The Philo Vance Megapack

by S. S. Van Dine

  Heath met us at the Franklin Street entrance to the Criminal Courts Building. He, too, was anxious and subdued and he shook hands with us in a detached manner devoid of his usual heartiness.

  “I’ve got Snitkin running the elevator,” he said, after the briefest of salutations. “Burke’s in the hall upstairs, and Emery is with him, waiting to be let into Swacker’s office.”

  We entered the deserted and almost silent building and rode up to the fourth floor. Markham unlocked his office door and we passed in.

  “Guilfoyle, the man who’s tailing Skeel,” Heath explained, when we were seated, “is to report by phone to the Homicide Bureau as soon as the Dude leaves his rooms.”

  It was now twenty minutes to ten. Five minutes later Swacker arrived. Taking his stenographic notebook, he stationed himself just inside of the swinging door of Markham’s private sanctum, where he could hear all that was said without being seen. Markham lit a cigar, and Heath followed suit. Vance was already smoking placidly. He was the calmest person in the room, and lay back languorously in one of the great leather chairs as though immune to all cares and vicissitudes. But I could tell by the overdeliberate way he flicked his ashes into the receiver that he, too, was uneasy.

  Five or six minutes passed in complete silence. Then the sergeant gave a grunt of annoyance. “No, sir,” he said, as if completing some unspoken thought, “I can’t get a slant on this business. The finding of that jewelry, now, all nicely wrapped up…and then the Dude offering to squeal.… There’s no sense to it.”

  “It’s tryin’, I know, Sergeant; but it’s not altogether senseless.” Vance was gazing lazily at the ceiling. “The chap who confiscated those baubles didn’t have any use for them. He didn’t want them, in fact—they worried him abominably.”

  The point was too complex for Heath. The previous day’s developments had shaken the foundation of all his arguments; and he lapsed again into brooding silence.

  At ten o’clock he rose impatiently and, going to the hall door, looked out. Returning, he compared his watch with the office clock and began pacing restlessly. Markham was attempting to sort some papers on his desk, but presently he pushed them aside with an impatient gesture.

  “He ought to be coming along now,” he remarked, with an effort at cheerfulness.

  “He’ll come,” growled Heath, “or he’ll get a free ride.” And he continued his pacing.

  A few minutes later he turned abruptly and went out into the hall. We could hear him calling to Snitkin down the elevator shaft, but when he came back into the office, his expression told us that as yet there was no news of Skeel.

  “I’ll call up the bureau,” he decided, “and see what Guilfoyle had to report. At least we’ll know then when the Dude left his house.”

  But when the sergeant had been connected with police headquarters, he was informed that Guilfoyle had as yet made no report.

  “That’s damn funny,” he commented, hanging up the receiver.

  It was now twenty minutes past ten. Markham was growing restive. The tenacity with which the Canary murder case had resisted all his efforts toward a solution had filled him with discouragement; and he had hoped, almost desperately, that this morning’s interview with Skeel would clear up the mystery, or at least supply him with information on which definite action could be taken. Now, with Skeel late for this all-important appointment, the strain was becoming tense.

  He pushed back his chair nervously and, going to the window, gazed out into the dark haze of fine rain. When he returned to his desk his face was set.

  “I’ll give our friend until half past ten,” he said grimly. “If he isn’t here then, Sergeant, you’d better call up the local station house and have them send a patrol wagon for him.”

  There was another few minutes of silence. Vance lolled in his chair with half-closed eyes, but I noticed that, though he still held his cigarette, he was not smoking. His forehead was puckered by a frown, and he was very quiet. I knew that some unusual problem was occupying him. His lethargy had in it a quality of intentness and concentration.

  As I watched him he suddenly sat up straight, his eyes open and alert. He tossed his dead cigarette into the receiver with a jerky movement that attested to some inner excitation.

  “Oh, my word!” he exclaimed. “It really can’t be, y’ know! And yet”—his face darkened—“and yet, by Jove, that’s it!… What an ass I’ve been—what an unutterable ass!… Oh!”

  He sprang to his feet, then stood looking down at the floor like a man dazed, afraid of his own thoughts.

  “Markham, I don’t like it—I don’t like it at all.” He spoke almost as if he were frightened. “I tell you, there’s something terrible going on—something uncanny. The thought of it makes my flesh creep.… I must be getting old and sentimental,” he added, with an effort at lightness; but the look in his eyes belied his tone. “Why didn’t I see this thing yesterday?… But I let it go on.…”

  We were all staring at him in amazement. I had never seen him affected in this way before, and the fact that he was habitually so cynical and aloof, so adamant to emotion and impervious to outside influences, gave his words and actions an impelling and impressive quality.

  After a moment he shook himself slightly, as if to throw off the pall of horror that had descended upon him, and, stepping to Markham’s desk, he leaned over, resting on both hands.

  “Don’t you see?” he asked. “Skeel’s not coming. No use to wait—no use of our having come here in the first place. We have to go to him. He’s waiting for us.… Come! Get your hat.”

  Markham had risen, and Vance took him firmly by the arm.

  “You needn’t argue,” he persisted. “You’ll have to go to him sooner or later. You might as well go now, don’t y’ know. My word! What a situation!”

  He had led Markham, astonished and but mildly protesting, into the middle of the room, and he now beckoned to Heath with his free hand.

  “You, too, Sergeant. Sorry you had all this trouble. My fault. I should have foreseen this thing. A devilish shame; but my mind was on Monets all yesterday afternoon.… You know where Skeel lives?”

  Heath nodded mechanically. He had fallen under the spell of Vance’s strange and dynamic importunities.

  “Then, don’t wait. And, Sergeant! You’d better bring Burke or Snitkin along. They won’t be needed here—nobody’ll be needed here any more today.”

  Heath looked inquiringly to Markham for counsel; his bewilderment had thrown him into a state of mute indecision. Markham nodded his approval of Vance’s suggestions, and, without a word, slipped into his raincoat. A few minutes later the four of us, accompanied by Snitkin, had entered Vance’s car and were lurching uptown. Swacker had been sent home; the office had been locked up; and Burke and Emery had departed for the Homicide Bureau to await further instructions.

  Skeel lived in 35th Street, near the East River, in a dingy, but once pretentious, house which formerly had been the residence of some old family of the better class. It now had an air of dilapidation and decay; there was rubbish in the areaway; and a large sign announcing rooms for rent was posted in one of the ground-floor windows.

  As we drew up before it Heath sprang to the street and looked sharply about him. Presently he espied an unkempt man slouching in the doorway of a grocery store diagonally opposite, and beckoned to him. The man shambled over furtively.

  “It’s all right, Guilfoyle,” the sergeant told him. “We’re paying the Dude a social visit. What’s the trouble? Why didn’t you report?”

  Guilfoyle looked surprised. “I was told to phone in when he left the house, sir. But he ain’t left yet. Mallory tailed him home last night round ten o’clock, and I relieved Mallory at nine this morning. The Dude’s still inside.”

  “Of course he’s still inside, Sergeant,” said Vance, a bit impatiently.

  “Where’s his room situated, Guilfoyle?” asked Heath.

  “Second floor, at the back.”

  “Right.
We’re going in. Stand by.”

  “Look out for him,” admonished Guilfoyle. “He’s got a gat.”

  Heath took the lead up the worn steps which led from the pavement to the little vestibule. Without ringing, he roughly grasped the doorknob and shook it. The door was unlocked, and we stepped into the stuffy lower hallway.

  A bedraggled woman of about forty, in a disreputable dressing gown, and with hair hanging in strings over her shoulders, emerged suddenly from a rear door and came toward us unsteadily, her bleary eyes focused on us with menacing resentment.

  “Say!” she burst out, in a rasping voice. “What do youse mean by bustin’ in like this on a respectable lady?” And she launched forth upon a stream of profane epithets.

  Heath, who was nearest her, placed his large hand over her face, and gave her a gentle but firm shove backward.

  “You keep outa this, Cleopatra!” he advised her, and began to ascend the stairs.

  The second-floor hallway was dimly lighted by a small flickering gas jet, and at the rear we could distinguish the outlines of a single door set in the middle of the wall.

  “That’ll be Mr. Skeel’s abode,” observed Heath.

  He walked up to it and, dropping one hand in his right coat pocket, turned the knob. But the door was locked. He then knocked violently upon it and, placing his ear to the jamb, listened. Snitkin stood directly behind him, his hand also in his pocket. The rest of us remained a little in the rear.

  Heath had knocked a second time when Vance’s voice spoke up from the semidarkness. “I say, Sergeant, you’re wasting time with all that formality.”

  “I guess you’re right,” came the answer after a moment of what seemed unbearable silence.

  Heath bent down and looked at the lock. Then he took some instrument from his pocket and inserted it into the keyhole.

  “You’re right,” he repeated. “The key’s gone.”

  He stepped back and, balancing on his toes like a sprinter, sent his shoulders crashing against the panel directly over the knob. But the lock held.

  “Come on, Snitkin,” he ordered.

  The two detectives hurled themselves against the door. At the third onslaught there was a splintering of wood and a tearing of the lock’s bolt through the molding. The door swung drunkenly inward.

  The room was in almost complete darkness. We all hesitated on the threshold, while Snitkin crossed warily to one of the windows and sent the shade clattering up. The yellow-gray light filtered in, and the objects of the room at once took definable form. A large, old-fashioned bed projected from the wall on the right.

  “Look!” cried Snitkin, pointing; and something in his voice sent a shiver over me.

  We pressed forward. On the foot of the bed, at the side toward the door, sprawled the crumpled body of Skeel. Like the Canary, he had been strangled. His head hung back over the footboard, his face a hideous distortion. His arms were outstretched, and one leg trailed over the edge of the mattress, resting on the floor.

  “Thuggee,” murmured Vance. “Lindquist mentioned it. Curious!”

  Heath stood staring fixedly at the body, his shoulders hunched. His normal ruddiness of complexion was gone, and he seemed like a man hypnotized.

  “Mother o’ God!” he breathed, awestricken. And, with an involuntary motion, he crossed himself.

  Markham was shaken also. He set his jaw rigidly.

  “You’re right, Vance.” His voice was strained and unnatural. “Something sinister and terrible has been going on here.… There’s a fiend loose in this town—a werewolf.”

  “I wouldn’t say that, old man.” Vance regarded the murdered Skeel critically. “No, I wouldn’t say that. Not a werewolf. Just a desperate human being. A man of extremes, perhaps, but quite rational, and logical—oh, how deuced logical!”

  CHAPTER 24

  AN ARREST

  (Sunday, P.M., Monday, A.M.; September 16-17)

  The investigation into Skeel’s death was pushed with great vigor by the authorities. Doctor Doremus, the medical examiner, arrived promptly and declared that the crime had taken place between ten o’clock and midnight. Immediately Vance insisted that all the men who were known to have been intimately acquainted with the Odell girl—Mannix, Lindquist, Cleaver, and Spotswoode—be interviewed at once and made to explain where they were during these two hours. Markham agreed without hesitation and gave the order to Heath, who at once put four of his men on the task.

  Mallory, the detective who had shadowed Skeel the previous night, was questioned regarding possible visitors; but inasmuch as the house where Skeel lived accommodated over twenty roomers, who were constantly coming and going at all hours, no information could be gained through that channel. All that Mallory could say definitely was that Skeel had returned home at about ten o’clock, and had not come out again. The landlady, sobered and subdued by the tragedy, repudiated all knowledge of the affair. She explained that she had been “ill” in her room from dinnertime until we had disturbed her recuperation the next morning. The front door, it seemed, was never locked, since her tenants objected to such an unnecessary inconvenience. The tenants themselves were questioned, but without result; they were not of a class likely to give information to the police, even had they possessed any.

  The fingerprint experts made a careful examination of the room but failed to find any marks except Skeel’s own. A thorough search through the murdered man’s effects occupied several hours; but nothing was discovered that gave any hint of the murderer’s identity. A .38 Colt automatic, fully loaded, was found under one of the pillows on the bed; and eleven hundred dollars, in bills of large denomination, was taken from a hollow brass curtain rod. Also, under a loose board in the hall, the missing steel chisel, with the fissure in the blade, was found. But these items were of no value in solving the mystery of Skeel’s death; and at four o’clock in the afternoon the room was closed with an emergency padlock and put under guard.

  Markham and Vance and I had remained several hours after our discovery of the body. Markham had taken immediate charge of the case and had conducted the interrogation of the tenants. Vance had watched the routine activities of the police with unwonted intentness, and had even taken part in the search. He had seemed particularly interested in Skeel’s evening clothes, and had examined them garment by garment. Heath had looked at him from time to time, but there had been neither contempt nor amusement in the sergeant’s glances.

  At half past two Markham departed, after informing Heath that he would be at the Stuyvesant Club during the remainder of the day; and Vance and I went with him. We had a belated luncheon in the empty grill.

  “This Skeel episode rather knocks the foundation from under everything,” Markham said dispiritedly, as our coffee was served.

  “Oh, no—not that,” Vance answered. “Rather, let us say that it has added a new column to the edifice of my giddy theory.”

  “Your theory—yes. It’s about all that’s left to go on.” Markham sighed. “It has certainly received substantiation this morning.… Remarkable how you called the turn when Skeel failed to show up.”

  Again Vance contradicted him.

  “You overestimate my little flutter in forensics, Markham dear. You see, I assumed that the lady’s strangler knew of Skeel’s offer to you. That offer was probably a threat of some kind on Skeel’s part; otherwise he wouldn’t have set the appointment a day ahead. He no doubt hoped the victim of his threat would become amenable in the meantime. And that money hidden in the curtain rod leads me to think he was blackmailing the Canary’s murderer and had been refused a further donation just before he phoned you yesterday. That would account, too, for his having kept his guilty knowledge to himself all this time.”

  “You may be right. But now we’re worse off than ever, for we haven’t even Skeel to guide us.”

  “At least we’ve forced our elusive culprit to commit a second crime to cover up his first, don’t y’ know. And when we have learned what the Canary’s various amorist
s were doing last night between ten and twelve, we may have something suggestive on which to work. By the bye, when may we expect this thrillin’ information?”

  “It depends upon what luck Heath’s men have. Tonight sometime, if everything goes well.”

  It was, in fact, about half past eight when Heath telephoned the reports. But here again Markham seemed to have drawn a blank. A less satisfactory account could scarcely be imagined. Doctor Lindquist had suffered a “nervous stroke” the preceding afternoon, and had been taken to the Episcopal Hospital. He was still there under the care of two eminent physicians whose word it was impossible to doubt; and it would be a week at least before he would be able to resume his work. This report was the only definite one of the four, and it completely exonerated the doctor from any participation in the previous night’s crime.

  By a curious coincidence neither Mannix, nor Cleaver, nor Spotswoode could furnish a satisfactory alibi. All three of them, according to their statements, had remained at home the night before. The weather had been inclement; and though Mannix and Spotswoode admitted to having been out earlier in the evening, they stated that they had returned home before ten o’clock. Mannix lived in an apartment hotel, and, as it was Saturday night, the lobby was crowded, so that no one would have been likely to see him come in. Cleaver lived in a small private apartment house without a doorman or hall-boys to observe his movements. Spotswoode was staying at the Stuyvesant Club, and since his rooms were on the third floor, he rarely used the elevator. Moreover, there had been a political reception and dance at the club the previous night, and he might have walked in and out at random a dozen times without being noticed.

  “Not what you’d call illuminatin’,” said Vance, when Markham had given him this information.

  “It eliminates Lindquist, at any rate.”

  “Quite. And, automatically, it eliminates him as an object of suspicion in the Canary’s death also; for these two crimes are part of a whole—integers of the same problem. They complement each other. The latter was conceived in relation to the first—was, in fact, a logical outgrowth of it.”