The Dragon Murder Case

by S. S. Van Dine

  He greeted us pleasantly and, I thought, a bit diffidently.

  “Good morning, gentlemen. Sorry I was so crotchety last night. Forgive me. I was under the weather—and unstrung...”

  “That’s quite all right,” Vance assured him. “We understand perfectly—a dashed tryin’ situation... We’re thinking of looking over the estate a bit, especially down by the pool, and we thought you’d be good enough to pilot us around.”

  “Delighted.” Stamm led the way down a path on the north side of the house. “It’s a unique place I’ve got here. Nothing quite like it in New York—or in any other city, for that matter.”

  We followed him past the head of the steps that led down to the pool, and on toward the rear of the house. We came presently to a slight embankment at the foot of which ran a narrow concrete road.

  “This is the East Road,” Stamm explained. “My father built it many years ago. It runs down the hill through those trees and joins one of the old roadways just outside the boundary of the estate.”

  “And where does the old roadway lead?” asked Vance.

  “Nowhere in particular. It passes along the Bird Refuge toward the south end of the Clove, and there it divides. One branch goes to the Shell Bed and the Indian Cave to the north, and joins the road which circles the headland and connects with the River Road. The other branch runs down by the Green Hill and turns into Payson Avenue north of the Military Ovens. But we rarely use the road—it’s not in good condition.”

  We walked down the embankment. To our right, and to the southeast of the house, stood a large garage, with a cement turning-space in front of it.

  “An inconvenient place for the garage,” Stamm remarked. “But it was the best we could do. If we’d placed it in front of the house it would have spoiled the vista. However, I extended the cement road to the front of the house on the south side there.”

  “And this East Road runs past the pool?” Vance was glancing down the wooded hill toward the little valley.

  “That’s right,” Stamm nodded, “though the road doesn’t go within fifty yards of it.”

  “Suppose we waddle down,” suggested Vance. “And then we can return to the house by way of the pool steps—eh, what?”

  Stamm seemed pleased and not a little proud to show us the way. We walked down the sloping hill, across the short concrete bridge over the creek which fed the pool, and, circling a little to the left, got a clear view of the high stone cliff which formed the north boundary of the pool. A few feet ahead of us was a narrow cement walk—perhaps eighteen inches wide—which led off at right angles to the road in the direction of the pool.

  Stamm turned into the walk, and we followed him. On either side of us were dense trees and underbrush, and it was not until we had come to the low opening at the northeast corner of the pool, between the cliff and the filter, that we were able to take our bearings accurately. From this point we could look diagonally across the pool to the Stamm mansion which stood on the top of the hill opposite.

  The water-level of the pool was noticeably lower. In fact, half of the bottom—the shallow half nearest the cliff—was already exposed, and there remained only a channel of water, perhaps twenty feet wide, on the opposite side, nearest the house. And even this water was sinking perceptibly as it ran through the lock at the bottom of the dam.

  The gates above the filter, immediately on our left, were tightly closed, thus acting as an upper dam and creating a miniature pond to the east of the pool. Fortunately, at this time of year the flow of the stream was less abundant than usual, and there was no danger that the water would reach the top of the gates or overflow its banks for several hours. Only a negligible amount of water trickled through the crack between the gates.

  As yet the dead man had not come into view, and Heath, scanning the surface of the pool perplexedly, remarked that Montague must have met his death in the deep channel on the other side.

  Directly ahead of us, within a few feet of the cliff, the apex of a large conical piece of jagged rock was partly imbedded in the muddy soil, like a huge inverted stalagmite. Stamm pointed at it.

  “There’s that damned rock I told you about,” he said. “That’s where you got your splash last night. I’ve been afraid for weeks it would fall into the pool. Luckily it didn’t hit anybody, although I warned every one not to get too close to the cliff if they went swimming... Now I suppose it will have to be dragged out. A mean job.”

  His eyes roamed over the pool. Only a narrow channel of water now remained along the concrete wall on the far side. And there was still no indication of the dead man.

  “I guess Montague must have bumped his head just off the end of the spring-board,” Stamm commented sourly. “Damn shame it had to happen. People are always getting drowned here. The pool is unlucky as the devil.”

  “What devil?” asked Vance, without glancing up. “The Piasa?”*

  Stamm shot Vance a quick look and made a disdainful noise which was half a laugh.

  “I see that you, too, have been listening to those crazy yarns. Good Lord! the old wives will soon have me believing there’s a man-eating dragon in this pool... By the way, where did you get that term Piasa? The word the Indians round here use for the dragon is Amangemokdom. I haven’t heard the word Piasa for many years, and then it was used by an old Indian chief from out West who was visiting here. Quite an impressive old fellow. And I shall always remember his hair-raising description of the Piasa.”

  “Piasa and Amangemokdom mean practically the same thing—a dragon-monster,” Vance returned in a low voice, his eyes still focused on the gradually receding water on the floor of the pool. “Different dialects, don’t y’ know. Amangemokdom was used by the Lenapes,* but the Algonkian Indians along the Mississippi called their devil-dragon the Piasa.”

  The water remaining in the channel seemed to be running out more swiftly now, and Stamm started to walk across the small flat area of sod at the edge of the pool, in order, I presume, to get a better view; but Vance caught him quickly by the arm.

  “Sorry and all that,” he said a bit peremptorily; “but we may have to go over this patch of ground for footprints...”

  Stamm looked at him with questioning surprise, and Vance added:

  “Silly idea, I know. But it occurred to us that Montague might have swum across the pool to this opening and walked away.”

  Stamm’s jaw dropped.

  “Why, in God’s name, should he do that?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know,” Vance replied lightly. “He probably didn’t. But if there’s no body in the pool it will be most embarrassin’. And we’ll have to account for his disappearance, don’t y’ know.”

  “Tommy-rot!” Stamm seemed thoroughly disgusted. “The body’ll be here all right. You can’t make a voodoo mystery out of a simple drowning.”

  “By the by,” inquired Vance, “what sort of soil is on the bottom of this pool?”

  “Hard and sandy,” Stamm said, still rankled by Vance’s former remark. “At one time I thought of putting in a cement bottom, but decided it wouldn’t be any better than what was already there. And it keeps pretty clean, too. That accumulation of muddy silt you see is only an inch or so deep. When the water gets out of the pool you can walk over the whole bottom in a pair of rubbers without soiling your shoes.”

  The water in the pool was now but a stream scarcely three feet wide, and I knew it would be only a matter of minutes before the entire surface of the basin would be visible. The five of us—Vance, Markham, Heath, Stamm and myself—stood in a line at the end of the cement walk, looking out intently over the draining pool. The water at the upper end of the channel had disappeared, and, as the rest of the constantly narrowing stream flowed through the lock, the bottom of the channel gradually came into view.

  We watched this receding line as it moved downward toward the dam, foot by foot. It reached the cabañas, and passed them. It approached the spring-board, and I felt a curious tension in my nerves... It reached the
spring-board—then passed it, and moved down along the cement wall to the lock. A strange tingling sensation came over me, and, though I seemed to be held fascinated, I managed to drag my eyes away from the rapidly diminishing water and look at the four men beside me.

  Stamm’s mouth was open, and his eyes were fixed as if in hypnosis. Markham was frowning in deep perplexity. Heath’s face was set and rigid. Vance was smoking placidly, his eyebrows slightly raised in a cynical arc; and there was the suggestion of a grim smile on his ascetic mouth.

  I turned my gaze back to the lock in the dam... All the water had now gone through it...

  At that moment there rang out across the hot sultry air, a hysterical shriek followed by high-pitched gloating laughter. We all looked up, startled; and there, on the third-floor balcony of the old mansion, stood the wizened figure of Matilda Stamm, her arms outstretched and waving toward the pool.

  For a moment the significance of this distracting and blood-chilling interlude escaped me. But then, suddenly, I realized the meaning of it. From where we stood we could see every square foot of the empty basin of the pool.

  And there was no sign of a body!

  Footnotes

  * Doctor Emanuel Doremus, Chief Medical Examiner.

  * In a pamphlet published in Morris, Illinois, in 1887, written by the Honorable P. A. Armstrong and entitled “The Piasa, or the Devil Among the Indians,” there is an old engraving showing the Piasa as a monster with a dragon’s head, antlers like a deer, the scales of a great fish, claws, and large wings, and with a long tail, like that of a sea-serpent, coiled about its body. The petroglyphs, or pictographs, carved on rock, of this devil-dragon were first found by Father Marquette in the valley of the Mississippi about 1665; and his description of the Piasa, given in Armstrong’s pamphlet, reads thus: “They are as large as a calf, with head and horns like a goat, their eyes are red, beard like a tiger’s, and a face like a man’s. Their tails are so long that they pass over their bodies and between their legs, ending like a fish’s tail.”

  * Lenape is the generic name for the Algonkian tribes in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and vicinity; and it was one of these tribes that inhabited Inwood.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Mysterious Footprints (Sunday, August 12; 11.30 a.m.)

  SO EXTRAORDINARY AND unexpected was the result of the draining of the Dragon Pool, that none of us spoke for several moments.

  I glanced at Markham. He was scowling deeply, and I detected in his expression a look of fear and bafflement, such as one might have in the presence of things unknown. Heath, as was usual whenever he was seriously puzzled, was chewing viciously on his cigar, and staring belligerently. Stamm, whose bulging eyes were focused on the lock in the dam through which the water had disappeared, was leaning rigidly forward, as if transfixed by a startling phenomenon.

  Vance seemed the calmest of us all. His eyebrows were slightly elevated, and there was a mildly cynical expression in his cold gray eyes. Moreover, his lips held the suggestion of a smile of satisfaction, although it was evident from the tensity of his attitude that he had not been entirely prepared for the absence of Montague’s body.

  Stamm was the first to speak.

  “I’ll be damned!” he muttered. “It’s incredible—it’s not possible!” He fumbled nervously in the pocket of his sport shirt and drew out a small black South American cigarette which he lit with some difficulty.

  Vance shrugged almost imperceptibly.

  “My word!” he murmured. He, too, reached in his pocket for a cigarette. “Now the search for footprints will be more fascinatin’ than ever, Sergeant.”

  Heath made a wry face.

  “Maybe yes and maybe no... What about that rock that fell in the pool over there? Maybe our guy’s under it.”

  Vance shook his head.

  “No, Sergeant. The apex of that piece of rock, as it lies buried in the pool, is, I should say, barely eighteen inches in diameter. It couldn’t possibly hide a man’s body.”

  Stamm took his black cigarette from his mouth and turned in Vance’s direction.

  “You’re right about that,” he commented. “It’s not a particularly pleasant subject for conversation, but the fact of the matter is, the bottom of the pool is too hard to have a body driven into it by a rock.” He looked back toward the dam. “We’ll have to find another explanation for Montague’s disappearance.”

  Heath was both annoyed and uneasy.

  “All right,” he mumbled. Then he turned to Vance. “But there wasn’t any footprints here last night—at least Snitkin and I couldn’t find ’em.”

  “Suppose we take another peep,” Vance suggested. “And it might be just as well to hail Snitkin, so that we can go about the task systematically.”

  Without a word Heath turned and trotted back down the cement path toward the roadway. We could hear him whistling to Snitkin who was on guard at the gate, a hundred feet or so down the East Road.

  Markham moved nervously a few paces back and forth.

  “Have you any suggestion, Mr. Stamm,” he asked, “as to what might have become of Montague?”

  Stamm, with a perplexed frown, again scrutinized the basin of the pool. He shook his head slowly.

  “I can’t imagine,” he replied, after a moment, “—unless, of course, he deliberately walked out of the pool on this side.”

  Vance gave Markham a whimsical smile.

  “There’s always the dragon as a possibility,” he remarked cheerfully.

  Stamm wheeled about. His face was red with anger, and his lips trembled as he spoke.

  “For the love of Heaven, don’t bring that up again!” he pleaded. “Things are bad enough as they are, without dragging in that superstitious hocus-pocus. There simply must be a rational explanation for everything.”

  “Yes, yes, to be sure,” sighed Vance. “Rationality above all else.”

  At this moment I happened to look up at the third-floor balcony of the house, and I saw Mrs. Schwarz and Doctor Holliday step up to Mrs. Stamm and lead her gently back into the house.

  A few seconds later Heath and Snitkin joined us.

  The search for footprints along the level area between us and the high-water mark of the pool took considerable time. Beginning close to the filter on the left, Vance, Snitkin and Heath worked systematically across the level space to the perpendicular edge of the cliff that formed the north wall of the pool, on our right. The area was perhaps fifteen feet square. The section lying nearest to the pool was of encrusted earth, and the strip nearest to where Markham, Stamm and I were standing, at the end of the cement path, was covered with short, irregular lawn.

  When, at length, Vance turned at the edge of the cliff and walked back toward us, there was a puzzled look on his face.

  “There’s no sign of a footprint,” he remarked. “Montague certainly didn’t walk out of the pool at this point.”

  Heath came up, solemn and troubled.

  “I didn’t think we’d find anything,” he grumbled. “Snitkin and I made a pretty thorough search last night, with our flashlights.”

  Markham was studying the edge of the cliff.

  “Is there any way Montague might have crawled up on one of those ledges and hopped over to the walk here?” he asked of no one in particular.

  Vance shook his head unhappily.

  “Montague might have been an athlete, but he was no inyala.”

  Stamm stood as if in hypnotized reflection.

  “If he didn’t get out of the pool at this end,” he said, “I don’t see how the devil he got out at all.”

  “But he did get out, don’t y’ know,” Vance returned. “Suppose we do a bit of pryin’ around.”

  He led the way toward the filter and mounted its broad coping. We followed him in single file, hardly knowing what to expect. When he was half-way across the filter he paused and looked down at the water-line of the pool. It was fully six feet below the coping of the filter and eight feet below the top of the gates. The filter was
of small galvanized wire mesh, backed by a thin coating of perforated porous material which looked like very fine cement. It was obvious that no man could have climbed up the side of the filter to the coping without the aid of an accomplice.

  Vance, satisfied, continued across the filter to the cabañas on the far side of the pool. A cement retaining wall about four feet above the water-level of the pool ran from the end of the filter to the dam.

  “It’s a sure thing Montague didn’t climb over this wall,” Heath observed. “Those flood-lights play all along it, and some one would certainly have seen him.”

  “Quite right,” agreed Stamm. “He didn’t escape from the pool on this side.”

  We walked down to the dam, and Vance made a complete inspection of it, testing the strength of the wire mesh over the lock and making sure there was no other opening. Then he went down to the stream bed below the dam, where all the water had now flowed off, and wandered for a while over the jagged, algæ-covered rocks.

  “There’s no use looking for his body down there,” Stamm called to him at length. “There hasn’t been enough flow here for the last month to wash as much as a dead cat over the dam.”

  “Oh, quite,” Vance returned abstractedly, climbing back up the bank to where we stood. “I really wasn’t looking for the corpse, d’ ye see. Even if there had been a strong flow over the dam, Montague wouldn’t have been carried over with it. It would take at least twenty-four hours for his body to come to the surface if he had been drowned.”

  “Well, just what were you looking for?” Markham demanded testily.

  “I’m sure I don’t know, old dear,” Vance replied. “Just sightseein’—and hopin’... Suppose we return to the other side of the pool. That little square of ground over there, without any footprints, is dashed interestin’.”