“Who’s here?” he asked.
“The whole works, from the Chief Inspector down,” Dinwiddie told him, with a hopeless shrug, as if the fact boded ill for all concerned.
At that moment a tall, massive, middle-aged man with a pink complexion and a closely-cropped white moustache, appeared in the doorway of the living-room. On seeing Markham he came forward stiffly with outstretched hand. I recognized him at once as Chief Inspector O’Brien, who was in command of the entire Police Department. Dignified greetings were exchanged between him and Markham, and then Vance and I were introduced to him. Inspector O’Brien gave us each a curt, silent nod, and turned back to the living-room, with Markham, Dinwiddie, Vance and myself following.
The room, which was entered by a wide double door about ten feet down the hall, was a spacious one, almost square, and with high ceilings. Two windows gave on the street; and on the extreme right of the north wall, opposite to the front of the house, was another window opening on a paved court. To the left of this window were the sliding doors leading into the dining-room at the rear.
The room presented an appearance of garish opulence. About the walls hung several elaborately framed paintings of race-horses and a number of mounted hunting trophies. A highly-colored oriental rug covered nearly the entire floor. In the middle of the east wall, facing the door, was an ornate fireplace and carved marble mantel. Placed diagonally in the corner on the right stood a walnut upright piano with copper trimmings. Then there was a mahogany bookcase with glass doors and figured curtains, a sprawling tapestried davenport, a squat Venetian tabouret with inlaid mother of pearl, a teak-wood stand containing a large brass samovar, and a buhl-topped center table nearly six feet long. At the side of the table nearest the hallway, with its back to the front windows, stood a large wicker lounge chair with a high, fan-shaped back.
In this chair reposed the body of Alvin Benson.
Though I had served two years at the front in the World War and had seen death in many terrible guises, I could not repress a strong sense of revulsion at the sight of this murdered man. In France death had seemed an inevitable part of my daily routine, but here all the organisms of environment were opposed to the idea of fatal violence. The bright June sunshine was pouring into the room, and through the open windows came the continuous din of the city’s noises, which, for all their cacophony, are associated with peace and security and the orderly social processes of life.
West 48th. Street
Benson’s body was reclining in the chair in an attitude so natural that one almost expected him to turn to us and ask why we were intruding upon his privacy. His head was resting against the chair’s back. His right leg was crossed over his left in a position of comfortable relaxation. His right arm was resting easily on the center-table, and his left arm lay along the chair’s arm. But that which most strikingly gave his attitude its appearance of naturalness, was a small book which he held in his right hand with his thumb still marking the place where he had evidently been reading.5
He had been shot through the forehead from in front; and the small circular bullet mark was now almost black as a result of the coagulation of the blood. A large dark spot on the rug at the rear of the chair indicated the extent of the hemorrhage caused by the grinding passage of the bullet through his brain. Had it not been for these grisly indications one might have thought that he had merely paused momentarily in his reading to lean back and rest.
He was attired in an old smoking-jacket and red felt bed-room slippers, but still wore his dress trousers and evening shirt, though he was collarless, and the neck band of the shirt had been unbuttoned as if for comfort. He was not an attractive man physically, being almost completely bald and more than a little stout. His face was flabby, and the puffiness of his neck was doubly conspicuous without its confining collar. With a slight shudder of distaste I ended my brief contemplation of him, and turned to the other occupants of the room.
Two burly fellows with large hands and feet, their black felt hats pushed far back on their heads, were minutely inspecting the iron grill-work over the front windows. They seemed to be giving particular attention to the points where the bars were cemented into the masonry; and one of them had just taken hold of a grille with both hands and was shaking it, simian-wise, as if to test its strength. Another man, of medium height and dapper appearance, with a small blond moustache, was bending over in front of the grate looking intently, so it seemed, at the dusty gas-logs. On the far side of the table a thickset man in blue serge and a derby hat, stood with arms a-kimbo scrutinizing the silent figure in the chair. His eyes, hard and pale blue, were narrowed, and his square prognathous jaw was rigidly set. He was gazing with rapt intensity at Benson’s body, as though he hoped, by the sheer power of concentration, to probe the secret of the murder.
Another man, of unusual mien, was standing before the rear window, with a jeweller’s magnifying glass in his eye, inspecting a small object held in the palm of his hand. From pictures I had seen of him I knew he was Captain Carl Hagedorn, the most famous fire-arms expert in America. He was a large, cumbersome, broad-shouldered man of about fifty; and his black shiny clothes were several sizes too large for him. His coat hitched up behind, and in front hung half way down to his knees; and his trousers were baggy and lay over his ankles in grotesquely comic folds. His head was round and abnormally large, and his ears seemed sunken into his skull. His mouth was entirely hidden by a scraggly, grey-shot moustache, all the hairs of which grew downwards, forming a kind of lambrequin to his lips. Captain Hagedorn had been connected with the New York Police Department for thirty years, and though his appearance and manner were ridiculed at Headquarters, he was profoundly respected. His word on any point pertaining to fire-arms and gunshot wounds was accepted as final by Headquarters men.
In the rear of the room, near the dining-room door, stood two other men talking earnestly together. One was Inspector William M. Moran, Commanding Officer of the Detective Bureau; the other, Sergeant Ernest Heath of the Homicide Bureau, of whom Markham had already spoken to us.
As we entered the room in the wake of Chief Inspector O’Brien everyone ceased his occupation for a moment and looked at the District Attorney in a spirit of uneasy, but respectful, recognition. Only Captain Hagedorn, after a cursory squint at Markham, returned to the inspection of the tiny object in his hand, with an abstracted unconcern which brought a faint smile to Vance’s lips.
Inspector Moran and Sergeant Heath came forward with stolid dignity; and after the ceremony of hand-shaking (which I later observed to be a kind of religious rite among the police and the members of the District Attorney’s staff), Markham introduced Vance and me, and briefly explained our presence. The Inspector bowed pleasantly to indicate his acceptance of the intrusion, but I noticed that Heath ignored Markham’s explanation, and proceeded to treat us as if we were non-existent.
Inspector Moran was a man of different quality from the others in the room. He was about sixty, with white hair and a brown moustache, and was immaculately dressed. He looked more like a successful Wall Street broker of the better class than a police official.6
“I’ve assigned Sergeant Heath to the case, Mr. Markham,” he explained in a low, well-modulated voice. “It looks as though we were in for a bit of trouble before it’s finished. Even the Chief Inspector thought it warranted his lending the moral support of his presence to the preliminary rounds. He has been here since eight o’clock.”
Inspector O’Brien had left us immediately upon entering the room, and now stood between the front windows, watching the proceedings with a grave, indecipherable face.
“Well, I think I’ll be going,” Moran added. “They had me out of bed at seven-thirty, and I haven’t had any breakfast yet. I won’t be needed anyway now that you’re here. . . . Good-morning.” And again he shook hands.
When he had gone Markham turned to the Assistant District Attorney.
“Look after these two gentlemen, will you, Dinwiddie? They’re babes in the wood, and want to see how these affairs work. Explain things to them while I have a little confab with Sergeant Heath.”
Dinwiddie accepted the assignment eagerly. I think he was glad of the opportunity to have someone to talk to by way of venting his pent-up excitement.
As the three of us turned rather instinctively toward the body of the murdered man—he was, after all, the hub of this tragic drama—I heard Heath say in a sullen voice:
“I suppose you’ll take charge now, Mr. Markham.”
Dinwiddie and Vance were talking together, and I watched Markham with interest after what he had told us of the rivalry between the Police Department and the District Attorney’s office.
Markham looked at Heath with a slow gracious smile, and shook his head.
“No, Sergeant,” he replied. “I’m here to work with you, and I want that relationship understood from the outset. In fact, I wouldn’t be here now if Major Benson hadn’t ’phoned me and asked me to lend a hand. And I particularly want my name kept out of it. It’s pretty generally known—and if it isn’t, it will be—that the Major is an old friend of mine; so, it will be better all round if my connection with the case is kept quiet.”
Heath murmured something I did not catch, but I could see that he had, in large measure, been placated. He, in common with all other men who were acquainted with Markham, knew his word was good; and he personally liked the District Attorney.
“If there’s any credit coming from this affair,” Markham went on, “the Police Department is to get it; therefore I think it best for you to see the reporters. . . . And, by the way,” he added good-naturedly, “if there’s any blame coming, you fellows will have to bear that, too.”
“Fair enough,” assented Heath.
“And now, Sergeant, let’s get to work,” said Markham.
5. The book was O. Henry’s Strictly Business, and the place at which it was being held open was, curiously enough, the story entitled “A Municipal Report.”
6. Inspector Moran (as I learned later) had once been the president of a large up-State bank that had failed during the panic of 1907, and during the Gaynor Administration had been seriously considered for the post of Police Commissioner.
CHAPTER III A LADY’S HAND-BAG
(Friday, June 14; 9.30 a.m.)
The District Attorney and Heath walked up to the body, and stood regarding it.
“You see,” Heath explained; “he was shot directly from the front. A pretty powerful shot, too; for the bullet passed through the head and struck the woodwork over there by the window.” He pointed to a place on the wainscot a short distance from the floor near the drapery of the window nearest the hallway. “We found the expelled shell, and Captain Hagedorn’s got the bullet.”
He turned to the fire-arms expert.
“How about it, Captain? Anything special?”
Hagedorn raised his head slowly, and gave Heath a myopic frown. Then after a few awkward movements, he answered with unhurried precision:
“A forty-five army bullet—Colt automatic.”
“Any idea how close to Benson the gun was held?” asked Markham.
“Yes, sir, I have,” Hagedorn replied, in his ponderous monotone. “Between five and six feet—probably.”
Heath snorted.
“ ‘Probably’,” he repeated to Markham with good natured contempt. “You can bank on it if the Captain says so. . . . You see, sir, nothing smaller than a forty-four or forty-five will stop a man, and these steel-capped army bullets go through a human skull like it was cheese. But in order to carry straight to the woodwork the gun had to be held pretty close; and as there aren’t any powder marks on the face, it’s a safe bet to take the Captain’s figures as to distance.”
At this point we heard the front door open and close, and Dr. Doremus, the Chief Medical Examiner, accompanied by his assistant, bustled in. He shook hands with Markham and Inspector O’Brien, and gave Heath a friendly salutation.
“Sorry I couldn’t get here sooner,” he apologized.
He was a nervous man with a heavily seamed face and the manner of a real-estate salesman.
“What have we got here?” he asked, in the same breath, making a wry face at the body in the chair.
“You tell us, Doc,” retorted Heath.
Dr. Doremus approached the murdered man with a callous indifference indicative of a long process of hardening. He first inspected the face closely,—he was, I imagine, looking for powder marks. Then he glanced at the bullet hole in the forehead and at the ragged wound in the back of the head. Next he moved the dead man’s arm, bent the fingers, and pushed the head a little to the side. Having satisfied himself as to the state of rigor mortis, he turned to Heath.
“Can we get him on the settee there?”
Heath looked at Markham inquiringly.
“All through, sir?”
Markham nodded, and Heath beckoned to the two men at the front windows and ordered the body placed on the davenport. It retained its sitting posture, due to the hardening of the muscles after death, until the doctor and his assistant straightened out the limbs. The body was then undressed, and Dr. Doremus examined it carefully for other wounds. He paid particular attention to the arms; and he opened both hands wide and scrutinized the palms. At length he straightened up and wiped his hands on a large colored silk handkerchief.
“Shot through the left frontal,” he announced. “Direct angle of fire. Bullet passed completely through the skull. Exit wound in the left occipital region—base of skull,—you found the bullet, didn’t you? He was awake when shot, and death was immediate—probably never knew what hit him. . . . He’s been dead about—well, I should judge, eight hours; maybe longer.”
“How about twelve-thirty for the exact time?” asked Heath.
The doctor looked at his watch.
“Fits O. K. . . . Anything else?”
No one answered, and after a slight pause the Chief Inspector spoke.
“We’d like a post-mortem report to-day, doctor.”
“That’ll be all right,” Dr. Doremus answered, snapping shut his medical case and handing it to his assistant. “But get the body to the Mortuary as soon as you can.”
After a brief hand-shaking ceremony, he went out hurriedly.
Heath turned to the detective who had been standing by the table when we entered.
“Burke, you ’phone Headquarters to call for the body—and tell ’em to get a move on. Then go back to the office and wait for me.”
Burke saluted and disappeared.
Heath then addressed one of the two men who had been inspecting the grilles of the front windows.
“How about that ironwork, Snitkin?”
“No chance, Sergeant,” was the answer. “Strong as a jail—both of ’em. Nobody never got in through those windows.”
“Very good,” Heath told him. “Now you two fellows chase along with Burke.”
When they had gone the dapper man in the blue serge suit and derby, whose sphere of activity had seemed to be the fireplace, laid two cigarette butts on the table.
“I found these under the gas-logs, Sergeant,” he explained unenthusiastically. “Not much; but there’s nothing else laying around.”
“All right, Emery.” Heath gave the butts a disgruntled look. “You needn’t wait, either. I’ll see you at the office later.”
Hagedorn came ponderously forward.
“I guess I’ll be getting along, too,” he rumbled. “But I’m going to keep this bullet a while. It’s got some peculiar rifling marks on it. You don’t want it specially, do you, Sergeant?”
Heath smiled tolerantly.
“What’ll I do with it, Captain? You keep it. But don’t you dare lose it.”
“I won’t lose it,” Hagedorn assured him, with stodgy seriousness; and, without so much as a glance at either the District Attorney or the Chief Inspector, he waddled from the room with a slightly rolling movement which suggested that of some huge amphibious mammal.
Vance, who was standing beside me near the door, turned and followed Hagedorn into the hall. The two stood talking in low tones for several minutes. Vance appeared to be asking questions, and although I was not close enough to hear their conversation, I caught several words and phrases—“trajectory,” “muzzle velocity,” “angle of fire,” “impetus,” “impact,” “deflection,” and the like—and wondered what on earth had prompted this strange interrogation.
As Vance was thanking Hagedorn for his information Inspector O’Brien entered the hall.
“Learning fast?” he asked, smiling patronizingly at Vance. Then, without waiting for a reply: “Come along, Captain; I’ll drive you down town.”
Markham heard him.
“Have you got room for Dinwiddie, too, Inspector?”
“Plenty, Mr. Markham.”
The three of them went out.
Vance and I were now left alone in the room with Heath and the District Attorney, and, as if by common impulse, we all settled ourselves in chairs, Vance taking one near the dining-room door directly facing the chair in which Benson had been murdered.
I had been keenly interested in Vance’s manner and actions from the moment of his arrival at the house. When he had first entered the room he had adjusted his monocle carefully—an act which, despite his air of passivity, I recognized as an indication of interest. When his mind was alert and he wished to take on external impressions quickly, he invariably brought out his monocle. He could see adequately enough without it, and his use of it, I had observed, was largely the result of an intellectual dictate. The added clarity of vision it gave him seemed subtly to affect his clarity of mind.7
At first he had looked over the room incuriously and watched the proceedings with bored apathy; but during Heath’s brief questioning of his subordinates, an expression of cynical amusement had appeared on his face. Following a few general queries to Assistant District Attorney Dinwiddie, he had sauntered, with apparent aimlessness, about the room, looking at the various articles and occasionally shifting his gaze back and forth between different pieces of furniture. At length he had stooped down and inspected the mark made by the bullet on the wainscot; and once he had gone to the door and looked up and down the hall.
The only thing that had seemed to hold his attention to any extent was the body itself. He had stood before it for several minutes, studying its position, and had even bent over the outstretched arm on the table as if to see just how the dead man’s hand was holding the book. The crossed position of the legs, however, had attracted him most, and he had stood studying them for a considerable time. Finally, he had returned his monocle to his waistcoat pocket, and joined Dinwiddie and me near the door, where he had stood, watching Heath and the other detectives with lazy indifference, until the departure of Captain Hagedorn.
The four of us had no more than taken seats when the patrolman stationed in the vestibule appeared at the door.
“There’s a man from the local precinct station here, sir,” he announced, “who wants to see the officer in charge. Shall I send him in?”
Heath nodded curtly, and a moment later a large red-faced Irishman, in civilian clothes, stood before us. He saluted Heath, but on recognizing the District Attorney, made Markham the recipient of his report.
“I’m Officer McLaughlin, sir—West Forty-seventh Street station,” he informed us; “and I was on duty on this beat last night. Around midnight, I guess it was, there was a big grey Cadillac standing in front of this house—I noticed it particular, because it had a lot of fishing-tackle sticking out the back, and all of its lights were on. When I heard of the crime this morning I reported the car to the station sergeant, and he sent me around to tell you about it.”
“Excellent,” Markham commented; and then, with a nod, referred the matter to Heath.
“May be something in it,” the latter admitted dubiously. “How long would you say the car was here, officer?”
“A good half hour anyway. It was here before twelve, and when I come back at twelve-thirty or thereabouts it was still here. But the next time I come by, it was gone.”
