The Philo Vance Megapack

by S. S. Van Dine

  186 What is purported to be the Keating map, or a copy of it, has been almost generally used by treasure seekers on Cocos Island. It is supposed to have been made by Captain Thompson himself, who left it to a friend named Keating. Keating, with a Captain Bogue, outfitted an expedition to the island. There was mutiny on board the boat, and Bogue died on the island; but Keating miraculously escaped. At his death his widow turned the map over to Nicholas Fitzgerald, who, in turn, willed it to Commodore Curzon-Howe of the British navy.

  187 Doctor Emanuel Doremus, Chief Medical Examiner.

  188 In a pamphlet published in Morris, Illinois, in 1887, written by the Honorable P. A. Armstrong and entitled The Piasa, or the Devil Among the Indians, there is an old engraving showing the Piasa as a monster with a dragon’s head, antlers like a deer, the scales of a great fish, claws, and large wings, and with a long tail, like that of a sea-serpent, coiled about its body. The petroglyphs, or pictographs, carved on rock, of this devil-dragon were first found by Father Marquette in the valley of the Mississippi about 1665; and his description of the Piasa, given in Armstrong’s pamphlet, reads thus: “They are as large as a calf, with head and horns like a goat, their eyes are red, beard like a tiger’s, and a face like a man’s. Their tails are so long that they pass over their bodies and between their legs, ending like a fish’s tail.”

  189 Lenape is the generic name for the Algonkian tribes in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and vicinity; and it was one of these tribes that inhabited Inwood.

  190 See The Greene Murder Case.

  191 The glacial pot-holes in Inwood Hill Park were recently discovered. They are excellent geological specimens of deeply bored, striated cavities formed in the glacial period by the grinding action of the lower gravel surface of the massive continental ice sheet that covered the northeastern part of North America between 30,000 and 50,000 years ago. One of these sub-glacial holes is about three and a half feet in diameter and five feet deep. Another is over four feet across; and still another is eight feet in diameter.

  192 There is a slab of Archæan-age granite with glacial markings from Vinalhaven, Maine, in front of the American Museum of Natural History, showing the formation of a glacial pot-hole. The cylindrical boring in it, however, is much smaller than those in Inwood.

  193 The fact is that one Patrick Coghlan, a resident of Inwood, found these pot-holes only a few years ago, on one of his rambling walks. They have since been cleared by the Dyckman Institute and made available for public inspection and study.

  THE DRAGON MURDER CASE (Part 2)

  CHAPTER XII

  INTERROGATIONS

  (Sunday, August 12; 3 p. m.)

  Kirwin Tatum was a man in his early thirties, slender, wiry and loose-jointed. His face was thin and skeleton-like, and, as he stood at the drawing-room door that Sunday afternoon, staring at us, there was a bloodless, haggard look in his expression, which may have been the result of fright or of the ravages of his recent dissipation. But there was a sullen craftiness in his eyes which was almost vulpine. His blond hair, heavily pomaded, was brushed straight back from a peaked forehead with sloping parietals. From one corner of his feral thin-lipped mouth a cigarette drooped. He was dressed in sport clothes of gay and elaborate design; and a heavy gold chain bracelet hung loosely on his left wrist. He stood in the doorway for several minutes, gazing at us shiftily, his long spatulate fingers moving nervously at his sides. That he was uneasy and afraid was apparent.

  Vance regarded him with critical coldness, as he might have inspected some specimen in a laboratory. Then he waved his hand toward a chair beside the table.

  “Come in and sit down, Tatum.” His tone was at once condescending and peremptory.

  The man moved forward with a shambling gait, and threw himself into the chair with affected nonchalance.

  “Well, what do you want?” he asked, with a show of spirit, glancing about the room.

  “I understand you play the piano,” remarked Vance.

  Tatum ceased fidgeting and looked up with smouldering anger.

  “Say, what is this—a game of some kind?”

  Vance nodded gravely.

  “Yes—and a dashed serious game. You were a bit unsettled, we have been told, by the disappearance of your rival, Mr. Montague.”

  “Unsettled?” Tatum nervously relighted his cigarette which had gone out. Vance had thrown him off his guard, and his deliberate and prolonged pause patently indicated that he was endeavoring to readjust his equilibrium. “Well, why not? But I haven’t been shedding crocodile tears over Monty, if that’s what you mean. He was a rotter, and it’s just as well, for everybody, that he is out of the way.”

  “Do you think he will ever return?” asked Vance casually.

  Tatum made an unpleasant noise in his throat, which was probably intended to be a scornful laugh.

  “No, he won’t show up again—because he can’t. You don’t think he planned the disappearance himself, do you? He didn’t have enough sense—or courage. It meant going out of the limelight; and Monty couldn’t live or breathe unless he was in the limelight.… Somebody got him!”

  “Who do you think it was?”

  “How should I know?”

  “Do you think it was Greeff?”

  Tatum’s eyes half closed, and a cold, hard look spread over his drawn face.

  “It might have been Greeff,” the man said between his teeth. “He had ample reason.”

  “And didn’t you yourself have ‘ample reason’?” Vance returned quietly.

  “Plenty.” A ferocious smile came to Tatum’s lips, then faded immediately away. “But I’m in the clear. You can’t pin anything on me.” He leaned forward and fixed Vance with his eyes. “I’d hardly got into my bathing suit when the fellow jumped from the spring-board, and I even went into the pool myself and tried to find him when he failed to come up. I was with the rest of the party all the time. You can ask them.”

  “We shall, no doubt,” Vance murmured. “But if you are so immaculately free from suspicion, how can you suggest that Greeff may have had a hand in Montague’s mysterious fading from the scene? He seems to have followed very much the same course you did.”

  “Oh, yes?” Tatum retorted, with cynical scorn. “The hell he did!…”

  “You refer, I take it,” said Vance mildly, “to the fact that Greeff swam to the opposite side of the pool into the shallow water.”

  “Oh, you know that, do you?” Tatum looked up shrewdly. “But do you know what he was doing during the fifteen minutes when no one could see him?”

  Vance shook his head.

  “I haven’t the groggiest notion.… Have you?”

  “He might have been doing almost anything,” Tatum returned, with a sly nod.

  “Such as draggin’ Montague’s body out of the pool?”

  “And why not?”

  “But the only place where he could have emerged from the water was devoid of any footprints. That fact was checked both last night and this morning.”

  Tatum frowned. Then he said, with a certain aggressiveness:

  “What of it? Greeff’s as shrewd as they come. He may have found some way to avoid making footprints.”

  “It sounds a bit vague, don’t y’ know. But, even if your theory is correct, what could he have done with the body in so short a time?”

  The ashes of Tatum’s cigarette broke and fell on his coat: he leaned forward and shook them off.

  “Oh, you’ll probably find the body somewhere on the other side of the pool,” he returned, readjusting himself in the chair.

  Vance’s gaze rested calculatingly on the man for several minutes.

  “Is Greeff the only possibility you have to suggest?” he asked at length.

  “No,” Tatum answered, with a one-sided smile, “there are plenty of possibilities. But the point is to hook them up with the circumstances. If Leland hadn’t been alongside of me the whole time I was in the pool, I wouldn’t give him a clean bill of health for a split second. And
Stamm had plenty of cause to bump Monty off; but he’s out of the running because of all the liquor he’d poured into himself. And the women here, too—the McAdam dame and Ruby Steele—they’d have welcomed an opportunity of getting rid of the handsome Monty. But I don’t see how they could have managed it.”

  “Really, y’ know, Tatum,” Vance remarked, “you’re simply bulging with suspects. How do you happen to have overlooked old Mrs. Stamm?”

  Tatum sucked in his breath, and his face took on the expression of a death’s-head. His long fingers closed over the arms of his chair.

  “She’s a devil—that woman!” he muttered huskily. “They say she’s crazy. But she sees too much—she knows too much.” He stared straight ahead blankly. “She’s capable of anything!” There was something approaching abject fear in his manner. “I’ve seen her only twice; but she haunts this whole house like a ghost. You can’t get away from her.”

  Vance had been watching Tatum closely, without appearing to do so.

  “Your nerves are a bit on edge, I fear,” he commented. Then he took a deep inhalation on his cigarette and, rising, walked to the mantelpiece, where he stood almost directly facing the other. “Incidentally,” he said casually, dropping his ash into the fireplace, “Mrs. Stamm’s theory is that a dragon in the pool killed Montague and hid his body.”

  Tatum gave a tremulous, cynical laugh.

  “Oh, sure, I’ve heard that wild story before. Maybe a dodo trampled on him—or a unicorn gored him.”

  “It might interest you to know, however, that we have found Montague’s body—”

  Tatum started forward.

  “Where?” he interrupted.

  “In one of the sub-glacial pot-holes down the East Road.… And there were three long claw-marks down his chest, such as this mythical dragon might have made.”

  Tatum sprang to his feet. His cigarette fell from his lips, and he shook his finger hysterically at Vance.

  “Don’t try to frighten me—don’t try to frighten me.” His voice was high-pitched and shaky. “I know what you’re trying to do—you’re trying to break down my nerves and get me to admit something. But I won’t talk—do you understand?—I won’t talk.…”

  “Come, come, Tatum.” Vance spoke mildly but sternly. “Sit down and calm yourself. I’m telling you the exact truth. And I’m only endeavorin’ to find some solution to Montague’s murder. It merely occurred to me that you might be able to help us.”

  Tatum, soothed and reassured by Vance’s manner, sank back into his chair and lit another cigarette.

  “Did you,” Vance asked next, “notice anything peculiar about Montague last night before he went to the pool? Did he, for instance, appear to you like a man who might have been drugged?”

  “He was drugged with liquor, if that’s what you mean,” Tatum replied rationally. “Although—I’ll say this for Monty—he carried his liquor pretty well. And he hadn’t had any more than the rest of us—and much less than Stamm, of course.”

  “Did you ever hear of a woman named Ellen Bruett?”

  Tatum puckered his brow.

  “Bruett?… The name sounds familiar.… Oh, I know where I’ve heard it. Stamm told me, when he asked me to come here, that there was an Ellen Bruett coming to the party. I imagine I was to be paired with her. Thank God she didn’t come, though.” He looked up shrewdly. “What’s she got to do with it?”

  “She’s an acquaintance of Montague’s—so Stamm told us,” Vance explained carelessly. Then he asked quickly: “When you were in the pool, last night, did you hear an automobile on the East Road?”

  Tatum shook his head.

  “Maybe I did, but I certainly don’t remember it. I was too busy diving round for Monty.”

  Vance dismissed the subject and put another query to Tatum.

  “After Montague’s disappearance, did you feel immediately that there had been foul play of some kind?”

  “Yes!” Tatum compressed his lips and nodded ominously. “In fact, I had a feeling all day yesterday that something was going to happen. I came pretty near leaving the party in the afternoon—I didn’t like the set-up.”

  “Can you explain what gave you that impression of impending disaster?”

  Tatum thought a moment, and his eyes shifted back and forth.

  “No, I can’t say,” he muttered at length. “A little of everything, perhaps. But especially that crazy woman up-stairs.…”

  “Ah!”

  “She’d give any one the heebie-jeebies. Stamm makes a habit, you know, of taking his guests to see her for a few moments when they arrive—to pay their respects, or something of the kind. And I remember when I got here, Friday afternoon, Teeny McAdam and Greeff and Monty were already upstairs with her. She seemed pleasant enough—smiled at all of us and bid us welcome—but there was a queer look in her eyes as she studied each one of us individually—something calculating and ill-omened, if you know what I’m trying to get at. I had the feeling that she was making up her mind which one of us she disliked the most. Her eyes rested a long time on Monty—and I was glad she didn’t look at me the same way. When she dismissed us she said, ‘Have a good time’—but she was like a cobra grinning at her victims. It took three shots of whisky to bring me back to normal.”

  “Did the others feel the same way about it?”

  “They didn’t say much, but I know they didn’t like it. And of course the whole party here has been one continual round of back-biting and underhand animosity.”

  Vance rose and waved his hand toward the door.

  “You may go now, Tatum. But I warn you, we want nothing said yet about the finding of Montague’s body. And you’re to stay indoors with the rest, until further orders from the District Attorney.”

  Tatum started to say something, checked himself, and then went out.

  When the man had gone Vance moved back and forth between the fireplace and the door several times, smoking, his head down. Slowly he looked up at Markham.

  “A shrewd, unscrupulous lad, that.… Not a nice person—not at all a nice person. And as ruthless as a rattlesnake. Moreover, he knows—or, at least, he seriously suspects—something connected with Montague’s death. You recall that, even before he knew we had found the body, he was quite sure it would be discovered somewhere on the other side of the pool. That wasn’t altogether guesswork on his part—his tone was far too casual and assured. And he was pretty certain regarding the time Greeff spent in the shallow water. Of course, he ridiculed the dragon idea—and did it cleverly.… His comments on Mrs. Stamm were rather interestin’, too. He thinks she knows and sees too much—but, after all, why should he care? Unless, of course, he has something to hide.… And he told us he didn’t hear any car last night, though others heard it.…”

  “Yes, yes.” Markham made a vague gesture with his hand, as if to dismiss Vance’s speculations. “Everything here seems contradictory. But what I’d like to know is: was it possible for Greeff to have manipulated the whole thing from his position at the shallow side of the pool?”

  “The answer to that question,” returned Vance, “seems to lie in the solution of the problem of how Montague got out of the pool and into the pot-hole.… Anyway, I think it would be a bully idea, while we’re waiting for Doremus, to have another brief parley with Greeff.—Will you please fetch him, Sergeant?”

  Greeff entered the drawing-room a few minutes later, dressed in a conventional light-weight business suit, and wearing a small gardenia in his buttonhole. Despite his rugged healthy complexion, he showed unmistakable signs of strain, and I imagined that he had done considerable drinking since we had interviewed him the night before. Much of his aggressiveness was gone, and his fingers shook slightly as he moved his long cigarette holder to and from his lips.

  Vance greeted him perfunctorily and asked him to sit down. When Greeff had chosen a chair, Vance said:

  “Both Mr. Leland and Mr. Tatum have told us that when you were in the pool, helping them search for Montague, you swam
immediately across to the shallow water below the cliffs.”

  “Not immediately.” There was the suggestion of indignant protestation in Greeff’s voice. “I made several efforts to find the chap. But, as I’ve already told you, I am not a good swimmer, and it occurred to me that perhaps his body had drifted across the pool, since he had dived in that direction; and I thought I might be of more help by looking about over there than by interfering with Leland and Tatum with my clumsy splashing about.” He shot a quick look at Vance. “Was there any reason why I shouldn’t have done it?”

  “No-o,” Vance drawled. “We were just interested in checkin’ the whereabouts of the various members of the party during that particular period.”

  Greeff squinted, and the color deepened on his cheeks.

  “Then what’s the point of the question?” he snapped.

  “Merely an attempt to clarify one or two dubious items,” Vance returned lightly, and then went on, before the other could speak again: “By the by, when you were in the shallow water at the other side of the pool, did you, by any chance, hear a motor-car along the East Road?”

  Greeff stared at Vance for several moments in startled silence. The color left his face, and he rose to his feet with jerky ponderance.

  “Yes, by Gad! I did hear one.” He stood with hunched shoulders, emphasizing his words with his long cigarette holder which he held in his right hand, like a conductor’s baton. “And I thought at the time it was damned queer. But I forgot all about it last night, and didn’t think of it again until you mentioned it just now.”