The Philo Vance Megapack

by S. S. Van Dine

  He lighted another cigarette and finished his coffee. Then he settled back in his chair and read the letter for the third time. I had seldom seen him so interested. At length he said:

  “Why all the domestic details of the Llewellyns, Van? Any one who reads the newspapers knows of the situation in the Llewellyn home. The pretty blond actress marrying into the Social Register over the protests of mama and then ending up under mama’s roof: Lynn Llewellyn a young gadabout and the darling of the night-clubs: serious little sister turning from the frivolities of the social whirl to study art:—who in this fair bailiwick could have failed to hear of these things? And mama herself is a noisy philanthropist and a committee member of every social and economic organization she can find. And certainly Kinkaid, the old lady’s brother, is not an inconnu. There are few characters in the city more notorious than he—much to old Mrs. Llewellyn’s chagrin and humiliation. The wealth of the family alone would make its doings common gossip.” Vance made a wry face. “And yet my correspondent reminds me of these various matters. Why? Why the letter at all? Why am I chosen as the recipient? Why the flowery language? Why the abominable typing? Why this paper and the secrecy? Why everything?… I wonder… I wonder.…”

  He rose and paced up and down. I was surprised at his perturbation: it was altogether unlike him. The letter had not impressed me very much, aside from its unusualness; and my first inclination was to regard it as the act of a crank or of some one who had a grudge against the Llewellyns and was taking this circuitous means of causing them annoyance. But Vance evidently had sensed something in the letter that had completely escaped me.

  Suddenly he ceased his contemplative to-and-fro, and walked to the telephone. A few moments later he was speaking with District Attorney Markham, urging him to stop in at the apartment that afternoon.

  “It’s really quite important,” he said, with but a trace of the usual jocular manner he assumed when speaking to Markham. “I have a fascinatin’ document to show you.… Toddle up—there’s a good fellow.”

  For some time after he had replaced the receiver Vance sat in silence. Finally he rose and turned to the section of his library devoted to psychoanalysis and abnormal psychology. He ran through the indices of several books by Freud, Jung, Stekel and Ferenczi; and, marking several pages, he sat down again to peruse the volumes. After an hour or so he replaced the books on the shelves, and spent another thirty minutes consulting various reference books, such as “Who’s Who,” the New York “Social Register” and “The American Biographical Dictionary.” Finally he shrugged his shoulders slightly, yawned mildly and settled himself at his desk, on which were spread numerous reproductions of the art works unearthed in Doctor Woolley’s seven years’ excavations at Ur.

  Saturday being a half-day at the District Attorney’s office, Markham arrived shortly after two o’clock. Vance meanwhile had dressed and had his luncheon, and he received Markham in the library.

  “A sear and yellow day,” he complained, leading Markham to a chair before the fireplace. “Not good for man to be alone. Depression rides me like a hag. I missed the field trial on Long Island today. Preferred to stay in and hover over the glowin’ embers. Maybe I’m getting old and full of dreams.… Distressin’.… But I’m awfully grateful and all that for your comin’. How about a pony of 1811 Napoléon to counteract your autumnal sorrows?”

  “I’ve no sorrows today, autumnal or otherwise,” Markham returned, studying Vance closely. “And when you babble most you’re thinking hardest—the unmistakable symptom.” (He still scrutinized Vance.) “I’ll take the cognac, however. But why the air of mystery over the phone?”

  “My dear Markham—oh, my dear Markham! Really, now, was it an air of mystery? The melancholy days—”

  “Come, come, Vance.” Markham was beginning to grow restless. “Where’s that interesting paper you wished me to see?”

  “Ah, yes—quite.” Vance reached into his pocket, and, taking out the anonymous letter he had received that morning, handed it to Markham. “It really should not have come on a depressin’ day like this.”

  Markham read the letter through casually and then tossed it on the table with a slight gesture of irritation.

  “Well, what of it?” he asked, attempting, without success, to hide his annoyance. “I sincerely hope you’re not taking this seriously.”

  “Neither seriously nor frivolously,” Vance sighed; “but with an open mind, old dear. The epistle has possibilities, don’t y’ know.”

  “For Heaven’s sake, Vance!” Markham protested. “We get letters like that every day. Scores of them. If we paid any attention to them we’d have time for nothing else. The letter-writing habit of professional trouble-makers—But I don’t have to go into that with you: you’re too good a psychologist.”

  Vance nodded with unwonted seriousness.

  “Yes, yes—of course. The epistol’ry complex. A combination of futile egomania, cowardice and Sadism—I’m familiar with the formula. But, really, y’ know, I’m not convinced that this particular letter falls in that categ’ry.”

  Markham glanced up.

  “You really think it’s an honest expression of concern based on inside knowledge?”

  “Oh, no. On the contr’ry.” Vance regarded his cigarette meditatively. “It goes deeper than that. If it were a sincere letter it would be less verbose and more to the point. Its very verbosity and its stilted phraseology indicate an ulterior motive: there’s too much thought behind it.… And there are sinister implications in it—an atmosphere of abnormal reasoning—a genuine note of cruel tragedy, as if a fiend of some kind were plotting and chuckling at the same time.… I don’t like it, Markham—I don’t at all like it.”

  Markham regarded Vance with considerable surprise. He started to say something, but, instead, picked up the letter and read it again, more carefully this time. When he had finished he shook his head slowly.

  “No, Vance,” he protested mildly. “The saddest days of the year have affected your imagination. This letter is merely the outburst of some hysterical woman similarly affected.”

  “There are a few somewhat feminine touches in it—eh, what?” Vance spoke languidly. “I noticed that. But the general tone of the letter is not one that points to hallucinations.”

  Markham waved his hand in a deprecatory gesture and drew on his cigar a while in silence. At length he asked:

  “You know the Llewellyns personally?”

  “I’ve met Lynn Llewellyn once;—just a curs’ry introduction—and I’ve seen him at the Casino a number of times. The usual wild type of pampered darling whose mater holds the purse strings. And, of course, I know Kinkaid. Every one knows Richard Kinkaid but the police and the District Attorney’s office.” Vance shot Markham a waggish look. “But you’re quite right in ignoring his existence and refusing to close his gilded den of sin. It’s really run pretty straight, and only people who can afford it go there. My word! Imagine the naïveté of a mind that thinks gambling can be stopped by laws and raids!… The Casino is a delightful place, Markham—quite correct and all that sort of thing. You’d enjoy it immensely.” Vance sighed dolefully. “If only you weren’t the D. A.! Sad…sad.…”

  Markham shifted uneasily in his chair, and gave Vance a withering look followed by an indulgent smile.

  “I may go there some time—after the next election perhaps,” he returned. “Do you know any of the others mentioned in the letter?”

  “Only Morgan Bloodgood,” Vance told him. “He’s Kinkaid’s chief croupier—his right hand, so to speak. I know him only professionally, however, though I’ve heard he’s a friend of the Llewellyns and knew Lynn’s wife when she was in musical comedy. He’s a college man, a genius at figures: he majored in mathematics at Princeton, Kinkaid told me once. Held an instructorship for a year or two, and then threw in his lot with Kinkaid. Probably needed excitement—anything’s preferable to the quantum theory.… The other prospective dramatis personæ are unknown to me. I never even saw
Virginia Vale—I was abroad during her brief triumph on the stage. And old Mrs. Llewellyn’s path has never crossed mine. Nor have I ever met the art-aspiring daughter, Amelia.”

  “What of the relations between Kinkaid and old Mrs. Llewellyn? Do they get along as brother and sister should?”

  Vance looked up at Markham languidly.

  “I’d thought of that angle, too.” He mused for a moment. “Of course, the old lady is ashamed of her wayward brother—it’s quite annoyin’ for a fanatical social worker to harbor a brother who’s a professional gambler; and while they’re outwardly civil to each other, I imagine there’s internal friction, especially as the Park-Avenue house belongs to them jointly and they both live under its protectin’ roof. But I don’t think the old girl would carry her animosity so far as to do any plotting against Kinkaid.… No, no. We can’t find an explanation for the letter along that line.…”

  At this moment Currie entered the library.

  “Pardon me, sir,” he said to Vance in a troubled tone; “but there’s a person on the telephone who wishes me to ask you if you intend to be at the Casino tonight—”

  “Is it a man or a woman?” Vance interrupted.

  “I—really, sir—” Currie stammered, “I couldn’t say. The voice was very faint and indistinct—disguised, you might say. But the person asked me to tell you that he—or she, sir—would not say another word, but would wait on the wire for your answer.”

  Vance did not speak for several moments.

  “I’ve rather been expecting something of the sort,” he murmured finally. Then he turned to Currie. “Tell my ambiguously sexed caller that I will be there at ten o’clock.”

  Markham took his cigar slowly from his mouth and looked at Vance with troubled concern.

  “You actually intend to go to the Casino because of that letter?”

  Vance nodded seriously.

  “Oh, yes—quite.”

  CHAPTER II

  THE CASINO

  (Saturday, October 15; 10:30 p. m.)

  Richard Kinkaid’s famous old gambling establishment, the Casino, in West 73rd Street, near West End Avenue, had, in its heyday, many claims to the glories of the long-defunct Canfield’s. It flourished but a short time, yet its memory is still fresh in many minds, and its fame has spread to all parts of the country. It forms a glowing and indispensable link in the chain of resorts that runs through the spectacular history of the night life of New York. A towering apartment house, with terraces and penthouses, now rises where the Casino once stood.

  To the uninitiated passer-by the Casino was just another of those large and impressive gray-stone mansions which were once the pride of the upper West Side. The house had been built in the ’Nineties and was the residence of Richard’s father, Amos Kinkaid (known as “Old Amos”), one of the city’s shrewdest and wealthiest real-estate operators. This particular property was the one parcel that had been willed outright to Richard Kinkaid in Old Amos’s will: all the other property had been bequeathed jointly to his two children, Kinkaid and Mrs. Anthony Llewellyn. Mrs. Llewellyn, at the time of the inheritance, was already a widow with two children, Lynn and Amelia, both in their early teens.

  Richard Kinkaid had lived alone in the gray-stone house for several years after Old Amos’s death. He had then locked its doors, boarded up its windows, and indulged his desire for travel and adventure in the remote places of the earth. He had always had an irresistible instinct for gambling—perhaps a heritage from his father—and in the course of his travels he had visited most of the famous gambling resorts of Europe. As you may recall, the accounts of his spectacular gains and losses often reached the front pages of this country’s press. When his losses had far exceeded his gains Kinkaid returned to America, a poorer but no doubt a wiser man.

  Counting on political influence and powerful personal connections, he then decided to make an endeavor to recoup his losses by opening a fashionable gambling house of his own, patterned along the lines of some of America’s famous houses of the old days.

  “The trouble with me,” Kinkaid had told one of his chief under-cover supporters, “is that I’ve always gambled on the wrong side of the table.”

  He had the big house in 73rd Street remodelled and redecorated, furnished it with the most lavish appointments, and entered upon his notorious enterprise “on the right side of the table.” These embellishments of the house, so rumor had it, all but exhausted the remainder of his patrimony. He named the new establishment Kinkaid’s Casino, in cynical memory perhaps of Monte Carlo. But so well known did the place become among the social elect and the wealthy, that the prefix “Kinkaid’s” soon became superfluous: there was only one “Casino” in America.

  The Casino, like so many of the extra-legal establishments of its kind, and like the various fashionable night-clubs that sprang up during the prohibition era, was run as a private club. Membership was requisite, and all applicants were prudently investigated and weighed. The initiation fee was sufficiently high to discourage all undesirable elements; and the roster of those who were accorded the privileges of the “club” read almost like a compilation of the names of the socially and professionally prominent.

  For his chief croupier and supervisor of the games, Kinkaid had chosen Morgan Bloodgood, a cultured young mathematician whom he had met at his sister’s home. Bloodgood had been at college with Lynn Llewellyn, though the latter was his senior by three years; and, incidentally, it was Bloodgood who brought about the meeting of Virginia Vale and young Llewellyn. Bloodgood, while in college and during the time he had taught mathematics, had, as a hobby, busied himself with the laws of probability. He applied his findings especially to the relation of these laws to numerical gambling, and had figured out elaborately the percentages in all the well-known games of chance. His estimates of permutations, possibilities of repetitions and changes of sequence as bearing on card games are today officially used in computing chances in drawings; and he was at one time associated with the District Attorney’s office in exposing the overwhelming chances in favor of the owners in connection with a city-wide campaign against slot-machines of all types.

  Kinkaid was once asked why he had chosen young Bloodgood in preference to an old-time, experienced croupier; and he answered:

  “I am like Balzac’s old Gobseck, who gave all his personal legal business to the budding solicitor, Derville, on the theory that a man under thirty can be relied upon, but that after that age no man may be wholly trusted.”

  The assistant croupiers and dealers at the Casino were likewise chosen from the ranks of well-bred, non-professional young men of good appearance and education; and they were carefully trained in the intricacies of their duties.199

  Cynical though Kinkaid’s philosophy may have been, the practical application of it met with success. His gambling from the “right side of the table” prospered. He was content with the usual house percentage, and the shrewdest of gamblers and experts were never able to bring against him an accusation of “fixing” any of his games.200 In all disputes between a player and the croupier, the player was paid without question. Many small fortunes were lost and won at the Casino during its comparatively brief existence; and the play was always large, especially on Friday and Saturday nights.

  When Vance and I arrived at the Casino on that fatal Saturday night of October 15, there was as yet only a scattering of guests present. It was too early for the full quota of habitués who, as a rule, came after the theatre.

  As we walked up the wide stone steps from the paved outer court and entered the narrow vestibule of plate glass and black ironwork, we were greeted with a nod from a Chinese porter who stood at the left of the entrance. By some secret signal our identity was communicated to those in charge on the inside; and almost simultaneously with our arrival in the vestibule the great bronze door (which Old Amos had brought over from Italy) was swung open. In the spacious reception hall, fully thirty feet square, hung with rich brocades and old paintings, and furnished in lu
xurious Italian Renaissance style, our hats and coats were taken from us by two uniformed attendants, both of them extremely tall and powerful men.201

  At the rear of the hall was a divided marble stairway which led, on either side of a small glistening fountain, to the gaming rooms above.

  On the second floor Kinkaid had combined the former drawing-room and the reception-room into one large salon which he had christened the Gold Room. It ran the entire width of the house and was perhaps sixty feet long. The west wall was broken by an alcove which was furnished as a small lounge. The salon was decorated in modified Roman style, with an occasional suggestion of Byzantine ornamentation. The walls were covered with gold leaf, and the flat marble pilasters, which broke them into large rectangular panels, were of a subdued ivory tone that blended with the gold of the walls and the buff-colored ceiling. The draperies at the long windows were of yellow silk brocaded with gold; and the deep-piled carpet was a neutralized ochre in color.

  There were three roulette tables set down the centre of the room, two black-jack, or vingt-et-un, tables at the middle of the east and west walls, four chuck-a-luck tables, or bird cages, in the four corners, and an elaborate dice table at the far end, between the windows. At the rear of the Gold Room, to the west, was a private card room, with a row of small individual tables where any form of solitaire could be played, and a dealer to look on and to pay or collect, according to the luck and skill of the player. Adjoining this room, to the east, was a crystal bar with a wide archway leading into the main salon. Here only the finest liquors and wines were served. These two rooms had evidently been the main dining-room and the breakfast room of the old Kinkaid mansion. A cashier’s cage had been constructed in what had once been a linen closet, to the left of the bar.