The Scarab Murder Case

by S. S. Van Dine

  “What time?” he repeated, like a man attempting to collect his thoughts. “Let me see… Brush brought me my breakfast about nine, and a few minutes later I drank the coffee…some of it, at any rate—” His gaze wandered off into space. “That’s all I remember until—until there was a pounding on the door… What time is it, Mr. Vance?”

  “It’s well past noon,” Vance informed him. “You evidently fell asleep as soon as you had your coffee. Quite natural, don’t y’know. Scarlett tells me you worked late last night.”

  Bliss nodded heavily.

  “Yes—till three this morning. I wanted to have the report in order for Kyle when he arrived… And now”—he looked hopelessly toward the outstretched body of his benefactor—“I find him dead—murdered… I can’t understand.”

  “Neither can we—for the moment,” Vance returned. “But Mr. Markham—the District Attorney—and Sergeant Heath of the Homicide Bureau are here for the purpose of ascertaining the facts; and you may rest assured, sir, that justice will be done. Just now you can help us materially by answering a few questions. Do you feel equal to it?”

  “Of course I’m equal to it,” Bliss replied, with a slight show of nervous vitality. “But,” he added, running his tongue over his dry lips, “I’m horribly thirsty. A drink of water—”

  “Ah! I thought you might be wanting a drink… How about it Sergeant?”

  Heath was already on his way toward the front stairs. He disappeared through the door, and we could hear his voice giving staccato orders to some one outside. A minute or two later he returned to the museum with a glass of water.

  Doctor Bliss drank it like a man parched with thirst, and when he had set the glass down Vance asked him:

  “When did you finish your financial report for Mr. Kyle?”

  “This morning—just before Brush brought me my breakfast.” Bliss’s voice was stronger: there was even animation in his tone. “I had practically completed it before retiring last night—all but about an hour’s work. So I came down to the study at eight this morning.”

  “And where is that report now?”

  “On my desk in the study. I intended to check the figures after breakfast, before Kyle arrived… I’ll get it.”

  He started to rise, but Vance restrained him. “That won’t be necess’ry, sir. I have it here… It was found in Mr. Kyle’s hand.”

  Bliss looked at the paper, which Vance showed him, with dumbfounded eyes.

  “In—Kyle’s hand?” he stammered. “But…but…”

  “Don’t disturb yourself about it.” Vance’s manner was casual. “Its presence there will be explained when we’ve come to know the situation better. The report was no doubt taken from your study while you were asleep…”

  “Maybe Kyle himself—”

  “It’s possible, but hardly probable.” It was obvious that Vance scouted the idea of Kyle’s having personally taken the report. “By the by, is it custom’ry for you to leave the door leading from your study into the museum unlocked?”

  “Yes. I never lock it. No necessity to. As a matter of fact I couldn’t tell you offhand where the key is.”

  “That bein’ the case,” mused Vance, “any one in the museum might have entered the study and taken the report after nine o’clock or so, when you were asleep.”

  “But who, in Heaven’s name, Mr. Vance—?”

  “We don’t know yet. We’re still in the conjectural stage of our investigation.—And if you’ll be so good, doctor, permit me to ask the questions… Do you happen to know where Mr. Salveter is this morning?”

  Bliss turned his head toward Vance with a resentful gesture.

  “Certainly I know where he is,” he responded, setting his jaws firmly. (I got the impression that he intended to protect Kyle’s nephew from any suspicion.) “I sent him to the Metropolitan Museum—”

  “You sent him? When?”

  “I asked him last night to go the first thing this morning and inquire regarding a duplicate set of reproductions of the tomb furniture in the recently discovered grave of Hotpeheres, the mother of Kheuf of the Fourth Dynasty—”

  “Hotpeheres? Kheuf?… Do you refer to Hetep-hir-es and Khufu?”

  “Certainly!” The doctor’s tone was tart. “I use the transliteration of Weigall. In his ‘History of the Pharaohs’—”

  “Yes, yes. Forgive me, doctor. I recall now that Weigall has altered many of the accepted transliterations from the Egyptian… But, if my memory is correct, the expedition which unearthed the tomb of Hetep-hir-es—or Hotpeheres—was sponsored by Harvard University and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.”

  “Quite true. But I knew that my old friend, Albert Lythgoe, the Curator of the Egyptian department of the Metropolitan Museum, could supply me with the information I desired.”

  “I see,” Vance paused. “Did you speak to Mr. Salveter this morning?”

  “No.” Bliss became indignant. “I was in my study from eight o’clock on; and the lad wouldn’t think of disturbing me. He probably left the house about nine-thirty,—the Metropolitan Museum opens at ten.”

  Vance nodded.

  “Yes; Brush said he went out about that time. But shouldn’t he be back by now?”

  Bliss shrugged his shoulders.

  “Perhaps,” he said, as if the matter was of no importance. “He may have had to wait for the Curator, however. Anyway, he’ll be back as soon as he has finished his mission. He’s a good conscientious lad: both my wife and I are extremely fond of him. It was he who, by interceding with his uncle, made possible the excavations of Intef’s tomb.”

  “So Scarlett told me.” Vance spoke with the off-handedness of complete uninterest, and drawing up a collapsible wooden chair sat down lazily. As he did so he gave Markham an admonitory glance—a glance which said as plainly as words could have done: “Let me do the talking for the time being.” Then he leaned back and folded his hands behind his head.

  “I say, doctor,” he went on, with a slight yawn; “speaking of old Intef, I was present, don’t y’know, when you appropriated that fascinatin’ lapis-lazuli scarab…”

  Bliss’s hand went to his four-in-hand, and he glanced guiltily toward Hani, who had moved before the statue of Tetishiret and now stood with his back to us in a pose of detached and absorbed adoration. Vance pretended not to have seen the doctor’s movements, and, gazing dreamily out of the rear windows, he continued:

  “A most interestin’ scarab—unusually marked. Scarlett tells me you had it made into a scarf-pin… Have you it with you? I’d jolly well like to see it.”

  “Really, Mr. Vance,”—again Bliss’s hand went to his cravat—“it must be up-stairs. If you’ll call Brush—”

  Scarlett had moved forward beside Bliss.

  “It was in your study last night, doctor,” he said, “—on the desk…”

  “So it was!” Bliss was in perfect control of himself now. “You’ll find it on my desk, stuck in the necktie I was wearing yesterday.”

  Vance rose and confronted Scarlett with an arctic look.

  “Thanks awfully,” he said coldly. “When I need your assistance I’ll call on you.” Then he turned to Bliss. “The truth is, doctor, I was endeavorin’ to ascertain when you last remembered havin’ your scarab pin… It’s not in your study, d’ye see. It was lyin’ beside the body of Mr. Kyle when we arrived here.”

  “My Intef scarab here!” Bliss leapt to his feet and gazed, with a panic-stricken stare, at the murdered man. “That’s impossible!”

  Vance stepped to Kyle’s body and picked up the scarab.

  “Not impossible, sir,” he said, displaying the pin; “but very mystifyin’… It was probably taken from your study at the same time as the report.”

  “It’s beyond me,” Bliss remarked slowly, in a hoarse whisper.

  “Maybe it fell outa your necktie,” Heath suggested antagonistically, thrusting his jaw forward.

  “What do you mean?” The doctor’s tone was dull and frightened. “I didn’
t have it in this necktie. I left it in the study—”

  “Sergeant!” Vance gave Heath a look of stern reproval. “Let’s go at this thing calmly and with discretion.”

  “Mr. Vance,”—Heath’s aggressiveness did not relax—“I’m here to find out who croaked Kyle. And the person who had every opportunity to do it is this Doctor Bliss. On top of that fact we find a financial report and a stick-pin that hooks Doctor Bliss up to the dead man. And there’s those foot-prints—”

  “All you say is true, Sergeant.” Vance cut him short. “But ballyragging the doctor will not give us the explanation of this extr’ordin’ry situation.”

  Bliss had shrunk back into his chair.

  “Oh, my God!” he moaned. “I see what you’re getting at. You think I killed him!” He turned his eyes to Vance in desperate entreaty. “I tell you I’ve been asleep since nine o’clock. I didn’t even know Kyle was here. It’s terrible—terrible… Surely, Mr. Vance, you can’t believe—”

  There was a sound of angry voices at the main door of the museum, and we all looked in that direction. At the head of the stairs stood Hennessey, his arms wide, protesting volubly. On the door-sill was a young woman.

  “This is my house,” she said in a shrill, angry voice. “How dare you tell me I can’t enter here?…”

  Scarlett at once hurried toward the stairs.

  “Meryt!”

  “It’s my wife,” Bliss informed us. “Why is she refused admittance, Mr. Vance?”

  Before Vance could answer, Heath was shouting:

  “That’s all right, Hennessey. Let the lady come in.”

  Mrs. Bliss hastened down the stairs, and almost ran to her husband.

  “Oh, what is it, Mindrum? What has happened?” She dropped to her knees and put her arms about the doctor’s shoulders. At that instant she caught sight of Kyle’s body and, with a gasp and a shudder, turned her eyes away.

  She was a striking-looking woman, whose age, I surmised, was about twenty-six or -seven. Her large eyes were dark and heavily lashed, and her skin was a deep olive. Her Egyptian blood was most marked in the sensual fullness of her lips and in her high prominent cheekbones, which gave her face a decidedly Oriental character. There was something about her that recalled to my mind the beautiful reconstructed painting made of Queen Nefret-îti by Winifred Brunton.* She wore a powder-blue toque hat not unlike the headdress of Nefret-îti herself; and her gown of cinnamon-brown georgette crepe clung closely to her slender, well-rounded body, bringing out and emphasizing its sensuous curves. There were both strength and beauty in her supple figure, which followed the lines of the old Oriental ideal such as we find in Ingres’ Bain Turc.

  Despite her youth she possessed a distinct air of maturity and poise: there were undeniable depths to her nature; and I could easily imagine, as I watched her kneeling beside Bliss, that she might be capable of powerful emotions and equally powerful deeds.†

  Bliss patted her shoulder in an affectionately paternal manner. His eyes, though, were abstracted.

  “Kyle is dead, my dear,” he told her in a hollow voice. “He’s been killed…and these gentlemen are accusing me of having done it.”

  “You!” Mrs. Bliss was instantly on her feet. For a moment her great eyes stared uncomprehendingly at her husband; then she turned on us in a flashing rage. But before she could speak Vance stepped toward her.

  “The doctor is not quite accurate, Mrs. Bliss,” he said in a low, even tone. “We have not accused him. We are merely making an investigation of this tragic affair; and it happens that the doctor’s scarab-pin was found near Mr. Kyle’s body…”

  “What of it?” She had become strangely calm. “Any one might have dropped it there.”

  “Exactly, madam,” Vance returned, with friendly assurance. “Our main object in this investigation is to ascertain who that person was.”

  The woman’s eyes were half-closed, and she stood rigid, as if transfixed by a sudden devastating thought.

  “Yes…yes,” she breathed. “Some one placed the scarab-pin there…some one…” Her voice died out, and a cloud, as of pain, came over her face. But quickly she drew herself together and, taking a deep breath, looked resolutely into Vance’s eyes.

  “Whoever it was that did this terrible thing, I want you to find him.” Her expression became set and hard. “And I will help you. Do you understand?—I will help you.”

  Vance studied her briefly before replying.

  “I believe you will, Mrs. Bliss. And I shall call on you for that help.” He bowed slightly. “But there is nothing you can do at this moment. A few prelimin’ry routine things must be done first. In the meantime, I would appreciate your waiting for us in the drawing-room—there will be several questions we shall want to ask you presently… Hani may accompany you.”

  I had been watching the Egyptian with one eye during this little scene. When Mrs. Bliss had entered the museum he had barely turned in her direction, but when she had begun speaking to Vance he had moved silently toward them. He now stood, his arms folded, just behind the inlaid coffer, with his eyes fixed upon the woman, in an attitude of protective devotion.

  “Come, Meryt-Amen,” he said. “I will remain with you till these gentlemen wish to consult you. There is nothing to fear. Sakhmet has had her just revenge, and she is beyond the mundane power of Occidental law.”

  The woman hesitated a moment. Then, going to Bliss, she kissed him lightly on the forehead, and walked toward the front stairway, Hani servilely following her.

  Footnotes

  *I learned from Vance that Doctor Bliss had read, in the British Museum, the Abbott Papyrus of the Twentieth Dynasty, which reported the inspection of this and other tombs. The report stated that, in early times, Intef V’s tomb had been entered but not robbed: the raiders had evidently been unable to penetrate to the actual grave chamber. Bliss, therefore, had concluded that the mummy of Intef would still be found in the original tomb. An old native named Hasan had showed him where two obelisks had stood in front of the pyramid of Intef (Intef-o); and through this information he had succeeded in locating the pyramid, and had excavated at that point.

  *This colored portrait (with the Queen’s name spelled Nefertiti) appears in “Kings and Queens of Ancient Egypt” (Charles Scribner’s Sons).

  †I learned subsequently from Scarlett that Mrs. Bliss’s mother had been a Coptic lady of noble descent who traced her lineage from the last Saïte Pharaohs, and who, despite her Christian faith, had retained her traditional veneration for the native gods of her country. Her only child, Meryt-Amen (“Beloved of Amûn”), had been named in honor of the great Ramses II, whose full title as Son of the Sun-God was Ra-mosê-su Mery-Amûn. (The more correct English spelling of Mrs. Bliss’s name would have been Meryet-Amûn, but the form chosen was no doubt based on the transliterations of Flinders Petrie, Maspero, and Abercrombie.) Meryet-Amûn was not an uncommon name among the queens and princesses of ancient Egypt. Three queens of that name have already been found—one (of the family of Ah-mosè I) whose mummy is in the Cairo Museum; another (of the family of Ramses II) whose tomb and sarcophagus are in the Valley of the Queens; and a third, whose burial chamber and mummy were recently found by the Egyptian Expedition of the Metropolitan Museum of Art on the hillside near the temple of Deir el Bahri at Thebes. This last Queen Meryet-Amûn was the daughter of Thut-mosè III and Meryet-Rê, and the wife of Amenhotep II. The story of the finding of her tomb is told in Section II of the Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art for November, 1929.

  CHAPTER SIX

  A Four-Hour Errand

  (Friday, July 13; 1.15 p.m.)

  SCARLETT’S EYES FOLLOWED her with a troubled, sympathetic look.

  “Poor girl!” he commented, with a sigh. “You know, Vance, she was devoted to Kyle—her father and Kyle were great cronies. When old Abercrombie died Kyle cared for her as though she’d been his daughter… This affair is a terrible blow to her.”

  “One can well understand that,” Van
ce murmured perfunctorily. “But she has Hani to console her… By the by, doctor, your Egyptian servant appears to be quite en rapport with Mrs. Bliss.”

  “What’s that—what’s that?” Bliss lifted his head and made an effort at concentration. “Ah, yes… Hani. A faithful dog—where my wife’s concerned. He practically brought her up, after her father’s death. He’s never forgiven me for marrying her.” He smiled grimly and lapsed into a state of brooding despondency.

  Heath’s cigar had gone out, but he still chewed viciously on it.

  He was standing beside Kyle’s body, his legs apart, his hands in his pockets, glaring with frustrated animosity at the doctor.

  “What’s all this palaver about, anyhow?” he asked sullenly. He faced Markham. “Listen, Chief: haven’t you got enough evidence for an indictment?”

  Markham was sorely troubled. His instinct was to order Bliss’s arrest, but his faith in Vance halted him. He knew that Vance was not satisfied with the situation, and he no doubt felt, as a result of Vance’s attitude, that there were certain things connected with Kyle’s murder which did not show on the surface. Moreover, there was perhaps an uncertainty in his own mind as to the authenticity of the evidence that pointed to the Egyptologist.

  He was on the point of answering Heath when Hennessey put his head in the door and called out:

  “Hey, Sergeant; the buggy from the Department of Public Welfare is here.”

  “Well, it’s about time.” Heath was in a vicious mood. He turned to Markham. “Any reason, sir, why we shouldn’t get the body outa the way?”

  Markham glanced toward Vance, who nodded.

  “No, Sergeant,” he answered. “The sooner it reaches the mortuary, the sooner we’ll have the post-mortem report.”

  “Right!” Heath cupped his hands to his mouth and bawled to Hennessey: “Send ’em in.”

  A moment later two men—one the driver of the car, the other an unkempt “pick-up”—came down the stairs carrying a large wicker basket shaped like a coffin. Without a word they callously lifted Kyle’s body into it, and started toward the front door with their gruesome burden, the “pick-up” at the rear end of the basket doing a playful dance step as he moved across the hardwood floor.