The Philo Vance Megapack

by S. S. Van Dine

  “Still, he staked everything on one turn of the wheel, as you put it.”

  “Ah! But not in the same sense that Spotswoode did. Mannix is a cautious and timid gambler as compared with Spotswoode. To begin with, he had an equal chance and an even bet, whereas Spotswoode had no chance at all—his hand was worthless. And yet Spotswoode wagered the limit on a pure bit of mental calculation. That was gambling in the higher ether. On the other hand, Mannix was merely tossing a coin, with an even chance of winning. Furthermore, no calculation of any kind entered into it; there was no planning, no figuring, no daring. And, as I have told you from the start, the Odell murder was premeditated and carefully worked out with shrewd calculation and supreme daring.… And what true gambler would ask an adversary to double a bet on the second flip of the coin, and then accept an offer to redouble on the third flip? I purposely tested Mannix in that way, so as to preclude any possibility of error. Thus I not only eliminated him, I expunged him, eradicated him, wiped him out utterly. It cost me a thousand dollars, but it purged my mind of any lingering doubt. I then knew, despite all the contr’ry material indications, that Spotswoode had done away with the lady.”

  “You make your case theoretically plausible. But, practically, I’m afraid I can’t accept it.” Markham was more impressed, I felt, than he cared to admit. “Damn it, man!” he exploded after a moment. “Your conclusion demolishes all the established landmarks of rationality and sane credibility.—Just consider the facts.” He had now reached the argumentative stage of his doubt. “You say Spotswoode is guilty. Yet we know, on irrefutable evidence, that five minutes after he came out of the apartment, the girl screamed and called for help. He was standing by the switchboard, and, accompanied by Jessup, he went to the door and carried on a brief conversation with her. She was certainly alive then. Then he went out the front door, entered a taxicab, and drove away. Fifteen minutes later he was joined by Judge Redfern as he alighted from the taxicab in front of the club here—nearly forty blocks away from the apartment house! It would have been impossible for him to have made the trip in less time; and, moreover, we have the chauffeur’s record. Spotswoode simply did not have either the opportunity or the time to commit the murder between half past eleven and ten minutes of twelve, when Judge Redfern met him. And, remember, he played poker in the club here until three in the morning—hours after the murder took place.”

  Markham shook his head with emphasis.

  “Vance, there’s no human way to get round those facts. They’re firmly established; and they preclude Spotswoode’s guilt as effectively and finally as though he had been at the North Pole that night.”

  Vance was unmoved.

  “I admit everything you say,” he rejoined. “But as I have stated before, when material facts and psychological facts conflict, the material facts are wrong. In this case, they may not actually be wrong, but they’re deceptive.”

  “Very well, magnus Apollo!” The situation was too much for Markham’s exacerbated nerves. “Show me how Spotswoode could have strangled the girl and ransacked the apartment, and I’ll order Heath to arrest him.”

  “’Pon my word, I can’t do it,” expostulated Vance. “Omniscience was denied me. But—deuce take it!—I think I’ve done rather well in pointing out the culprit. I never agreed to expound his technic, don’t y’ know.”

  “So! Your vaunted penetration amounts only to that, does it? Well, well! Here and now I become a professor of the higher mental sciences, and I pronounce solemnly that Doctor Crippen murdered the Odell girl. To be sure, Crippen’s dead; but that fact doesn’t interfere with my newly adopted psychological means of deduction. Crippen’s nature, you see, fits perfectly with all the esoteric and recondite indications of the crime. Tomorrow I’ll apply for an order of exhumation.”

  Vance looked at him with waggish reproachfulness and sighed. “Recognition of my transcendent genius, I see, is destined to be posthumous. Omnia post obitum fingit majora vetustas. In the meantime I bear the taunts and jeers of the multitude with a stout heart. ‘My head is bloody, but unbowed.’”

  He looked at his watch and then seemed to become absorbed with some line of thought.

  “Markham,” he said, after several minutes, “I’ve a concert at three o’clock, but there’s an hour to spare. I want to take another look at that apartment and its various approaches. Spotswoode’s trick—and I’m convinced it was nothing more than a trick—was enacted there; and if we are ever to find the explanation, we shall have to look for it on the scene.”

  I had got the impression that Markham, despite his emphatic denial of the possibility of Spotswoode’s guilt, was not entirely unconvinced. Therefore, I was not surprised when, with only a halfhearted protest, he assented to Vance’s proposal to revisit the Odell apartment.

  CHAPTER 29

  BEETHOVEN’S “ANDANTE”

  (Tuesday, September 18; 2 P.M.)

  Less than half an hour later we again entered the main hall of the little apartment building in 71st Street. Spively, as usual, was on duty at the switchboard. Just inside the public reception room the officer on guard reclined in an easy chair, a cigar in his mouth. On seeing the district attorney, he rose with forced alacrity.

  “When you going to open things up, Mr. Markham?” he asked. “This rest cure is ruinin’ my health.”

  “Very soon, I hope, Officer,” Markham told him. “Any more visitors?”

  “Nobody, sir.” The man stifled a yawn.

  “Let’s have your key to the apartment. Have you been inside?”

  “No, sir. Orders were to stay out here.”

  We passed into the dead girl’s living room. The shades were still up, and the sunlight of midday was pouring in. Nothing apparently had been touched; not even the overturned chairs had been righted. Markham went to the window and stood, his hands behind him, surveying the scene despondently. He was laboring under a growing uncertainty, and he watched Vance with a cynical amusement which was far from spontaneous.

  Vance, after lighting a cigarette, proceeded to inspect the two rooms, letting his eyes rest searchingly on the various disordered objects. Presently he went into the bathroom and remained several minutes. When he came out he carried a towel with several dark smudges on it.

  “This is what Skeel used to erase his fingerprints,” he said, tossing the towel on the bed.

  “Marvelous!” Markham rallied him. “That, of course, convicts Spotswoode.”

  “Tut, tut! But it helps substantiate my theory of the crime.” He walked to the dressing table and sniffed at a tiny silver atomizer. “The lady used Coty’s Chypre,” he murmured. “Why will they all do it?”

  “And just what does that help substantiate?”

  “Markham dear, I’m absorbing atmosphere. I’m attuning my soul to the apartment’s vibrations. Do let me attune in peace. I may have a visitation at any moment—a revelation from Sinai, as it were.”

  He continued his round of investigation and at last passed out into the main hall, where he stood, one foot holding open the door, looking about him with curious intentness. When he returned to the living room, he sat down on the edge of the rosewood table and surrendered himself to gloomy contemplation. After several minutes he gave Markham a sardonic grin.

  “I say! This is a problem. Dash it all, it’s uncanny!”

  “I had an idea,” scoffed Markham, “that sooner or later you’d revise your deductions in regard to Spotswoode.”

  Vance stared idly at the ceiling.

  “You’re devilish stubborn, don’t y’ know. Here I am trying to extricate you from a deuced unpleasant predicament, and all you do is to indulge in caustic observations calculated to damp my youthful ardor.”

  Markham left the window and seated himself on the arm of the davenport facing Vance. His eyes held a worried look.

  “Vance, don’t get me wrong. Spotswoode means nothing in my life. If he did this thing, I’d like to know it. Unless this case is cleared up, I’m in for an ungodly wallopin
g by the newspapers. It’s not to my interests to discourage any possibility of a solution. But your conclusion about Spotswoode is impossible. There are too many contradictory facts.”

  “That’s just it, don’t y’ know. The contradic’try indications are far too perfect. They fit together too beautifully; they’re almost as fine as the forms in a Michelangelo statue. They’re too carefully coordinated, d’ ye see, to have been merely a haphazard concatenation of circumstances. They signify conscious design.”

  Markham rose and, slowly returning to the window, stood looking out into the little rear yard.

  “If I could grant your premise that Spotswoode killed the girl,” he said, “I could follow your syllogism. But I can’t very well convict a man on the grounds that his defense is too perfect.”

  “What we need, Markham, is inspiration. The mere contortions of the sibyl are not enough.” Vance took a turn up and down the room. “What really infuriates me is that I’ve been outwitted. And by a manufacturer of automobile access’ries!… It’s most humiliatin’.”

  He sat down at the piano and played the opening bars of Brahms’s Capriccio No. 1. “Needs tuning,” he muttered; and, sauntering to the Boule cabinet, he ran his finger over the marquetry. “Pretty and all that,” he said, “but a bit fussy. Good example, though. The deceased’s aunt from Seattle should get a very fair price for it.” He regarded a pendent girandole at the side of the cabinet. “Rather nice, that, if the original candles hadn’t been supplanted with modern frosted bulbs.” He paused before the little china clock on the mantel. “Gingerbread. I’m sure it kept atrocious time.” Passing on to the escritoire, he examined it critically. “Imitation French Renaissance. But rather dainty, what?” Then his eye fell on the wastepaper basket, and he picked it up. “Silly idea,” he commented, “—making a basket out of vellum. The artistic triumph of some lady interior decorator, I’ll wager. Enough vellum here to bind a set of Epictetus. But why ruin the effect with hand-painted garlands? The aesthetic instinct has not as yet invaded these fair States—decidedly not.”

  Setting the basket down, he studied it meditatively for a moment. Then he leaned over and took from it the piece of crumpled wrapping paper to which he had referred the previous day.

  “This doubtless contained the lady’s last purchase on earth,” he mused. “Very touchin’. Are you sentimental about such trifles, Markham? Anyway, the purple string round it was a godsend to Skeel.… What knickknack, do you suppose, paved the way for the frantic Tony’s escape?”

  He opened the paper, revealing a broken piece of corrugated cardboard and a large square dark-brown envelope.

  “Ah, to be sure! Phonograph records.” He glanced about the apartment. “But, I say, where did the lady keep the bally machine?”

  “You’ll find it in the foyer,” said Markham wearily, without turning. He knew that Vance’s chatter was only the outward manifestation of serious and perplexed thinking; and he was waiting with what patience he could muster.

  Vance sauntered idly through the glass doors into the little reception hall, and stood gazing abstractedly at a console phonograph of Chinese Chippendale design which stood against the wall at one end. The squat cabinet was partly covered with a prayer rug, and upon it sat a polished bronze flower bowl.

  “At any rate, it doesn’t look phonographic,” he remarked. “But why the prayer rug?” He examined it casually. “Anatolian—probably called a Caesarian for sale purposes. Not very valuable—too much on the Oushak type.… Wonder what the lady’s taste in music was. Victor Herbert, doubtless.” He turned back the rug and lifted the lid of the cabinet. There was a record already on the machine, and he leaned over and looked at it.

  “My word! The Andante from Beethoven’s C-Minor Symphony!” he exclaimed cheerfully. “You know the movement, of course, Markham. The most perfect Andante ever written.” He wound up the machine. “I think a little music might clear the atmosphere and volatilize our perturbation, what?”

  Markham paid no attention to his banter; he was still gazing dejectedly out of the window.

  Vance started the motor, and placing the needle on the record, returned to the living room. He stood staring at the davenport, concentrating on the problem in hand. I sat in the wicker chair by the door waiting for the music. The situation was getting on my nerves, and I began to feel fidgety. A minute or two passed, but the only sound which came from the phonograph was a faint scratching. Vance looked up with mild curiosity, and walked back to the machine. Inspecting it cursorily, he once more set it in operation. But though he waited several minutes, no music came forth.

  “I say! That’s deuced queer, y’ know,” he grumbled, as he changed the needle and rewound the motor.

  Markham had now left the window and stood watching him with good-natured tolerance. The turntable of the phonograph was spinning, and the needle was tracing its concentric revolutions; but still the instrument refused to play. Vance, with both hands on the cabinet, was leaning forward, his eyes fixed on the silently revolving record with an expression of amused bewilderment.

  “The sound box is probably broken,” he said. “Silly machines, anyway.”

  “The difficulty, I imagine,” Markham chided him, “lies in your patrician ignorance of so vulgar and democratic a mechanism. Permit me to assist you.”

  He moved to Vance’s side, and I stood looking curiously over his shoulder. Everything appeared to be in order, and the needle had now almost reached the end of the record. But only a faint scratching was audible.

  Markham stretched forth his hand to lift the sound box. But his movement was never completed.

  At that moment the little apartment was filled with several terrifying treble screams, followed by two shrill calls for help. A cold chill swept my body, and there was a tingling at the roots of my hair.

  After a short silence, during which the three of us remained speechless, the same feminine voice said in a loud, distinct tone: “No; nothing is the matter. I’m sorry.… Everything is all right.… Please go home, and don’t worry.”

  The needle had come to the end of the record. There was a slight click, and the automatic device shut off the motor. The almost terrifying silence that followed was broken by a sardonic chuckle from Vance.

  “Well, old dear,” he remarked languidly, as he strolled back into the living room, “so much for your irrefutable facts!”

  There came a loud knocking on the door, and the officer on duty outside looked in with a startled face.

  “It’s all right,” Markham informed him in a husky voice. “I’ll call you when I want you.”

  Vance lay down on the davenport and took out another cigarette. Having lighted it, he stretched his arms far over his head and extended his legs, like a man in whom a powerful physical tension had suddenly relaxed.

  “’Pon my soul, Markham, we’ve all been babes in the woods,” he drawled. “An incontrovertible alibi—my word! If the law supposes that, as Mr. Bumble said, the law is a ass, a idiot.—Oh, Sammy, Sammy, vy worn’t there a alleybi!… Markham, I blush to admit it, but it’s you and I who’ve been the unutterable asses.”

  Markham had been standing by the instrument like a man dazed, his eyes riveted hypnotically on the telltale record. Slowly he came into the room and threw himself wearily into a chair.

  “Those precious facts of yours!” continued Vance. “Stripped of their carefully disguised appearance, what are they?—Spotswoode prepared a phonograph record—a simple enough task. Everyone makes ’em nowadays—”

  “Yes. He told me he had a workshop at his home on Long Island where he tinkered a bit.”

  “He really didn’t need it, y’ know. But it facilitated things, no doubt. The voice on the record is merely his own in falsetto—better for the purpose than a woman’s, for it’s stronger and more penetrating. As for the label, he simply soaked it off an ordin’ry record, and pasted it on his own. He brought the lady several new records that night, and concealed this one among them. After the theate
r he enacted his gruesome little drama and then carefully set the stage so that the police would think it was a typical burglar’s performance. When this had been done, he placed the record on the machine, set it going, and calmly walked out. He had placed the prayer rug and bronze bowl on the cabinet of the machine to give the impression that the phonograph was rarely used. And the precaution worked, for no one thought of looking into it. Why should they?… Then he asked Jessup to call a taxicab—everything quite natural, y’ see. While he was waiting for the car the needle reached the recorded screams. They were heard plainly: it was night, and the sounds carried distinctly. Moreover, being filtered through a wooden door, their phonographic timbre was well disguised. And, if you’ll note, the enclosed horn is directed toward the door, not three feet away.”

  “But the synchronization of his questions and the answers on the record…?”

  “The simplest part of it. You remember Jessup told us that Spotswoode was standing with one arm on the switchboard when the screams were heard. He merely had his eye on his wristwatch. The moment he heard the cry, he calculated the intermission on the record and put his question to the imagin’ry lady at just the right moment to receive the record’s response. It was all carefully figured out beforehand; he no doubt rehearsed it in his laborat’ry. It was deuced simple, and practically proof against failure. The record is a large one—twelve-inch diameter, I should say—and it requires about five minutes for the needle to traverse it. By putting the screams at the end, he allowed himself ample time to get out and order a taxicab. When the car at last came, he rode direct to the Stuyvesant Club, where he met Judge Redfern and played poker till three. If he hadn’t met the judge, rest assured he would have impressed his presence on someone else so as to have established an alibi.”