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

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I think Heath said. Her room, you remember, is next to Chester’s, and the shot probably roused her. But we’d better be going.”

      “Am I invited?”

      “I wish you would come.” Markham made no effort to hide his desire to have the other accompany him.

      “Oh, I had every intention of doing so, don’t y’ know.” And Vance left the room abruptly to get dressed.

      It took the District Attorney’s car but a few minutes to reach the Greene mansion from Vance’s house in East 38th Street. A patrolman stood guard outside the great iron gates, and a plain-clothes man lounged on the front steps beneath the arched doorway.

      Heath was in the drawing-room talking earnestly to Inspector Moran, who had just arrived; and two men from the Homicide Bureau stood by the window awaiting orders. The house was peculiarly silent: no member of the family was to be seen.

      The Sergeant came forward at once. His usual ruddiness of complexion was gone and his eyes were troubled. He shook hands with Markham, and then gave Vance a look of friendly welcome.

      “You had the right dope, Mr. Vance. Somebody’s ripping things wide open here; and it isn’t swag they’re after.”

      Inspector Moran joined us, and again the hand-shaking ceremony took place.

      “This case is going to stir things up considerably,” he said. “And we’re in for an unholy scandal if we don’t clean it up quickly.”

      The worried look in Markham’s eyes deepened.

      “The sooner we get to work, then, the better. Are you going to lend a hand, Inspector?”

      When he had gone Heath gave us the details of the crime.

      At about half past eleven, after the family and the servants had retired, the shot was fired. Sibella was reading in bed at the time and heard it distinctly. She rose immediately and, after listening for several moments, stole up the servants’ stairs—the entrance to which was but a few feet from her door. She wakened the butler, and the two of them then went to Chester’s room. The door was unlocked, and the lights in the room were burning. Chester Greene was sitting, slightly huddled, in a chair near the desk. Sproot went to him, but saw that he was dead, and immediately left the room, locking the door. He then telephoned to the police and to Doctor Von Blon.

      “I got here before Von Blon did,” Heath explained. “The doctor was out again when the butler phoned, and didn’t get the message till nearly one o’clock. I was damn glad of it, because it gave me a chance to check up on the footprints outside. The minute I turned in at the gate I could see that somebody had come and gone, the same as last time; and I whistled for the man on the beat to guard the entrance until Snitkin arrived. Then I came on in, keeping along the edge of the walk; and the first thing I noticed when the butler opened the door was a little puddle of water on the rug in the hall. Somebody had recently tracked the soft snow in. I found a coupla other puddles in the hall, and there were some wet imprints on the steps leading up-stairs. Five minutes later Snitkin gave me the signal from the street, and I put him to work on the footprints outside. The tracks were plain, and Snitkin was able to get some pretty accurate measurements.”

      After Snitkin had been put to work on the footprints, the Sergeant, it seemed, went up-stairs to Chester’s room and made an examination. But he found nothing unusual, aside from the murdered man in the chair, and after half an hour descended again to the dining-room, where Sibella and Sproot were waiting. He had just begun his questioning of them when Doctor Von Blon arrived.

      “I took him up-stairs,” said Heath, “and he looked at the body. He seemed to want to stick around, but I told him he’d be in the way. So he talked to Miss Greene out in the hall for five or ten minutes, and then left.”

      Shortly after Doctor Von Blon’s departure two other men from the Homicide Bureau arrived, and the next two hours were spent in interrogating the members of the household. But nobody, except Sibella, admitted even hearing the shot. Mrs. Greene was not questioned. When Miss Craven, the nurse, who slept on the third floor, was sent in to her, she reported that the old lady was sleeping soundly; and the Sergeant decided not to disturb her. Nor was Ada awakened: according to the nurse, the girl had been asleep since nine o’clock.

      Rex Greene, however, when interviewed, contributed one vague and, as it seemed, contradictory bit of evidence. He had been lying awake, he said, at the time the snowfall ceased, which was a little after eleven. Then, about ten minutes later, he had imagined he heard a faint shuffling noise in the hall and the sound of a door closing softly. He had thought nothing of it, and only recalled it when pressed by Heath. A quarter of an hour afterward he had looked at his watch. It was then twenty-five minutes past eleven; and very soon after that he had fallen asleep.

      “The only queer thing about his story,” commented Heath, “is the time. If he’s telling the tale straight, he heard this noise and the door shutting twenty minutes or so before the shot was fired. And nobody in the house was up at that time. I tried to shake him on the question of the exact hour, but he stuck to it like a leech. I compared his watch with mine, and it was O. K. Anyhow, there’s nothing much to the story. The wind mighta blown a door shut, or he mighta heard a noise out in the street and thought it was in the hall.”

      “Nevertheless, Sergeant,” put in Vance, “if I were you I’d file Rex’s story away for future meditation. Somehow it appeals to me.”

      Heath looked up sharply and was about to ask a question; but he changed his mind and said merely: “It’s filed.” Then he finished his report to Markham.

      After interrogating the occupants of the house he had gone back to the Bureau, leaving his men on guard, and set the machinery of his office in operation. He had returned to the Greene mansion early that morning, and was now waiting for the Medical Examiner, the finger-print experts, and the official photographer. He had given orders for the servants to remain in their quarters, and had instructed Sproot to serve breakfast to all the members of the family in their own rooms.

      “This thing’s going to take work, sir,” he concluded. “And it’s going to be touchy going, too.”

      Markham nodded gravely, and glanced toward Vance, whose eyes were resting moodily on an old oil-painting of Tobias Greene.

      “Does this new development help co-ordinate any of your former impressions?” he asked.

      “It at least substantiates the feeling I had that this old house reeks with a deadly poison,” Vance replied. “This thing is like a witches’ sabbath.” He gave Markham a humorous smile. “I’m beginning to think your task is going to take on the nature of exorcising devils.”

      Markham grunted.

      “I’ll leave the magic potions to you. . . . Sergeant, suppose we take a look at the body before the Medical Examiner gets here.”

      Heath led the way without a word. When we reached the head of the stairs he took a key from his pocket and unlocked the door of Chester’s room. The electric lights were still burning—sickly yellow disks in the gray daylight which filtered in from the windows above the river.

      The room, long and narrow, contained an anachronistic assortment of furniture. It was a typical man’s apartment, with an air of comfortable untidiness. Newspapers and sports magazines cluttered the table and desk; ash-trays were everywhere; an open cellaret stood in one corner; and a collection of golf-clubs lay on the tapestried Chesterfield. The bed, I noticed, had not been slept in.

      In the centre of the room, beneath an old-fashioned cut-glass chandelier, was a Chippendale “knee-hole” desk, beside which stood a sleepy-hollow

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