Leland turned his head slowly, frowned, and appeared to weigh the question that Vance had put to him. Finally he shook his head despondently.
“I do not know—exactly—why I did that,” he replied.
Vance’s penetrating eyes held the man’s gaze for a brief space of time. Then he asked:
“What are you going to do about it, Mr. Leland?”
Leland glanced down at his pipe, fumbled with it for a moment, and then rose.
“I think I had better go up-stairs to Miss Stamm—if you don’t mind. It might be best if it were I who told her.”
Vance nodded. “I believe you are right.”
Leland had scarcely entered the house and closed the door when Markham sprang to his feet and started after him; but Vance stepped up quickly and put a firm restraining hand on the District Attorney’s shoulder.
“Stay here, Markham,” he said, with grim and commanding insistence.
“But you can’t do this thing, Vance!” Markham protested, trying to throw off the other’s hold. “You have no right to contravene justice this way. You’ve done it before—and it was outrageous!”*
“Please believe me, Markham,” Vance returned sternly, “it’s the best thing.” Then his eyes opened wide, and a look of astonishment came into them. “Oh, my word!” he said. “You don’t yet understand... Wait—wait.” And he forced Markham back into his chair.
A moment later Stamm, in his bathing suit, emerged from one of the cabañas and crossed the coping of the filter to the windlass beyond. The two men he had brought with him from Spuyten Duyvil had already attached the rope to the drum and stood at the hand-cranks, awaiting Stamm’s orders. Stamm picked up the loose end of the coiled rope and, throwing it over his shoulder, waded into the shallow water along the foot of the cliff until he came to the submerged rock. We watched him for some time looping the rope over the rock and endeavoring to dislodge it with the assistance of the men operating the winch. Twice the rope slipped, and once a stake anchoring the winch was dislodged.
It was while the men were repairing this stake that Leland returned softly to the terrace and sat down again beside Vance. His face was pale and set, and a great sadness had come into his eyes. Markham, who had started slightly when Leland appeared, now sat looking at him curiously. Leland’s eyes moved indifferently toward the pool where Stamm was struggling with the heavy rope.
“Bernice has suspected the truth all along,” Leland remarked to Vance, in a voice barely above a whisper... “I think, though,” he added, “she feels better, now that you gentlemen understand everything... She is very brave...”
Across the sinister waters of the Dragon Pool, there came to us a curious rumbling and crackling sound, like Sharp, distant thunder. As I instinctively glanced toward the cliffs I saw the entire pinnacle of the rocky projection we had examined the day before, topple and slide downward toward the spot where Stamm was standing breast-deep in the water.
The whole terrible episode happened so quickly that the details of it are, even today, somewhat confused in my mind. But as the great mass of rock slid down the cliff, a shower of small stones in its wake, I caught a fleeting picture of Stamm glancing upward and then striving frantically to get out of the path of the crashing boulder, which the rainstorm earlier in the afternoon must have loosened. But his arms had become entangled in the rope which he was attempting to fasten about the rock in the pool, and he was unable to disengage himself. I got a momentary glimpse of his panic-stricken face just before the great mass of rock caught him and pinned him beneath the waters.
Simultaneously with the terrific splash, a fearful, hysterical shriek rang out from the balcony high above our heads; and I knew that old Mrs. Stamm had witnessed the tragedy.
We all sat in stunned silence for several seconds. Then I was conscious of Leland’s soft voice.
“A merciful death,” he commented.
Vance took a long, deep inhalation on his cigarette.
“Merciful—and just,” he said.
The two men at the windlass had entered the water and were wading rapidly toward the place where Stamm had been buried; but it was only too obvious that their efforts would be futile. The great mass of rock had caught Stamm squarely, and there could be no hope of rescue.
The first sudden shock of the catastrophe past, we rose to our feet, almost with one accord. It was then that the hall door opened and Doctor Holliday, pale and upset, lumbered out on the terrace.
“Oh, there you are, Mr. Leland.” He hesitated, as if he did not know exactly how to proceed. Then he blurted out:
“Mrs. Stamm’s dead. Sudden shock—she saw it happen. You had better break the news to her daughter.”
Footnote
* Markham, I believe, was referring to the opportunity that Vance had given the murderer in “The ‘Canary’ Murder Case” to commit suicide after he had admitted his guilt.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The End of the Case (Monday, August 13; 10 p.m.)
LATE THAT NIGHT Markham and Heath and I were sitting with Vance on his roof-garden, drinking champagne and smoking.
We had remained at the Stamm estate only a short time after Stamm’s death. Heath had stayed on to supervise the detail work which closed the case. The pool had been drained again, and Stamm’s body had been taken from beneath the rock boulder. It was mutilated beyond recognition. Leland, with Miss Stamm’s assistance, had taken charge of all the domestic affairs.
Vance and Markham and I had not finished dinner until nearly ten o’clock, and shortly afterward Sergeant Heath joined us. It was still hot and sultry, and Vance had produced a bottle of his 1904 Pol Roger.
“An amazin’ crime,” he remarked, lying back lethargically in his chair. “Amazin’—and yet simple and rational.”
“That may be true,” Markham returned. “But there are many details of it which are still obscure to me.”
“Once its basic scheme is clear,” Vance said, “the various shapes and colors of the mosaic take their places almost automatically.”
He emptied his glass of champagne.
“It was easy enough for Stamm to plan and execute the first murder. He brought together a house-party of warring elements, on any member of which suspicion might fall if criminality were proved in connection with Montague’s disappearance. He felt sure his guests would go swimming in the pool and that Montague, with his colossal vanity, would take the first dive. He deliberately encouraged the heavy drinking, and he himself pretended to overindulge. But as a matter of fact, he was the only member of the party, with the possible exception of Leland and Miss Stamm, who did no drinking.”
“But Vance—”
“Oh, I know. He gave the appearance of having drunk heavily all day. But that was only part of his plan. He was probably never more sober in his life than when the rest of the party left the house for the swimming pool. During the entire evening he sat on the davenport in the library, and surreptitiously poured his liquor into the jardinière holding the rubber-plant.”
Markham looked up quickly.
“That was why you were so interested in the soil of that plant?”
“Exactly. Stamm had probably emptied two quarts of whisky into the pot. I took up a good bit of the soil on my finger; and it was well saturated with alcohol.”
“But Doctor Holliday’s report—”
“Oh, Stamm was actually in a state of acute alcoholism when the doctor examined him. You remember the quart of Scotch he ordered from Trainor, just before the others went down to the pool. When he himself came back to the library, after the murder, he undoubtedly drank the entire bottle; and when Leland found him his state of alcoholic collapse was quite genuine. Thus he gave the whole affair an air of verisimilitude.”
Vance lifted the champagne from the wine cooler and poured himself another glass. When he had taken a few sips he lay back again in his chair.
“What Stamm did,” he continued, “was to hide his diving outfit and the grapnel in his car
in the garage earlier in the day. Then, feigning a state of almost complete drunken insensibility, he waited till every one had gone to the pool. Immediately he went to the garage, and drove—or perhaps coasted—down the East Road to the little cement path. He donned his diving suit, which he put on over his dinner clothes, and attached the oxygen tank—a matter of but a few minutes. Then he put the board in place, and entered the pool. He was reasonably sure that Montague would take the first dive; and he was able to select almost the exact spot in the pool toward which Montague would head. He had his grapnel with him, so that he could reach out in any direction and get his victim. The water in the pool is quite clear and the flood-lights would give him a good view of Montague. The technique of the crime for an experienced diver like Stamm was dashed simple.”
Vance made a slight gesture with his hand.
“There can be little doubt as to exactly what happened. Montague took his dive, and Stamm, standing on the sloping basin opposite the deep channel, simply hooked him with the grappling-iron—which accounts for the wounds on Montague’s chest. The force of the dive, I imagine, drove Montague’s head violently against the metal oxygen tank clamped to the breast-plate of Stamm’s helmet, and fractured his skull. With his victim stunned and perhaps unconscious, Stamm proceeded to choke him under the water until he was quite limp. It was no great effort for Stamm to drag him to the car and throw him in. Next Stamm replaced the board, doffed his diving suit, hid it in the old coffin in the vault, and drove to the pot-holes, where he dumped Montague’s body. Montague’s broken bones were the result of the rough way in which Stamm chucked him into the rock pit; and the abrasions on his feet were undoubtedly caused by Stamm’s dragging him over the cement walk to the parked car. Afterward Stamm drove the car back to the garage, returned cautiously to the library, and proceeded to consume the quart of whisky.”
Vance took a long inhalation on his cigarette, exhaling the smoke slowly.
“It was an almost perfect alibi.”
“But the time element, Vance—” Markham began.
“Stamm had plenty of time. At least fifteen minutes elapsed before the others had changed to their bathing suits; and this was twice as much time as Stamm required to coast down the hill in his car, slip into his diving suit, put the piece of lumber in place, and station himself in the pool. And, certainly, it took him not more than fifteen minutes, at the most, to replace the board, hide his diving suit, deposit his victim in the pot-hole, and return to the house.”
“But he was taking a desperate chance,” Markham commented.
“On the contr’ry, he was taking no chance at all. If his calculations worked out successfully, there was no way in which the plot could go awry. Stamm had all the time necess’ry; he had the equipment; and he was working out of sight of any possible witnesses. If Montague had not dived into the pool, as was his custom, it would have meant only that the murder would have to be postponed. In that case Stamm would simply have walked out of the pool, returned to the house, and bided his time.”
Vance frowned wistfully and turned his head lazily toward Markham.
“There was, however, one fatal error in the calculations,” he said. “Stamm was too cautious—he lacked boldness: he covered his gamble, as it were. As I have said, in planning the house-party he invited persons who had reason to want Montague out of the way, his idea being to supply the authorities with suspects in the event his scheme did not work out. But, in doing so, he overlooked the fact that some of these very people were familiar with diving apparatus and with his own under-sea work in the tropics—people who, having this information, might have figured out how the murder was committed, provided the body was found...”
“You mean,” asked Markham, “that you think Leland saw through the plot from the first?”
“There can be little doubt,” Vance returned, “that when Montague failed to come up from his dive, Leland strongly suspected that Stamm had committed a crime. Naturally, he was torn between his sense of justice and fair play, on the one hand, and his love for Bernice Stamm, on the other. My word, what a predicament! He compromised by telephoning to the Homicide Bureau and insisting that an investigation be instigated. He wouldn’t definitely expose or accuse the brother of the woman he loved. But, as an honorable man, he couldn’t bring himself to countenance what he believed to be deliberate murder. Y’ know, Markham, he was infinitely relieved when I told him this afternoon that I knew the truth. But meanwhile the man had suffered no end.”
“Do you think any one else suspected?” Markham asked.
“Oh, yes. Bernice Stamm suspected the truth—Leland himself told us so this afternoon. That’s why the Sergeant, when he first saw her, got the impression she was not primarily worried about Montague’s disappearance.—And I feel pretty sure that Tatum also guessed the truth. Don’t forget, he had been on the trip to Cocos Island with Stamm and was familiar with the possibilities of diving suits. But the present situation no doubt seemed a bit fantastic to him, and he couldn’t voice his suspicion because there was apparently no way of proving it.—And Greeff, too, having helped to equip some of Stamm’s expeditions, undoubtedly had a fairly accurate idea as to what had happened to Montague.”
“And the others also?” asked Markham.
“No, I doubt if either Mrs. McAdam or Ruby Steele really suspected the truth; but I think both of them felt that something was wrong. Ruby Steele was attracted by Montague—which accounts, perversely, for the antagonism between them. And she was jealous of Bernice Stamm, as well as of Teeny McAdam. When Montague disappeared, I have no doubt the idea of foul play did enter her mind. That’s why she accused Leland: she hated him because of his superiority.”
Vance paused a moment and went on.
“Mrs. McAdam’s mental reactions in the matter were a bit subtler. I doubt if she entirely understood her own emotions. Unquestionably, however, she too suspected foul play. Although the fact that Montague had faded from the scene would have favored her personal ends, I imagine she had some lingerin’ sentiment for the chap, and that’s why she handed us Greeff and Leland as possibilities—both of whom she disliked. And I imagine also that her scream was purely emotional, while her later indifference indicated the dominance of her scheming mind over her heart. The horror of the possibility of Montague’s having been murdered accounted for her violent reaction when I told her of the splash in the pool: she pictured terrible things happening to him. The old feminine heart at work again, Markham.”
There were several moments of silence. Then Markham said, almost inaudibly, as if stating to himself some point in a train of thought:
“And of course the car that Leland and Greeff and Miss Stamm heard was Stamm’s.”
“Unquestionably,” Vance returned. “The time element fitted exactly.”
Markham nodded, but there was a troubled reservation in his frown.
“But still,” he said, “there was that note from the Bruett woman.”
“My dear Markham! There’s no such person. Stamm created Ellen Bruett to account for Montague’s disappearance. He was hoping that the whole affair would simply blow over as a commonplace elopement. He wrote the rendezvous note himself, and put it in Montague’s pocket after he returned from the pool that night. And you remember that he indicated where we could find it, when he opened the clothes-closet door. A clever ruse, Markham; and the sound of the car on the East Road bore out the theory, though Stamm probably didn’t take the sound of the car into consideration at all.”
“No wonder my men couldn’t find any trace of the dame,” grumbled the Sergeant.
Markham was gazing at his cigar with a thoughtful abstracted look.
“I can understand the Bruett factor,” he remarked at length; “but how do you account for Mrs. Stamm’s uncannily accurate prophecies?”
Vance smiled mildly.
“They were not prophecies, Markham,” he replied, with a sad note in his voice. “They were all based on real knowledge of what was going on,
and were the pathetic attempts of an old woman to protect her son. What Mrs. Stamm didn’t actually see from her window, she probably suspected; and nearly everything she said to us was deliberately calculated to divert us from the truth. That’s why she sent for us at the outset.”
Vance drew deeply on his cigarette again, and looked out wistfully over the tree-tops.
“Much of her talk about the dragon was insincere, although there is no question that the hallucination concerning the dragon in the pool had taken a powerful hold on her weakened mind. And this partial belief in the existence of a water-monster formed the basis of her defense of Stamm. We don’t know how much she saw from her window. Personally, I think she felt instinctively that Stamm had plotted the murder of Montague, and I also think that she heard the car going down the East Road and suspected what its errand was. When she listened at the top of the stairs that first night and heard Stamm protesting, the shock produced by the realization of her fears caused her to scream and to send for us later to tell us that no one in the house was guilty of any crime.”
Vance sighed.
“It was a tragic effort, Markham; and all her other efforts to mislead us were equally tragic. She attempted to build up the dragon hypothesis because she herself was not quite rational on the subject. Moreover, she knew Stamm would take the body away and hide it—which accounts for her seeming prophecy that the body would not be found in the pool. And she was able to figure out where Stamm would hide the body—in fact, she may even have been able to tell, from the sound, approximately how far down the road Stamm drove the car before returning to the garage. When she screamed at the time the pool was emptied, she was simply making a dramatic gesture to emphasize her theory that the dragon had flown off with Montague’s body.”
The Dragon Murder Case Page 24
