“Consider the situation,” Spotswoode replied, in a suave, even voice. “I most certainly would have opened so rich a pot, had I been able to, after Mr. Cleaver and you had passed. But since I nevertheless stayed after Mr. Vance had opened for so large an amount, it goes without saying that I must have had either a four-straight, a four-flush, or a four-straight-flush. I believe I may state without immodesty that I am too good a player to have stayed otherwise.…”
“And I assure you, Markham,” interrupted Vance, “that Mr. Spotswoode is too good a player to have stayed unless he had actually had a four-straight-flush. That is the only hand he would have been justified in backing at the betting odds of two to one. You see, I had opened for the amount in the pot, and Mr. Spotswoode had to put up half the amount of the money on the table in order to stay—making it a two-to-one bet. Now, these odds are not high, and any nonopening hand smaller than a four-straight-flush would not have warranted the risk. As it was, he had, with a one-card draw, two chances in forty-seven of making a straight-flush, nine chances in forty-seven of making a flush, and eight chances in forty-seven of making a straight; so that he had nineteen chances in forty-seven—or more than one chance in three—of strengthening his hand into either a straight-flush, a flush, or a straight.”
“Exactly,” assented Spotswoode. “However, after I had drawn my one card, the only possible question in Mr. Vance’s mind was whether or not I had made my straight-flush. If I had not made it—or had merely drawn a straight or a flush—Mr. Vance figured, and figured rightly, that I would not have seen his large bet and also have raised it the limit. To have done so, in those circumstances, would have been irrational poker. Not one player in a thousand would have taken such a risk on a mere bluff. Therefore, had Mr. Vance not laid down his four aces when I raised him, he would have been foolhardy in the extreme. It turned out, of course, that I was actually bluffing; but that does not alter the fact that the correct and logical thing was for Mr. Vance to quit.”
“Quite true,” Vance agreed. “As Mr. Spotswoode says, not one player in a thousand would have wagered the limit without having filled his straight-flush, knowing I had a pat hand. Indeed, one might also say that Mr. Spotswoode, by doing so, has added another decimal point to the psychological subtleties of the game; for, as you see, he analyzed my reasoning, and carried his own reasoning a step further.”
Spotswoode acknowledged the compliment with a slight bow; and Cleaver reached for the cards and began to shuffle them. But the tension had been broken, and the game was not resumed.
Something, however, seemed to have gone wrong with Vance. For a long while he sat frowning at his cigarette and sipping his highball in troubled abstraction. At last he rose and walked to the mantel, where he stood studying a Cézanne watercolor he had given Markham years before. His action was a typical indication of his inner puzzlement.
Presently, when there came a lull in the conversation, he turned sharply and looked at Mannix.
“I say, Mr. Mannix”—he spoke with only casual curiosity—“how does it happen you’ve never acquired a taste for poker? All good businessmen are gamblers at heart.”
“Sure they are,” Mannix replied, with pensive deliberation. “But poker, now, isn’t my idea of gambling—positively not. It’s got too much science. And it ain’t quick enough for me—it hasn’t got the kick in it, if you know what I mean. Roulette’s my speed. When I was in Monte Carlo last summer, I dropped more money in ten minutes than you gentlemen lost here this whole evening. But I got action for my money.”
“I take it, then, you don’t care for cards at all.”
“Not to play games with.” Mannix had become expansive. “I don’t mind betting money on the draw of a card, for instance. But no two out of three, y’ understand. I want my pleasures to come rapid.” And he snapped his thick fingers several times in quick succession to demonstrate the rapidity with which he desired to have his pleasures come.
Vance sauntered to the table and carelessly picked up a deck of cards. “What do you say to cutting once for a thousand dollars?”
Mannix rose instantly. “You’re on!”
Vance handed the cards over, and Mannix shuffled them. Then he put them down and cut. He turned up a ten. Vance cut and showed a king.
“A thousand I owe you,” said Mannix, with no more concern than if it had been ten cents.
Vance waited without speaking, and Mannix eyed him craftily.
“I’ll cut with you again—two thousand this time. Yes?”
Vance raised his eyebrows. “Double?… By all means.” He shuffled the cards and cut a seven.
Mannix’s hand swooped down and turned a five.
“Well, that’s three thousand I owe you,” he said. His little eyes had now narrowed into slits, and he held his cigar clamped tightly between his teeth.
“Like to double it again—eh, what?” Vance asked. “Four thousand this time?”
Markham looked at Vance in amazement, and over Allen’s face there came an expression of almost ludicrous consternation. Everyone present, I believe, was astonished at the offer, for obviously Vance knew that he was giving Mannix tremendous odds by permitting successive doubling. In the end he was sure to lose. I believe Markham would have protested if at that moment Mannix had not snatched the cards from the table and begun to shuffle them.
“Four thousand it is!” he announced, putting down the deck and cutting. He turned up the queen of diamonds. “You can’t beat the lady—positively not!” He was suddenly jovial.
“I fancy you’re right,” murmured Vance; and he cut a trey.
“Want some more?” asked Mannix, with good-natured aggressiveness.
“That’s enough.” Vance seemed bored. “Far too excitin’. I haven’t your rugged constitution, don’t y’ know.”
He went to the desk and made out a check to Mannix for a thousand dollars. Then he turned to Markham and held out his hand. “Had a jolly evening and all that sort of thing.… And, don’t forget: we lunch together tomorrow. One o’clock at the club, what?”
Markham hesitated. “If nothing interferes.”
“But really, y’ know, it mustn’t,” insisted Vance. “You’ve no idea how eager you are to see me.”
He was unusually silent and thoughtful during the ride home. Not one explanatory word could I get out of him. But when he bade me good night he said, “There’s a vital part of the puzzle still missing, and until it’s found, none of it has any meaning.”
CHAPTER 28
THE GUILTY MAN
(Tuesday, September 18; 1 P.M.)
Vance slept late the following morning and spent the hour or so before lunch checking a catalog of ceramics which were to be auctioned next day at the Anderson Galleries. At one o’clock we entered the Stuyvesant Club and joined Markham in the grill.
“The lunch is on you, old thing,” said Vance. “But I’ll make it easy. All I want is a rasher of English bacon, a cup of coffee, and a croissant.”
Markham gave him a mocking smile.
“I don’t wonder you’re economizing after your bad luck of last night.”
Vance’s eyebrows went up. “I rather fancied my luck was most extr’ordin’ry.”
“You held four of a kind twice and lost both hands.”
“But, y’ see,” blandly confessed Vance, “I happened to know both times exactly what cards my opponents held.”
Markham stared at him in amazement.
“Quite so,” Vance assured him. “I had arranged before the game, d’ ye see, to have those particular hands dealt.” He smiled benignly. “I can’t tell you, old chap, how I admire your delicacy in not referring to my rather unique guest, Mr. Allen, whom I had the bad taste to introduce so unceremoniously into your party. I owe you an explanation and an apology. Mr. Allen is not what one would call a charming companion. He is deficient in the patrician elegancies, and his display of jewelry was a bit vulgar—though I infinitely preferred his diamond studs to his piebald tie. But Mr. A
llen has his points—decidedly he has his points. He ranks with Andy Blakely, Canfield, and Honest John Kelly as an indoor soldier of fortune. In fact, our Mr. Allen is none other than Doc Wiley Allen, of fragrant memory.”
“Doc Allen! Not the notorious old crook who ran the Eldorado Club?”
“The same. And, incidentally, one of the cleverest card manipulators in a once lucrative but shady profession.”
“You mean this fellow Allen stacked the cards last night?” Markham was indignant.
“Only for the two hands you mentioned. Allen, if you happen to remember, was the dealer both times. I, who purposely sat on his right, was careful to cut the cards in accordance with his instructions. And you really must admit that no stricture can possibly attach to my deception, inasmuch as the only beneficiaries of Allen’s manipulations were Cleaver and Spotswoode. Although Allen did deal me four of a kind on each occasion, I lost heavily both times.”
Markham regarded Vance for a moment in puzzled silence and then laughed good-naturedly. “You appear to have been in a philanthropic mood last night. You practically gave Mannix a thousand dollars by permitting him to double the stakes on each draw. A rather quixotic procedure, I should say.”
“It all depends on one’s point of view, don’t y’ know. Despite my financial losses—which, by the bye, I have every intention of charging up to your office budget—the game was most successful.… Y’ see, I attained the main object of my evening’s entertainment.”
“Oh, I remember!” said Markham vaguely, as if the matter, being of slight importance, had for the moment eluded his memory. “I believe you were going to ascertain who murdered the Odell girl.”
“Amazin’ memory!… Yes, I let fall the hint that I might be able to clarify the situation today.”
“And whom am I to arrest?”
Vance took a drink of coffee and slowly lit a cigarette.
“I’m quite convinced, y’ know, that you won’t believe me,” he returned in an even, matter-of-fact voice. “But it was Spotswoode who killed the girl.”
“You don’t tell me!” Markham spoke with undisguised irony. “So it was Spotswoode! My dear Vance, you positively bowl me over. I would telephone Heath at once to polish up his handcuffs, but, unfortunately, miracles—such as strangling persons from across town—are not recognized possibilities in this day and age.… Do let me order you another croissant.”
Vance extended his hands in a theatrical gesture of exasperated despair. “For an educated, civilized man, Markham, there’s something downright primitive about the way you cling to optical illusions. I say, y’ know, you’re exactly like an infant who really believes that the magician generates a rabbit in a silk hat, simply because he sees it done.”
“Now you’re becoming insulting.”
“Rather!” Vance pleasantly agreed. “But something drastic must be done to disentangle you from the Lorelei of legal facts. You’re so deficient in imagination, old thing.”
“I take it that you would have me close my eyes and picture Spotswoode sitting upstairs here in the Stuyvesant Club and extending his arms to 71st Street. But I simply couldn’t do it. I’m a commonplace chap. Such a vision would strike me as ludicrous; it would smack of a hasheesh dream.… You yourself don’t use Cannabis indica, do you?”
“Put that way, the idea does sound a bit supernatural. And yet: Certum est quia impossibile est. I rather like that maxim, don’t y’ know; for, in the present case, the impossible is true. Oh, Spotswoode’s guilty—no doubt about it. And I’m going to cling tenaciously to that apparent hallucination. Moreover, I’m going to try to lure you into its toils; for your own—as we absurdly say—good name is at stake. As it happens, Markham, you are at this moment shielding the real murderer from publicity.”
Vance had spoken with the easy assurance that precludes argument; and from the altered expression on Markham’s face I could see he was moved.
“Tell me,” he said, “how you arrived at your fantastic belief in Spotswoode’s guilt.”
Vance crushed out his cigarette and folded his arms on the table.
“We begin with my quartet of possibilities—Mannix, Cleaver, Lindquist, and Spotswoode. Realizing, as I did, that the crime was carefully planned with the sole object of murder, I knew that only someone hopelessly ensnared in the lady’s net could have done it. And no suitor outside of my quartet could have been thus enmeshed, or we would have learned of him. Therefore, one of the four was guilty. Now, Lindquist was eliminated when we found out that he was bedridden in a hospital at the time of Skeel’s murder; for obviously the same person committed both crimes—”
“But,” interrupted Markham, “Spotswoode had an equally good alibi for the night of the Canary’s murder. Why eliminate one and not the other?”
“Sorry, but I can’t agree with you. Being prostrated at a known place surrounded by incorruptible and disinterested witnesses, both preceding and during an event, is one thing; but being actually on the ground, as Spotswoode was that fatal evening, within a few minutes of the time the lady was murdered, and then being alone in a taxicab for fifteen minutes or so following the event—that is another thing. No one, as far as we know, actually saw the lady alive after Spotswoode took his departure.”
“But the proof of her having been alive and spoken to him is incontestable.”
“Granted. I admit that a dead woman doesn’t scream and call for help and then converse with her murderer.”
“I see.” Markham spoke with sarcasm. “You think it was Skeel, disguising his voice.”
“Lord no! What a priceless notion! Skeel didn’t want anyone to know he was there. Why should he have staged such a masterpiece of idiocy? That certainly isn’t the explanation. When we find the answer it will be reasonable and simple.”
“That’s encouraging,” smiled Markham. “But proceed with your reason for Spotswoode’s guilt.”
“Three of my quartet, then, were potential murderers,” Vance resumed. “Accordingly, I requested an evening of social relaxation, that I might put them under the psychological microscope, as it were. Although Spotswoode’s ancestry was wholly consistent with his having been the guilty one, nevertheless I confess I thought that Cleaver or Mannix had committed the crime; for, by their own statements, either of them could have done it without contradicting any of the known circumstances of the situation. Therefore, when Mannix declined your invitation to play poker last night, I put Cleaver to the first test. I wig-wagged to Mr. Allen, and he straightway proceeded to perform his first feat of prestidigitation.”
Vance paused and looked up.
“You perhaps recall the circumstances? It was a jackpot. Allen dealt Cleaver a four-straight-flush and gave me three kings. The other hands were so poor that everyone else was compelled to drop out. I opened, and Cleaver stayed. On the draw, Allen gave me another king, and gave Cleaver the card he needed to complete his straight-flush. Twice I bet a small amount, and each time Cleaver raised me. Finally I called him, and, of course, he won. He couldn’t help but win d’ ye see. He was betting on a sure thing. Since I opened the pot and drew two cards, the highest hand I could possibly have held would have been four of a kind. Cleaver knew this, and having a straight-flush, he also knew, before he raised my bet, that he had me beaten. At once I realized that he was not the man I was after.”
“By what reasoning?”
“A poker player, Markham, who would bet on a sure thing is one who lacks the egotistical self-confidence of the highly subtle and supremely capable gambler. He is not a man who will take hazardous chances and tremendous risks, for he possesses, to some degree, what the psychoanalysts call an inferiority complex, and instinctively he grasps at every possible opportunity of protecting and bettering himself. In short, he is not the ultimate, unadulterated gambler. And the man who killed the Odell girl was a supreme gambler who would stake everything on a single turn of the wheel, for, in killing her, that is exactly what he did. And only a gambler whose paramount self-confidenc
e would make him scorn, through sheer egotism, to bet on a sure thing, could have committed such a crime. Therefore, Cleaver was eliminated as a suspect.”
Markham was now listening intently.
“The test to which I put Spotswoode a little later,” Vance went on, “had originally been intended for Mannix, but he was out of the game. That didn’t matter, however, for, had I been able to eliminate both Cleaver and Spotswoode, then Mannix would undoubtedly have been the guilty man. Of course I would have planned something else to substantiate the fact; but, as it was, that wasn’t necessary.… The test I applied to Spotswoode was pretty well explained by the gentleman himself. As he said, not one player in a thousand would have wagered the limit against a pat hand, when he himself held nothing. It was tremendous—superb! It was probably the most remarkable bluff ever made in a game of poker. I couldn’t help admiring him when he calmly shoved forward all his chips, knowing, as I did, that he held nothing. He staked everything, d’ ye see, wholly on his conviction that he could follow my reasoning step by step and, in the last analysis, outwit me. It took courage and daring to do that. And it also took a degree of self-confidence which would never have permitted him to bet on a sure thing. The psychological principles involved in that hand were identical with those of the Odell crime. I threatened Spotswoode with a powerful hand—a pat hand—just as the girl, no doubt, threatened him; and instead of compromising—instead of calling me or laying down—he outreached me; he resorted to one supreme coup, though it meant risking everything.… My word, Markham! Can’t you see how the man’s character, as revealed in that amazing gesture, dovetails with the psychology of the crime?”
Markham was silent for a while; he appeared to be pondering the matter. “But you yourself, Vance, were not satisfied at the time,” he submitted at length. “In fact, you looked doubtful and worried.”
“True, old dear. I was no end worried. The psychological proof of Spotswoode’s guilt came so dashed unexpectedly—I wasn’t looking for it, don’t y’ know. After eliminating Cleaver I had a parti pris, so to speak, in regard to Mannix; for all the material evidence in favor of Spotswoode’s innocence—that is, the seeming physical impossibility of his having strangled the lady—had, I admit, impressed me. I’m not perfect, don’t y’ know. Being unfortunately human, I’m still susceptible to the malicious animal magnetism about facts and appearances, which you lawyer chaps are continuously exuding over the earth like some vast asphyxiating effluvium. And even when I found that Spotswoode’s psychological nature fitted perfectly with all the factors of the crime, I still harbored a doubt in regard to Mannix. It was barely possible that he would have played the hand just as Spotswoode played it. That is why, after the game was over, I tackled him on the subject of gambling. I wanted to check his psychological reactions.”
The Philo Vance Megapack Page 51