“And Robin?”
“He belonged to Belle Dillard’s set—an oldish young society man who held several archery records.…”
“Yes, I know. I just looked up the name in this book on archery. A Mr. J. C. Robin seems to have made the high scores in several recent championship meets. And I noted, too, that a Mr. Sperling has been the runner-up in several large archery tournaments.—Is Miss Dillard an archer as well?”
“Yes, quite an enthusiast. In fact, she organized the Riverside Archery Club. Its permanent ranges are at Sperling’s home in Scarsdale; but Miss Dillard has rigged up a practice range in the side yard of the professor’s 75th-Street house. It was on this range that Robin was killed.”
“Ah! And, as you say, the last person known to have been with him was Sperling. Where is our sparrow now?”
“I don’t know. He was with Robin shortly before the tragedy; but when the body was found he had disappeared. I imagine Heath will have news on that point.”
“And wherein lies the possible motive of jealousy you referred to?” Vance’s eyelids had drooped lazily, and he smoked with leisurely but precise deliberation—a sign of his intense interest in what was being told him.
“Professor Dillard mentioned an attachment between his niece and Robin; and when I asked him who Sperling was and what his status was at the Dillard house, he intimated that Sperling was also a suitor for the girl’s hand. I didn’t go into the situation over the phone, but the impression I got was that Robin and Sperling were rivals, and that Robin had the better of it.”
“And so the sparrow killed Cock Robin.” Vance shook his head dubiously. “It won’t do. It’s too dashed simple; and it doesn’t account for the fiendishly perfect reconstruction of the Cock-Robin rhyme. There’s something deeper—something darker and more horrible-in this grotesque business.—Who, by the by, found Robin?”
“Dillard himself. He had stepped out on the little balcony at the rear of the house, and saw Robin lying below on the practice range, with an arrow through his heart. He went down-stairs immediately—with considerable difficulty, for the old man suffers abominably from gout—and, seeing that the man was dead, phoned me.—That’s all the advance information I have.”
“Not what you’d call a blindin’ illumination, but still a bit suggestive.” Vance got up. “Markham old dear, prepare for something rather bizarre—and damnable. We can rule out accidents and coincidence. While it’s true that ordin’ry target arrows—which are made of soft wood and fitted with little bevelled piles—could easily penetrate a person’s clothing and chest wall, even when driven with a medium weight bow, the fact that a man named ‘Sparrow’ should kill a man named Cochrane Robin, with a bow and arrow, precludes any haphazard concatenation of circumstances. Indeed, this incredible set of events proves conclusively that there has been a subtle, diabolical intent beneath the whole affair.” He moved toward the door. “Come, let us find out something more about it at what the Austrian police officials eruditely call the situs criminis.”
We left the house at once and drove uptown in Markham’s car. Entering Central Park at Fifth Avenue we emerged through the 72nd-Street gate, and a few minutes later were turning off of West End Avenue into 75th Street. The Dillard house—number 391—was on our right, far down the block toward the river. Between it and the Drive, occupying the entire corner, was a large fifteen-story apartment house. The professor’s home seemed to nestle, as if for protection, in the shadow of this huge structure.
The Dillard house was of gray, weather-darkened limestone, and belonged to the days when homes were built for permanency and comfort. The lot on which it stood had a thirty-five-foot frontage, and the house itself was fully twenty-five feet across. The other ten feet of the lot, which formed an areaway separating the house from the apartment structure, was shut off from the street by a ten-foot stone wall with a large iron door in the centre.
The house was of modified Colonial architecture. A short flight of shallow steps led from the street to a narrow brick-lined porch adorned with four white Corinthian pillars. On the second floor a series of casement windows, paned with rectangular laded glass, extended across the entire width of the house. (These, I learned later, were the windows of the library.) There was something restful and distinctly old-fashioned about the place: it appeared like anything but the scene of a gruesome murder.
Two police cars were parked near the entrance when we drove up, and a dozen or so curious onlookers had gathered in the street. A patrolman lounged against one of the fluted columns of the porch, gazing at the crowd before him with bored disdain.
An old butler admitted us and led us into the drawing-room on the left of the entrance hall, where we found Sergeant Ernest Heath and two other men from the Homicide Bureau. The Sergeant, who was standing beside the centre-table smoking, his thumbs hooked in the armholes of his waistcoat, came forward and extended his hand in a friendly greeting to Markham.
“I’m glad you got here, sir,” he said; and the worried look in his cold blue eyes seemed to relax a bit. “I’ve been waiting for you. There’s something damn fishy about this case.”
He caught sight of Vance, who had paused in the background, and his broad pugnacious features crinkled in a good-natured grin.
“Howdy, Mr. Vance. I had a sneaking idea you’d be lured into this case. What you been up to these many moons?” I could not help comparing this genuine friendliness of the Sergeant’s attitude with the hostility of his first meeting with Vance at the time of the Benson case. But much water had run under the bridge since that first encounter in the murdered Alvin’s garish living-room; and between Heath and Vance there had grown up a warm attachment, based on a mutual respect and a frank admiration for each other’s capabilities.
Vance held out his hand, and a smile played about the corners of his mouth.
“The truth is, Sergeant, I’ve been endeavorin’ to discover the lost glories of an Athenian named Menander, a dramatic rival of Philemon’s. Silly, what?”
Heath grunted disdainfully.
“Well, anyhow, if you’re as good at it as you are at discovering crooks, you’ll probably get a conviction.” It was the first compliment I had ever heard pass his lips, and it attested not only to his deep-seated admiration for Vance, but also to his own troubled and uncertain state of mind.
Markham sensed the Sergeant’s mental insecurity, and asked somewhat abruptly: “Just what seems to be the difficulty in the present case?”
“I didn’t say there was any difficulty, sir,” Heath replied. “It looks as though we had the bird who did it dead to rights. But I ain’t satisfied, and—oh, hell! Mr. Markham…it ain’t natural; it don’t make sense.”
“I think I understand what you mean.” Markham regarded the Sergeant appraisingly. “You’re inclined to think that Sperling’s guilty?”
“Sure, he’s guilty,” declared Heath with overemphasis. “But that’s not what’s worrying me. To tell you the truth, I don’t like the name of this guy who was croaked—especially as he was croaked with a bow and arrow.…” He hesitated, a bit shamefaced. “Don’t it strike you as peculiar, sir?”
Markham nodded perplexedly.
“I see that you, too, remember your nursery rhymes,” he said, and turned away.
Vance fixed a waggish look on Heath.
“You referred to Mr. Sperling just now as a ‘bird,’ Sergeant. The designation was most apt. Sperling, d’ ye see, means ‘sparrow’ in German. And it was a sparrow, you recall, who killed Cock Robin with an arrow.… A fascinatin’ situation—eh, what?”
The Sergeant’s eyes bulged slightly, and his lips fell apart. He stared at Vance with almost ludicrous bewilderment.
“I said this here business was fishy!”
“I’d say, rather, it was avian, don’t y’ know.”
“You would call it something nobody’d understand,” Heath retorted truculently. It was his wont to become bellicose when confronted with the inexplicable.
Markham intervened diplomatically.
“Let’s have the details of the case, Sergeant. I take it you’ve questioned the occupants of the house.”
“Only in a general way, sir.” Heath flung one leg over the corner of the centre-table and relit his dead cigar. “I’ve been waiting for you to show up. I knew you were acquainted with the old gentleman up-stairs; so I just did the routine things. I put a man out in the alley to see that nobody touches the body till Doc Doremus arrives,80 he’ll be here when he finishes lunch.—I phoned the finger-print men before I left the office, and they oughta be on the job any minute now; though I don’t see what good they can do.…”
“What about the bow that fired the arrow?” put in Vance.
“That was our one best bet; but old Mr. Dillard said he picked it up from the alley and brought it in the house. He probably gummed up any prints it mighta had.”
“What have you done about Sperling?” asked Markham.
“I got his address—he lives in a country house up Westchester way—and sent a coupla men to bring him here as soon as they could lay hands on him. Then I talked to the two servants—the old fellow that let you in, and his daughter, a middle-aged woman who does the cooking. But neither of ’em seemed to know anything, or else they’re acting dumb.—After that I tried to question the young lady of the house.” The Sergeant raised his hands in a gesture of irritated despair. “But she was all broke up and crying; so I thought I’d let you have the pleasure of interviewing her.—Snitkin and Burke”—he jerked his thumb toward the two detectives by the front window—“went over the basement and the alley and back yard trying to pick up something; but drew a blank.—And that’s all I know so far. As soon as Doremus and the finger-print men get here, and after I’ve had a heart-to-heart talk with Sperling, then I’ll get the ball to rolling and clean up the works.”
Vance heaved an audible sigh.
“You’re so sanguine, Sergeant! Don’t be disappointed if your ball turns out to be a parallelopiped that won’t roll. There’s something deuced oddish about this nursery extravaganza; and, unless all the omens deceive me, you’ll be playing blind-man’s-buff for a long time to come.”
“Yeh?” Heath gave Vance a look of despondent shrewdness. It was evident he was more or less of the same opinion.
“Don’t let Mr. Vance dishearten you, Sergeant,” Markham rallied him. “He’s permitting his imagination to run away with him.” Then with an impatient gesture he turned toward the door. “Let’s look over the ground before the others arrive. Later I’ll have a talk with Professor Dillard and the other members of the household. And, by the way, Sergeant, you didn’t mention Mr. Arnesson. Isn’t he at home?”
“He’s at the university; but he’s expected to return soon.”
Markham nodded and followed the Sergeant into the main hall. As we passed down the heavily-carpeted passage to the rear, there was a sound on the staircase, and a clear but somewhat tremulous woman’s voice spoke from the semi-darkness above.
“Is that you, Mr. Markham? Uncle thought he recognized your voice. He’s waiting for you in the library.”
“I’ll join your uncle in a very few minutes, Miss Dillard.” Markham’s tone was paternal and sympathetic. “And please wait with him, for I want to see you, too.”
With a murmured acquiescence, the girl disappeared round the head of the stairs.
We moved on to the rear door of the lower hall. Beyond was a narrow passageway terminating in a flight of wooden steps which led to the basement. At the foot of these steps we came into a large, low-ceilinged room with a door giving directly upon the areaway at the west side of the house. This door was slightly ajar, and in the opening stood the man from the Homicide Bureau whom Heath had set to guard the body.
The room had obviously once been a basement storage; but it had been altered and redecorated, and now served as a sort of club-room. The cement floor was covered with fibre rugs, and one entire wall was painted with a panorama of archers throughout the ages. In an oblong panel on the left was a huge illustrated reproduction of an archery range labelled “Ayme for Finsburie Archers—London 1594,” showing Bloody House Ridge in one corner, Westminster Hall in the centre, and Welsh Hall in the foreground. There were a piano and a phonograph in the room; numerous comfortable wicker chairs; a varicolored divan; an enormous wicker centre-table littered with all manner of sports magazines; and a small bookcase filled with works on archery. Several targets rested in one corner, their gold discs and concentric chromatic rings making brilliant splashes of color in the sunlight which flooded in from the two rear windows. One wall space near the door was hung with long bows of varying sizes and weights; and near them was a large old-fashioned tool-chest. Above it was suspended a small cupboard, or ascham, strewn with various odds and ends of tackle, such as bracers, shooting-gloves, piles, points of aim, and bow strings. A large oak panel between the door and the west window contained a display of one of the most interesting and varied collections of arrows I had ever seen.
This panel attracted Vance particularly, and adjusting his monocle carefully, he strolled over to it.
“Hunting and war arrows,” he remarked. “Most inveiglin’.… Ah! One of the trophies seems to have disappeared. Taken down with considerable haste, too. The little brass brad that held it in place is shockingly bent.”
On the floor stood several quivers filled with target arrows. He leaned over and, withdrawing one, extended it to Markham.
“This frail shaft may not look as if it would penetrate the human breast; but target arrows will drive entirely through a deer at eighty yards.… Why, then, the missing hunting arrow from the panel? An interestin’ point.”
Markham frowned and compressed his lips; and I realized that he had been clinging to the forlorn hope that the tragedy might have been an accident. He tossed the arrow hopelessly on a chair, and walked toward the outer door.
“Let’s take a look at the body and the lie of the land,” he said gruffly.
As we emerged into the warm spring sunlight a sense of isolation came over me. The narrow paved areaway in which we stood seemed like a canyon between steep stone walls. It was four or five feet below the street level, which was reached by a short flight of steps leading to the gate in the wall. The blank, windowless rear wall of the apartment house opposite extended upwards for 150 feet; and the Dillard house itself, though only four stories high, was the equivalent of six stories gauged by the architectural measurements of today. Though we were standing out of doors in the heart of New York, no one could see us except from the few side windows of the Dillard house and from a single bay window of the house on 76th Street, whose rear yard adjoined that of the Dillard grounds.
This other house, we were soon to learn, was owned by a Mrs. Drukker; and it was destined to play a vital and tragic part in the solution of Robin’s murder. Several tall willow trees acted as a mask to its rear windows; and only the bay window at the side of the house had an unobstructed view of that part of the areaway in which we stood.
I noticed that Vance had his eye on this bay window, and as he studied it I saw a flicker of interest cross his face. It was not until much later that afternoon that I was able to guess what had caught and held his attention.
The archery range extended from the wall of the Dillard lot on 75th Street all the way to a similar street wall of the Drukker lot on 76th Street, where a butt of hay bales had been erected on a shallow bed of sand. The distance between the two walls was 200 feet, which, as I learned later, made possible a sixty-yard range, thus permitting target practice for all the standard archery events, with the one exception of the York Round for men.
The Dillard lot was 135 feet deep, the depth of the Drukker lot therefore being sixty-five feet. A section of the tall ironwork fence that separated the two rear yards had been removed where it had once transected the space now used for the archery range. At the further end of the range, backing against the western line of the Drukker property, was another tall
apartment house occupying the corner of 76th Street and Riverside Drive. Between these two gigantic buildings ran a narrow alleyway, the range end of which was closed with a high board fence in which had been set a small door with a lock.
For purposes of clarity I am incorporating in this record a diagram of the entire scene; for the arrangement of the various topographical and architectural details had a very important bearing on the solution of the crime. I would call attention particularly to the following points:—first, to the little second-story balcony at the rear of the Dillard house, which projects slightly over the archery range; secondly, to the bay window (on the second floor) of the Drukker house, whose southern angle has a view of the entire archery range toward 75th Street; and thirdly, to the alleyway between the two apartment houses, which leads from Riverside Drive into the Dillard rear yard.
The body of Robin lay almost directly outside of the archery-room door. It was on its back, the arms extended, the legs slightly drawn up, the head pointing toward the 76th-Street end of the range. Robin had been a man of perhaps thirty-five, of medium height, and with an incipient corpulency. There was a rotund puffiness to his face, which was smooth-shaven except for a narrow blond moustache. He was clothed in a two-piece sport suit of light gray flannel, a pale-blue silk shirt, and tan Oxfords with thick rubber soles. His hat—a pearl-colored felt fedora—was lying near his feet.
Beside the body was a large pool of coagulated blood which had formed in the shape of a huge pointing hand. But the thing which held us all in a spell of fascinated horror was the slender shaft that extended vertically from the left side of the dead man’s breast. The arrow protruded perhaps twenty inches, and where it had entered the body there was the large dark stain of the hemorrhage. What made this strange murder seem even more incongruous were the beautifully fletched feathers on the arrow. They had been dyed a bright red; and about the shaftment were two stripes of turquoise blue—giving the arrow a gala appearance. I had a feeling of unreality about the tragedy, as though I were witnessing a scene in a sylvan play for children.
The Philo Vance Megapack Page 86
