"What time did you enter the museum this morning?"
Salveter hesitated. Then throwing his head back he looked challengingly at Vance.
"I left the house a little after nine. When I got to Fifth Avenue it suddenly occurred to me I hadn't made an inspection of the museum; and for some reason I was worried. I couldn't tell you why I felt that way--but I did. Maybe because of the new shipment that arrived yesterday. Anyway, I turned back, let myself in with my key, and went into the museum--"
"About half past nine?"
"That would be about right."
"And no one saw you re-enter the house?"
"I hardly think so. In any event, I didn't see any one."
Vance gazed at him languidly.
"Suppose you finish the recital. . . . If you don't care to, I'll finish it for you."
"You won't have to." Salveter tossed his cigarette into a cloisonné dish on the table and drew himself resolutely to the edge of his chair. "I'll tell you all there is to tell. Then if you're not satisfied, you can order my arrest--and the hell with you!"
Vance sighed and let his head fall back.
"Such energy!" he breathed. "But why be vulgar? . . . I take it you saw your uncle before you finally quitted the museum for the Great American Mausoleum on the Avenue."
"Yes--I saw him!" Salveter's eyes flashed and his chin shot forward. "Now, make something out of that."
"Really, I can't be bothered. Much too fatiguin'." Vance did not even look at the man: his eyes, half closed, were resting on an old-fashioned crystal chandelier which hung low over the centre-table. "Since you saw your uncle," he said, "you must have remained in the museum for at least half an hour."
"Just about." Salveter obviously could not understand Vance's indifferent attitude. "The fact is I got interested in a papyrus we picked up last winter, and tried to work out a few of the words that stumped me. There were the words ankhet, wash, and tema that I couldn't translate."
Vance frowned slightly; then his eyebrows lifted.
"Ankhet . . . wash . . . tema. . . ." He iterated the words slowly. "Was the ankhet written with or without a determinative?"
Salveter did not answer at once.
"With the animal-skin determinative," he said presently.
"And was the next word really wash and not was?"
Again he hesitated, and looked uneasily at Vance.
"It was wash, I think. . . . And tema was written with a double flail."
"Not the sledge ideogram, eh? . . . Now, that's most interestin'.--And during your linguistic throes your uncle walked in."
"Yes. I was sitting at the little desk-table by the obelisk when Uncle Ben opened the door. I heard him say something to Brush, and I got up to greet him. It was rather dark, and he didn't see me till he'd reached the floor of the museum."
"And then?"
"I knew he wanted to inspect the new treasures; so I ran along. Went to the Metropolitan--"
"Your uncle seemed in normal good spirits when he came into the museum?"
"About as usual--a bit grouchy perhaps. He was never over-pleasant in the forenoons. But that didn't mean anything."
"You left the museum immediately after greeting him?"
"At once. I hadn't realized I'd been so long fussing over the papyrus; and I hurried away. Another thing, I knew he'd come to see Doctor Bliss on a pretty important matter, and I didn't want to be in the way."
Vance nodded but gave no indication whether or not he unreservedly accepted the other's statements. He sat smoking lazily, his eyes impassive and mild.
"And during the next twenty minutes," he mused,"--that is between ten o'clock and ten-twenty, at which time Mr. Scarlett entered the museum--your uncle was killed."
Salveter winced.
"So it seems," he mumbled. "But"--he shot his jaw out--"I didn't have anything to do with it! That's straight,--take it or leave it."
"There, now; don't be indelicate," Vance admonished him quietly. "I don't have to take it and I don't have to leave it, d' ye see? I may choose merely to dally with it."
"Dally and be damned!"
Vance got to his feet leisurely, and there was a chilly smile on his face--a smile more deadly than any contortion of anger could have been.
"I don't like your language, Mr. Salveter," he said slowly.
"Oh, don't you!" The man sprang up, his fists clenched, and swung viciously. Vance, however, stepped back with the quickness of a cat, and caught the other by the wrist. Then he made a swift, pivotal movement to the right, and Salveter's pinioned arm was twisted upward behind his shoulder-blades. With an involuntary cry of pain, the man fell to his knees. (I recalled the way in which Vance had saved Markham from an attack in the District Attorney's office at the close of the Benson murder case.) Heath and Hennessey stepped forward, but Vance motioned them away with his free hand.
"I can manage this impetuous gentleman," he said. Then he lifted Salveter to his feet and shoved him back into his chair. "A little lesson in manners," he remarked pleasantly. "And now you will please be civil and answer my questions, or I'll be compelled to have you--and Mrs. Bliss--arrested for conspiring to murder Mr. Kyle."
Salveter was completely subdued. He looked at his antagonist in ludicrous amazement. Then suddenly Vance's words seemed to seep into his astonished brain.
"Mrs. Bliss? . . . She had nothing to do with it, I tell you!" His tone, though highly animated, was respectful. "If it'll save her from any suspicion, I'll confess to the crime. . . ."
"No need for any such heroism." Vance had resumed his seat and was again smoking calmly. "But you might tell us why, when you came into the museum this afternoon and learned of your uncle's death, you didn't mention the fact that you'd seen him at ten o'clock."
"I--I was too upset--too shocked," the man stammered. "And I was afraid. Self-protective instinct, maybe. I can't explain--really I can't. I should have told you, I suppose . . . but--but--"
Vance helped him out.
"But you didn't care to involve yourself in a crime of which you were innocent. Yes . . . yes. Quite natural. Thought you'd wait and find out if any one had seen you. . . . I say, Mr. Salveter; don't you know that if you had admitted being with your uncle at ten o'clock, it would have been a point in your favor?"
Salveter had become sullen, and before he could answer Vance went on.
"Leavin' these speculations to one side, could we prevail upon you to tell us exactly what you did in the museum between half past nine and ten o'clock?"
"I've already told you." Salveter was troubled and distrait. "I was comparing an Eighteenth-Dynasty papyrus recently found by Doctor Bliss at Thebes with Luckenbill's translation of the hexagonal prism of the Annals of Sennacherib* in order to determine certain values for--"
* The prism referred to by Salveter was the terra-cotta one acquired by the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago during its reconnoitering expedition of 1919-20. The document was a variant duplicate of the Taylor prism in the British Museum, written about two years earlier under another eponym.
"You're romancing frightfully, Mr. Salveter," Vance broke in quietly. "And you're indulgin' in an anachronism. The Sennacherib prism is in Babylonian cuneiform, and dates almost a thousand years later." He lifted his eyes sternly. "What were you doing in the museum this morning?"
Salveter started forward in his chair, but at once sank back.
"I was writing a letter," he answered weakly.
"To whom?"
"I'd rather not say."
"Naturally." Vance smiled faintly. "In what language?"
An immediate change came over the man. His face went pale, and his hands, which were lying along his knees, convulsed.
"What language?" he repeated huskily. "Why do you ask that? . . . What language would I be likely to write a letter in--Bantu, Sanskrit, Walloon, Ido. . . ?"
"No-o." Vance's gaze came slowly to rest on Salveter. "Nor did I have in mind Aramaic, or Agao, or Swahili, or Sumerian. . . . The fact is, it smote my
brain a moment ago that you were composin' an epistle in Egyptian hieroglyphics."
The man's eyes dilated.
"Why, in Heaven's name," he asked lamely, "should I do a thing like that?"
"Why? Ah, yes--why, indeed?" Vance sighed deeply. "But, really, y' know, you were composin' in Egyptian--weren't you?"
"Was I? What makes you think so?"
"Must I explain? It's so deuced simple." Vance put out his cigarette and made a slight deprecatory gesture. "I could even guess for whom the epistle was intended. Unless I'm hopelessly mistaken, Mrs. Bliss was to have been the recipient." Again Vance smiled musingly. "Y' see, you mentioned three words in the imagin'ry papyrus, which you have not yet satisfactorily translated--ankhet, wash, and tema. But since there are scores of Egyptian words that have thus far resisted accurate translation, I wondered why you should have mentioned these particular three. And I further wondered why you should have mentioned three words whose meaning you did not recall, which so closely approximate three very familiar words in Egyptian. . . . And then I bethought me as to the meaning of these three familiar words. Ankh--without a determinative--can mean the 'living one.' Was--which is close to wash--means 'happiness' or 'good fortune'; though I realize there is some doubt about it,--Erman translates it, with a question-mark, as Glück. The tema you mentioned with a double flail is unknown to me. But I of course am familiar with tem spelt with a sledge ideograph. It means 'to be ended' or 'finished.' . . . Do you follow me?"
Salveter stared like a man hypnotized.
"Good God!" he muttered.
"And so," Vance continued, "I concluded that you had been dealin' in the well-known forms of these three words, and had mentioned them because, in their other approximate forms, their transliterative meanings are unknown. . . . And the words fitted perfectly with the situation. Indeed, Mr. Salveter, it wouldn't take a great deal of imagination to reconstruct your letter, being given the three verbal salients--to wit, the living one, happiness or good fortune, and to be ended or finished"
Vance paused briefly, as if to arrange his words.
"You probably composed a communication in which you said that the 'living one' (ankh) was standing in the way of your 'happiness' or 'good fortune' (was), and expressed a desire for the situation 'to be ended' or 'finished' (tem). . . . I'm right, am I not?"
Salveter continued staring at Vance in a kind of admiring astonishment.
"I'm going to be truthful with you," he said at length. "That's exactly what I wrote. You see, Meryt-Amen, who knows the Middle Egyptian heiroglyphic language better than I'll ever know it, suggested long ago that I write to her at least once a week in the language of her ancestors, as a kind of exercise. I've been doing it for years; and she always corrects me and advises me--she's almost as well versed as any of the scribes who decorated the ancient tombs. . . . This morning, when I returned to the museum, I realized that the Metropolitan did not open until ten o'clock, and on some sudden impulse I sat down and began working on this letter."
"Most unfortunate," Vance sighed; "for your phraseology in that letter made it appear that you were contemplating taking drastic measures."
"I know it!" Salveter caught his breath. "That's why I lied to you. But the fact is, Mr. Vance, the letter was innocent enough. . . . I know it was foolish, but I didn't take it very seriously. Honest, sir, it was really a lesson in Egyptian composition--not an actual communication."
Vance nodded non-committally.
"And where is this letter now?" he asked.
"In the drawer of the table in the museum. I hadn't finished it when Uncle Ben came in; and I put it away."
"And you had already made use of the three words, ankh and was and tem?"
Salveter braced himself and took a deep breath.
"Yes! Those three familiar words were in it. And then, when you first asked me about what I'd been doing in the museum I made up the tale about the papyrus--"
"And mentioned three words which were suggested to you by the three words you had actually used--eh, what?"
"Yes, sir! That's the truth."
"We're most grateful for your sudden burst of honesty." Vance's tone was frigid. "Will you be so good as to bring me the uncompleted epistle? I'd dearly love to see it; and perhaps I can decipher it."
Salveter leapt to his feet and fairly ran out of the room. A few minutes later he returned, to all appearances dazed and crestfallen.
"It isn't there!" he announced. "It's gone!"
"Oh, is it now? . . . Most unfortunate."
Vance lay back pensively for several moments. Then suddenly he sprang to his feet.
"It's not there! . . . It's gone!" he murmured. "I don't like this situation, Markham--I don't at all like it. . . . Why should the letter have disappeared? Why . . . why?"
He swung about to Salveter.
"What kind of paper did you write that indiscreet letter on?" he asked, with suppressed excitement.
"On a yellow scratch-pad--the kind that's generally kept on the table. . . ."
"And the ink--did you draw your characters with pen or pencil?"
"With a pen. Green ink. It's always in the museum. . . ."
Vance raised his hand in an impatient gesture.
"That's enough. . . . Go up-stairs--go to your room . . . and stay there."
"But, Mr. Vance, I--I'm worried about that letter. Where do you think it is?"
"Why should I know where it is?--provided, of course, you ever wrote it. I'm no divining-rod." Vance was deeply troubled, though he sought to hide the fact. "Didn't you know better than to leave such a missive lying loosely about?"
"It never occurred to me--"
"Oh, didn't it? . . . I wonder." Vance looked at Salveter sharply. "This is no time to speculate. . . . Please go to your room. I'll speak to you again. . . . Don't ask any questions--do as I tell you!"
Salveter, without a word, turned and disappeared through the door. We could hear his heavy footsteps ascending the stairs.
15
VANCE MAKES A DISCOVERY
(Friday, July 13; 4:45 P.M.)
Vance stood for a long time in uneasy silence. At length he lifted his eyes to Hennessey.
"I wish you'd run up-stairs," he said, "and take a post where you can watch all the rooms. I don't want any communication between Mrs. Bliss and Salveter and Hani."
Hennessey glanced at Heath.
"Those are orders," the Sergeant informed him; and the detective went out with alacrity.
Vance turned to Markham.
"Maybe that priceless young ass actually wrote the silly letter," he commented; and a worried look came over his face. "I say; let's take a peep in the museum."
"See here, Vance,"--Markham rose--"why should the possibility of Salveter's having written a foolish letter upset you?"
"I don't know--I'm not sure." Vance went to the door; then pivoted suddenly. "But I'm afraid--I'm deuced afraid! Such a letter would give the murderer a loophole--that is, if what I think is true. If the letter was written, we've got to find it. If we don't find it, there are several plausible explanations for its disappearance--and one of 'em is fiendish. . . . But come. We'll have to search the museum--on the chance that it was written, as Salveter says, and left in the table-drawer."
He went swiftly across the hall and threw open the great steel door.
"If Doctor Bliss and Guilfoyle return while we're in the museum," he said to Snitkin, who stood leaning against the front door, "take them in the drawing-room and keep them there."
We passed down the steps into the museum, and Vance went at once to the little desk-table beside the obelisk. He looked at the yellow pad and tested the color of the ink. Then he pulled open the drawer and turned out its contents. After a few minutes' inspection of the odds and ends, he restored the drawer to order and closed it. There was a small mahogany waste-basket beneath the table, and Vance emptied it on the floor. Going down on his knees he looked at each piece of crumpled paper. At length he rose and shook his head.
"I don't like this, Markham," he said. "I'd feel infinitely better if I could find that letter."
He strolled about the museum looking for places where a letter might have been thrown. But when he reached the iron spiral stairs at the rear he leaned his back against them and regarded Markham hopelessly.
"I'm becoming more and more frightened," he remarked in a low voice. "If this devilish plot should work! . . ." He turned suddenly and ran up the stairs, beckoning to us as he did so. "There's a chance--just a chance," he called over his shoulder. "I should have thought of it before."
We followed him uncomprehendingly into Doctor Bliss's study.
"The letter should be in the study," he said, striving to control his eagerness. "That would be logical . . . and this case is unbelievably logical, Markham--so logical, so mathematical, that we may eventually be able to read it aright. It's too logical, in fact--that's its weakness. . . ."
He was already on all fours delving into the spilled contents of Doctor Bliss's waste-basket. After a moment's search he picked up two torn pieces of yellow paper. He glanced at them carefully, and we could see tiny markings on them in green ink. He placed them to one side, and continued his search. After several minutes he had amassed a small pile of yellow paper fragments.
"I think that's about all," he said, rising.
He sat down in the swivel chair and laid the torn bits of yellow paper on the blotter.
"This may take a little time, but since I know Egyptian heiroglyphs fairly well I ought to accomplish the task without too much difficulty, don't y' know."
He began arranging and fitting the scraps together, while Markham, Heath and I stood behind him looking on with fascination. At the end of ten minutes he had reassembled the letter. Then he took a large sheet of white paper from one of the drawers of the desk and covered it with mucilage. Carefully he transferred the reconstructed letter, piece by piece, to the gummed paper.
"There, Markham old dear," he sighed, "is the unfinished letter which Salveter told us he was working on this morning between nine-thirty and ten."
Philo Vance 12 Novels Complete Bundle Page 124