The Philo Vance Megapack

by S. S. Van Dine

  “I’ve asked myself the same question a dozen times since,” she confessed dolefully. “We women are such impulsive creatures—always doing things we shouldn’t.… But I know what you’re thinking: if I had intended to shoot him, that would have been a natural preliminary. Isn’t that what’s in your mind? I suppose all murderesses do go to dinner with their victims first.”

  While she spoke she opened her vanity case and looked at her reflection in its mirror. She daintily adjusted several imaginary stray ends of her abundant dark brown hair, and touched her arched eyebrows gently with her little finger as if to rectify some infinitesimal disturbance in their penciled contour. Then she tilted her head, regarded herself appraisingly, and returned her gaze to the district attorney only as she came to the end of her speech. Her actions had perfectly conveyed to her listeners the impression that the subject of the conversation was, in her scheme of things, of secondary importance to her personal appearance. No words could have expressed her indifference so convincingly as had her little pantomime.

  Markham was becoming exasperated. A different type of district attorney would no doubt have attempted to use the pressure of his office to force her into a more amenable frame of mind. But Markham shrank instinctively from the bludgeoning, threatening methods of the ordinary public prosecutor, especially in his dealings with women. In the present case, however, had it not been for Vance’s strictures at the club, he would no doubt have taken a more aggressive stand. But it was evident he was laboring under a burden of uncertainty superinduced by Vance’s words and augmented by the evasive deportment of the woman herself.

  After a moment’s silence he asked grimly, “You did considerable speculating through the firm of Benson and Benson, did you not?”

  A faint ring of musical laughter greeted this question. “I see that the dear major has been telling tales.… Yes, I’ve been gambling most extravagantly. And I had no business to do it. I’m afraid I’m avaricious.”

  “And is it not true that you’ve lost heavily of late—that, in fact, Mr. Alvin Benson called upon you for additional margin and finally sold out your securities?”

  “I wish to Heaven it were not true,” she lamented, with a look of simulated tragedy. Then: “Am I supposed to have done away with Mr. Benson out of sordid revenge or as an act of just retribution?” She smiled archly and waited expectantly, as if her question had been part of a guessing game.

  Markham’s eyes hardened as he coldly enunciated his next words.

  “Is it not a fact that Captain Philip Leacock owned just such a pistol as Mr. Benson was killed with—a .45 army Colt automatic?”

  At the mention of her fiancé’s name she stiffened perceptibly and caught her breath. The part she had been playing fell from her, and a faint flush suffused her cheeks and extended to her forehead. But almost immediately she had reassumed her role of playful indifference.

  “I never inquired into the make or caliber of Captain Leacock’s firearms,” she returned carelessly.

  “And is it not a fact,” pursued Markham’s imperturbable voice, “that Captain Leacock lent you his pistol when he called at your apartment on the morning before the murder?”

  “It’s most ungallant of you, Mr. Markham,” she reprimanded him coyly, “to inquire into the personal relations of an engaged couple; for I am betrothed to Captain Leacock—though you probably know it already.”

  Markham stood up, controlling himself with effort.

  “Am I to understand that you refuse to answer any of my questions, or to endeavor to extricate yourself from the very serious position you are in?”

  She appeared to consider. “Yes,” she said slowly, “I haven’t anything I care especially to say just now.”

  Markham leaned over and rested both hands on the desk. “Do you realize the possible consequences of your attitude?” he asked ominously. “The facts I know regarding your connection with the case, coupled with your refusal to offer a single extenuating explanation, give me more grounds than I actually need to order your being held.”

  I was watching her closely as he spoke, and it seemed to me that her eyelids drooped involuntarily the merest fraction of an inch. But she gave no other indication of being affected by the pronouncement, and merely looked at the district attorney with an air of defiant amusement.

  Markham, with a sudden contraction of the jaw, turned and reached toward a bell button beneath the edge of his desk. But, in doing so, his glance fell upon Vance; and he paused indecisively. The look he had encountered on the other’s face was one of reproachful amazement; not only did it express complete surprise at his apparent decision but it stated, more eloquently than words could have done, that he was about to commit an act of irreparable folly.

  There were several moments of tense silence in the room. Then calmly and unhurriedly Miss St. Clair opened her vanity case and powdered her nose. When she had finished, she turned a serene gaze upon the district attorney.

  “Well, do you want to arrest me now?” she asked.

  Markham regarded her for a moment, deliberating. Instead of answering at once, he went to the window and stood for a full minute looking down upon the Bridge of Sighs which connects the Criminal Courts Building with the Tombs.

  “No, I think not today,” he said slowly.

  He stood awhile longer in absorbed contemplation; then, as if shaking off his mood of irresolution, he swung about and confronted the woman.

  “I’m not going to arrest you—yet,” he reiterated, a bit harshly. “But I’m going to order you to remain in New York for the present. And if you attempt to leave, you will be arrested. I hope that is clear.”

  He pressed a button, and his secretary entered.

  “Swacker, please escort Miss St. Clair downstairs, and call a taxicab for her.… Then you can go home yourself.”

  She rose and gave Markham a little nod.

  “You were very kind to lend me my cigarette holder,” she said pleasantly, laying it on his desk.

  Without another word, she walked calmly from the room.

  The door had no more than closed behind her when Markham pressed another button. In a few moments the door leading into the outer corridor opened, and a white-haired, middle-aged man appeared.

  “Ben,” ordered Markham hurriedly, “have that woman that Swacker’s taking downstairs followed. Keep her under surveillance and don’t let her get lost. She’s not to leave the city—understand? It’s the St. Clair woman Tracy dug up.”

  When the man had gone, Markham turned and stood glowering at Vance.

  “What do you think of your innocent young lady now?” he asked, with an air of belligerent triumph.

  “Nice gel—eh, what?” replied Vance blandly. “Extr’ordin’ry control. And she’s about to marry a professional milit’ry man! Ah, well. De gustibus.… Y’ know, I was afraid for a moment you were actu’lly going to send for the manacles. And if you had, Markham old dear, you’d have regretted it to your dying day.”

  Markham studied him for a few seconds. He knew there was something more than a mere whim beneath Vance’s certitude of manner; and it was this knowledge that had stayed his hand when he was about to have the woman placed in custody.

  “Her attitude was certainly not conducive to one’s belief in her innocence,” Markham objected. “She played her part damned cleverly, though. But it was just the part a shrewd woman, knowing herself guilty, would have played.”

  “I say, didn’t it occur to you,” asked Vance, “that perhaps she didn’t care a farthing whether you thought her guilty or not?—that, in fact, she was a bit disappointed when you let her go?”

  “That’s hardly the way I read the situation,” returned Markham. “Whether guilty or innocent, a person doesn’t ordinarily invite arrest.”

  “By the bye,” asked Vance, “where was the fortunate swain during the hour of Alvin’s passing?”

  “Do you think we didn’t check up on that point?” Markham spoke with disdain. “Captain Leacock was a
t his own apartment that night from eight o’clock on.”

  “Was he, really?” airily retorted Vance. “A most model young fella!”

  Again Markham looked at him sharply. “I’d like to know what weird theory has been struggling in your brain today,” he mused. “Now that I’ve let the lady go temporarily—which is what you obviously wanted me to do—and have stultified my own better judgment in so doing, why not tell me frankly what you’ve got up your sleeve?”

  “‘Up my sleeve?’ Such an inelegant metaphor! One would think I was a prestidig’tator, what?”

  Whenever Vance answered in this fashion, it was a sign that he wished to avoid making a direct reply; and Markham dropped the matter.

  “Anyway,” he submitted, “you didn’t have the pleasure of witnessing my humiliation, as you prophesied.”

  Vance looked up in simulated surprise. “Didn’t I, now?” Then he added sorrowfully, “Life is so full of disappointments, y’ know.”

  CHAPTER 8

  VANCE ACCEPTS A CHALLENGE

  (Saturday, June 15; 4 P.M.)

  After Markham had telephoned Heath the details of the interview, we returned to the Stuyvesant Club. Ordinarily the district attorney’s office shuts down at one o’clock on Saturdays; but today the hour had been extended because of the importance attaching to Miss St. Clair’s visit. Markham had lapsed into an introspective silence which lasted until we were again seated in the alcove of the club’s lounge-room. Then he spoke irritably.

  “Damn it! I shouldn’t have let her go.… I still have a feeling she’s guilty.”

  Vance assumed an air of gushing credulousness.

  “Oh, really? I daresay you’re so psychic. Been that way all your life, no doubt. And haven’t you had lots and lots of dreams that came true? I’m sure you’ve often had a phone call from someone you were thinking about at the moment. A delectable gift. Do you read palms, also?… Why not have the lady’s horoscope cast?”

  “I have no evidence as yet,” Markham retorted, “that your belief in her innocence is founded on anything more substantial than your impressions.”

  “Ah, but it is,” averred Vance. “I know she’s innocent. Furthermore, I know that no woman could possibly have fired the shot.”

  “Don’t get the erroneous idea in your head that a woman couldn’t have manipulated a .45 army Colt.”

  “Oh, that?” Vance dismissed the notion with a shrug. “The material indications of the crime don’t enter into my calculations, y’ know—I leave ’em entirely to you lawyers and the lads with the bulging deltoids. I have other, and surer, ways of reaching conclusions. That’s why I told you that if you arrested any woman for shooting Benson, you’d be blundering most shamefully.”

  Markham grunted indignantly. “And yet you seem to have repudiated all processes of deduction whereby the truth may be arrived at. Have you, by any chance, entirely renounced your faith in the operations of the human mind?”

  “Ah, there speaks the voice of God’s great common people!” exclaimed Vance. “Your mind is so typical, Markham. It works on the principle that what you don’t know isn’t knowledge, and that, since you don’t understand a thing there is no explanation. A comfortable point of view. It relieves one from all care and uncertainty. Don’t you find the world a very sweet and wonderful place?”

  Markham adopted an attitude of affable forbearance. “You spoke at lunchtime, I believe, of one infallible method of detecting crime. Would you care to divulge this profound and priceless secret to a mere district attorney?”

  Vance bowed with exaggerated courtesy.10

  “Delighted, I’m sure,” he returned. “I referred to the science of individual character and the psychology of human nature. We all do things, d’ ye see, in a certain individual way, according to our temp’raments. Every human act, no matter how large or how small, is a direct expression of a man’s personality and bears the inev’table impress of his nature. Thus, a musician, by looking at a sheet of music, is able to tell at once whether it was composed, for example, by Beethoven, or Schubert, or Debussy, or Chopin. And an artist, by looking at a canvas, knows immediately whether it is a Corot, a Harpignies, a Rembrandt, or a Franz Hals. And just as no two faces are exactly alike, so no two natures are exactly alike; the combination of ingredients which go to make up our personalities, varies in each individual. That is why, when twenty artists, let us say, sit down to paint the same subject, each one conceives and executes it in a different manner. The result in each case is a distinct and unmistakable expression of the personality of the painter who did it.… It’s really rather simple, don’t y’ know.”

  “Your theory, doubtless, would be comprehensible to an artist,” said Markham, in a tone of indulgent irony. “But its metaphysical refinements are, I admit, considerably beyond the grasp of a vulgar worldling like myself.”

  “‘The mind inclined to what is false rejects the nobler course,’” murmured Vance, with a sigh.

  “There is,” argued Markham, “a slight difference between art and crime.”

  “Psychologically, old chap, there’s none,” Vance amended evenly. “Crimes possess all the basic factors of a work of art—approach, conception, technique, imagination, attack, method, and organization. Moreover, crimes vary fully as much in their manner, their aspects, and their general nature, as do works of art. Indeed, a carefully planned crime is just as direct an expression of the individual as is a painting, for instance. And therein lies the one great possibility of detection. Just as an expert aesthetician can analyze a picture and tell you who painted it, or the personality and temp’rament of the person who painted it, so can the expert psychologist analyze a crime and tell you who committed it—that is, if he happens to be acquainted with the person—or else can describe to you, with almost mathematical surety, the criminal’s nature and character.… And that, my dear Markham, is the only sure and inev’table means of determining human guilt. All others are mere guesswork, unscientific, uncertain, and—perilous.”

  Throughout this explanation Vance’s manner had been almost casual; yet the very serenity and assurance of his attitude conferred upon his words a curious sense of authority. Markham had listened with interest, though it could be seen that he did not regard Vance’s theorizing seriously.

  “Your system ignores motive altogether,” he objected.

  “Naturally,” Vance replied, “since it’s an irrelevant factor in most crimes. Every one of us, my dear chap, has just as good a motive for killing at least a score of men as the motives which actuate ninety-nine crimes out of a hundred. And, when anyone is murdered, there are dozens of innocent people who had just as strong a motive for doing it as had the actual murderer. Really, y’ know, the fact that a man has a motive is no evidence whatever that he’s guilty—such motives are too universal a possession of the human race. Suspecting a man of murder because he has a motive is like suspecting a man of running away with another man’s wife because he has two legs. The reason that some people kill and others don’t, is a matter of temp’rament—of individual psychology. It all comes back to that.… And another thing: when a person does possess a real motive—something tremendous and overpowering—he’s pretty apt to keep it to himself, to hide it and guard it carefully—eh, what? He may even have disguised the motive through years of preparation; or the motive may have been born within five minutes of the crime through the unexpected discovery of facts a decade old.… So, d’ ye see, the absence of any apparent motive in a crime might be regarded as more incriminating than the presence of one.”

  “You are going to have some difficulty in eliminating the idea of cui bono from the consideration of crime.”

  “I daresay,” agreed Vance. “The idea of cui bono is just silly enough to be impregnable. And yet, many persons would be benefited by almost anyone’s death. Kill Sumner, and, on that theory, you could arrest the entire membership of the Authors’ League.”

  “Opportunity, at any rate,” persisted Markham, “is an insu
perable factor in crime—and by opportunity, I mean that affinity of circumstances and conditions which make a particular crime possible, feasible, and convenient for a particular person.”

  “Another irrelevant factor,” asserted Vance. “Think of the opportunities we have every day to murder people we dislike! Only the other night I had ten insuff’rable bores to dinner in my apartment—a social devoir. But I refrained—with consid’rable effort, I admit—from putting arsenic in the Pontet Canet. The Borgias and I, y’ see, merely belong in different psychological categ’ries. On the other hand, had I been resolved to do murder, I would—like those resourceful cinquecenio patricians—have created my own opportunity.… And there’s the rub:—one can either make an opportunity or disguise the fact that he had it, with false alibis and various other tricks. You remember the case of the murderer who called the police to break into his victim’s house before the latter had been killed, saying he suspected foul play, and who then preceded the policemen indoors and stabbed the man as they were trailing up the stairs.”11

  “Well, what of actual proximity, or presence—the proof of a person being on the scene of the crime at the time it was committed?”

  “Again misleading,” Vance declared. “An innocent person’s presence is too often used as a shield by the real murderer, who is actu’lly absent. A clever criminal can commit a crime from a distance through an agency that is present. Also, a clever criminal can arrange an alibi and then go to the scene of the crime disguised and unrecognized. There are far too many convincing ways of being present when one is believed to be absent—and vice versa.… But we can never part from our individualities and our natures. And that is why all crime inev’tably comes back to human psychology—the one fixed, undisguisable basis of deduction.”

  “It’s a wonder to me,” said Markham, “in view of your theories, that you don’t advocate dismissing nine-tenths of the police force and installing a gross or two of those psychological machines so popular with the Sunday Supplement editor.”

  Vance smoked a minute meditatively.