The Greatest Works of S. S. Van Dine (Illustrated Edition) - S.S. Van Dine

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a number of interesting possibilities, and raised several points that might bear looking into. However, the only potential weight of your argument lies in an accumulation of items which, taken separately, are not particularly impressive. A plausible answer might be found for each one of them. The trouble is, the integers of your summary are without a connecting thread, and consequently must be regarded as separate units.”

      “That legal mind of yours!” Vance rose and paced up and down. “An accumulation of queer and unexplained facts centring about a crime is no more impressive than each separate item in the total! Well, well! I give up. I renounce all reason. I fold up my tent like the Arabs and as silently steal away.” He took up his coat. “I leave you to your fantastic, delirious burglar, who walks without keys into a house and steals nothing, who knows where electric switches are hidden but can’t find a staircase, who shoots women and then turns up the lights. When you find him, my dear Lycurgus, you should, in all humaneness, send him to the psychopathic ward. He’s quite unaccountable, I assure you.”

      Markham, despite his opposition, had not been unimpressed. Vance unquestionably had undermined to some extent his belief in a housebreaker. But I could readily understand why he was reluctant to abandon this theory until it had been thoroughly tested. His next words, in fact, explained his attitude.

      “I’m not denying the remote possibility that this affair may go deeper than appears. But there’s too little to go on at present to warrant an investigation along other than routine lines. We can’t very well stir up an ungodly scandal by raking the members of a prominent family over the coals, when there’s not a scintilla of evidence against any one of them. It’s too unjust and dangerous a proceeding. We must at least wait until the police have finished their investigation. Then, if nothing develops, we can again take inventory and decide how to proceed. . . . How long, Sergeant, do you figure on being busy?”

      Heath took his cigar from his mouth and regarded it thoughtfully.

      “That’s hard to say, sir. Dubois’ll finish up his finger-printing to-morrow, and we’re checking up on the regulars as fast as we can. Also, I’ve got two men digging up the records of the Greene servants. It may take a lot of time, and it may go quick. Depends on the breaks we get.”

      Vance sighed.

      “And it was such a neat, fascinatin’ crime! I’ve rather been looking forward to it, don’t y’ know, and now you talk of prying into the early amours of serving-maids and that sort of thing. It’s most disheartenin’.”

      He buttoned his ulster about him and walked to the door.

      “Ah, well, there’s nothing for me to do while you Jasons are launched on your quaint quest. I think I’ll retire and resume my translation of Delacroix’s ‘Journal.’ ”

      But Vance was not destined then to finish this task he had had in mind so long. Three days later the front pages of the country’s press carried glaring head-lines telling of a second grim and unaccountable tragedy at the old Greene mansion, which altered the entire character of the case and immediately lifted it into the realm of the foremost causes célèbres of modern times. After this second blow had fallen all ideas of a casual burglar were banished. There could no longer be any doubt that a hidden death-dealing horror stalked through the dim corridors of that fated house.

      CHAPTER VIII

       THE SECOND TRAGEDY

       Table of Contents

      (Friday, November 12; 8 a. m.)

      The day after we had taken leave of Markham at his office the rigor of the weather suddenly relaxed. The sun came out, and the thermometer rose nearly thirty degrees. Toward night of the second day, however, a fine, damp snow began to fall, spreading a thin white blanket over the city; but around eleven the skies were again clear.

      I mention these facts because they had a curious bearing on the second crime at the Greene mansion. Footprints again appeared on the front walk; and, as a result of the clinging softness of the snow, the police also found tracks in the lower hall and on the marble stairs.

      As he sat sipping his cognac at the end of dinner on Thursday night, his eyes idly tracing the forms in the Renoir Beigneuse above the mantel, he gave voice to his thoughts.

      “’Pon my word, Van, I can’t shake the atmosphere of that damnable house. Markham is probably right in refusing to take the matter seriously—one can’t very well chivy a bereaved family simply because I’m oversensitive. And yet”—he shook himself slightly—“it’s most annoyin’. Maybe I’m becoming weak and emotional. What if I should suddenly go in for Whistlers and Böcklins! Could you endure it? Miserere nostri! . . . No, it won’t come to that. But—dash it all!—that Greene murder is haunting my slumbers like a lamia. And the business isn’t over yet. There’s a horrible incompleteness about what’s already occurred. . . .”

      It was scarcely eight o’clock on the following morning when Markham brought us the news of the second Greene tragedy. I had risen early, and was having my coffee in the library when Markham came in, brushing past the astonished Currie with only a curt nod.

      “Get Vance out right away—will you, Van Dine?” he began, without even a word of greeting. “Something serious has happened.”

      I hastened to fetch Vance, who grumblingly slipped into a camel’s-hair dressing-gown and came leisurely into the library.

      “My dear Markham!” he reproached the District Attorney. “Why pay your social calls in the middle of the night?”

      “This isn’t a social call,” Markham told him tartly. “Chester Greene has been murdered.”

      “Ah!” Vance rang for Currie, and lighted a cigarette. “Coffee for two and clothes for one,” he ordered, when the man appeared. Then he sank into a chair before the fire and gave Markham a waggish look. “That same unique burglar, I suppose. A perseverin’ lad. Did the family plate disappear this time?”

      Markham gave a mirthless laugh.

      “No, the plate’s intact; and I think we can now eliminate the burglar theory. I’m afraid your premonitions were correct—damn your uncanny faculty!”

      “Pour out your heart-breakin’ story.” Vance, for all his levity, was extraordinarily interested. His moodiness of the past two days had given way to an almost eager alertness.

      “It was Sproot who phoned the news to Headquarters a little before midnight. The operator in the Homicide Bureau caught Heath at home, and the Sergeant was at the Greene house inside of half an hour. He’s there now—phoned me at seven this morning. I told him I’d hurry out, so I didn’t get many details over the wire. All I know is that Chester Greene was fatally shot last night at almost the exact hour that the former shootings occurred—a little after half past eleven.”

      “Was he in his own room at the time?” Vance was pouring the coffee which Currie had brought in.

      “I believe Heath did mention he was found in his bedroom.”

      “Shot from the front?”

      “Yes, through the heart, at very close range.”

      “Very interestin’. A duplication

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