“It was about ten minutes after Montague had dived in, wasn’t it?”
“Just about.”
“Both Mr. Leland and Miss Stamm heard it,” Vance remarked. “But they were a trifle vague about it.”
“I heard it, all right,” Greeff muttered. “And I wondered whose car it was.”
“I’d jolly well like to know that myself.” Vance contemplated the tip of his cigarette. “Could you tell which way the car was going?”
“Toward Spuyten Duyvil,” Greeff answered, without hesitation. “And it started somewhere to the east of the pool. When I got over into the shallow water everything was quiet—too damned quiet to suit me. I didn’t like it. I called to Leland, and then made some further efforts to see if Montague’s body had drifted over to the shoal at that side of the pool. But it was no go. And as I stood there, with my head and shoulders above the surface of the water, on the point of swimming back, I distinctly heard some one starting the motor of a car—”
“As if the car had been parked in the road?” interrupted Vance.
“Exactly.… And then I heard the gears being shifted; and the car went on down the East Road—and I swam back across the pool, wondering who was leaving the estate.”
“According to a billet-doux we found in one of Montague’s coats, a lady was waiting for him in a car, down near the east gate, at ten o’clock last night.”
“So?” Greeff gave an unpleasant laugh. “So that’s the way the wind blows, is it?”
“No, no, not altogether. There was some miscalculation somewhere, I opine.… The fact is, d’ ye see,” Vance added, with slow emphasis, “we found Montague’s body just beyond the Clove—in one of the pot-holes.”
Greeff’s mouth sagged open, and his eyes contracted into small, shining discs.
“You found him, eh?” he iterated. “How did he die?”
“We don’t know yet. The Medical Examiner is on his way up here now. But he wasn’t a pleasant sight—a bad gash on the head and great claw-like scratches down his chest—”
“Wait a minute—wait a minute!” There was a tense huskiness in Greeff’s demand. “Were there three scratches close together?”
Vance nodded, scarcely looking at the man.
“Exactly three—and they were a uniform distance apart.”
Greeff staggered backward toward his chair and fell into it heavily.
“Oh, my God—oh, my God!” he muttered. After a moment he moved his thick fingers over his chin and looked up abruptly, fixing his eyes on Vance in furtive inquiry. “Have you told Stamm?”
“Oh, yes,” Vance replied abstractedly. “We gave him the glad tidings as soon as we returned to the house, less than an hour ago.” Vance appeared to reflect; then he put another question to Greeff. “Did you ever accompany Stamm on any of his treasure hunts or fishing expeditions in the tropics?”
Obviously Greeff was profoundly puzzled by this change of subject.
“No—no,” he spluttered. “Never had anything to do with such silly business—except that I helped Stamm finance and equip a couple of his expeditions. That is,” he amended, “I got some of my clients to put up the money. But Stamm paid it all back after the expeditions had fizzled.…”
Vance arrested the other’s explanations with a gesture.
“You’re not interested in tropical fish yourself, I take it?”
“Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say I’m not interested in them,” Greeff returned in a matter-of-fact voice; but his eyes were still narrowed, like those of a man deeply perplexed. “They’re nice to look at—grand colors and all that.…”
“Any Dragonfish in Stamm’s collection?”
Greeff sat up again, his face paling.
“My God! You don’t mean—”
“Purely an academic question,” Vance interrupted, with a wave of the hand.
Greeff made a throaty noise.
“Yes, by Gad!” he declared. “There are some Dragonfish here. But they’re not alive. Stamm has two of them preserved some way. Anyway, they’re only about twelve inches long—though they’re vicious-looking devils. He has some long name for them—”
“Chauliodus sloanei?”
“Something like that.… And he’s also got some Sea-horses and a coral-red Sea-dragon.… But see here, Mr. Vance, what have these fish got to do with the case?”
Vance sighed before answering.
“I’m sure I don’t know. But I’m dashed interested in Stamm’s collection of tropical fish.”
At this moment Stamm himself and Doctor Holliday crossed the hall to the drawing-room.
“I’m going, gentlemen,” Doctor Holliday announced quietly. “If you want me for anything, Mr. Stamm knows where to reach me.” Without further ado he went toward the front door, and we heard him go out and drive away in his little coupé.
Stamm stood for several moments, glowering at Greeff.
“Adding more fuel to the fire?” he asked, with an almost vicious sarcasm.
Greeff shrugged hopelessly and extended his hands in a futile gesture, as if unable to cope with the other’s unreasonable attitude.
It was Vance who answered Stamm.
“Mr. Greeff and I have just been discussing your fish.”
Stamm looked skeptically from one to the other of them, then turned on his heel and went from the room. Vance permitted Greeff to go also.
He had no sooner passed the portières than there came the sound of a car on the front drive; and a few moments later Detective Burke, who had been stationed at the front door, ushered in the Medical Examiner.
CHAPTER XIII
THREE WOMEN
(Sunday, August 12; 3.30 p. m.)
Doctor Doremus looked us over satirically, then fixed his gaze on Sergeant Heath.
“Well, well,” he said, with a commiserating shake of the head. “So the corpse has returned. Suppose we have a look at it before it eludes you again.”
“It’s down the East Road a bit.” Vance rose from his chair and went toward the door. “We’d better drive.”
We went out of the house and, picking up Detective Burke, got into Vance’s car. Doremus trailed us in his own car. We swung round to the south of the house and turned down the East Road. When we were opposite the pot-holes, where Snitkin was waiting, Vance drew up and we got out.
Vance led the way to the cliff and pointed to the rock wall of the pot-hole in which Montague’s body lay.
“The chap’s in there,” he said to Doremus. “He hasn’t been touched.”
Doremus made a grimace of annoyed boredom.
“A ladder would have helped,” he grumbled, as he climbed up to the low parapet and seated himself on its rounded top. After leaning over and inspecting the huddled body cursorily, he turned back to us with a wry face and mopped his brow.
“He certainly looks dead. What killed him?”
“That’s what we’re hoping you can tell us,” answered Heath.
Doremus slid down from the wall. “All right. Get him out of there and put him down on the ground.”
It was not an easy matter to move Montague’s body from the pot-hole, as rigor mortis had set in, and it required several minutes for Heath and Snitkin and Burke to accomplish the task. Doremus knelt down and, after straightening out the dead man’s distorted limbs, began to make an examination of the wound in his head and the gashes down the breast. After a while he looked up and, pushing his hat back, shook his head in obvious uncertainty.
“This is a queer one,” he announced. “The man’s been struck on the head with a blunt instrument of some kind, which has ripped his scalp open and given him a linear fracture of the skull. It could easily have been the cause of death. But, on the other hand, he’s been strangled—look at the ecchymosis on either side of the thyroid cartilage. Only, I’d swear those discolorations are not the marks of a human hand, or even of a rope or cord. And look at those bulging eyes, and the thick black lips and tongue.”
“Could he have been dro
wned?” asked Heath.
“Drowned?” Doremus cocked a pitying eye at the Sergeant. “I’ve just finished telling you he was bashed over the head and also strangled. If he couldn’t get air in his lungs, how could he get water in ’em?”
“What the Sergeant means, doctor,” put in Markham, “is whether it’s possible that the man was drowned before he was mutilated.”
“No.” Doremus was emphatic. “In that case he wouldn’t show the same type of wound. There wouldn’t have been the hemorrhage in the surrounding tissues; and the contusions on the throat would be superficial and circumscribed and not of such a deep color.”
“What about those marks on his chest?” asked Vance.
The doctor pursed his lips and looked puzzled. Before replying he studied the three gashes again, and then rose to his feet.
“They’re nasty wounds,” he said. “But the lacerations are not very serious. They laid open the pectoralis major and minor muscles without penetrating the chest walls. And they were made before he died: you can tell that by the condition of the blood on them.”
“He certainly had rough handling.” Heath spoke like a man caught in a wave of wonder.
“And that’s not all,” Doremus went on. “He has some broken bones. The left leg is bent on itself below the knee, showing a fracture of both the tibia and the fibula. The right humerus is broken, too. And from the depressed look of the right side of his chest, I’d say a couple of the lower ribs are smashed.”
“That might be the result of his having been thrown into the pot-hole,” Vance suggested.
“Possibly,” agreed Doremus. “But there are also dull open abrasions—made after death—on the posterior surfaces of both heels, as if he’d been dragged over a rough surface.”
Vance took a long, deliberate inhalation on his cigarette.
“That’s most interestin’,” he murmured, his eyes fixed meditatively ahead of him.
Markham shot him a quick glance.
“What do you mean by that?” he asked, almost angrily.
“Nothing cryptic,” Vance returned mildly. “But the doctor’s comment opens up a new possibility, don’t y’ know.”
Heath was staring raptly at Montague’s body, and I detected something of both awe and fright in his attitude.
“What do you think made those scratches on his chest, doc?” he asked.
“How should I know?” snapped Doremus. “Haven’t I already told you I’m a doctor and not a detective? They might have been made by any kind of a sharp instrument.”
Vance turned with a smile.
“It’s very distressin’, doctor, but I can explain the Sergeant’s uneasiness. There’s a theory hereabouts that this johnny was killed by a dragon that lives in the pool.”
“A dragon!” Doremus was bewildered for a moment; then he looked at Heath, and laughed derisively. “And I suppose the Sergeant is figuring out just how the naughty dragon scratched him with his claws—is that it?” He shook his head and chuckled. “Well, well! That’s one way of solving a murder:—cherchez le dragon. Good Gad, what’s the world coming to!”
Heath was piqued.
“If you’d been up against what I have the last coupla days, doc,” he growled, “you’d believe anything, too.”
Doremus lifted his eyebrows ironically.
“Have you thought of leprechawns?” he asked. “Maybe they did the fellow in. Or the satyrs may have butted him to death. Or the gnomes may have got him. Or perhaps the fairies tickled him to death with pussy-willows.” He snorted. “A sweet-looking medical report it’d be if I put down death due to dragon scratches.…”
“And yet, doctor,” said Vance with unwonted seriousness, “a sort of dragon did kill the chap, don’t y’ know.”
Doremus raised his hands and let them fall in a hopeless gesture.
“Have it your own way. But, as a poor benighted medico, my guess is this guy was first hit over the head and ripped open down the front; then he was strangled, dragged to this rock hole, and dumped into it. If the autopsy shows anything different, I’ll let you know.”
He took out a pencil and a pad of blanks, and wrote for a moment. When he had finished he tore off the top sheet and handed it to Heath.
“Here’s your order for removal, Sergeant. But there’s going to be no post mortem till tomorrow. It’s too blooming hot. You can play Saint George and go dragon hunting till then.”
“That’s precisely what we’re going to do,” Vance smiled.
“Just as a matter of record—” began Heath; but the doctor interrupted him with an impatient gesture.
“I know, I know!—‘How long has he been dead?’… When I die and go to hell, along with the rest of the medical fraternity, that’s the query that’ll be eternally drummed into my ears.… All right, Sergeant: he’s been dead over twelve hours and less than twenty-four. Satisfactory?”
“We have reason to believe, doctor,” said Markham, “that the man was killed around ten o’clock last night.”
Doremus looked at his watch.
“That would make eighteen hours. Just about right, I’d say.” He turned and walked toward his car. “And now I’m on my way—back to a mint julep and an easy chair. Gad, what a day! I’ll be having a sunstroke and a brain-storm, like the rest of you, if I don’t hurry back to town.” He got into his car. “But I’m going home by way of Spuyten Duyvil and Payson Avenue. Taking no chances on going back past the pool.” He leered at Heath. “I’m afraid of running into that dragon!” And, with a cheerful wave of the hand, he shot down the East Road.
Heath ordered Snitkin and Burke to remain with Montague’s body until it was called for, and the rest of us returned to the Stamm residence, where Heath telephoned to the Department of Public Welfare to send a wagon to the pot-holes.
“And where are we now?” asked Markham hopelessly, when we were again seated in the drawing-room. “Every discovery seems to throw this case deeper into the realm of impenetrable mystery. There’s apparently no line of investigation that leads anywhere except into a blank wall.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” Vance replied cheerfully. “Really, y’ know, I thought things were shaping up rather well. Doremus gave us many revealin’ items. The technique of the murder was unique,—the very brutality and insanity of it holds amazin’ possibilities. Y’ know, Markham, I’ve an idea we weren’t expected to find the body. Otherwise, why should it have been so carefully hidden? The murderer wanted us to think Montague merely chose to disappear from his present haunts.”
Heath nodded ponderously.
“I get what you mean, Mr. Vance. That note in Montague’s clothes, for instance. My idea is that this dame who wrote the note had an accomplice in the car at the gate, who did the dirty work and threw the bird in that pot-hole.…”
“That won’t do, Sergeant,” Vance interrupted in a kindly but firm voice. “Were that the case, we’d have found Montague’s footprints leading out of the pool.”
“Well, why didn’t we find them?” demanded Markham with exasperation. “Montague’s body was found down the East Road. He must have got out of the pool some way.”
“Yes, yes; he got out some way.” Vance frowned at his cigarette: something was troubling him deeply. “That’s the devilish part of it.… Somehow I think, Markham, that Montague didn’t leave any footprints because he wasn’t able to. He may not have wanted to escape from the pool—he may have been carried out.…”
“My God!” Markham rose nervously and took a deep breath. “You’re not reverting to that hideous flying-dragon theory, are you?”
“My dear fellow!” Vance spoke in soothing reprimand. “At least not the kind of dragon you imagine. I was merely intimatin’ that the hapless Montague was killed in the pool and carried to the pothole.”
“But that theory,” protested Markham, “only involves us in deeper complications.”
“I’m aware of that fact,” sighed Vance. “But, after all, the chappie did travel, in some manner, from t
he pool to the pot-hole. And it’s obvious he didn’t go voluntarily.”
“What about the car that was heard on the East Road?” The practical Sergeant projected himself again into the discussion.
“Quite.” Vance nodded. “That car puzzles me no end. It may have been Montague’s means of transportation. But, dash it all! how did he get from the pool to the car? And why was he mutilated in such shockin’ fashion?”
He smoked a while in silence, and then turned to Markham.
“Y’ know, there are several persons here who have not yet heard of the finding of Montague’s body—Ruby Steele, and Mrs. McAdam, and Bernice Stamm. I think the time has come to inform them. Their reactions may be helpful.…”
The three women were sent for, and when they had joined us Vance told them briefly of the circumstances surrounding the discovery and examination of the dead man. He spoke in a matter-of-fact manner, but I noticed he was watching his listeners closely. (At the time I could not understand his reason for the procedure, but it was not long before I realized why he had chosen this means of apprising the various members of the household of our gruesome find in the pot-hole.)
The three women listened intently; and there was a short silence following the conclusion of his information. Then Ruby Steele said, in a low, sententious voice:
“It really bears out what I told you last night. The fact that there were no footprints leading from the pool means nothing. A man like this half-breed, Leland—with all his hidden powers—could accomplish seeming miracles. And he was the last person to return to the house here!”
I expected Bernice Stamm to resent these remarks, but she merely smiled musingly and said with troubled dignity:
“I’m not surprised that poor Monty has been found; but I doubt if miracles are needed to explain his death.…” Then the pupils of her eyes dilated, and her breast rose and fell with accelerated respiration. “But,” she went on, “I don’t understand the marks on Monty’s chest.”
“Do you understand the other features of the case, Miss Stamm?” Vance asked quietly.
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