The Philo Vance Megapack

by S. S. Van Dine

  Markham gave a resigned sigh, and we went upstairs. Heath sent Gamble to ask Miss Lake to join us there; and a few minutes later she came in, swaggering but chilly and, I thought, suspicious.

  “Haven’t you found the dastard yet?” she asked with a half sneer. “What a pity!”

  Vance pushed a chair forward for her, ignoring her taunt.

  “We wanted to ask you, Miss Lake,” he began gravely, “just what you meant when you spoke of your Uncle Brisbane’s having ‘dabbled in criminology’—I believe that was your phrase.”

  “Oh, that!” Her tone was symptomatic of relief. “He was always interested in the subject, along with other fads. Intricate problems worried him immensely. He’d have made an excellent chess player, if he’d had the time and patience.…”

  “What form did his interest in criminology take?” Vance spoke casually.

  “Only reading.” The woman made a slight outward gesture of the hands. “To my knowledge he never practised the criminal arts. At heart he was quite respectable, though inclined at times toward fanaticism.”

  “What did he read mostly?” Vance’s tone was even and uneager.

  “Criminal cases, court records, detective stories—the usual thing. There are hundreds of volumes in his room. Why not look at them? They’ll tell you the whole sad story.”

  “I’m inclined to follow your suggestion.” Vance bowed. “Were you, too, interested in your Uncle Brisbane’s books?”

  “Oh, yes. There’s nothing else interesting in the house. I certainly wouldn’t read those dry tomes on ceramics in the library.”

  “Then you, too, have ‘dabbled in criminology’?”

  She shot Vance a quick look and gave a forced laugh.

  “You might call it that.”

  “Ah! Then perhaps you can help us.” Vance’s air became jocular. “We crave to know how this door could have been bolted on the inside. Obviously Archer couldn’t have done it with a bullet in his head.”

  “Or a dagger through his lungs,” she supplemented, and became suddenly serious. “But he might have done it before the bullet entered his head.”

  “But he was dead at that time.” Vance, too, had become serious and was watching the woman closely.

  “Have you never heard of cadaveric spasm, or rigor mortis?” she asked contemptuously. “Men, with revolvers in their hands at death, have been known to fire them hours after they were dead, as a result of muscular contraction.”

  Vance nodded, without changing his expression or shifting his gaze.

  “Quite true. There was the famous case in Prague of the suicide who later shot the police inspector.162 And there was a more recent case in Pennsylvania.163… But I hardly think that condition applies here. Archer, d’ ye see, died of a stab in the back. And the position of his hand holding the revolver was not such as would indicate that he himself pulled the trigger.”

  “Perhaps you’re right.” I was surprised at her ready acceptance of Vance’s dismissal of her suggestion. “Some one else must have bolted the door.” She spoke with cynical lightness. “It’s quite a problem, isn’t it?”

  “Are you sure you can’t help us?” Vance gazed at her steadily.

  “You’re trying to flatter me.” She gave Vance a hard, straight-lipped smile. “I, of course, know all the usual methods. The string under the door, for instance, tied to a nail thrust through the bow of the key.164 But then, there’s not a bit of space under this door—it scrapes the sill, in fact—and there’s no key—hasn’t been one for years.—Then there’s the old turn-bolt system which any child can operate with a hairpin and a piece of thread.165 But, alas! there’s no turn-bolt.—And naturally I know of the melted candle method of bolting a door from the outside;166 but this bolt isn’t a drop-bolt.—And the piece of ice that will melt and let the bolt fall down.167 But that’s out, too, for this bolt is the kind that slips over into a groove and turns down.”

  She quickly became thoughtful: a curious change came over her, and she looked at Vance with a questioning steady stare.

  “I’ve been thinking about that door for several hours,” she said tensely; “and I can’t find an answer to it. Uncle Brisbane and Mr. Wrede and I often talked about these tricky criminal devices. We worked out various ways and means of doing seemingly impossible things; but bolting this door from the outside was something we never could figure out.”

  Vance took his cigarette from his mouth with slow deliberation.

  “You mean to tell me that you and Brisbane and Mr. Wrede actually discussed the possibilities of bolting this particular door from the outside?”

  “Oh, yes.” She appeared quite frank. “Many times. But we decided it couldn’t be successfully done.”

  Vance hesitated, and a strange kind of chill ran over me. I felt as if we were approaching something particularly pertinent and, at the same time, sinister.

  “Did any one else”—Vance’s cool voice brought me back to reality—“ever hear these discussions?”

  “No one but Uncle Archer.” Hilda Lake had become frigid and indifferent again. “He always ridiculed our speculations.”

  “What of Liang?” Vance asked casually.

  “The cook? Oh, I suppose he heard our idle chatter. I believe we talked over our dire plots at dinner occasionally.”

  “And now the problem that troubled all of you has been solved.” Vance rose and strolled meditatively toward the door. “Very sad.…” He opened the door and held it ajar. “Thank you, Miss Lake. We’ll try not to disturb you more than is absolutely necess’ry. I say, you won’t mind remaining in your room till dinner time, will you?”

  “If I did mind, it wouldn’t do me any good, I suppose.” She spoke with obvious resentment as she walked toward Vance. When she reached the threshold she swung half-way round and asked aggressively: “May I be permitted to get a book from Uncle Brisbane’s room to while away my hours of detention?” Her eyes were narrowed, and her lip curled in an ugly arc.

  Vance’s calm gaze did not alter.

  “I’m dashed sorry, and all that sort of thing,” he said politely, “but I’ll send you up any book you’d like—later. I’ve a bit of browsing to do first.”

  The woman turned on her heel and walked away without a word.

  Vance waited until he heard her door close with a bang; then he turned and came back into the room.

  “Not a sweet, Victorian clinging vine,” he lamented; “but a lady of parts, none the less.… Curious, her telling us of her discussions with Brisbane about the possibilities of bolting this door from the outside. There was something back of that, Markham. The young woman had ideas. Now, why should she have tried to be so helpful? And that suggestion about rigor mortis and the revolver.… Amazin’.”

  “If you want my candid opinion,” Markham commented, “she knows, or suspects, more than she’s telling; and she’s trying to throw us off the track.”

  Vance considered this for a time.

  “Yes—it’s possible,” he agreed at length. “On the other hand…”

  Markham was patently puzzled.

  “Any suggestion?” he asked. “What’s our next move?”

  “Oh, that’s indicated.” Vance sighed deeply. “Painful as it may prove, I simply must run my eye over Brisbane’s books.”

  Markham also sighed deeply, and rose.

  CHAPTER XIV

  VANCE EXPERIMENTS

  (Thursday, October 11; 4 p. m.)

  We went into Brisbane Coe’s room, which was at the front of the house on the west side. It was a long narrow room, somewhat the shape of Archer’s, with a large bay window on the street. It was simply furnished, but a series of large oak cabinets about the walls gave it an overcrowded, massive appearance. On the north wall beside the window was a series of simple built-in book-shelves extending to the ceiling. There were, I estimated, between three and four hundred volumes on them, all neatly and meticulously arranged.

  Vance went to the window and threw up the shades. Then
he drew a chair to the book-shelves, mounted it, and began running his eye systematically over the volumes. I stood behind him and glanced over the titles. Markham and Heath sat down on a long davenport before the fireplace and watched Vance with an air of boredom.

  For so small a number of criminological volumes Brisbane Coe’s collection was unusually complete. He had Hargrave L. Adam’s complete “Police Encyclopædia” of Scotland Yard; the Complete Newgate Calendar; the Notable British Trials Series; Doctor Hans Gross’s great handbook for examining magistrates; Dumas’ “Celebrated Crimes”; Gayot de Pitaval’s “Causes Célèbres et Intéressantes, avec les Jugemens qui les ont décidées”; Maurice Méjan’s “Recueil des Causes Célèbres”; and many works in German including Kurt Langenscheidt’s “Encyklopädie der Kriminalistik,” a set of Der Wiener Pitaval, Friedlaender’s “Kriminal-Prozesse,” a set of Doctor Ludwig Altmann’s “Aus dem Archiv des Grauen Hauses,” and Leonhard’s library of “Aussenseiter der Gesellschaft.” In addition, there were various miscellaneous volumes dealing with criminals and their methods, but very little on the psychology of crime or its medico-legal aspects.

  In surveying the titles one got the impression that, had Brisbane gone in for crime, he would have been highly practical rather than subtle. The three lower shelves were devoted almost entirely to the classics of detective fiction, from Gaboriau and Poe to A. Conan Doyle and Austin Freeman.

  Vance glanced over the books rapidly but carefully. There were but few that were not in his own library, and he was familiar not only with their titles but with their appearance. He gave little attention, however, to the fiction. Just what he was looking for none of us knew; but we did know that he had some definite object in mind, and we suspected, from what he had said to us, that the object of his search related to the bolted door of Archer’s bedroom.

  After scanning the backs of the books for perhaps fifteen minutes, he sat down and slowly lighted one of his Régies.

  “It should be here, y’ know,” he murmured, as if to himself, “—unless it’s been taken away.…”

  He got up leisurely, and again standing on the chair, began to check the volume numbers of the various sets of books. When he came to the red-and-gold set of the “Aussenseiter der Gesellschaft” he gave a nod and stepped down to the floor.

  “A volume missing,” he announced. He scanned the upper book-shelves carefully. “I wonder.…” Then he dropped on his knees and began going more thoroughly over the section of fiction.

  When he had come to the lowest shelf he reached forward and took out a thin red-and-gold volume. He glanced at it and leant forward again to inspect the books on either side of the space from which he had extracted the missing volume of the “Aussenseiter der Gesellschaft” series.

  “Oh, I say!” he exclaimed. “That’s deuced interestin’.” He pulled out a small red book. “The Clue of the New Pin, by Edgar Wallace,” he read aloud.168 “Only, we have two pins and a darning-needle—eh, what?… Still, Markham, it’s significant that the missing volume of the Aussenseiter der Gesellschaft should be found cheek by jowl with a book dealing with a pin.”

  Markham took his cigar from his mouth, stood up, and faced Vance with a serious face.

  “I see what you mean,” he said. “You think that Brisbane, by the help of these books on criminology, worked out some way of bolting Archer’s door from the outside, by the use of those pins and string.”

  Vance gave an affirmative nod.

  “Either Brisbane or some one else. It was quite a technical operation.” He picked up the “Aussenseiter der Gesellschaft” volume and glanced at the title page. “Der Merkwürdige Fall Konrad,” he read. “By Kurt Bernstein.… That doesn’t tell us much. I wonder who Konrad might have been and what subtleties he engaged in.… I think I’ll do a bit of pryin’ into Konrad’s criminal past. And I’ll glance through Wallace—if you could bear to wait for me a short while.”

  Markham made a gesture of acquiescence.

  “The Sergeant and I will wait downstairs—I’ve some telephoning to do.”

  The three of us left Vance alone in Brisbane’s room, and as I closed the door I saw Vance stretch himself out on the davenport with the two books.

  An hour later he came to the head of the stairs and called down to us. We joined him in Archer’s bedroom. He had both books with him, and I noticed that there were pages marked in each.

  “I think I’ve found a solution to one phase of our problem,” he announced seriously, when we were seated. “But it may take a bit of working out.” He opened the novel. “Wallace has a clever idea here—I found the passage without too long a search. The tale, as I gather at a hasty reading, relates of a dead man found locked in a vault with the key to the door on the table before him. The vault door was locked from the outside, of course.… Here’s the explanat’ry passage: ‘No other word he spoke, but took something from his pocket: it was a reel of stout cotton. Then from his waistcoat he produced a new pin, and with great care and solemnity tied the thread to the end of the pin, Tab watching him intently. And all the time he was working, Rex Lander was humming a little tune, as though he were engaged in the most innocent occupation. Presently he stuck the point of the pin in the centre of the table, and pulled at it by the thread he had fastened. Apparently he was satisfied. He unwound a further length of cotton, and when he had sufficient he threaded the key upon it, carrying it well outside the door. The end he brought back into the vault, and then pushed it out again from the inside through one of the air-holes. Then he closed the door carefully. He had left plenty of slack for his purpose and Tab heard the click of the lock as it was fastened, and his heart sank. He watched the door fascinated, and saw that Lander was pulling the slack of the cotton through the air-hole. Presently the key came in sight under the door. Higher and higher came the sagging line of cotton and the key rose until it was at the table’s level, slid down the taut cotton, and came to rest on the table. Tighter drew the strain of the thread, and presently the pin came out, passed through the hole in the key, leaving it in the exact centre of the table. Tab watched the bright pin as it was pulled across the floor and through the ventilator.’169… That’s the way Wallace worked his locked door.”

  “But,” objected Markham. “There was an open ventilator in the door, and space beneath the door. Those conditions are not true here.”

  “Yes—of course,” Vance returned. “But don’t overlook the fact that there was a string and a bent pin. At least they are common integers in the two problems.… Now, let’s see if we can combine those integers with certain common integers of the Konrad case.” He opened the other book. “Konrad,” Vance explained, “was a truck-driver in Berlin nearly fifty years ago. His wife and five children were found dead in their cellar room; and the door—a ponderous affair without even a keyhole or space around the moulding—was securely bolted on the inside. The case was at once pronounced one of murder and suicide on the part of the mother; and Konrad would have been free to marry his inamorata (whom he had in the offing) had it not been for an examining magistrate of the criminal court, named Hollmann. Hollmann, for no tangible reason, did not believe in the suicide theory, and set to work to figure out how Konrad could have bolted the door from without.… Here’s the revelat’ry passage—if you’ll forgive my rather sketchy sight translation of the German: ‘Hollmann, urged on by his conviction that Frau Konrad had not murdered her children and committed suicide, determined, as a last resort, to give the entire door, both inside and outside, a microscopic examination. But there was not the slightest aperture anywhere, and the door fitted so tightly around the frame that a piece of paper could not have been passed through any crevice. Hollmann examined the door minutely with a powerful lens. It required hours of labor, but in the end he was rewarded. Just above the bolt he found on the inside, close to the edge of the door, a very small hole which was barely discernible. Opening the door he inspected the outside surface directly opposite to the hole on the inside. But there was no c
orresponding hole visible. Hollmann did find on the outside of the door, however, a small spot on which the paint seemed fresher than that on the rest of the door. The spot was solid, but this did not deter Hollmann’s investigation. He borrowed a hatpin from one of the tenants in the building, and heating it, ran it through the hole on the inside. With but little pressure the heated hatpin penetrated the door, coming out on the outside exactly in the centre of the newly painted spot. Moreover, when Hollmann withdrew the hatpin a piece of tough horsehair adhered to the pin; and on the pin was also discernible a slight film of wax.… It was obvious then how Konrad had bolted the door from without. He had first bored a tiny hole through the door above the bolt, looped a piece of horsehair over the bolt’s knob, and slipped the two ends through the hole. He had then pulled the bolt-knob upward until the horsehair loop was disengaged, withdrawing the horsehair through the hole. A piece of the horsehair had, however, caught in the hole and remained there. Konrad had then filled up the hole with wax and painted it on the outside, thereby eliminating practically every trace of his criminal device. He was later convicted of the murder of his family, sentenced to death, and hanged.’…”170

  Heath, as Vance finished reading, leapt to his feet.

  “That’s a new one on me.” He went swiftly to the door and bent over.

  Vance smiled.

  “There’s no hole in the door above the bolt, Sergeant,” he said. “No need, don’t y’ know. There’s a keyhole.”

  Heath squared off and looked at the door.

  “Still and all, the keyhole’s only half-way over the bolt, and eight inches below it. No string fastened to the bolt and run through that keyhole would lock the room from the outside.”

  “True, Sergeant,” Vance nodded. “But that’s where the modification of the trick comes in. The person who planned bolting this door carried the idea to a few more decimal points. Don’t forget we have two pieces of string and two pins.”