"That's all right, Potts," Markham told him in a kindly voice. Then to Snitkin: "Let the man go—only get his full name and address."
Vance had been studying the newspaper in which the jewels had been wrapped.
"I say, my man," he asked, "is this the original paper you found them in?"
"Yes, sir—the same. I ain't touched nothin'."
"Right-o."
Mr. Potts, greatly relieved, shambled out, followed by Snitkin.
"The Flatiron Building is directly across Madison Square from the Stuyvesant Club," observed Markham, frowning.
"So it is." Vance then pointed to the left-hand margin of the newspaper that held the jewels. "And you'll notice that this Herald of yesterday has three punctures evidently made by the pins of a wooden holder such as is generally used in a club's reading room."
"You got a good eye, Mr. Vance." Heath nodded, inspecting the newspaper.
"I'll see about this." Markham viciously pressed a button. "They keep their papers on file for a week at the Stuyvesant Club."
When Swacker appeared, he asked that the club's steward be got immediately on the telephone. After a short delay, the connection was made. At the end of five minutes' conversation Markham hung up the receiver and gave Heath a baffled look.
"The club takes two Heralds. Both of yesterday's copies are there, on the rack."
"Didn't Cleaver once tell us he read nothing but The Herald—that and some racing sheet at night?" Vance put the question offhandedly.
"I believe he did." Markham considered the suggestion. "Still, both the club Heralds are accounted for." He turned to Heath. "When you were checking up on Mannix, did you find out what clubs he belonged to?"
"Sure." The sergeant took out his notebook and riffled the pages for a minute or two. "He's a member of the Furriers' and the Cosmopolis."
Markham pushed the telephone toward him.
"See what you can find out."
Heath was fifteen minutes at the task. "A blank," he announced finally. "The Furriers' don't use holders, and the Cosmopolis don't keep any back numbers."
"What about Mr. Skeel's clubs, Sergeant?" asked Vance, smiling.
"Oh, I know the finding of that jewelry gums up my theory about Skeel," said Heath, with surly ill nature. "But what's the good of rubbing it in? Still, if you think I'm going to give that bird a clean bill of health just because the Odell swag was found in a trashcan, you're mighty mistaken. Don't forget we're watching the Dude pretty close. He may have got leery, and tipped off some pal he'd cached the jewels with."
"I rather fancy the experienced Skeel would have turned his booty over to a professional receiver. But even had he passed it on to a friend, would this friend have been likely to throw it away because Skeel was worried?"
"Maybe not. But there's some explanation for those jewels being found, and when we get hold of it, it won't eliminate Skeel."
"No; the explanation won't eliminate Skeel," said Vance; "but—my word!—how it'll change his locus standi."
Heath contemplated him with shrewdly appraising eyes. Something in Vance's tone had apparently piqued his curiosity and set him to wondering. Vance had too often been right in his diagnoses of persons and things for the sergeant to ignore his opinions wholly.
But before he could answer, Swacker stepped alertly into the room, his eyes animated.
"Tony Skeel's on the wire, Chief, and wants to speak to you."
Markham, despite his habitual reserve, gave a start. "Here, Sergeant," he said quickly. "Take that extension phone on the table and listen in." He nodded curtly to Swacker, who disappeared to make the connection. Then he took up the receiver of his own telephone and spoke to Skeel.
For a minute or so he listened. Then, after a brief argument, he concurred with some suggestion that had evidently been made; and the conversation ended.
"Skeel craves an audience, I gather," said Vance. "I've rather been expecting it, y' know."
"Yes. He's coming here tomorrow at ten."
"And he hinted that he knew who slew the Canary—eh, what?"
"That's just what he did say. He promised to tell me the whole story tomorrow morning."
"He's the lad that's in a position to do it," murmured Vance.
"But, Mr. Markham," said Heath, who still sat with his hand on the telephone, gazing at the instrument with dazed incredulity, "I don't see why you don't have him brought here today."
"As you heard, Sergeant, Skeel insisted on tomorrow and threatened to say nothing if I forced the issue. It's just as well not to antagonize him. We might spoil a good chance of getting some light on this case if I ordered him brought here and used pressure. And tomorrow suits me. It'll be quiet around here then. Moreover, your man's watching Skeel, and he won't get away."
"I guess you're right, sir. The Dude's touchy and he can give a swell imitation of an oyster when he feels like it." The sergeant spoke with feeling.
"I'll have Swacker here tomorrow to take down his statement," Markham went on; "and you'd better put one of your men on the elevator. The regular operator is off Sundays. Also, plant a man in the hall outside and put another one in Swacker's office."
Vance stretched himself luxuriously and rose.
"Most considerate of the gentleman to call up at this time, don't y' know. I had a longing to see the Monets at Durand-Ruel's this afternoon, and I was afraid I wasn't going to be able to drag myself away from this fascinatin' case. Now that the apocalypse has been definitely scheduled for tomorrow, I'll indulge my taste for Impressionism. . . . À demain, Markham. Bye-bye, Sergeant."
23. THE TEN-O'CLOCK APPOINTMENT
(Sunday, September 16; 10 A.M.)
A fine drizzle was falling the next morning when we rose; and a chill—the first forerunner of winter—was in the air. We had breakfast in the library at half past eight, and at nine o'clock Vance's car, which had been ordered the night before, called for us. We rode down Fifth Avenue, now almost deserted in its thick blanket of yellow fog, and called for Markham at his apartment in West 12th Street. He was waiting for us in front of the house and stepped quickly into the car with scarcely a word of greeting. From his anxious, preoccupied look I knew that he was depending a good deal on what Skeel had to tell him.
We had turned into West Broadway beneath the Elevated tracks before any of us spoke. Then Markham voiced a doubt which was plainly an articulation of his troubled ruminations.
"I'm wondering if, after all, this fellow Skeel can have any important information to give us. His phone call was very strange. Yet he spoke confidently enough regarding his knowledge. No dramatics, no request for immunity—just a plain, assured statement that he knew who murdered the Odell girl, and had decided to come clean."
"It's certain he himself didn't strangle the lady," pronounced Vance. "My theory, as you know, is that he was hiding in the clothes press when the shady business was being enacted; and all along I've clung lovingly to the idea that he was au secret to the entire proceedings. The keyhole of that closet door is on a direct line with the end of the davenport where the lady was strangled; and if a rival was operating at the time of his concealment, it's not unreasonable to assume that he peered forth—eh, what? I questioned him on this point, you remember; and he didn't like it a bit."
"But, in that case—"
"Oh, I know. There are all kinds of erudite objections to my wild dream. Why didn't he give the alarm? Why didn't he tell us about it before? Why this? and why that? . . . I make no claim to omniscience, y' know; I don't even pretend to have a logical explanation for the various traits d'union of my vagary. My theory is only sketched in, as it were. But I'm convinced, nevertheless, that the modish Tony knows who killed his bona roba and looted her apartment."
"But of the three persons who possibly could have got into the Odell apartment that night—namely, Mannix, Cleaver, and Lindquist—Skeel evidently knows only one—Mannix."
"Yes, to be sure. And Mannix, it would seem, is the only one of the trio who know
s Skeel. . . . An interestin' point."
Heath met us at the Franklin Street entrance to the Criminal Courts Building. He, too, was anxious and subdued and he shook hands with us in a detached manner devoid of his usual heartiness.
"I've got Snitkin running the elevator," he said, after the briefest of salutations. "Burke's in the hall upstairs, and Emery is with him, waiting to be let into Swacker's office."
We entered the deserted and almost silent building and rode up to the fourth floor. Markham unlocked his office door and we passed in.
"Guilfoyle, the man who's tailing Skeel," Heath explained, when we were seated, "is to report by phone to the Homicide Bureau as soon as the Dude leaves his rooms."
It was now twenty minutes to ten. Five minutes later Swacker arrived. Taking his stenographic notebook, he stationed himself just inside of the swinging door of Markham's private sanctum, where he could hear all that was said without being seen. Markham lit a cigar, and Heath followed suit. Vance was already smoking placidly. He was the calmest person in the room, and lay back languorously in one of the great leather chairs as though immune to all cares and vicissitudes. But I could tell by the overdeliberate way he flicked his ashes into the receiver that he, too, was uneasy.
Five or six minutes passed in complete silence. Then the sergeant gave a grunt of annoyance. "No, sir," he said, as if completing some unspoken thought, "I can't get a slant on this business. The finding of that jewelry, now, all nicely wrapped up . . . and then the Dude offering to squeal. . . . There's no sense to it."
"It's tryin', I know, Sergeant; but it's not altogether senseless." Vance was gazing lazily at the ceiling. "The chap who confiscated those baubles didn't have any use for them. He didn't want them, in fact—they worried him abominably."
The point was too complex for Heath. The previous day's developments had shaken the foundation of all his arguments; and he lapsed again into brooding silence.
At ten o'clock he rose impatiently and, going to the hall door, looked out. Returning, he compared his watch with the office clock and began pacing restlessly. Markham was attempting to sort some papers on his desk, but presently he pushed them aside with an impatient gesture.
"He ought to be coming along now," he remarked, with an effort at cheerfulness.
"He'll come," growled Heath, "or he'll get a free ride." And he continued his pacing.
A few minutes later he turned abruptly and went out into the hall. We could hear him calling to Snitkin down the elevator shaft, but when he came back into the office, his expression told us that as yet there was no news of Skeel.
"I'll call up the bureau," he decided, "and see what Guilfoyle had to report. At least we'll know then when the Dude left his house."
But when the sergeant had been connected with police headquarters, he was informed that Guilfoyle had as yet made no report.
"That's damn funny," he commented, hanging up the receiver.
It was now twenty minutes past ten. Markham was growing restive. The tenacity with which the Canary murder case had resisted all his efforts toward a solution had filled him with discouragement; and he had hoped, almost desperately, that this morning's interview with Skeel would clear up the mystery, or at least supply him with information on which definite action could be taken. Now, with Skeel late for this all-important appointment, the strain was becoming tense.
He pushed back his chair nervously and, going to the window, gazed out into the dark haze of fine rain. When he returned to his desk his face was set.
"I'll give our friend until half past ten," he said grimly. "If he isn't here then, Sergeant, you'd better call up the local station house and have them send a patrol wagon for him."
There was another few minutes of silence. Vance lolled in his chair with half-closed eyes, but I noticed that, though he still held his cigarette, he was not smoking. His forehead was puckered by a frown, and he was very quiet. I knew that some unusual problem was occupying him. His lethargy had in it a quality of intentness and concentration.
As I watched him he suddenly sat up straight, his eyes open and alert. He tossed his dead cigarette into the receiver with a jerky movement that attested to some inner excitation.
"Oh, my word!" he exclaimed. "It really can't be, y' know! And yet"—his face darkened—"and yet, by Jove, that's it! . . . What an ass I've been—what an unutterable ass! . . . Oh!"
He sprang to his feet, then stood looking down at the floor like a man dazed, afraid of his own thoughts.
"Markham, I don't like it—I don't like it at all." He spoke almost as if he were frightened. "I tell you, there's something terrible going on—something uncanny. The thought of it makes my flesh creep. . . . I must be getting old and sentimental," he added, with an effort at lightness; but the look in his eyes belied his tone. "Why didn't I see this thing yesterday? . . . But I let it go on. . . ."
We were all staring at him in amazement. I had never seen him affected in this way before, and the fact that he was habitually so cynical and aloof, so adamant to emotion and impervious to outside influences, gave his words and actions an impelling and impressive quality.
After a moment he shook himself slightly, as if to throw off the pall of horror that had descended upon him, and, stepping to Markham's desk, he leaned over, resting on both hands.
"Don't you see?" he asked. "Skeel's not coming. No use to wait—no use of our having come here in the first place. We have to go to him. He's waiting for us. . . . Come! Get your hat."
Markham had risen, and Vance took him firmly by the arm.
"You needn't argue," he persisted. "You'll have to go to him sooner or later. You might as well go now, don't y' know. My word! What a situation!"
He had led Markham, astonished and but mildly protesting, into the middle of the room, and he now beckoned to Heath with his free hand.
"You, too, Sergeant. Sorry you had all this trouble. My fault. I should have foreseen this thing. A devilish shame; but my mind was on Monets all yesterday afternoon. . . . You know where Skeel lives?"
Heath nodded mechanically. He had fallen under the spell of Vance's strange and dynamic importunities.
"Then, don't wait. And, Sergeant! You'd better bring Burke or Snitkin along. They won't be needed here—nobody'll be needed here any more today."
Heath looked inquiringly to Markham for counsel; his bewilderment had thrown him into a state of mute indecision. Markham nodded his approval of Vance's suggestions, and, without a word, slipped into his raincoat. A few minutes later the four of us, accompanied by Snitkin, had entered Vance's car and were lurching uptown. Swacker had been sent home; the office had been locked up; and Burke and Emery had departed for the Homicide Bureau to await further instructions.
Skeel lived in 35th Street, near the East River, in a dingy, but once pretentious, house which formerly had been the residence of some old family of the better class. It now had an air of dilapidation and decay; there was rubbish in the areaway; and a large sign announcing rooms for rent was posted in one of the ground-floor windows.
As we drew up before it Heath sprang to the street and looked sharply about him. Presently he espied an unkempt man slouching in the doorway of a grocery store diagonally opposite, and beckoned to him. The man shambled over furtively.
"It's all right, Guilfoyle," the sergeant told him. "We're paying the Dude a social visit. What's the trouble? Why didn't you report?"
Guilfoyle looked surprised. "I was told to phone in when he left the house, sir. But he ain't left yet. Mallory tailed him home last night round ten o'clock, and I relieved Mallory at nine this morning. The Dude's still inside."
"Of course he's still inside, Sergeant," said Vance, a bit impatiently.
"Where's his room situated, Guilfoyle?" asked Heath.
"Second floor, at the back."
"Right. We're going in. Stand by."
"Look out for him," admonished Guilfoyle. "He's got a gat."
Heath took the lead up the worn steps which led from the p
avement to the little vestibule. Without ringing, he roughly grasped the doorknob and shook it. The door was unlocked, and we stepped into the stuffy lower hallway.
A bedraggled woman of about forty, in a disreputable dressing gown, and with hair hanging in strings over her shoulders, emerged suddenly from a rear door and came toward us unsteadily, her bleary eyes focused on us with menacing resentment.
"Say!" she burst out, in a rasping voice. "What do youse mean by bustin' in like this on a respectable lady?" And she launched forth upon a stream of profane epithets.
Heath, who was nearest her, placed his large hand over her face, and gave her a gentle but firm shove backward.
"You keep outa this, Cleopatra!" he advised her, and began to ascend the stairs.
The second-floor hallway was dimly lighted by a small flickering gas jet, and at the rear we could distinguish the outlines of a single door set in the middle of the wall.
"That'll be Mr. Skeel's abode," observed Heath.
He walked up to it and, dropping one hand in his right coat pocket, turned the knob. But the door was locked. He then knocked violently upon it and, placing his ear to the jamb, listened. Snitkin stood directly behind him, his hand also in his pocket. The rest of us remained a little in the rear.
Heath had knocked a second time when Vance's voice spoke up from the semidarkness. "I say, Sergeant, you're wasting time with all that formality."
"I guess you're right," came the answer after a moment of what seemed unbearable silence.
Heath bent down and looked at the lock. Then he took some instrument from his pocket and inserted it into the keyhole.
"You're right," he repeated. "The key's gone."
He stepped back and, balancing on his toes like a sprinter, sent his shoulders crashing against the panel directly over the knob. But the lock held.
"Come on, Snitkin," he ordered.
The two detectives hurled themselves against the door. At the third onslaught there was a splintering of wood and a tearing of the lock's bolt through the molding. The door swung drunkenly inward.
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