The Philo Vance Megapack

by S. S. Van Dine

  “In a general way,” returned Markham. “Old Puritan stock, I believe—governors, burgomasters, a few successful traders. All Yankee forebears—no intermixture. As a matter of fact, Spotswoode represents the oldest and hardiest of the New England aristocracy—although I imagine the so-called wine of the Puritans has become pretty well diluted by now. His affair with the Odell girl is hardly consonant with the older Puritans’ mortification of the flesh.”

  “It’s wholly consonant, though, with the psychological reactions which are apt to follow the inhibitions produced by such mortification,” submitted Vance. “But what does he do? Whence cometh his lucre?”

  “His father manufactured automobile accessories, made a fortune at it, and left the business to him. He tinkers at it, but not seriously, though I believe he has designed a few appurtenances.”

  “I do hope the hideous cut-glass olla for holding paper bouquets is not one of them. The man who invented that tonneau decoration is capable of any fiendish crime.”

  “It couldn’t have been Spotswoode, then,” said Markham tolerantly, “for he certainly can’t qualify as your potential strangler. We know the girl was alive after he left her, and that, during the time she was murdered, he was with Judge Redfern.… Even you, friend Vance, couldn’t manipulate those facts to the gentleman’s disadvantage.”

  “On that, at least, we agree,” conceded Vance. “And that’s all you know of the gentleman?”

  “I think that’s all, except that he married a well-to-do woman—a daughter of a Southern senator, I believe.”

  “Doesn’t help any.… And now, let’s have Mannix’s history.”

  Markham referred to a typewritten sheet of paper.

  “Both parents immigrants—came over in the steerage. Original name Mannikiewicz, or something like that. Born on the East Side; learned the fur business in his father’s retail shop in Hester Street; worked for the Sanfrasco Cloak Company and got to be factory foreman. Saved his money and sweetened the pot by manipulating real estate; then went into the fur business for himself and steadily worked up to his present opulent state. Public school and night commercial college. Married in 1900 and divorced a year later. Lives a gay life—helps support the nightclubs, but never gets drunk. I suppose he comes under the head of a spender and wine opener. Has invested some money in musical comedies and always has a stage beauty in tow. Runs to blondes.”

  “Not very revealin’,” sighed Vance. “The city is full of Mannixes.… What did you garner in connection with our bon-ton medico?”

  “The city has its quota of Doctor Lindquists, too, I fear. He was brought up in a small Middle-West bailiwick—French and Magyar extraction; took his M.D. from the Ohio State Medical, practiced in Chicago—some shady business there, but never convicted; came to Albany and got in on the X-ray-machine craze; invented a breast pump and formed a stock company—made a small fortune out of it; went to Vienna for two years—”

  “Ah, the Freudian motif!”

  “—returned to New York and opened a private sanitarium; charged outrageous prices and thereby endeared himself to the nouveau riche. Has been at the endearing process ever since. Was defendant in a breach-of-promise suite some years ago, but the case was settled out of court. He’s not married.”

  “He wouldn’t be,” commented Vance. “Such gentry never are.… Interestin’ summary, though—yes, decidedly interestin’. I’m tempted to develop a psychoneurosis and let Ambroise treat me. I do so want to know him better. And where—oh, where—was this egregious healer at the moment of our erring sister’s demise? Ah, who can tell, my Markham; who knows—who knows?”

  “In any event, I don’t think he was murdering anyone.”

  “You’re so prejudicial!” said Vance. “But let us move reluctantly on. What’s your portrait parlé of Cleaver? The fact that he’s familiarly called Pop is helpful as a starter. You simply couldn’t imagine Beethoven being called Shorty, or Bismarck being referred to as Snookums.”

  “Cleaver has been a politician all of his life—a Tammany Hall ‘regular.’ Was a ward boss at twenty-five; ran a Democratic club of some kind in Brooklyn for a time; was an alderman for two terms and practiced general law. Was appointed Tax Commissioner; left politics and raised a small racing stable. Later secured an illegal gambling concession at Saratoga; and now operates a poolroom in Jersey City. He’s what you might call a professional sport. Loves his liquor.”

  “No marriages?”

  “None on the records. But see here: Cleaver’s out of it. He was ticketed in Boonton that night at half past eleven.”

  “Is that, by any chance, the watertight alibi you mentioned a moment ago?”

  “In any primitive legal way I considered it as such.” Markham resented Vance’s question. “The summons was handed him at half past eleven; it’s so marked and dated. And Boonton is fifty miles from here—a good two hours’ motor ride. Therefore, Cleaver unquestionably left New York about half past nine; and even if he’d driven directly back, he couldn’t have reached here until long after the time the medical examiner declared the girl was dead. As a matter of routine, I investigated the summons and even spoke by phone to the officer who issued it. It was genuine enough—I ought to know: I had it quashed.”

  “Did this Boonton Dogberry know Cleaver by sight?”

  “No, but he gave me an accurate description of him. And naturally he took the car’s number.”

  Vance looked at Markham with open-eyed sorrow.

  “My dear Markham—my very dear Markham—can’t you see that all you’ve actually proved is that a bucolic traffic Nemesis handed a speed-violation summons to a smooth-faced, middle-aged, stout man who was driving Cleaver’s car near Boonton at half past eleven on the night of the murder?… And, my word! Isn’t that exactly the sort of alibi the old boy would arrange if he intended taking the lady’s life at midnight or thereabouts?”

  “Come, come!” laughed Markham. “That’s a bit too far-fetched. You’d give every lawbreaker credit for concocting schemes of the most diabolical cunning.”

  “So I would,” admitted Vance apathetically. “And—d’ ye know?—rather fancy that’s just the kind of schemes a lawbreaker would concoct, if he was planning a murder, and his own life was at stake. What really amazes me is the naïve assumption of you investigators that a murderer gives no intelligent thought whatever to his future safety. It’s rather touchin’, y’ know.”

  Markham grunted. “Well, you can take it from me, it was Cleaver himself who got the summons.”

  “I dare say you’re right,” Vance conceded. “I merely suggested the possibility of deception, don’t y’ know. The only point I really insist on is that the fascinatin’ Miss Odell was killed by a man of subtle and superior mentality.”

  “And I, in turn,” irritably rejoined Markham, “insist that the only men of that type who touched her life intimately enough to have had any reason to do it are Mannix, Cleaver, Lindquist, and Spotswoode. And I further insist that not one of them can be regarded as a promising possibility.”

  “I fear I must contradict you, old dear,” said Vance serenely. “They’re all possibilities—and one of them is guilty.”

  Markham glared at him derisively.

  “Well, well! So the case is settled! Now, if you’ll but indicate which is the guilty one, I’ll arrest him at once and return to my other duties.”

  “You’re always in such haste,” Vance lamented. “Why leap and run? The wisdom of the world’s philosophers is against it. Festina lente, says Caesar; or, as Rufus has it, Festinatio tarda est. And the Koran says quite frankly that haste is of the Devil. Shakespeare was constantly belittling speed: ‘He tires betimes that spurs too fast betimes’; and, ‘Wisely, and slow; they stumble that run fast.’ Then there was Molière—remember Sganarelle?—‘Le trop de promptitude à l’erreur nous expose.’ Chaucer also held similar views. ‘He hasteth wel,’ said he, ‘that wysely can abyde.’ Even God’s common people have embalmed the idea in numberless pr
overbs: ‘Good and quickly seldom meet’; and ‘Hasty men never want woe—’”

  Markham rose with a gesture of impatience.

  “Hell! I’m going home before you start a bedtime story,” he growled.

  The ironical aftermath of this remark was that Vance did tell a “bedtime story” that night; but he told it to me in the seclusion of his own library; and the gist of it was this:

  “Heath is committed, body and soul, to a belief in Skeel’s guilt; and Markham is as effectively strangled with legal red tape as the poor Canary was strangled with powerful hands. Eheu, Van! There’s nothing left for me but to set forth tomorrow a cappella, like Gaboriau’s Monsieur Lecoq, and see what can be done in the noble cause of justice. I shall ignore both Heath and Markham, and become as a pelican of the wilderness, an owl of the desert, a sparrow alone upon the housetop.… Really, y’ know, I’m no avenger of society, but I do detest an unsolved problem.”

  22 The Antlers Club has since been closed by the police; and Red Raegan is now serving a long term in Sing Sing for grand larceny.

  23 Written especially for her by B. G. De Sylva.

  24 See The Benson Murder Case.

  25 The Loeb-Leopold crime, the Dorothy King case, and the Hall-Mills murder came later; but the Canary murder proved fully as conspicuous a case as the Nan Patterson-”Caesar” Young affair, Durant’s murder of Blanche Lamont and Minnie Williams in San Francisco, the Molineux arsenic-poisoning case, and the Carlyle Harris morphine murder. To find a parallel in point of public interest one must recall the Borden double-murder in Fall River, the Thaw case, the shooting of Elwell, and the Rosenthal murder.

  26 The case referred to here was that of Mrs. Elinor Quiggly, a wealthy widow living at the Adlon Hotel in West 96th Street. She was found on the morning of September 5 suffocated by a gag which had been placed on her by robbers who had evidently followed her home from the Club Turque—a small but luxurious all-night cafe at 89 West 48th Street. The killing of the two detectives, McQuade and Cannison, was, the police believe, due to the fact that they were in possession of incriminating evidence against the perpetrators of the crime. Jewelry amounting to over $50,000 was stolen from the Quiggly apartment.

  27 The Stuyvesant was a large club, somewhat in the nature of a glorified hotel; and its extensive membership was drawn largely from the political, legal, and financial ranks.

  28 The case to which Vance referred, I ascertained later, was Shatterham v. Shatterham, 417 Mich., 79—a testamentary case.

  29 Heath had become acquainted with Vance during the investigation of the Benson murder case two months previously.

  30 It is an interesting fact that for the nineteen years he had been connected with the New York Police Department, he had been referred to, by his superiors and subordinates alike, as “the Professor.”

  31 His full name was William Elmer Jessup, and he had been attached to the 308th Infantry of the 77th Division of the Overseas Forces.

  32 “Ben” was Colonel Benjamin Hanlon, the commanding officer of the Detective Division attached to the district attorney’s office.

  33 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.

  34 Abe Rubin was at that time the most resourceful and unscrupulous criminal lawyer in New York. Since his disbarment two years ago, little has been heard from him.

  35 I sent a proof of the following paragraphs to Vance, and he edited and corrected them; so that, as they now stand, they represent his theories in practically his own words.

  THE “CANARY” MURDER CASE (Part 2)

  CHAPTER 16

  SIGNIFICANT DISCLOSURES

  (Thursday, September 13; forenoon)

  Greatly to Currie’s astonishment Vance gave instructions to be called at nine o’clock the following morning; and at ten o’clock we were sitting on his little roof garden having breakfast in the mellow mid-September sunshine.

  “Van,” he said to me, when Currie had brought us our second cup of coffee, “however secretive a woman may be, there’s always someone to whom she unburdens her soul. A confidant is an essential to the feminine temperament. It may be a mother, or a lover, or a priest, or a doctor, or, more generally, a girl chum. In the Canary’s case we haven’t a mother or a priest. Her lover, the elegant Skeel, was a potential enemy; and we’re pretty safe in ruling out her doctor—she was too shrewd to confide in such a creature as Lindquist. The girl chum, then, remains. And today we seek her.” He lit a cigarette and rose. “But, first, we must visit Mr. Benjamin Browne of Seventh Avenue.”

  Benjamin Browne was a well-known photographer of stage celebrities, with galleries in the heart of the city’s theatrical district; and as we entered the reception room of his luxurious studio later that morning my curiosity as to the object of our visit was at the breaking point. Vance went straight to the desk, behind which sat a young woman with flaming red hair and mascaro-shaded eyes, and bowed in his most dignified manner. Then, taking a small unmounted photograph from his pocket, he laid it before her.

  “I am producing a musical comedy, mademoiselle,” he said, “and I wish to communicate with the young lady who left this picture of herself with me. Unfortunately I’ve misplaced her card; but as her photograph bore the imprint of Browne’s, I thought you might be good enough to look in your files and tell me who she is and where I may find her.”

  He slipped a five-dollar bill under the edge of the blotter, and waited with an air of innocent expectancy.

  The young woman looked at him quizzically, and I thought I detected the hint of a smile at the corners of her artfully rouged lips. But after a moment she took the photograph without a word and disappeared through a rear door. Ten minutes later she returned and handed Vance the picture. On the back of it she had written a name and address.

  “The young lady is Miss Alys La Fosse, and she lives at the Belafield Hotel.” There was now no doubt as to her smile. “You really shouldn’t be so careless with the addresses of your applicants—some poor girl might lose an engagement.” And her smile suddenly turned into soft laughter.

  “Mademoiselle,” replied Vance, with mock seriousness, “in the future I shall be guided by your warning.” And with another dignified bow, he went out.

  “Good Lord!” he said, as we emerged into Seventh Avenue. “Really, y’ know, I should have disguised myself as an impresario, with a gold-headed cane, a derby, and a purple shirt. That young woman is thoroughly convinced that I’m contemplating an intrigue.… A jolly smart tête-rouge, that.”

  He turned into a florist’s shop at the corner, and selecting a dozen American Beauties, addressed them to “Benjamin Browne’s Receptionist.”

  “And now,” he said, “let us stroll to the Belafield, and seek an audience with Alys.”

  As we walked across town Vance explained.

  “That first morning, when we were inspecting the Canary’s rooms, I was convinced that the murder would never be solved by the usual elephantine police methods. It was a subtle and well-planned crime, despite its obvious appearances. No routine investigation would suffice. Intimate information was needed. Therefore, when I saw this photograph of the xanthous Alys half hidden under the litter of papers on the escritoire, I reflected: ‘Ah! A girl friend of the departed Margaret’s. She may know just the things that are needed.’ So, when the Sergeant’s broad back was turned, I put the picture in my pocket. There was no other photograph about the place, and this one bore the usual sentimental inscription. ‘Ever thine,’ and was signed ‘Alys.’ I concluded, therefore, that Alys had played Anactoria to the Canary’s Sappho. Of course I erased the inscription before presenting the picture to the penetrating sibyl at Browne’s.… And here we are at the Belafield, hopin’ for a bit of enlightenment.”
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  The Belafield was a small, expensive apartment-hotel in the East Thirties, which, to judge from the guests to be seen in the Americanized Queen Anne lobby, catered to the well-off sporting set. Vance sent his card up to Miss La Fosse, and received the message that she would see him in a few minutes. The few minutes, however, developed into three-quarters of an hour, and it was nearly noon when a resplendent bellboy came to escort us to the lady’s apartment.

  Nature had endowed Miss La Fosse with many of its arts, and those that Nature had omitted, Miss La Fosse herself had supplied. She was slender and blond. Her large blue eyes were heavily lashed, but though she looked at one with a wide-eyed stare, she was unable to disguise their sophistication. Her toilet had been made with elaborate care; and as I looked at her, I could not help thinking what an excellent model she would have been for Chéret’s pastel posters.

  “So you are Mr. Vance,” she cooed. “I’ve often seen your name in Town Topics.”

  Vance gave a shudder.

  “And this is Mr. Van Dine,” he said sweetly, “—a mere attorney, who, thus far, has been denied the pages of that fashionable weekly.”

  “Won’t you sit down?” (I am sure Miss La Fosse had spoken the line in a play; she made of the invitation an impressive ceremonial.) “I really don’t know why I should have received you. But I suppose you called on business. Perhaps you wish me to appear at a society bazaar, or something of the kind. But I’m so busy, Mr. Vance. You simply can’t imagine how occupied I am with my work.… I just love my work,” she added, with an ecstatic sigh.

  “And I’m sure there are many thousands of others who love it, too,” returned Vance, in his best drawing-room manner. “But unfortunately I have no bazaar to be graced by your charming presence. I have come on a much more serious matter.… You were a very close friend of Miss Margaret Odell’s—”