Philo Vance 12 Novels Complete Bundle

by S. S. Van Dine

  "Can't say that it does." Vance had again become serious and perplexed. "In fact, it makes the situation still more fantastic. . . . I could see a glimmer of light--eerie and unearthly, perhaps, but still a perceptible illumination--in all this murkiness if it wasn't for that jewel case and the steel chisel."

  Markham was about to answer when Swacker again looked in and informed him that Sergeant Heath had arrived and wanted to see him.

  Heath's manner was far less depressed than when we had taken leave of him that morning. He accepted the cigar Markham offered him, and seating himself at the conference table in front of the district attorney's desk, drew out a battered notebook.

  "We've had a little good luck," he began. "Burke and Emery--two of the men I put on the case--got a line on Odell at the first place they made inquiries. From what they learned, she didn't run around with many men--limited herself to a few live wires, and played the game with what you'd call finesse. . . . The principal one--the man who's been seen most with her--is Charles Cleaver."

  Markham sat up. "I know Cleaver--if it's the same one."

  "It's him, all right," declared Heath. "Former Brooklyn Tax Commissioner; been interested in a poolroom for pony-betting over in Jersey City ever since. Hangs out at the Stuyvesant Club, where he can hobnob with his old Tammany Hall cronies."

  "That's the one," nodded Markham. "He's a kind of professional gay dog--known as Pop, I believe."

  Vance gazed into space.

  "Well, well," he murmured. "So old Pop Cleaver was also entangled with our subtle and sanguine Dolores. She certainly couldn't have loved him for his beaux yeux."

  "I thought, sir," went on Heath, "that, seeing as how Cleaver is always in and out of the Stuyvesant Club, you might ask him some questions about Odell. He ought to know something."

  "Glad to, Sergeant." Markham made a note on his pad. "I'll try to get in touch with him tonight. . . . Anyone else on your list?"

  "There's a fellow named Mannix--Louis Mannix--who met Odell when she was in the 'Follies'; but she chucked him over a year ago, and they haven't been seen together since. He's got another girl now. He's the head of the firm of Mannix and Levine, fur importers, and is one of your nightclub rounders--a heavy spender. But I don't see much use of barking up that tree--his affair with Odell went cold too long ago."

  "Yes," agreed Markham; "I think we can eliminate him."

  "I say, if you keep up this elimination much longer," observed Vance, "you won't have anything left but the lady's corpse."

  "And then, there's the man who took her out last night," pursued Heath. "Nobody seems to know his name--he must've been one of those discreet, careful old boys. I thought at first he might have been Cleaver, but the descriptions don't tally. . . . And by the way, sir, here's a funny thing: when he left Odell last night he took the taxi down to the Stuyvesant Club and got out there."

  Markham nodded. "I know all about that, Sergeant. And I know who the man was; and it wasn't Cleaver."

  Vance was chuckling. "The Stuyvesant Club seems to be well in the forefront of this case," he said. "I do hope it doesn't suffer the sad fate of the Knickerbocker Athletic."*

  * Vance was here referring to the famous Molineux case, which, in 1898, sounded the death knell of the old Knickerbocker Athletic Club at Madison Avenue and 45th Street. But it was commercialism that ended the Stuyvesant's career. This club, which stood on the north side of Madison Square, was razed a few years later to make room for a skyscraper.

  Heath was intent on the main issue.

  "Who was the man, Mr. Markham?"

  Markham hesitated, as if pondering the advisability of taking the other into his confidence. Then he said: "I'll tell you his name, but in strict confidence. The man was Kenneth Spotswoode."

  He then recounted the story of his being called away from lunch, and of his failure to elicit any helpful suggestions from Spotswoode. He also informed Heath of his verification of the man's statements regarding his movements after meeting Judge Redfern at the club.

  "And," added Markham, "since he obviously left the girl before she was murdered, there's no necessity to bother him. In fact, I gave him my word I'd keep him out of it for his family's sake."

  "If you're satisfied, sir, I am." Heath closed his notebook and put it away. "There's just one other little thing. Odell used to live on 110th Street, and Emery dug up her former landlady and learned that this fancy guy the maid told us about used to call on her regularly."

  "That reminds me, Sergeant." Markham picked up the memorandum he had made during Inspector Brenner's phone call. "Here's some data the Professor gave me about the forcing of the jewel case."

  Heath studied the paper with considerable eagerness. "Just as I thought!" He nodded his head with satisfaction. "Clear-cut professional job, by somebody who's been in the line of work before."

  Vance roused himself. "Still, if such is the case," he said, "why did this experienced burglar first use the insufficient poker? And why did he overlook the living room clothes press?"

  "I'll find all that out, Mr. Vance, when I get my hands on him," asserted Heath, with a hard look in his eyes. "And the guy I want to have a nice quiet little chat with is the one with the pleated silk shirt and the chamois gloves."

  "Chacun à son goût," sighed Vance. "For myself, I have no yearning whatever to hold converse with him. Somehow, I can't just picture a professional looter trying to rend a steel box with a cast iron poker."

  "Forget the poker," Heath advised gruffly. "He jimmied the box with a steel chisel; and that same chisel was used last summer in another burglary on Park Avenue. What about that?"

  "Ah! That's what torments me, Sergeant. If it wasn't for that disturbin' fact, d' ye see, I'd be lightsome and sans souci this afternoon, inviting my soul over a dish of tea at Claremont."

  Detective Bellamy was announced, and Heath sprang to his feet. "That'll mean news about those fingerprints," he prophesied hopefully.

  Bellamy entered unemotionally and walked up to the district attorney's desk.

  "Cap'n Dubois sent me over," he said. "He thought you'd want the report on those Odell prints." He reached into his pocket and drew out a small flat folder which, at a sign from Markham, he handed to Heath. "We identified 'em. Both made by the same hand, like Cap'n Dubois said: and that hand belonged to Tony Skeel."

  "'Dude' Skeel, eh?" The sergeant's tone was vibrant with suppressed excitement. "Say, Mr. Markham, that gets us somewhere. Skeel's an ex-convict and an artist in his line."

  He opened the folder and took out an oblong card and a sheet of blue paper containing eight or ten lines of typewriting. He studied the card, gave a satisfied grunt, and handed it to Markham. Vance and I stepped up and looked at it. At the top was the familiar rogues' gallery photograph showing the full face and profile of a regular-featured youth with thick hair and a square chin. His eyes were wide-set and pale, and he wore a small, evenly trimmed moustache with waxed, needlepoint ends. Below the double photograph was a brief tabulated description of its sitter, giving his name, aliases, residence, and Bertillon measurements, and designating the character of his illegal profession. Underneath were ten little squares arranged in two rows, each containing a fingerprint impress made in black ink--the upper row being the impressions of the right hand, the lower row those of the left.

  "So that's the arbiter elegantiarum who introduced the silk shirt for full-dress wear! My word!" Vance regarded the identification card satirically. "I wish he'd start a craze for gaiters with dinner jackets--these New York theaters are frightfully drafty in winter."

  Heath put the card back in the folder and glanced over the typewritten paper that had accompanied it.

  "He's our man, and no mistake, Mr. Markham. Listen to this: 'Tony (Dude) Skeel. Two years Elmira Reformatory, 1902 to 1904. One year in the Baltimore County jail for petit larceny, 1906. Three years in San Quentin for assault and robbery, 1908 to 1911. Arrested Chicago for housebreaking, 1912; case dismissed. Arrested and tried for burglary
in Albany, 1913; no conviction. Served two years and eight months in Sing-Sing for housebreaking and burglary, 1914 to 1916.'" He folded the paper and put it, with the card, into his breast pocket. "Sweet little record."

  "That dope what you wanted?" asked the imperturbable Bellamy.

  "I'll say!" Heath was almost jovial.

  Bellamy lingered expectantly with one eye on the district attorney; and Markham, as if suddenly remembering something, took out a box of cigars and held it out.

  "Much obliged, sir," said Bellamy, helping himself to two Mi Favoritas; and putting them into his waistcoat pocket with great care, he went out.

  "I'll use your phone now, if you don't mind, Mr. Markham," said Heath.

  He called the Homicide Bureau.

  "Look up Tony Skeel--Dude Skeel--pronto, and bring him in as soon as you find him," were his orders to Snitkin. "Get his address from the files and take Burke and Emery with you. If he's hopped it, send out a general alarm and have him picked up--some of the boys'll have a line on him. Lock him up without booking him, see? . . . And, listen. Search his room for burglar tools: he probably won't have any laying around, but I specially want a one-and-three-eighths-inch chisel with a nick in the blade. . . . I'll be at headquarters in half an hour."

  He hung up the receiver and rubbed his hands together.

  "Now we're sailing," he rejoiced.

  Vance had gone to the window and stood staring down on the "Bridge of Sighs," his hands thrust deep into his pockets. Slowly he turned, and fixed Heath with a contemplative eye.

  "It simply won't do, don't y' know," he asserted. "Your friend, the Dude may have ripped open that bally box, but his head isn't the right shape for the rest of last evening's performance."

  Heath was contemptuous. "Not being a phrenologist, I'm going by the shape of his fingerprints."

  "A woeful error in the technic of criminal approach, sergente mio," replied Vance dulcetly. "The question of culpability in this case isn't so simple as you imagine. It's deuced complicated. And this glass of fashion and mold of form whose portrait you're carryin' next to your heart has merely added to its intricacy."

  10

  A FORCED INTERVIEW

  (Tuesday, September 11; 8 P.M.)

  Markham dined at the Stuyvesant Club, as was his custom, and at his invitation Vance and I remained with him. He no doubt figured that our presence at the dinner table would act as a bulwark against the intrusion of casual acquaintances; for he was in no mood for the pleasantries of the curious. Rain had begun to fall late in the afternoon, and when dinner was over, it had turned into a steady downpour which threatened to last well into the night. Dinner over, the three of us sought a secluded corner of the lounge room, and settled ourselves for a protracted smoke.

  We had been there less than a quarter of an hour when a slightly rotund man, with a heavy, florid face and thin gray hair, strolled up to us with a stealthy, self-assured gait, and wished Markham a jovial good evening. Though I had not met the newcomer I knew him to be Charles Cleaver.

  "Got your note at the desk saying you wanted to see me." He spoke with a voice curiously gentle for a man of his size; but, for all its gentleness, there was in it a timbre of calculation and coldness.

  Markham rose and, after shaking hands, introduced him to Vance and me--though, it seemed, Vance had known him slightly for some time. He took the chair Markham indicated, and, producing a Corona Corona, he carefully cut the end with a gold clipper attached to his heavy watch chain, rolled the cigar between his lips to dampen it and lighted it in closely cupped hands.

  "I'm sorry to trouble you, Mr. Cleaver," began Markham, "but, as you probably have read, a young woman by the name of Margaret Odell was murdered last night in her apartment in 71st Street. . . ."

  He paused. He seemed to be considering just how he could best broach a subject so obviously delicate; and perhaps he hoped that Cleaver would volunteer the fact of his acquaintance with the girl. But not a muscle of the man's face moved; and, after a moment, Markham continued.

  "In making inquiries into the young woman's life I learned that you, among others, were fairly well acquainted with her."

  Again he paused. Cleaver lifted his eyebrows almost imperceptibly but said nothing.

  "The fact is," went on Markham, a trifle annoyed by the other's deliberately circumspect attitude, "my report states that you were seen with her on many occasions during a period of nearly two years. Indeed, the only inference to be drawn from what I've learned is that you were more than casually interested in Miss Odell."

  "Yes?" The query was as noncommittal as it was gentle.

  "Yes," repeated Markham. "And I may add, Mr. Cleaver, that this is not the time for pretenses or suppressions. I am talking to you tonight, in large measure ex officio, because it occurred to me that you could give me some assistance in clearing the matter up. I think it only fair to say that a certain man is now under grave suspicion, and we hope to arrest him very soon. But, in any event, we will need help, and that is why I requested this little chat with you at the club."

  "And how can I assist you?" Cleaver's face remained blank; only his lips moved as he put the question.

  "Knowing this young woman as well as you did," explained Markham patiently, "you are no doubt in possession of some information--certain facts or confidences, let us say--which would throw light on her brutal, and apparently unexpected, murder."

  Cleaver was silent for some time. His eyes had shifted to the wall before him, but otherwise his features remained set.

  "I'm afraid I can't accommodate you," he said at length.

  "Your attitude is not quite what might be expected in one whose conscience is entirely clear," returned Markham, with a show of resentment.

  The man turned a mildly inquisitive gaze upon the district attorney.

  "What has my knowing the girl to do with her being murdered? She didn't confide in me who her murderer was to be. She didn't even tell me that she knew anyone who intended to strangle her. If she'd known, she most likely could have avoided being murdered."

  Vance was sitting close to me, a little removed from the others, and, leaning over, murmured in my ear sotto voce: "Markham's up against another lawyer--poor dear! . . . A crumplin' situation."

  But however inauspiciously this interlocutory skirmish may have begun, it soon developed into a grim combat which ended in Cleaver's complete surrender. Markham, despite his suavity and graciousness, was an unrelenting and resourceful antagonist; and it was not long before he had forced from Cleaver some highly significant information.

  In response to the man's ironically evasive rejoinder, he turned quickly and leaned forward.

  "You're not on the witness stand in your own defense, Mr. Cleaver," he said sharply, "however much you appear to regard yourself as eligible for that position."

  Cleaver glared back fixedly without replying; and Markham, his eyelids level, studied the man opposite, determined to decipher all he could from the other's phlegmatic countenance. But Cleaver was apparently just as determined that his vis-à-vis should decipher absolutely nothing; and the features that met Markham's scrutiny were as arid as a desert. At length Markham sank back in his chair.

  "It doesn't matter particularly," he remarked indifferently, "whether you discuss the matter or not here in the club tonight. If you prefer to be brought to my office in the morning by a sheriff with a subpoena, I'll be only too glad to accommodate you."

  "That's up to you," Cleaver told him hostilely.

  "And what's printed in the newspapers about it will be up to the reporters," rejoined Markham. "I'll explain the situation to them and give them a verbatim report of the interview."

  "But I've nothing to tell you." The other's tone was suddenly conciliatory; the idea of publicity was evidently highly distasteful to him.

  "So you informed me before," said Markham coldly. "Therefore I wish you good evening."

  He turned to Vance and me with the air of a man who had terminated an unpleasan
t episode.

  Cleaver, however, made no move to go. He smoked thoughtfully for a minute or two; then he gave a short, hard laugh which did not even disturb the contours of his face.

  "Oh, hell!" he grumbled, with forced good nature. "As you said, I'm not on the witness stand. . . . What do you want to know?"

  "I've told you the situation." Markham's voice betrayed a curious irritation. "You know the sort of thing I want. How did this Odell girl live? Who were her intimates? Who would have been likely to want her out of the way? What enemies had she?--Anything that might lead us to an explanation of her death. . . . And incidentally," he added with tartness, "anything that'll eliminate yourself from any suspected participation, direct or indirect, in the affair."

  Cleaver stiffened at these last words and started to protest indignantly. But immediately he changed his tactics. Smiling contemptuously, he took out a leather pocket case and, extracting a small folded paper, handed it to Markham.

  "I can eliminate myself easily enough," he proclaimed, with easy confidence. "There's a speeding summons from Boonton, New Jersey. Note the date and the time: September the tenth--last night--at half past eleven. Was driving down to Hopatcong, and was ticketed by a motorcycle cop just as I had passed Boonton and was heading for Mountain Lakes. Got to appear in court there tomorrow morning. Damn nuisance, these country constables." He gave Markham a long, calculating look. "You couldn't square it for me, could you? It's a rotten ride to Jersey, and I've got a lot to do tomorrow."

  Markham, who had inspected the summons casually, put it in his pocket.

  "I'll attend to it for you," he promised, smiling amiably. "Now tell me what you know."

  Cleaver puffed meditatively on his cigar. Then, leaning back and crossing his knees, he spoke with apparent candor.

  "I doubt if I know much that'll help you. . . . I liked the Canary, as she was called--in fact, was pretty much attached to her at one time. Did a number of foolish things; wrote her a lot of damn-fool letters when I went to Cuba last year. Even had my picture taken with her down at Atlantic City." He made a self-condemnatory grimace. "Then she began to get cool and distant; broke several appointments with me. I raised the devil with her, but the only answer I got was a demand for money. . . ."