The Philo Vance Megapack

by S. S. Van Dine

  In the Manhattan Chess Club there was probably less discussion of the case than anywhere else in New York. The members felt perhaps that the club’s honor was in some way involved. Or there may have been a sense of loyalty toward a man who had done as much for chess as Pardee. But whatever the cause of the club’s avoidance of the subject, the fact remained that its members attended, almost to a man, Pardee’s funeral. I could not help admiring this tribute to a fellow chess player; for, whatever his personal acts, he had been one of the great sustaining patrons of the royal and ancient game to which they were devoted.109

  Markham’s first official act on the day after Pardee’s death was to secure Sperling’s release. The same afternoon the Police Department moved all its records of the Bishop murders to the file marked “shelved cases,” and withdrew the guards from the Dillard house. Vance protested mildly against this latter step; but, in view of the fact that the Medical Examiner’s post-mortem report had substantiated in every particular the theory of suicide, there was little that Markham could do in the matter. Furthermore, he was thoroughly convinced that the death of Pardee had terminated the case; and he scoffed at Vance’s wavering doubts.

  During the week following the finding of Pardee’s body Vance was restive and more distrait than usual. He attempted to interest himself in various matters, but without any marked success. He showed signs of irritability; and his almost miraculous equanimity seemed to have deserted him. I got the impression that he was waiting for something to happen. His manner was not exactly expectant, but there was a watchfulness in his attitude amounting at times almost to apprehension.

  On the day following the Drukker funeral Vance called on Arnesson, and on Friday night accompanied him to a performance of Ibsen’s “Ghosts”—a play which, I happened to know, he disliked. He learned that Belle Dillard had gone away for a month’s visit to the home of a relative in Albany. As Arnesson explained, she had begun to show the effects of all she had been through, and needed a change of scene. The man was plainly unhappy over her absence, and confided to Vance that they had planned to be married in June. Vance also learned from him that Mrs. Drukker’s will had left everything to Belle Dillard and the professor in the event of her son’s death—a fact which appeared to interest Vance unduly.

  Had I known, or even suspected, what astounding and terrible things were hanging over us that week, I doubt if I could have stood the strain. For the Bishop murder case was not ended. The climactic horror was still to come; but even that horror, terrific and staggering as it proved, was only a shadow of what it might have been had not Vance reasoned the case out to two separate conclusions, only one of which had been disposed of by Pardee’s death. It was this other possibility, as I learned later, that had kept him in New York, vigilant and mentally alert.

  Monday, April 25, was the beginning of the end. We were to dine with Markham at the Bankers Club and go afterwards to a performance of “Die Meistersinger”110; but we did not witness the triumphs of Walther that night. I noticed that when we met Markham in the rotunda of the Equitable Building he seemed troubled; and we were no more than seated in the club grill when he told us of a phone call he had received from Professor Dillard that afternoon.

  “He asked me particularly to come to see him tonight,” Markham explained; “and when I tried to get out of it he became urgent. He made a point of the fact that Arnesson would be away the entire evening, and said that a similar opportunity might not present itself until it was too late. I asked him what he meant by that; but he refused to explain, and insisted that I come to his house after dinner. I told him I’d let him know if I could make it.”

  Vance had listened with the intensest interest.

  “We must go there, Markham. I’ve been rather expecting a call of this kind. It’s possible we may at last find the key to the truth.”

  “The truth about what?”

  “Pardee’s guilt.”

  Markham said no more, and we ate our dinner in silence.

  At half past eight we rang the bell of the Dillard house, and were taken by Pyne direct to the library.

  The old professor greeted us with nervous reserve.

  “It’s good of you to come, Markham,” he said, without rising. “Take a chair and light a cigar. I want to talk to you—and I want to take my time about it. It’s very difficult.…” His voice trailed off as he began filling his pipe.

  We settled ourselves and waited. A sense of expectancy invaded me for no apparent reason, except perhaps that I caught some of the radiations of the professor’s obviously distraught mood.

  “I don’t know just how to broach the subject,” he began; “for it has to do, not with physical facts, but with the invisible, human consciousness. I’ve struggled all week with certain vague ideas that have been forcing themselves upon me; and I see no way to rid myself of them but by talking with you.…”

  He looked up hesitantly.

  “I preferred to discuss these ideas with you when Sigurd was not present, and as he has gone tonight to see Ibsen’s ‘Pretenders’—his favorite play, by the way—I took the opportunity to ask you here.”

  “What do these ideas concern?” asked Markham.

  “Nothing specifically. As I have said, they’re very vague; but they have nevertheless grown fairly insistent.… So insistent, in fact,” he added, “that I thought it best to send Belle away for a while. It’s true that she was in a tortured state of mind as a result of all these tragedies; but my real reason for shipping her north was that I was beset by intangible doubts.”

  “Doubts?” Markham leaned forward. “What sort of doubts?”

  Professor Dillard did not reply at once.

  “Let me answer that question by asking another,” he countered presently. “Are you wholly satisfied in your mind that the situation in regard to Pardee is exactly as it appears?”

  “You mean the authenticity of his suicide?”

  “That and his presumptive culpability.”

  Markham settled back contemplatively.

  “Are you not wholly satisfied?” he asked.

  “I can’t answer that question.” Professor Dillard spoke almost curtly. “You have no right to ask me. I merely wanted to be sure that the authorities, having all the data in their hands, were convinced that this terrible affair was a closed book.” A look of deep concern came over his face. “If I knew that to be a fact, it would help me to repulse the vague misgivings that have haunted me day and night for the past week.”

  “And if I were to say that I am not satisfied?”

  The old professor’s eyes took on a distant, distressed look. His head fell slightly forward, as if some burden of sorrow had suddenly weighed him down. After several moments he lifted his shoulders and drew a deep breath.

  “The most difficult thing in this world,” he said, “is to know where one’s duty lies; for duty is a mechanism of the mind, and the heart is forever stepping in and playing havoc with one’s resolutions. Perhaps I did wrong to ask you here; for, after all, I have only misty suspicions and nebulous ideas to go on. But there was the possibility that my mental uneasiness was based on some deep hidden foundation of whose existence I was unaware.… Do you see what I mean?” Evasive as were his words, there was no doubt as to the disturbing mien of the shadowy image that lurked at the back of his mind.

  Markham nodded sympathetically.

  “There is no reason whatever to question the findings of the Medical Examiner.” He made the statement in a forced matter-of-fact voice. “I can understand how the proximity of these tragedies might have created an atmosphere conducive to doubts. But I think you need have no further misgivings.”

  “I sincerely hope you’re right,” the professor murmured; but it was clear he was not satisfied. “Suppose, Markham—” he began, and then stopped. “Yes, I hope you’re right,” he repeated.

  Vance had sat through this unsatisfactory discussion smoking placidly; but he had been listening with unwonted concentration, and now he
spoke.

  “Tell me, Professor Dillard, if there has been anything—no matter how indefinite—that may have given birth to your uncertainty.”

  “No—nothing.” The answer came quickly and with a show of spirit. “I have merely been wondering—testing every possibility. I dared not be too sanguine without some assurance. Pure logic is all very well for principles that do not touch us personally. But where one’s own safety is concerned the imperfect human mind demands visual evidence.”

  “Ah, yes.” Vance looked up, and I thought I detected a flash of understanding between these two disparate men.

  Markham rose to make his adieu; but Professor Dillard urged him to remain a while.

  “Sigurd will be here before long. He’d enjoy seeing you again. As I said, he’s at ‘The Pretenders,’ but I’m sure he will come straight home.… By the way, Mr. Vance,” he went on, turning from Markham; “Sigurd tells me you accompanied him to ‘Ghosts’ last week. Do you share his enthusiasm for Ibsen?”

  A slight lift of Vance’s eyebrows told me that he was somewhat puzzled by this question; but when he answered there was no hint of perplexity in his voice.

  “I have read Ibsen a great deal; and there can be little doubt that he was a creative genius of a high order, although I’ve failed to find in him either the aesthetic form or the philosophic depth that characterizes Goethe’s ‘Faust,’ for instance.”

  “I can see that you and Sigurd would have a permanent basis of disagreement.”

  Markham declined the invitation to stay longer, and a few minutes later we were walking down West End Avenue in the brisk April air.

  “You will please take note, Markham old dear,” observed Vance, with a touch of waggishness, as we turned into 72nd Street and headed for the park, “that there are others than your modest collaborator who are hag-ridden with doubts as to the volition of Pardee’s taking-off. And I might add that the professor is not in the least satisfied with your assurances.”

  “His suspicious state of mind is quite understandable,” submitted Markham. “These murders have touched his house pretty closely.”

  “That’s not the explanation. The old gentleman has fears. And he knows something which he will not tell us.”

  “I can’t say that I got that impression.”

  “Oh, Markham—my dear Markham! Weren’t you listening closely to his halting, reluctant tale? It was as if he were trying to convey some suggestion to us without actually putting it into words. We were supposed to guess. Yes! That was why he insisted that you visit him when Arnesson was safely away at an Ibsen revival—”

  Vance ceased speaking abruptly and stood stock-still. A startled look came in his eyes.

  “Oh, my aunt! Oh, my precious aunt! So that was why he asked me about Ibsen!… My word! How unutterably dull I’ve been!” He stared at Markham, and the muscles of his jaw tightened. “The truth at last!” he said with impressive softness. “And it is neither you nor the police nor I who has solved this case: it is a Norwegian dramatist who has been dead for twenty years. In Ibsen is the key to the mystery.”

  Markham regarded him as though he had suddenly gone out of his mind; but before he could speak Vance hailed a taxicab.

  “I’ll show you what I mean when we reach home,” he said, as we rode east through Central Park. “It’s unbelievable, but it’s true. And I should have guessed it long ago; but the connotation of the signature on those notes was too clouded with other possible meanings.…”

  “If it were midsummer instead of spring,” commented Markham wrathfully, “I’d suggest that the heat had affected you.”

  “I knew from the first there were three possible guilty persons,” continued Vance. “Each was psychologically capable of the murders, provided the impact of his emotions had upset his mental equilibrium. So there was nothing to do but to wait for some indication that would focus suspicion. Drukker was one of my three suspects, but he was murdered; and that left two. Then Pardee to all appearances committed suicide, and I’ll admit that his death made reasonable the assumption that he had been the guilty one. But there was an eroding doubt in my mind. His death was not conclusive; and that house of cards troubled me. We were stalemated. So again I waited, and watched my third possibility. Now I know that Pardee was innocent, and that he did not shoot himself. He was murdered—just as were Robin and Sprigg and Drukker. His death was another grim joke—he was a victim thrown to the police in the spirit of diabolical jest. And the murderer has been chuckling at our gullibility ever since.”

  “By what reasoning do you arrive at so fantastic a conclusion?”

  “It’s no longer a question of reasoning. At last I have the explanation for the crimes; and I know the meaning of the ‘Bishop’ signature to the notes. I’ll show you a piece of amazing and incontrovertible evidence very soon.”

  A few minutes later we reached his apartment, and he led us straight to the library.

  “The evidence has been here within arm’s reach all the time.”

  He went to the shelves where he kept his dramas, and took down Volume II of the collected works of Henrik Ibsen.111 The book contained “The Vikings at Helgeland” and “The Pretenders”; but with the first of these plays Vance was not concerned. Turning to “The Pretenders” he found the page where the dramatis personae were given, and laid the book on the table before Markham.

  “Read the cast of characters of Arnesson’s favorite play,” he directed.

  Markham, silent and puzzled, drew the volume toward him; and I looked over his shoulder. This is what we saw:

  HÅKON HÅKONSSON, the King elected by the Birchlegs.

  INGA OF VARTEIG, his mother.

  EARL SKULE.

  LADY RAGNHILD, his wife.

  SIGRID, his sister.

  MARGRETE, his daughter.

  GUTHORM INGESSON.

  SIGURD RIBBUNG.

  NICHOLAS ARNESSON, Bishop of Oslo.

  DAGFINN THE PEASANT, Hakon’s marshal.

  IVAR BODDE, his chaplain.

  VEGARD VAERADAL, one of his guard.

  GREGORIUS JONSSON, a nobleman.

  PAUL FLIDA, a nobleman.

  INGEBORG, Andres Skialdarband’s wife.

  PETER, her son, a young priest.

  SIRA VILIAM, Bishop Nicholas’s chaplain.

  MASTER SIGARD OF BRABANT, a physician.

  JATGEIR SKALD, an Icelander.

  BÅRD BRATTE, a chieftain from the Trondhiem district.

  But I doubt if either of us read beyond the line:

  NICHOLAS ARNESSON, Bishop of Oslo.

  My eyes became riveted on that name with a set and horrified fascination. And then I remembered.… Bishop Arnesson was one of the most diabolical villains in all literature—a cynical, sneering monster who twisted all the sane values of life into hideous buffooneries.

  CHAPTER XXIV

  THE LAST ACT

  (Tuesday, April 26; 9 a. m.)

  With this astounding revelation the Bishop murder case entered its final and most terrible phase. Heath had been informed of Vance’s discovery; and it was arranged that we should meet in the District Attorney’s office early the following day for a counsel of war.

  Markham, when he took leave of us that night, was more troubled and despondent than I had ever seen him.

  “I don’t know what can be done,” he said hopelessly. “There’s no legal evidence against the man. But we may be able to devise some course of action that will give us the upper hand.… I never believed in torture, but I almost wish we had access today to the thumbscrew and the rack.”

  Vance and I arrived at his office a few minutes after nine the next morning. Swacker intercepted us and asked us to wait in the reception room for a little while. Markham, he explained, was engaged for the moment. We had no more than seated ourselves when Heath appeared, grim, pugnacious and sullen.

  “I gotta hand it to you, Mr. Vance,” he proclaimed. “You sure got a line on the situation. But what good it’s going to do us I don’t
see. We can’t arrest a guy because his name’s in a book.”

  “We may be able to force the issue some way,” Vance rejoined. “In any event, we now know where we stand.”

  Ten minutes later Swacker beckoned to us and indicated that Markham was free.

  “Sorry to have kept you waiting,” Markham apologized. “I had an unexpected visitor.” His voice had a despairing ring. “More trouble. And, curiously enough, it’s connected with the very section of Riverside Park where Drukker was killed. However, there’s nothing I can do about it.…” He drew some papers before him. “Now to business.”

  “What’s the new trouble in Riverside Park?” asked Vance casually.

  Markham frowned.

  “Nothing that need bother us now. A kidnapping, in all likelihood. There’s a brief account of it in the morning papers, in case you’re interested.…”

  “I detest reading the papers.” Vance spoke blandly, but with an insistence that puzzled me. “What happened?”

  Markham drew a deep breath of impatience.

  “A child disappeared from the playground yesterday after talking with an unknown man. Her father came here to solicit my help. But it’s a job for the Bureau of Missing Persons; and I told him so.—Now, if your curiosity is appeased—”

  “Oh, but it isn’t,” persisted Vance. “I simply must hear the details. That section of the park fascinates me strangely.”

  Markham shot him a questioning glance through lowered lids.

  “Very well,” he acquiesced. “A five-year-old girl, named Madeleine Moffat, was playing with a group of children at about half past five last evening. She crawled up on a high mound near the retaining wall, and a little later, when her governess went to get her, thinking she had descended the other side, the child was nowhere to be found. The only suggestive fact is that two of the other children say they saw a man talking to her shortly before she disappeared; but, of course, they can give no description of him. The police were notified, and are investigating. And that’s all there is to the case so far.”

  “‘Madeleine.’” Vance repeated the name musingly. “I say, Markham; do you know if this child knew Drukker?”