The Dragon Murder Case

by S. S. Van Dine

  “She’s a devil—that woman!” he muttered huskily. “They say she’s crazy. But she sees too much—she knows too much.” He stared straight ahead blankly. “She’s capable of anything!” There was something approaching abject fear in his manner. “I’ve seen her only twice; but she haunts this whole house like a ghost. You can’t get away from her.”

  Vance had been watching Tatum closely, without appearing to do so.

  “Your nerves are a bit on edge, I fear,” he commented. Then he took a deep inhalation on his cigarette and, rising, walked to the mantelpiece, where he stood almost directly facing the other. “Incidentally,” he said casually, dropping his ash into the fireplace, “Mrs. Stamm’s theory is that a dragon in the pool killed Montague and hid his body.”

  Tatum gave a tremulous, cynical laugh.

  “Oh, sure, I’ve heard that wild story before. Maybe a dodo trampled on him—or a unicorn gored him.”

  “It might interest you to know, however, that we have found Montague’s body—”

  Tatum started forward.

  “Where?” he interrupted.

  “In one of the sub-glacial pot-holes down the East Road... And there were three long claw-marks down his chest, such as this mythical dragon might have made.”

  Tatum sprang to his feet. His cigarette fell from his lips, and he shook his finger hysterically at Vance.

  “Don’t try to frighten me—don’t try to frighten me.” His voice was high-pitched and shaky. “I know what you’re trying to do—you’re trying to break down my nerves and get me to admit something. But I won’t talk—do you understand?—I won’t talk...”

  “Come, come, Tatum.” Vance spoke mildly but sternly. “Sit down and calm yourself. I’m telling you the exact truth. And I’m only endeavorin’ to find some solution to Montague’s murder. It merely occurred to me that you might be able to help us.”

  Tatum, soothed and reassured by Vance’s manner, sank back into his chair and lit another cigarette.

  “Did you,” Vance asked next, “notice anything peculiar about Montague last night before he went to the pool? Did he, for instance, appear to you like a man who might have been drugged?”

  “He was drugged with liquor, if that’s what you mean,” Tatum replied rationally. “Although—I’ll say this for Monty—he carried his liquor pretty well. And he hadn’t had any more than the rest of us—and much less than Stamm, of course.”

  “Did you ever hear of a woman named Ellen Bruett?”

  Tatum puckered his brow.

  “Bruett?... The name sounds familiar... Oh, I know where I’ve heard it. Stamm told me, when he asked me to come here, that there was an Ellen Bruett coming to the party. I imagine I was to be paired with her. Thank God she didn’t come, though.” He looked up shrewdly. “What’s she got to do with it?”

  “She’s an acquaintance of Montague’s—so Stamm told us,” Vance explained carelessly. Then he asked quickly: “When you were in the pool, last night, did you hear an automobile on the East Road?”

  Tatum shook his head.

  “Maybe I did, but I certainly don’t remember it. I was too busy diving round for Monty.”

  Vance dismissed the subject and put another query to Tatum.

  “After Montague’s disappearance, did you feel immediately that there had been foul play of some kind?”

  “Yes!” Tatum compressed his lips and nodded ominously. “In fact, I had a feeling all day yesterday that something was going to happen. I came pretty near leaving the party in the afternoon—I didn’t like the set-up.”

  “Can you explain what gave you that impression of impending disaster?”

  Tatum thought a moment, and his eyes shifted back and forth.

  “No, I can’t say,” he muttered at length. “A little of everything, perhaps. But especially that crazy woman up-stairs...”

  “Ah!”

  “She’d give any one the heebie-jeebies. Stamm makes a habit, you know, of taking his guests to see her for a few moments when they arrive—to pay their respects, or something of the kind. And I remember when I got here, Friday afternoon, Teeny McAdam and Greeff and Monty were already up-stairs with her. She seemed pleasant enough—smiled at all of us and bid us welcome—but there was a queer look in her eyes as she studied each one of us individually—something calculating and ill-omened, if you know what I’m trying to get at. I had the feeling that she was making up her mind which one of us she disliked the most. Her eyes rested a long time on Monty—and I was glad she didn’t look at me the same way. When she dismissed us she said, ‘Have a good time’—but she was like a cobra grinning at her victims. It took three shots of whisky to bring me back to normal.”

  “Did the others feel the same way about it?”

  “They didn’t say much, but I know they didn’t like it. And of course the whole party here has been one continual round of back-biting and underhand animosity.”

  Vance rose and waved his hand toward the door.

  “You may go now, Tatum. But I warn you, we want nothing said yet about the finding of Montague’s body. And you’re to stay indoors with the rest, until further orders from the District Attorney.”

  Tatum started to say something, checked himself, and then went out.

  When the man had gone Vance moved back and forth between the fireplace and the door several times, smoking, his head down. Slowly he looked up at Markham.

  “A shrewd, unscrupulous lad, that... Not a nice person—not at all a nice person. And as ruthless as a rattlesnake. Moreover, he knows—or, at least, he seriously suspects—something connected with Montague’s death. You recall that, even before he knew we had found the body, he was quite sure it would be discovered somewhere on the other side of the pool. That wasn’t altogether guesswork on his part—his tone was far too casual and assured. And he was pretty certain regarding the time Greeff spent in the shallow water. Of course, he ridiculed the dragon idea—and did it cleverly... His comments on Mrs. Stamm were rather interestin’, too. He thinks she knows and sees too much—but, after all, why should he care? Unless, of course, he has something to hide... And he told us he didn’t hear any car last night, though others heard it...”

  “Yes, yes.” Markham made a vague gesture with his hand, as if to dismiss Vance’s speculations. “Everything here seems contradictory. But what I’d like to know is: was it possible for Greeff to have manipulated the whole thing from his position at the shallow side of the pool?”

  “The answer to that question,” returned Vance, “seems to lie in the solution of the problem of how Montague got out of the pool and into the pot-hole... Anyway, I think it would be a bully idea, while we’re waiting for Doremus, to have another brief parley with Greeff.—Will you please fetch him, Sergeant?”

  Greeff entered the drawing-room a few minutes later, dressed in a conventional light-weight business suit, and wearing a small gardenia in his buttonhole. Despite his rugged healthy complexion, he showed unmistakable signs of strain, and I imagined that he had done considerable drinking since we had interviewed him the night before. Much of his aggressiveness was gone, and his fingers shook slightly as he moved his long cigarette holder to and from his lips.

  Vance greeted him perfunctorily and asked him to sit down. When Greeff had chosen a chair, Vance said:

  “Both Mr. Leland and Mr. Tatum have told us that when you were in the pool, helping them search for Montague, you swam immediately across to the shallow water below the cliffs.”

  “Not immediately.” There was the suggestion of indignant protestation in Greeff’s voice. “I made several efforts to find the chap. But, as I’ve already told you, I am not a good swimmer, and it occurred to me that perhaps his body had drifted across the pool, since he had dived in that direction; and I thought I might be of more help by looking about over there than by interfering with Leland and Tatum with my clumsy splashing about.” He shot a quick look at Vance. “Was there any reason why I shouldn’t have done it?”

  “No
-o,” Vance drawled. “We were just interested in checkin’ the whereabouts of the various members of the party during that particular period.”

  Greeff squinted, and the color deepened on his cheeks.

  “Then what’s the point of the question?” he snapped.

  “Merely an attempt to clarify one or two dubious items,” Vance returned lightly, and then went on, before the other could speak again: “By the by, when you were in the shallow water at the other side of the pool, did you, by any chance, hear a motor-car along the East Road?”

  Greeff stared at Vance for several moments in startled silence. The color left his face, and he rose to his feet with jerky ponderance.

  “Yes, by Gad! I did hear one.” He stood with hunched shoulders, emphasizing his words with his long cigarette holder which he held in his right hand, like a conductor’s baton. “And I thought at the time it was damned queer. But I forgot all about it last night, and didn’t think of it again until you mentioned it just now.”

  “It was about ten minutes after Montague had dived in, wasn’t it?”

  “Just about.”

  “Both Mr. Leland and Miss Stamm heard it,” Vance remarked. “But they were a trifle vague about it.”

  “I heard it, all right,” Greeff muttered. “And I wondered whose car it was.”

  “I’d jolly well like to know that myself.” Vance contemplated the tip of his cigarette. “Could you tell which way the car was going?”

  “Toward Spuyten Duyvil,” Greeff answered, without hesitation. “And it started somewhere to the east of the pool. When I got over into the shallow water everything was quiet—too damned quiet to suit me. I didn’t like it. I called to Leland, and then made some further efforts to see if Montague’s body had drifted over to the shoal at that side of the pool. But it was no go. And as I stood there, with my head and shoulders above the surface of the water, on the point of swimming back, I distinctly heard some one starting the motor of a car—”

  “As if the car had been parked in the road?” interrupted Vance.

  “Exactly... And then I heard the gears being shifted; and the car went on down the East Road—and I swam back across the pool, wondering who was leaving the estate.”

  “According to a billet-doux we found in one of Montague’s coats, a lady was waiting for him in a car, down near the east gate, at ten o’clock last night.”

  “So?” Greeff gave an unpleasant laugh. “So that’s the way the wind blows, is it?”

  “No, no, not altogether. There was some miscalculation somewhere, I opine... The fact is, d’ ye see,” Vance added, with slow emphasis, “we found Montague’s body just beyond the Clove—in one of the pot-holes.”

  Greeff’s mouth sagged open, and his eyes contracted into small, shining discs.

  “You found him, eh?” he iterated. “How did he die?”

  “We don’t know yet. The Medical Examiner is on his way up here now. But he wasn’t a pleasant sight—a bad gash on the head and great claw-like scratches down his chest—”

  “Wait a minute—wait a minute!” There was a tense huskiness in Greeff’s demand. “Were there three scratches close together?”

  Vance nodded, scarcely looking at the man.

  “Exactly three—and they were a uniform distance apart.”

  Greeff staggered backward toward his chair and fell into it heavily.

  “Oh, my God—oh, my God!” he muttered. After a moment he moved his thick fingers over his chin and looked up abruptly, fixing his eyes on Vance in furtive inquiry. “Have you told Stamm?”

  “Oh, yes,” Vance replied abstractedly. “We gave him the glad tidings as soon as we returned to the house, less than an hour ago.” Vance appeared to reflect; then he put another question to Greeff. “Did you ever accompany Stamm on any of his treasure hunts or fishing expeditions in the tropics?”

  Obviously Greeff was profoundly puzzled by this change of subject.

  “No—no,” he spluttered. “Never had anything to do with such silly business—except that I helped Stamm finance and equip a couple of his expeditions. That is,” he amended, “I got some of my clients to put up the money. But Stamm paid it all back after the expeditions had fizzled...”

  Vance arrested the other’s explanations with a gesture. “You’re not interested in tropical fish yourself, I take it?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say I’m not interested in them,” Greeff returned in a matter-of-fact voice; but his eyes were still narrowed, like those of a man deeply perplexed. “They’re nice to look at—grand colors and all that...”

  “Any Dragonfish in Stamm’s collection?”

  Greeff sat up again, his face paling.

  “My God! You don’t mean—”

  “Purely an academic question,” Vance interrupted, with a wave of the hand.

  Greeff made a throaty noise.

  “Yes, by Gad!” he declared. “There are some Dragonfish here. But they’re not alive. Stamm has two of them preserved some way. Anyway, they’re only about twelve inches long—though they’re vicious-looking devils. He has some long name for them—”

  “Chauliodus sloanei?”

  “Something like that... And he’s also got some Sea-horses and a coral-red Sea-dragon... But see here, Mr. Vance, what have these fish got to do with the case?”

  Vance sighed before answering.

  “I’m sure I don’t know. But I’m dashed interested in Stamm’s collection of tropical fish.”

  At this moment Stamm himself and Doctor Holliday crossed the hall to the drawing-room.

  “I’m going, gentlemen,” Doctor Holliday announced quietly. “If you want me for anything, Mr. Stamm knows where to reach me.” Without further ado he went toward the front door, and we heard him go out and drive away in his little coupé.

  Stamm stood for several moments, glowering at Greeff.

  “Adding more fuel to the fire?” he asked, with an almost vicious sarcasm.

  Greeff shrugged hopelessly and extended his hands in a futile gesture, as if unable to cope with the other’s unreasonable attitude.

  It was Vance who answered Stamm.

  “Mr. Greeff and I have just been discussing your fish.”

  Stamm looked skeptically from one to the other of them, then turned on his heel and went from the room. Vance permitted Greeff to go also.

  He had no sooner passed the portières than there came the sound of a car on the front drive; and a few moments later Detective Burke, who had been stationed at the front door, ushered in the Medical Examiner.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Three Women (Sunday, August 12; 3.30 p.m.)

  DOCTOR DOREMUS LOOKED us over satirically, then fixed his gaze on Sergeant Heath.

  “Well, well,” he said, with a commiserating shake of the head. “So the corpse has returned. Suppose we have a look at it before it eludes you again.”

  “It’s down the East Road a bit.” Vance rose from his chair and went toward the door. “We’d better drive.”

  We went out of the house and, picking up Detective Burke, got into Vance’s car. Doremus trailed us in his own car. We swung round to the south of the house and turned down the East Road. When we were opposite the pot-holes, where Snitkin was waiting, Vance drew up and we got out.

  Vance led the way to the cliff and pointed to the rock wall of the pot-hole in which Montague’s body lay.

  “The chap’s in there,” he said to Doremus. “He hasn’t been touched.”

  Doremus made a grimace of annoyed boredom.

  “A ladder would have helped,” he grumbled, as he climbed up to the low parapet and seated himself on its rounded top. After leaning over and inspecting the huddled body cursorily, he turned back to us with a wry face and mopped his brow.

  “He certainly looks dead. What killed him?”

  “That’s what we’re hoping you can tell us,” answered Heath.

  Doremus slid down from the wall.

  “All right. Get him out of there
and put him down on the ground.”

  It was not an easy matter to move Montague’s body from the pot-hole, as rigor mortis had set in, and it required several minutes for Heath and Snitkin and Burke to accomplish the task. Doremus knelt down and, after straightening out the dead man’s distorted limbs, began to make an examination of the wound in his head and the gashes down the breast. After a while he looked up and, pushing his hat back, shook his head in obvious uncertainty.

  “This is a queer one,” he announced. “The man’s been struck on the head with a blunt instrument of some kind, which has ripped his scalp open and given him a linear fracture of the skull. It could easily have been the cause of death. But, on the other hand, he’s been strangled—look at the ecchymosis on either side of the thyroid cartilage. Only, I’d swear those discolorations are not the marks of a human hand, or even of a rope or cord. And look at those bulging eyes, and the thick black lips and tongue.”

  “Could he have been drowned?” asked Heath.

  “Drowned?” Doremus cocked a pitying eye at the Sergeant. “I’ve just finished telling you he was bashed over the head and also strangled. If he couldn’t get air in his lungs, how could he get water in ’em?”

  “What the Sergeant means, doctor,” put in Markham, “is whether it’s possible that the man was drowned before he was mutilated.”

  “No.” Doremus was emphatic. “In that case he wouldn’t show the same type of wound. There wouldn’t have been the hemorrhage in the surrounding tissues; and the contusions on the throat would be superficial and circumscribed and not of such a deep color.”

  “What about those marks on his chest?” asked Vance.

  The doctor pursed his lips and looked puzzled. Before replying he studied the three gashes again, and then rose to his feet.

  “They’re nasty wounds,” he said. “But the lacerations are not very serious. They laid open the pectoralis major and minor muscles without penetrating the chest walls. And they were made before he died: you can tell that by the condition of the blood on them.”

  “He certainly had rough handling.” Heath spoke like a man caught in a wave of wonder.