"What I can't get through my head, though," complained Heath, "is why the old gent should have killed Pardee. That didn't throw any suspicion on Arnesson, and it made it look like Pardee was guilty and had got disgusted and croaked himself."
"That spurious suicide, Sergeant, was the professor's most fantastic joke. It was at once ironical and contemptuous; for all during that comic interlude plans were being made for Arnesson's destruction. And, of course, the fact that we possessed a plausible culprit had the great advantage of relaxing our watchfulness and causing the guards to be removed from the house. The murder, I imagine, was conceived rather spontaneously. The professor invented some excuse to accompany Pardee to the archery-room, where he had already closed the windows and drawn the shades. Then, perhaps pointing out an article in a magazine, he shot his unsuspecting guest through the temple, placed the gun in his hand, and, as a bit of sardonic humor, built the house of cards. On returning to the library he set up the chessmen to give the impression that Pardee had been brooding over the black bishop. . . .
"But, as I say, this piece of grim grotesquerie was only a side-issue. The Little-Miss-Muffet episode was to be the dénouement; and it was carefully planned so as to bring the heavens crashing down on Arnesson. The professor was at the Drukker house the morning of the funeral when Madeleine Moffat brought the flowers for Humpty Dumpty; and he undoubtedly knew the child by name--she was Drukker's favorite and had been to the house on numerous occasions. The Mother-Goose idea being now firmly implanted in his mind, like a homicidal obsession, he very naturally associated the name Moffat with Muffet. Indeed, it's not unlikely that Drukker or Mrs. Drukker had called the child 'Little Miss Muffat' in his presence. It was easy for him to attract her attention and summon her to the mound by the wall yesterday afternoon. He probably told her that Humpty Dumpty wanted to see her; and she came with him eagerly, following him under the trees by the bridle path, thence across the Drive, and through the alley between the apartment houses. No one would have noticed them, for the Drive is teeming with children at that hour. Then last night he planted in us the seed of suspicion against Arnesson, believing that when the Little-Miss-Muffet notes reached the press we would look for the child and find her, dead from lack of air, in the Drukker house. . . . A clever, devilish plan!"
"But did he expect us to search the attic of his own home?"
"Oh, yes; but not until to-morrow. By then he would have cleaned out the closet and put the typewriter in a more conspicuous place. And he would have removed the note-book, for there's little doubt that he intended to appropriate Drukker's quantum researches. But we came a day too soon, and upset his calculations."
Markham smoked moodily for a time.
"You say you were convinced of Dillard's guilt last night when you remembered the character of Bishop Arnesson. . . ."
"Yes--oh, yes. That gave me the motive. At that moment I realized that the professor's object was to shoulder Arnesson with the guilt, and that the signature to the notes had been chosen for that purpose."
"He waited a long time before he called our attention to 'The Pretenders,'" commented Markham.
"The fact is, he didn't expect to have to do it at all. He thought we'd discover the name for ourselves. But we were duller than he anticipated; and at last, in desperation, he sent for you and beat cleverly round the bush, accentuating 'The Pretenders.'"
Markham did not speak for several moments. He sat frowning reproachfully, his fingers tapping a tattoo on the blotter.
"Why," he asked at length, "did you not tell us last night that the professor and not Arnesson was the Bishop? You let us think--"
"My dear Markham! What else could I do? In the first place, you wouldn't have believed me, and would most likely have suggested another ocean trip, what? Furthermore, it was essential to let the professor think we suspected Arnesson. Otherwise, we'd have had no chance to force the issue as we did. Subterfuge was our only hope; and I knew that if you and the Sergeant suspected him you'd be sure to give the game away. As it was, you didn't have to dissemble; and lo! it all worked out beautifully."
The Sergeant, I noticed, had, for the past half hour, been regarding Vance from time to time with a look of perplexed uncertainty; but for some reason he had seemed reluctant to give voice to his troubled thoughts. Now, however, he shifted his position uneasily and, taking his cigar slowly from his mouth, asked a startling question.
"I ain't complaining about your not putting us wise last night, Mr. Vance, but what I would like to know is: why, when you hopped up and pointed at that plate on the mantel, did you switch Arnesson's and the old gent's glasses?"
Vance sighed deeply and gave a hopeless wag of the head.
"I might have known that nothing could escape your eagle eye, Sergeant."
Markham thrust himself forward over the desk, and glared at Vance with angry bewilderment.
"What's this!" he spluttered, his usual self-restraint deserting him. "You changed the glasses? You deliberately--"
"Oh, I say!" pleaded Vance. "Let not your wrathful passions rise." He turned to Heath with mock reproach. "Behold what you've got me in for, Sergeant."
"This is no time for evasion." Markham's voice was cold and inexorable. "I want an explanation."
Vance made a resigned gesture.
"Oh, well. Attend. My idea, as I've explained to you, was to fall in with the professor's plan and appear to suspect Arnesson. This morning I purposely let him see that we had no evidence, and that, even if we arrested Arnesson, it was doubtful if we could hold him. I knew that, in the circumstances, he would take some action--that he would try to meet the situation in some heroic way--for the sole object of the murders was to destroy Arnesson utterly. That he would commit some overt act and give his hand away, I was confident. What it would be I didn't know. But we'd be watching him closely. . . . Then the wine gave me an inspiration. Knowing he had cyanide in his possession, I brought up the subject of suicide, and thus planted the idea in his mind. He fell into the trap, and attempted to poison Arnesson and make it appear like suicide. I saw him surreptitiously empty a small phial of colorless fluid into Arnesson's glass at the sideboard when he poured the wine. My first intention was to halt the murder and have the wine analyzed. We could have searched him and found the phial, and I could have testified to the fact that I saw him poison the wine. This evidence, in addition to the identification by the child, might have answered our purpose. But at the last moment, after he had refilled all our glasses, I decided on a simpler course--"
"And so you diverted our attention and switched the glasses!"
"Yes, yes. Of course. I figured that a man should be willing to drink the wine he pours for another."
"You took the law in your own hands!"
"I took it in my arms--it was helpless. . . . But don't be so righteous. Do you bring a rattlesnake to the bar of justice? Do you give a mad dog his day in court? I felt no more compunction in aiding a monster like Dillard into the Beyond than I would have in crushing out a poisonous reptile in the act of striking."
"But it was murder!" exclaimed Markham in horrified indignation.
"Oh, doubtless," said Vance cheerfully. "Yes--of course. Most reprehensible. . . . I say, am I by any chance under arrest?"
The "suicide" of Professor Dillard terminated the famous Bishop murder case, and automatically cleared Pardee's reputation of all suspicion. The following year Arnesson and Belle Dillard were married quietly and sailed for Norway, where they made their home. Arnesson had accepted the chair of applied mathematics at the University of Oslo; and it will be remembered that two years later he was awarded the Nobel prize for his work in physics. The old Dillard house in 75th Street was torn down, and on the site now stands a modern apartment house on whose façade are two huge terra-cotta medallions strongly suggestive of archery targets. I have often wondered if the architect was deliberate in his choice of decoration.
THE END
THE SCARAB MURDER CASE
A PHI
LO VANCE STORY
by
S. S. VAN DINE
1930
La vérité n'a point cet air impétueux.
--Boileau
DEDICATED
WITH APPRECIATION
TO
AMBROSE LANSING
LUDLOW BULL
AND
HENRY A. CAREY
OF THE EGYPTIAN DEPARTMENT OF
THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM
OF ART
CONTENTS
1 MURDER!
2 THE VENGEANCE OF SAKHMET
3 SCARABAEUS SACER
4 TRACKS IN THE BLOOD
5 MERYT-AMEN
6 A FOUR-HOUR ERRAND
7 THE FINGER-PRINTS
8 IN THE STUDY
9 VANCE MAKES AN EXPERIMENT
10 THE YELLOW PENCIL
11 THE COFFEE PERCOLATOR
12 THE TIN OF OPIUM
13 AN ATTEMPTED ESCAPE
14 A HIEROGLYPHIC LETTER
15 VANCE MAKES A DISCOVERY
16 A CALL AFTER MIDNIGHT
17 THE GOLDEN DAGGER
18 A LIGHT IN THE MUSEUM
19 A BROKEN APPOINTMENT
20 THE GRANITE SARCOPHAGUS
21 THE MURDERER
22 THE JUDGMENT OF ANÛBIS
CHARACTERS OF THE BOOK
PHILO VANCE
JOHN F.-X. MARKHAM - District Attorney of New York County.
ERNEST HEATH - Sergeant of the Homicide Bureau.
DR. MINDRUM W. C. BLISS - Egyptologist; head of the Bliss Museum of Egyptian Antiquities.
BENJAMIN H. KYLE - Philanthropist and art patron.
MERYT-AMEN - Wife of Dr. Bliss.
ROBERT SALVETER - Assistant Curator of the Bliss Museum; nephew of Benjamin H. Kyle.
DONALD SCARLETT - Technical Expert of the Bliss Expeditions in Egypt.
ANÛPU HANI - Family retainer of the Blisses.
BRUSH - The Bliss butler.
DINGLE - The Bliss cook.
HENNESSEY - Detective of the Homicide Bureau.
SNITKIN - Detective of the Homicide Bureau.
EMERY - Detective of the Homicide Bureau.
GUILFOYLE - Detective of the Homicide Bureau.
CAPTAIN DUBOIS - Finger-print expert.
DETECTIVE BELLAMY - Finger-print expert.
DR. EMANUEL DOREMUS - Medical Examiner
CURRIE - Vance's valet.
1
MURDER!
(Friday, July 13; 11 A.M.)
Philo Vance was drawn into the Scarab murder case by sheer coincidence, although there is little doubt that John F.-X. Markham--New York's District Attorney--would sooner or later have enlisted his services. But it is problematic if even Vance, with his fine analytic mind and his remarkable flair for the subtleties of human psychology, could have solved that bizarre and astounding murder if he had not been the first observer on the scene; for, in the end, he was able to put his finger on the guilty person only because of the topsy-turvy clews that had met his eye during his initial inspection.
Those clews--highly misleading from the materialistic point of view--eventually gave him the key to the murderer's mentality and thus enabled him to elucidate one of the most complicated and incredible criminal problems in modern police history.
The brutal and fantastic murder of that old philanthropist and art patron, Benjamin H. Kyle, became known as the Scarab murder case almost immediately, as a result of the fact that it had taken place in a famous Egyptologist's private museum and had centred about a rare blue scarabaeus that had been found beside the mutilated body of the victim.
This ancient and valuable seal, inscribed with the names of one of the early Pharaohs (whose mummy had, by the way, not been found at the time), constituted the basis on which Vance reared his astonishing structure of evidence. The scarab, from the police point of view, was merely an incidental piece of evidence that pointed somewhat obviously toward its owner; but this easy and specious explanation did not appeal to Vance.
"Murderers," he remarked to Sergeant Ernest Heath, "do not ordinarily insert their visitin' cards in the shirt bosoms of their victims. And while the discovery of the lapis-lazuli beetle is most interestin' from both the psychological and evidential standpoints, we must not be too optimistic and jump to conclusions. The most important question in this pseudo-mystical murder is why--and how--the murderer left that archaeological specimen beside the defunct body. Once we find the reason for that amazin' action, we'll hit upon the secret of the crime itself."
The doughty Sergeant had sniffed at Vance's suggestion and had ridiculed his scepticism; but before another day had passed he generously admitted that Vance had been right, and that the murder had not been so simple as it had appeared in first view.
As I have said, a coincidence brought Vance into the case before the police were notified. An acquaintance of his had discovered the slain body of old Mr. Kyle, and had immediately come to him with the gruesome news.
It happened on the morning of Friday, July 13th. Vance had just finished a late breakfast in the roof-garden of his apartment in East Thirty-eighth Street, and had returned to the library to continue his translation of the Menander fragments found in the Egyptian papyri during the early years of the present century, when Currie--his valet and majordomo--shuffled into the room and announced with an air of discreet apology:
"Mr. Donald Scarlett has just arrived, sir, in a state of distressing excitement, and asks that you hasten to receive him."
Vance looked up from his Work with an expression of boredom.
"Scarlett, eh? Very annoyin'. . . . And why should he call on me when excited? I infinitely prefer calm people. . . . Did you offer him a brandy-and-soda--or some triple bromides?"
"I took the liberty of placing a service of Courvoisier brandy before him," explained Currie. "I recall that Mr. Scarlett has a weakness for Napoleon's cognac."
"Ah, yes--so he has. . . . Quite right, Currie." Vance leisurely lit one of his Régie cigarettes and puffed a moment in silence. "Suppose you show him in when you deem his nerves sufficiently calm."
Currie bowed and departed.
"Interestin' johnny, Scarlett," Vance commented to me (I had been with Vance all morning arranging and filing his notes.) "You remember him, Van--eh, what?"
I had met Scarlett twice, but I must admit I had not thought of him for a month or more. The impression of him, however, came back to me now with considerable vividness. He had been, I knew, a college mate of Vance's at Oxford, and Vance had run across him during his sojourn in Egypt two years before.
Scarlett was a student of Egyptology and archaeology, having specialized in these subjects at Oxford under Professor F. Ll. Griffith. Later he had taken up chemistry and photography in order that he might join some Egyptological expedition in a technical capacity. He was a well-to-do Englishman, an amateur and dilettante, and had made of Egyptology a sort of fad.
When Vance had gone to Alexandria Scarlett had been working in the Museum laboratory at Cairo. The two had met again and renewed their old acquaintance. Recently Scarlett had come to America as a member of the staff of Doctor Mindrum W. C. Bliss, the famous Egyptologist, who maintained a private museum of Egyptian antiquities in an old house in East Twentieth Street, facing Gramercy Park. He had called on Vance several times since his arrival in this country, and it was at Vance's apartment that I had met him. He had, however, never called without an invitation, and I was at a loss to understand his unexpected appearance this morning, for he possessed all of the well-bred Englishman's punctiliousness about social matters.
Vance, too, was somewhat puzzled, despite his attitude of lackadaisical indifference.
"Scarlett's a clever lad," he drawled musingly. "And most proper. Why should he call on me at this indecent hour? And why should he be excited? I hope nothing untoward has befallen his erudite employer. . . . Bliss is an astonishin' man, Van--one of the world's great Egyptologists."*
* Doctor Mindrum W. C. Bliss, M.A., A.
O.S.S., F.S.A., F.R.S., Hon. Mem. R.A.S., was the author of "The Stele of Intefoe at Koptos"; a "History of Egypt during the Hyksos Invasion"; "The Seventeenth Dynasty"; and a monograph on the Amen-hotpe III Colossi.
I recalled that during the winter which Vance had spent in Egypt he had become greatly interested in the work of Doctor Bliss, who was then endeavoring to locate the tomb of Pharaoh Intef V who ruled over Upper Egypt at Thebes during the Hyksos domination. In fact, Vance had accompanied Bliss on an exploration in the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings. At that time he had just become attracted by the Menander fragments, and he had been in the midst of a uniform translation of them when the Bishop murder case interrupted his labors.
Vance had also been interested in the variations of chronology of the Old and the Middle Kingdoms of Egypt--not from the historical standpoint but from the standpoint of the evolution of Egyptian art. His researches led him to side with the Bliss-Weigall, or short, chronology* (based on the Turin Papyrus), as opposed to the long chronology of Hall and Petrie, who set back the Twelfth Dynasty and all preceding history one full Sothic cycle, or 1,460 years. After inspecting the art works of the pre-Hyksos and the post-Hyksos eras, Vance was inclined to postulate an interval of not more than 300 years between the Twelfth and Eighteenth Dynasties, in accordance with the shorter chronology. In comparing certain statues made during the reign of Amen-emhêt III with others made during the reign of Thut-mosè I--thus bridging the Hyksos invasion, with its barbaric Asiatic influence and its annihilation of indigenous Egyptian culture--he arrived at the conclusion that the maintenance of the principles of Twelfth-Dynasty aesthetic attainment could not have been possible with a wider lacuna than 300 years. In brief, he concluded that, had the interregnum been longer, the evidences of decadence in Eighteenth-Dynasty art would have been even more pronounced.
Philo Vance 12 Novels Complete Bundle Page 109
