The Philo Vance Megapack

by S. S. Van Dine

  Vance moved in his chair.

  “This is what had happened in the meantime: Archer, recovering from the blow of the poker, and not realizing that he had also been stabbed, went upstairs to his bedroom. The shades were up, and Wrede, from his own apartment, could see him across the vacant lot.… No one will ever know what thoughts went on in Coe’s mind at this time. But obviously he was incensed at Wrede, and he probably sat down to write him a letter forbidding him ever to put foot in the house again. He began to feel tired—perhaps the blood had commenced to choke his lungs. The pen fell from his fingers. He made an effort to prepare himself for bed. He took off his coat and waistcoat and hung them carefully in the closet. Then he put on his dressing-gown, buttoned it, and tied the belt about him. He walked to the windows and pulled down the shades. That act took practically all of his remaining vitality. He started to get his bedroom slippers, but the black mist of death was drifting in upon him. He thought it fatigue—the result, perhaps, of the blow Wrede had struck him over the head. He sat down in his easy chair. But he never got up, Markham. He never changed his shoes. As he sat there the final inevitable fog stifled him!…”

  “Good God, Vance! I see the horror of it,” breathed Markham.

  “All these steps in that sinister situation,” Vance continued, “are clearly indicated.… But think what must have gone on in Wrede’s mind when he looked out of his window and saw the man he had murdered moving about the room upstairs, arranging the papers on his desk, changing his clothes, going about his affairs as if nothing whatever had happened!”

  Vance inhaled several times on his cigarette and broke the ashes into a small tray beside him.

  “My word, Markham! Can you imagine Wrede’s emotions? He had killed a man; and yet he could look across a vacant lot and see this dead man acting as if nothing had happened. Wrede had to start all over again. It was a delicate and terrible situation. He knew that he had thrust a deadly dagger into Archer Coe’s body. But Archer was still alive—and retribution must inevitably follow. And don’t forget that the lights did not go out in Archer Coe’s room. Wrede, no doubt, frantically asked himself a thousand times what was going on behind those drawn shades. He not only feared the incalculable mystery of the situation, but, I am inclined to think, he was perturbed most by his speculation concerning the things he could not see.… I wouldn’t care to put in the two hours that Wrede spent between eight o’clock and ten that night. He realized that some decision must be made—that some action must be taken. But he had nothing whatever to go on: his imagination was his only guide.…”

  “And he came back!” said Markham huskily.

  “Yes,” nodded Vance, “he came back. He had to come back! But in that interim of his indecision something unforeseen and horrible had taken place. Brisbane had returned to the house—he had returned stealthily, letting himself in with his own key. He had returned to kill his brother! He looked into the library: the lights were on, but Archer was not there. He went to the drawer of the table and took out the revolver. Then he went upstairs. Perhaps he saw the light through Archer’s bedroom door. He opened the door.…”

  Vance paused.

  “Y’ know, Markham, I am inclined to think that Brisbane was prepared for any emergency. He had worked out a scheme for killing Archer, placing him in his bedroom with the revolver in his hand, and then bolting the door from the hall, so as to make it appear as suicide. And when he saw Archer sitting in his easy chair, apparently asleep, he no doubt felt that the fates were with him, that his road had been made easy. I can see him tiptoeing across the room to the easy chair where the other sat. I can see him place the revolver against Archer’s right temple and pull the trigger,—the impact of the bullet drove Archer’s head to the left. Then I can see Brisbane place the revolver in Archer’s hand and return to the door, where he carefully put in operation the mechanism he had worked out for bolting the door from the hall.… My word, Markham, what a situation!—Brisbane shooting a dead man, and then elaborately setting the stage to prove that it was suicide!”

  “Good God!” breathed Markham.

  “But during this tragic farce,” Vance went on, “Wrede had arrived at a decision. He had decided to come back to Archer Coe and finish, for all time, the crime which apparently he had only started. He bethought himself of the Ting yao vase he had broken, and perhaps fearing its absence would be noted, he picked out a superficially similar vase from his own small collection and carried it back to the Coe house. The hour, I should say, was around ten o’clock.… Wrede opened the gate of the rear yard, and left it ajar; and it was then that the Scottie followed him on his dark errand. He went in the rear door of the Coe house, leaving it open—and the Scottie followed. Everything was black and still. He went through the dining-room into the library, and placed his own inferior vase on the teak-wood base where the Ting yao vase had stood. He took the dagger from the vase in which he had hidden it, and moved toward the hall.…”

  Vance raised himself a little in his chair.

  “And when he reached the door, Markham, he saw a figure coming down the stairs from the second floor. There was a light in the library, but it was not sufficient to make possible an absolute recognition of the figure on the stairs. To Wrede that figure was Archer. (Archer and Brisbane, you’ll recall, were of the same height and general build, and they did not look dissimilar.) Wrede stood behind the portières at the library door, the dagger grasped in his hand, and waited till his opportunity came. The shadowy figure came down the stairs and walked toward the closet door at the end of the hall,—Brisbane was no doubt going back for the overcoat and hat which he had left there on coming in. But Wrede, with his inflamed imagination, assumed that Archer was preparing to leave the house to tell some one of the attack—to report him to the police, perhaps. He couldn’t be sure: he only knew that it spelled danger for himself. And he was more thoroughly determined than ever to put an end to Archer.…

  “Brisbane, as I now see it, had just placed the strings, which he had used for bolting Archer’s door, in the pocket of his top-coat, when Wrede came silently upon him from behind and thrust the dagger into his back. He collapsed immediately, and Wrede pushed the body, which he thought was Archer’s, entirely into the closet and closed the door. He went back to the library; and it was at this time that he probably stumbled over the Scottie, which had followed him in. He decided that it was safest to get rid of her immediately. She may even have barked, or made some sound when he stumbled over her; and he was in no frame of mind at that moment to meet new emergencies logically. He dropped the dagger back into the vase and picked up the poker. Then he struck the Scottie over the head,—it was the simplest and most direct way of dealing with an unexpected circumstance when there was no time for thought. The presence of the dog was unexpected, incalculable.…

  “There can be little doubt that the man was in a panic—and with sufficient reason. He did not even switch off the lights in the library. The whole thing was amazin’. He went home through the rear door, thinking that he had left Archer’s dead body in the coat closet. Then, when Gamble summoned him the following morning, he found that Archer was still in his bedroom, behind a bolted door! The man must have felt that the whole world had gone insane. I imagine he rushed to the hall closet, when Gamble wasn’t looking, to check his sanity, so to speak; and then he saw the dead body of Brisbane. Some of the truth, at least, must have dawned upon him. He had killed his friend—his ally—by accident! What mental torture he must have suffered! And there was also in his mind the terrible problem of Archer’s death.… I wonder the man stood up so well when we arrived. The cold desperation of a final necessity, I suppose.…”

  Markham moved about the room restlessly.

  “I see it all,” he muttered, as if to himself. He stopped and swung round. “But what of Wrede’s attempted murder of Grassi?”

  “That was logical and in keeping with his character,” said Vance. “Miss Lake explained it—intense jealousy of his lucky riva
l. Wrede thought he had successfully pulled the wool over our eyes, and the fact gave him confidence. He knew exactly where the dagger was; he knew the domestic arrangements of the Coe house; he had a key to the rear door; and he doubtless knew of the broken lock on Grassi’s door. He had probably brooded over his loss of a wealthy bride until he could no longer resist the urge to follow up his—as he thought—successful murder of Archer by the murder of Grassi. He would thus have won a complete victory over the forces that had temporarily defeated him. His frustrated ego again. And had it not been for Liang’s perspicacity—which Wrede underestimated—and the shift of Grassi’s arm, he would have succeeded.”

  “But what,” asked Markham, “first gave you the idea that Wrede had committed the murders?”

  “The Scottie, Markham,” answered Vance. “After having found she belonged to Higginbottom, I ascertained that he had given her to his inamorata who lived in the Belle Maison. And once I had followed the Scottie’s trail and knew that she belonged next door, I made a bit of an investigation. I learned from a perfectly honest Irish maid that both Higginbottom and his lady fair—a Miss Delafield—had been having a farewell dinner at the time Coe was murdered. Y’ see, I had thought perhaps that some blond lady with a Duplaix lip-stick had admitted the Scottie into the Coe house earlier in the evening. But although Miss Delafield used Duplaix lip-stick and had undoubtedly called on Archer Coe before half-past seven, it was not she who had let the Scottie in; for the little dog was in the Delafield apartment after nine o’clock that night, and had disappeared some time between then and half-past ten, at which hour the maid instituted a search for her. Moreover, I learned that the Scottie could have entered the Coe house only if some one had unlocked the gate between the Belle Maison and the vacant lot next to the Coe residence. And I further learned that there was no way for the Scottie to escape from the Belle Maison, except into the rear yard. Only some one who had unlocked the gate and opened the rear door of the Coe residence would have given her the opportunity of entering the house. And Wrede was the only person who could have done this.”

  * * * *

  The following year Hilda Lake and Grassi were married, and the alliance seems to have been highly successful. Vance became the owner of Miss MacTavish. He had become attached to her during the days he had nursed her back to health, and the romance (if one may call it that) between Higginbottom and Doris Delafield ran on the rocks shortly after the lady’s return from Europe. After her break with the major she showed little interest in the dog; and Higginbottom, in appreciation of some nebulous favor which he considered Vance had done him, made him a present of the bitch. Vance placed her in his kennels, but she did not seem to be happy there; and he finally took her into his apartment. He still has her, and she has been “pensioned” for life. Sometimes I think that Vance would rather part with one of his treasured Cézannes than with little Miss MacTavish.

  160 Vance’s mirror-black vase, which I had often seen and admired, was fifteen inches tall, whereas the C. P. Allen vase is only seven inches tall.

  161 There is little doubt that Vance had been much impressed and helped, especially in the early days of his dog-breeding, by Doctor Fayette C. Ewing’s weekly column on Scottish terriers in Popular Dogs; and Doctor Ewing’s book, “The Book of the Scottish Terrier,” (for which I, by the way, wrote an appreciative introduction) was one of Vance’s “bibles.”

  162 Vance was referring to the case of Wenzel Kokoschka, a cooperative-society cashier, who shot himself, and who hours later seriously wounded Joseph Marcs, an inspector of gendarmes, with the same revolver—the result of rigor mortis acting on the trigger of the gun still held in the dead man’s hand.

  163 Joseph D. Trego, a war veteran of Reading, Pennsylvania, came very near shooting the coroner, hours after his own death, by the muscular contraction of his hand. It took the coroner half an hour to wrest the revolver from the dead man’s hand.

  164 A modification of this old method was employed by Tony Skeel in The ‘Canary’ Murder Case.

  165 This method consists merely of putting a hairpin around the handle of the turn-bolt, and then pulling the hairpin out through the keyhole or under the door.

  166 This device was used by Edgar Wallace in his “The Clue of the Twisted Candle,” and consists of resting the drop-bolt on a candle which, as it burns down or softens, permits the bolt to fall into place.

  167 A modification of, and an improvement on, the melted candle device.

  168 It was a Hodder and Stoughton reprint.

  169 Wallace, “The Clue of the New Pin,” pp. 274-275.

  170 “Überzeugt, dass Frau Konrad ihre Kinder nicht ermordet und dann Selbstmord begangen hatte, entschloss sich Hollmann, einen letzten Versuch zu machen, und die ganze Tür inwendig und auswendig mikroskopisch genau zu untersuchen. Aber nirgends war die geringste Öffnung zu finden, ja die Tür passte so genau in ihren Rahmen, dass man nicht einmal einen Papierstreifen durch irgend einen Riss hätte ziehen können. In stundenlanger Arbeit untersuchte Hollmann die Tür mit einer starken Lupe, um endlich seine Mühe belohnt zu sehen. Genau über dem Riegel, an der Innenseite, fast an der Kante der Tür, fand er ein ganz kleines, kaum bemerkbares Loch. Als er aber an der Aussenseite der Tür die dem Loch direkt gegenüberliegende Fläche untersuchte, war kein entsprechendes Loch zu entdecken. Er fand jedoch an dieser Stelle einen kleinen Fleck, wo der Anstrich frischer war, als an der übrigen Tür. Der Fleck war fest, was trotzdem Hollmann in seiner Forschungsarbeit nicht entmutigte. Von einem Mieter im Hause borgte er eine gewöhnliche Hutnadel, heizte sie und führte sie von der Innenseite in das Loch. Mit ganz geringem Druck durchbohrte die geheizte Hutnadel die Tür, und kam genau in der Mitte des frischgestrichenen Flecks an der Aussenseite zum Vorschein. Als Hollmann die Hutnadel wieder herauszog, klebte ein Stück zähes Rosshaar daran fest, während die Nadel mit einer dünnen Wachsschicht überzogen war.… Nun war es klar, durch welches Verfahren es Konrad gelungen war, die Tür von aussen zu verriegeln. Zuerst hatte er ein winzig kleines Loch über dem Riegel durch die Tür gebohrt, hatte dann eine Schlinge von Rosshaar um den Knopf am Riegel gelegt und die beiden Enden durch das Loch gezogen. Dann hatte er den Riegelknopf aufwärts gezogen, bis die Schlinge sich vom Knopf abgelöst, und darauf das Rosshaar wieder aus dem Loch herausgezogen. Ein Stück des Rosshaars war jedoch im Loch hängengeblieben. Sodann hatte Konrad das Loch mit Wachs verstopft und es an der Aussenseite mit Farbe überstrichen, und damit sozusagen jede Spur seines verbrecherischen Verfahrens getilgt. Später wurde er des Mordes seiner Familie überführt, zum Tode verurteilt, und gehängt.”—K. Bernstein, “Der Merkwürdige Fall Konrad,” pp. 222-224.

  171 Notably “The Bishop Murder Case.”

  172 This great Doberman, who won his Sieger title when less than fifteen months old, being the youngest dog ever to receive this award, has recently been imported to this country by F. R. Kingman, and made his American championship without difficulty.

  173 It might be interesting to note here that Jacob Munter Lobsenz, M.D., later became Vance’s personal physician.

  174 Marguerite Kirmse, the etcher and also a breeder and judge of Scottish terriers, is in private life Mrs. George W. Cole.

  175 Vance owned three of Marguerite Kirmse’s Scottie etchings—“My Scotties,” “Safety First,” and “Gangway!”

  176 It is considered unethical for any judge to acquaint himself, either by catalogue or otherwise, with any of the names of the entries in a show at which he is to officiate, and every reputable judge abides by this unwritten law. After the distribution of awards, he may, of course, acquaint himself with the names and ownership of any dog in the entry.

  177 Mr. Rice explained to us that the judges’ books and entry blanks were kept for six or seven months, until they had been thoroughly checked with the records and found correct.

  178 A. G. Bradley: “An Old Gate of England” (“The English Countryside Series”), published by Robert Scott, London, 1917.

  179 Bradley, An Old Gate of England
, p. 64.

  THE DRAGON MURDER CASE (Part 1)

  Sometime we see a cloud that’s dragonish.

  —Antony and Cleopatra.

  CHAPTER I

  THE TRAGEDY

  (Saturday, August 11; 11.45 p. m.)

  That sinister and terrifying crime, which came to be known as the dragon murder case, will always be associated in my mind with one of the hottest summers I have ever experienced in New York.

  Philo Vance, who stood aloof from the eschatological and supernatural implications of the case, and was therefore able to solve the problem on a purely rationalistic basis, had planned a fishing trip to Norway that August, but an intellectual whim had caused him to cancel his arrangements and to remain in America. Since the influx of post-war, nouveau-riche Americans along the French and Italian Rivieras, he had forgone his custom of spending his summers on the Mediterranean, and had gone after salmon and trout in the streams of North Bergenhus. But late in July of this particular year his interest in the Menander fragments found in Egypt during the early years of this century, had revived, and he set himself to complete their translation—a work which, you may recall, had been interrupted by that amazing series of Mother-Goose murders in West 75th Street.180

  However, once again this task of research and love was rudely intruded upon by one of the most baffling murder mysteries in which Vance ever participated; and the lost comedies of Menander were again pigeon-holed for the intricate ratiocination of crime. Personally I think Vance’s criminal investigations were closer to his heart than the scholastic enterprises on which he was constantly embarking, for though his mind was ever seeking out abstruse facts in the realm of cultural lore, he found his greatest mental recreation in intricate problems wholly unrelated to pure learning. Criminology satisfied this yearning in his nature, for it not only stimulated his analytical processes but brought into play his knowledge of recondite facts and his uncanny instinct for the subtleties of human nature.