"It was a clever idea," said Vance.
"Oh, no; not clever. Merely a bit of humour." Lethargy again seemed to pervade him; his expression became a mask; his hands lay limp on the arms of the chair. He might have been a corpse. There was a long silence; then Vance spoke.
"The handwriting on the wall. Would it comfort you to have me suggest that perhaps all the years throughout infinity are counted and divided?"
"No," Owen snapped. "'Comfort'--another babu word." Then he went on wistfully: "Eternal recurrence--resurgam. The perfect torture." He began to mutter. "'The sea will begin to wither.. an extinct planet.. absorbed in the sun.. greater suns.. the ultimate moment.. eternal dispersal of things.. billions of years hence.. this same room...'" He shook himself weakly, and stared at Vance. "Moore was right: it is like madness."
Vance nodded sympathetically.
"Yes. Madness. Quite. The moment'ry finite is all we dare face. But there is no finite."
"No, no finite, of course." Owen spoke sepulchrally. "But those billions of years beyond, when the mind returns to infinity.. like the endless ripples made by a stone cast in the water. Then we must have cleanliness of spirit. Not now. But then. We must cause no endless ripples...Thank God, I can talk to you."
Again Vance nodded.
"Yes, I quite understand. 'Cleanliness'--I know what you mean. The finite balances itself--that is, we can balance it, even at the last. We can go back clean to endless time. Yes. 'Cleanliness of spirit'--an apposite phrase. No ripples. I wholly agree."
"But not through restitution," Owen said quickly. "No preposterous confessionals."
Vance waved his hand in negation.
"I didn't mean that. Merely a neant--a nothingness--after the finite, when there will be no further struggle, no more trying to eliminate the impulses placed in us by the same agency that puts a taboo on our indulging them..."
"That's it!" There was a flicker of animation in Owen's voice; then he lapsed again into languor. The slight gesture of his hand was as graceful as a woman's. But the steely hardness in his gaze remained. "You will see that I cause no ripples, in case..?"
"Yes," returned Vance simply. "If the occasion should ever arise, and I am able to help, you may count on me."
"I trust you...And now, may I speak a moment? I have long wanted to say these things to someone who would understand..."
Vance merely waited, and Owen went on.
"Nothing has the slightest importance--not even life itself. We ourselves can create or smear out human beings--it is all one, whichever we do." He grinned hopelessly. "The rotten futility of all things--the futility of doing anything, even of thinking. Damn the agonizing succession of days we call Life! My temperament has ever drawn me in many directions at once--always the thumbscrew and the rack. Perhaps, after all, to smear souls out is better."
He seemed to shrink as from a ghost; and Vance put in: "I know the unrest that comes from too much needless activity, with all its multiplying desires."
"The aimless struggle! Yes, yes. The struggle to fit oneself into a mould that differs from one's ancient mould. That is the ultimate curse. The instinct to achieve--faugh! We learn its worthlessness only when it has devoured us. I have been fired by different instincts at different times. They are all lies--cunning, corroding lies. And we think we can subject our instincts to the mind. The mind!" He laughed softly. "The mind's only value is attained when it teaches us that it is useless."
He moved a little, as if a slight involuntary spasm had shaken him. "Nor can we attribute our distorted instincts to racial memory. There are no races--only one great filthy stream of life flowing out of the primeval slime. The abortive sensualism of primordial animal life lies dormant within all of us. If we suppress it, it manifests itself in cruelty and sadism; if we unleash it, it produces perversions and insanity. There is no answer."
"Man sometimes strives to counteract these horrors by releasing an inner ideal from its abstract conception through visual symbols."
"Symbols themselves are abstractions," came Owen's mordant monotone. "Nor can logic help. Logic leads no man to the truth: logic leads only to insane delusions. The apotheosis of logic:--angels dancing on the point of a needle...But why do I even bother, in this shadow between two infinities? I can give only one answer: the obscene urge to eat well and live well--which, in turn, is an instinct and, therefore, a lie."
"It may go farther back than that instinct," Vance suggested. "It may be an urge brought here when the shadow of life first fell across the path of infinity--the cosmic urge to play a game with life, in order to escape from the stresses and pressures of the finite."
(I now knew that Vance had some very definite--but, to me, obscure--purpose in mind as he talked with this strange, unnatural man before him.)
"Here in this dreamed--out world," said Owen hazily, "one course is no better than another; one person or thing is no more important than any other person or thing. All opposites are interchangeable--creation or slaughter, serenity or torture. Yet vanity seeps through the scabby crust of my congealed metaphysics. Bah!" He hunched himself over and stared At Vance. "There is neither time nor existence here."
"As you say. Infinity is not relatively divisible."
"But there is the terrifying possibility that we can add some factor to the time before us. And if we do, that factor will continue eternally... There must be no pebble thrown. We must cut through this shadow clean." ,
Owen had closed his eyes, and Vance scrutinized him without expression. Then he said in an almost consoling tone:
"That is wisdom...Yes. Cleanliness of spirit."
Owen nodded with great languor.
"Tomorrow night I sail for South America. Warmth--the ocean.. nepenthe, perhaps. I'll be engaged all tomorrow. Things to be done--accounts, a house--cleaning, temporal orderliness. No ripples to follow me for all time. Cleanliness--beyond...You understand?"
"Yes." Vance did not lower his gaze. "I understand. Cessation here, lest there be a 'hound of Heaven'..."
The man's slow eyes opened. He straightened and lighted another cigarette. His strange mood was dissipated, and another look came into his eyes. Throughout this discussion he had not once raised his voice; nor had there been more than the mildest inflection in his words. Yet I felt as if I had been listening to a bitter and passionate tirade.
Owen began speaking now of old books, of his days at Cambridge, of his cultural ambitions as a youth, of his early study of music. He was steeped in the lore of ancient civilizations and, to my astonishment, he dwelt with fanatical passion on the Tibetan Book of the Dead. But, strangely enough, he spoke of himself always with a sense of dualism, as if telling of someone else. There was a sensitive courtesy in the man, but somehow he instilled in me a repugnance akin to fear. There was always an invisible aura about him, like that of a primitive, smouldering beast. I was unwholesomely fascinated by the man; and I experienced an unmistakable sensation of relief when Vance stood up to go.
As we parted from him at the door, he said to Vance with seeming irrelevancy:
"Counted, weighed, divided...You have promised me.'
Vance met his gaze directly for a brief moment. "Thank you," breathed Owen, with a deep bow.
CHAPTER XV - AN APPALLING ACCUSATION
(Tuesday, May 21; 9:30 am.)
"Yes, Markham, quite mad," Vance summarized, as we were finishing breakfast in his apartment the next morning. "Quite. A poisonous madman, like some foul, crawling creature. His end is rapidly approaching, and a hideous fear has wrecked his brain. The sudden anticipation of death has severed his cord of sanity. He's seeking a hole in which to hide from the unescapable. But he has nowhere to take cover--only the mephitic charnel house which his warped brain has erected. That is his one remaining reality...A vile creature that should be stamped out as one would destroy a deadly germ. A mental, moral and spiritual leper. Unclean. Polluted. And I--I--am to save him from the horrors infinity holds for him!"
"You must have had a
pleasant evening with him," commented Markham with distaste.
Sergeant Heath, having arrived in answer to an earlier telephone summons from Vance, had listened attentively to the conversation. But he seemed to withdraw into himself when, a few moments later, Gracie Allen came tripping gaily into the library.
She carried a small wooden box, held tightly to her. Behind her was George Burns, diffident and hesitant. Miss Allen explained things buoyantly.
"I just had to come, Mr. Vance, to show you my clues. And George had just come to see me; so I brought him along, too. I think he should know how we're getting along. Don't you, Mr. Vance? And mother, she's coming over too in a little while. She said she wants to see you, though I can't even imagine why."
The girl paused long enough for Vance to present Markham. She accepted him without the suspicion she had previously accorded Heath; and Markham was both fascinated and amused by her lively and irrelevant chatter.
"And now, Mr. Vance," the girl continued, going to the desk and taking the tight cover from the little box she had brought, "I've simply got to show you my clues. But I really don't think they're any good, because I didn't know exactly where to look for them. Anyhow..."
She began to display her treasures. Vance humoured her and pretended to be greatly interested. Markham, puzzled but smiling, came forward a few steps; and Burns stood, ill at ease, at the other side of the desk. Heath, annoyed by the frivolous interruption, disgustedly lighted a cigar and walked to the window.
"Now here, Mr. Vance, is the exact size of a footprint." Gracie Allen took out a slip of paper with some figures written on it. "It measures just eleven inches long, and the man at the shoe store said that was the length of a number nine--and--a--half shoe--unless it was an English shoe, and then it might be only a number nine. But I don't think he was English--I mean the man with the foot. I think he was a Greek, because he was one of the waiters up at the Domdaniel. You see, I went up there because that's where you said the dead man was found. And I waited a long time for someone to come out of the kitchen to make a footprint; and then, when no one was looking, I measured it..."
She put the paper to one side.
"And now, here's a piece of blotter that I took from the desk in Mr. Puttie's office at lunch--time yesterday, when he wasn't there. And I held it to a mirror, but all it says is '4 dz Sw So,' just like I wrote it out again here. All that means is, 'four dozen boxes of sandalwood soap.'..."
She brought out two or three other useless odds and ends which she explained in amusing detail, as she placed them beside the others.
Vance did not interrupt her during this diverting, but pathetic, display. But Burns, who was growing nervous and exasperated at the girl's unnecessary wasting of time, finally seemed to lose his patience and burst out: "Why don't you show the gentlemen the almonds you have there, and get this silly business over with?"
"I haven't any almonds, George. There's only one thing left in the box, and that hasn't anything to do with it. I was just sort of practising when I got that due---"
"But something smells like bitter almond to me."
Vance suddenly became seriously interested.
"What else have you in the box, Miss Allen?" he asked.
She giggled as she took out the last item--a slightly bulging and neatly sealed envelope.
"It's only an old cigarette," she said. "And that's a good joke on George. He's always smelling the funniest smells. I guess he can't help it."
She tore away the corner of the envelope and let a flattened and partly broken cigarette slip into her hand. At first glimpse, I would have said that it had not been lighted, but then I noticed its charred end, as if a few inhalations had been taken of it. Vance took the cigarette and held it gingerly near his nose.
"Here's your smell of bitter almond, Mr. Burns." His eyes were focused somewhere far in space. Then he sealed the cigarette again in one of his own envelopes, and placed it on the mantelpiece.
"Where did you find that cigarette, Miss Allen?" he asked.
The girl giggled again musically.
"Why, that's the one that burned a hole in my dress last Saturday out in Riverdale. You remember...And then when you told me all about how important cigarettes are, I thought I'd go out there right away. I wanted to see if I could find the cigarette and maybe tell if it was a man or a woman that had thrown it at me. You see, I didn't really believe it was you that did it...I had a terrible time finding the cigarette, because I had stepped on it and it was half covered up. Anyhow, I couldn't tell anything from it, and I was awfully mad all over again. I started to throw it away. But I thought I'd just better keep it, because it was the first clue I had gotten--although it really didn't have anything to do with the case I was helping you with."
"My dear child," said Vance slowly, "it may not have anything to do with our case, but it may have something to do with some other case."
"Oh, wouldn't that be wonderful!" the girl exclaimed delightedly. "Then we'd have two cases, and I'd really be a detective, wouldn't I?"
Markham had come forward.
"What did you mean by that last remark, Vance?"
"Cyanide may have been on this cigarette." He looked at Markham significantly. "For the possible action of this drug, as well as the possible means of its administration, I have only to refer you to Doremus's remarks Sunday night."
Markham made a gesture of impatience. "For Heaven's sake, Vance! Your attitude toward this case is becoming more insane every minute."
Vance ignored the other's comment, and continued. "Assuming my fantastic, and probably fleeting, notion that this cigarette is the actual lethal weapon we have been yearning for, many other equally fantastic things in the case become rational. We could then connect several of our unknown, nightmarish quantities and thus build up a theory which--within its own limitations, at least--would glimmer with sense. Perpend: We could account for Hennessey's failure to see the chap enter the office Saturday evening. We could limit the knowledge of the secret door to Mirche and his immediate circle--which, you must admit, would be logical. We could assume that the crime took place elsewhere than in Mirche's office--in Riverdale, to be specific--and that the body was brought to the office for some definite reason. Such an assumption might offer an explanation of the peculiar manner in which the police were notified; and it might account for the difficulty Doctor Mendel had in determining the time of death. For if the killing took place in the office, it could not have been earlier than ten o'clock, since Miss Allen was in there at about that hour; whereas if the killing took place elsewhere, it could have been at any time within ten hours prior to the finding of the body."
Vance moved to the mantelpiece and thoughtfully tapped the envelope containing the cigarette.
"Should that cigarette prove to have been impregnated with the poison, and should it have been used as Doremus indicated such an item could be used, then we're up against an utterly implausible coincidence. To wit, we'd have two people, in separate parts of the city, murdered by the same obscure agent, on the some day. And, added to that, we have only one body."
Markham nodded slowly without enthusiasm. "Remotely specious. But----"
"I know your objections, Markham," Vance interrupted. "And they are mine, too. My whole capricious supposition may be less than gossamer--but it's mine own and, at the moment, I adore it."
Markham started to speak, but Vance ran on.
"Let me rave a moment longer ere you encase me in a strait--jacket...I behold, as in a dream, the most comforting pastures into which my quaint assumption might lead. It might even tie together the annoyin' factors that have robbed me of sweet sleep--Mirche's ready admission concerning his secret door; the hatred I glimpsed in the eyes of the Lorelei; the mystic lore of the Tofanas; and the presence of the 'Owl' at the Domdaniel Saturday night. It might explain the subtle implications in the name of the cafe. It might even justify the Sergeant's haunting hypothesis of a criminal ring. It might, conceivably, elucidate Mr. Burns' migrat'
ry cigarette--case with its scent of jonquille. And there are other things now baffling me that might be assembled into a consistent whole...My word, Markham! it has the most amazin' possibilities. Let me have my hasheesh dream. A pattern is forming at last in my whirling brain; and it is the first coherent design that has invaded my en--fevered imagination since Sabbath eve. With the droll premise that the cigarette was adequately poisoned, I can force a score of hitherto recalcitrant elements into line--or, rather, they tumble into line themselves, like the tiny coloured particles in a kaleidoscope."
"Vance, for the love of Heaven! You're simply creating a new and more preposterous fantasy to explain away your first fantasy." Markham's severe tone quickly sobered Vance.
"Yes, you're quite right," he said. "I shall, of course, send the cigarette at once to Doremus for analysis. And it will probably reveal nothing. As you say. Frankly, I don't understand how the smell could have remained on the cigarette so long, unless one of the combining poisons acted as a fixator and retarded volatilization...But, Markham, I do want--I need--a dead man who was killed in Riverdale last Saturday."
Gracie Allen had been looking from one to the other in a bewildered daze. "Oh, now I bet I understand!" she exclaimed exultantly. "You really think the cigarette could have killed somebody...But I never heard of anyone dying from smoking just one cigarette."
"Not an ordin'ry cigarette, my dear," Vance explained patiently. "It is only possible if the cigarette has been dipped in some terrible poison."
"Why, that's awful, if it's really true," she mused. "And up in Riverdale, of all places! It's so pretty and quiet up there..."
Her eyes began to grow wide, and finally she exclaimed: "But I bet I know who the dead man was! I bet I know!"
Philo Vance 12 Novels Complete Bundle Page 250