The Scarab Murder Case

by S. S. Van Dine

  “Yes, I know that. Powdered opium was part of the medical equipment on our tours of exploration in Egypt. Bliss effendi had charge of it.”

  Vance waited.

  “There is a large cabinet in the hall up-stairs,” Hani continued. “All the medical supplies are kept there.”

  “Is the door kept locked?”

  “No, I do not believe so.”

  “Would you be so good as to toddle up-stairs and see if the opium is still there?”

  Hani bowed and departed without a word.

  “Look here, Vance”;—Markham had risen and was pacing up and down—“what earthly good can it do us to know whether the rest of the opium is in the cabinet?… Moreover, I don’t trust Hani.”

  “Hani has been most revealin’,” Vance replied. “Let me dally with him in my own way for a time,—he has ideas, and they’re most interestin’… As for the opium, I have a distinct feelin’ that the tin of brown powder in the medicine chest will have disappeared—”

  “But why,” interrupted Markham, “should the person who extracted some of the opium remove it all from the cabinet? He wouldn’t leave the container on his dressing-table for the purpose of leading us directly to him.”

  “Not exactly.” Vance’s tone was grave. “But he may have sought to throw suspicion on some one else… That’s mere theory, however. Anyway, I’ll be frightfully disappointed if Hani finds the tin in the cabinet.”

  Heath was glowering.

  “It looks to me, sir,” he complained, “that one of us oughta looked for that opium. You can’t trust anything that Swami says.”

  “Ah, but you can trust his reactions, Sergeant,” Vance answered. “Furthermore, I had a definite object in sending Hani up-stairs alone.”

  Again came the sound of Hani’s footsteps in the hall outside. Vance walked to the window. Under his drooping lids he was watching the door eagerly.

  The Egyptian entered the room with a resigned, martyr-like air. In one hand he held a small circular tin container bearing a white-paper label. He placed it solemnly on the table and lifted heavy eyes to Vance.

  “I found the opium, effendi.”

  “Where?” The word was spoken softly.

  Hani hesitated and dropped his gaze.

  “It was not in the cabinet,” he said. “The place on the shelf where it was generally kept, was empty… And then I remembered—”

  “Most convenient!” There was a sneer in Vance’s tone. “You remembered that you yourself had taken the opium some time ago—eh, what?… Couldn’t sleep—or something of the kind.”

  “The effendi understands many things.” Hani’s voice was flat and expressionless. “Several weeks ago I was lying awake—I had not slept well for nights—and I went to the cabinet and took the opium to my room. I placed the container in the drawer of my own cabinet—”

  “And forgot to return it,” Vance concluded. “I do hope it cured your insomnia.” He smiled ironically. “You are an outrageous liar, Hani. But I do not blame you altogether—”

  “I have told you the truth.”

  “Se non è vero, è molto ben trovato.” Vance sat down, frowning.

  “I do not speak Italian…”

  “A quotation from Bruno.” He inspected the Egyptian speculatively. “Clawed into the vulgate, it means that, although you have not spoken the truth, you have invented your lie very well.”

  “Thank you, effendi.”

  Vance sighed and shook his head with simulated weariness. Then he said:

  “You were not gone long enough to have made any extensive search for the opium. You probably found it in the first place you looked—you had a fairly definite idea where you’d find it…”

  “As I told you—”

  “Dash it all! Don’t be so persistent. You’re becoming very borin’…” Menacingly Vance rose and stepped toward the Egyptian. His eyes were cold and his body was tense. “Where did you find that tin of opium?”

  Hani shrank away and his arms fell to his sides.

  “Where did you find the opium?” Vance repeated the question.

  “I have explained, effendi.” Despite the doggedness of Hani’s manner, his tone was not convincing.

  “Yes! You’ve explained—but you haven’t told the truth. The opium was not in your room—although you have a reason for wanting us to think so… A reason! What is it?… Perhaps I can guess that reason. You lied to me because you found the opium—”

  “Effendi!… Don’t continue. You are being deceived…”

  “I am not being deceived by you, Hani.” (I had rarely seen Vance so earnest.) “You unutterable ass! Don’t you understand that I knew where you’d find the opium? Do you think I’d have sent you to look for it if I hadn’t been pretty certain where it was? And you’ve told me—in your circuitous Egyptian way you’ve informed me most lucidly.” Vance relaxed and smiled. “But my real reason for sending you to search for the sleeping-powder was to ascertain to what extent you were involved in the plot.”

  “And you found out, effendi?” There were both awe and resignation in the Egyptian’s question.

  “Yes…oh, yes.” Vance casually regarded the other. “You’re not at all subtle, Hani. You’re only involved—you have characteristics in common with the ostrich, which is erroneously said to bury its head in the sand when in danger. You have merely buried your head in a tin of opium.”

  “Vance effendi is too erudite for my inferior comprehension …”

  “You’re extr’ordin’rily tiresome, Hani.” Vance turned his back and walked to the other end of the room. “Go away, please—go quite away.”

  At this moment there was a disturbance in the hall outside. We could hear angry voices at the end of the corridor. They became louder, and presently Snitkin appeared at the door of the breakfast-room holding Doctor Bliss firmly by the arm. The doctor, fully clothed and with his hat on, was protesting volubly. His face was pale, and his eyes had a hunted, frightened look.

  “What’s the meaning of this?” He addressed no one in particular. “I wanted to go out to get a bit of fresh air, and this bully dragged me down-stairs—”

  Snitkin looked toward Markham.

  “I was told by Sergeant Heath not to let any one leave the house, and this guy tries to make a getaway. Full of hauchoor, too… Whaddya want done with him?”

  “I see no reason why the doctor shouldn’t take an airin’, don’t y’know.” Vance spoke to Markham. “We sha’n’t want to confer with him till later.”

  “It’s bully with me,” Heath agreed. “There’s too many people in this house anyway.”

  Markham nodded to Snitkin.

  “You may let the doctor go for a walk, officer.” He shifted his gaze to Bliss. “Please be back, sir, in half an hour or so. We’ll want to question you.”

  “I’ll be back before that,—I only want to go over in the park for a while.” Bliss seemed nervous and distraught. “I feel unusually heavy and suffocated. My ears are ringing frightfully.”

  “And, I take it,” put in Vance, “you’ve been inordinately thirsty.”

  The doctor regarded him with mild surprise.

  “I’ve consumed at least a gallon of water since going to my room. I hope I’m not in for an attack of malaria…”

  “I hope not, sir. I believe you’ll feel perfectly normal later on.”

  Bliss hesitated on the door-sill.

  “Anything new?” he asked.

  “Oh, much.” Vance spoke without enthusiasm. “But we’ll talk of that later.”

  Bliss frowned and was about to ask another question; but he changed his mind, and bowing, went away, Snitkin trailing after him sourly.

  Footnotes

  *Sir E.A. Wallis Budge defines ka (or, more correctly, ku) both as “the double of a man” and “a divine double.” Breasted, explaining the ka, says it was the “vital force” which was supposed to animate the human body and also to accompany it into the next world. G. Elliot Smith calls the ka “one of the twin
souls of the dead.” (The other soul, ba, became deified in identification with Osiris.) Ka was the spirit of a mortal person, which remained in the tomb after death; and if the tomb were violated or destroyed, the ka had no resting-place. Our own word “soul” is not quite an accurate rendition of ka, but is perhaps as near as we can come to it in English. The German word Doppelgänger, however, is an almost exact translation.

  †An old Arabic proverb meaning: “The only answer to a fool is silence.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  An Attempted Escape

  (Friday, July 13; 3.45 p.m.)

  IT WAS HANI who broke the silence after Bliss’s departure.

  “You wish me to go away, effendi?” he asked Vance, with a respect that struck me as overdone.

  “Yes, yes.” Vance had become distrait and introspective. I knew something was preying on his mind. He stood near the table, his hands in his pockets, regarding the samovar intently. “Go up-stairs, Hani. Take some sodium bicarbonate—and meditate. Divinely bend yourself, so to speak; indulge in a bit of ‘holy exercise,’ as Shakespeare calls it in—is it Richard III?”

  “Yes, effendi—in Act III. Catesby uses the phrase to the Duke of Buckingham.”

  “Astonishin’!” Vance studied the Egyptian critically. “I had no idea the fellahîn were so well versed in the classics.”

  “For hours at a time I read to Meryt-Amen when she was young—”

  “Ah, yes.” Vance dropped the matter. “We’ll send for you when we need you. In the meantime wait in your room.”

  Hani bowed and moved toward the hall.

  “Do not be deceived by appearances, effendi,” he said solemnly, turning at the door. “I do not fully understand the things that have happened in this house to-day; but do not forget—”

  “Thanks awfully.” Vance waved his hand in dismissal. “I at least shall not forget that your name is Anûpu.”

  With a black look the man went out.

  Markham was growing more and more impatient.

  “Everything in this case seems to peter out,” he com plained. “Any one in the household could have put the opium in the coffee—which leaves us just where we were before we came here to the breakfast-room… By the way, where do you think Hani found the can of opium?”

  “Oh, that? Why, in Salveter’s room, of course… Rather obvious, don’t y’know.”

  “I’m damned if I see anything obvious about it. Why should Salveter have left it there?”

  “But he didn’t leave it there, old dear… My word! Don’t you see that some one in the house had ideas? There’s a deus ex machina in our midst, and he’s troublin’ himself horribly about the situation. The plot has been far too clever; and there’s a tutelary genius who’s attempting to simplify matters for us.”

  Heath made a throaty noise of violent disgust.

  “Well, I’m here to tell you he’s making a hell of a job of it.”

  Vance smiled sympathetically.

  “A hellish job, let us say, Sergeant.”

  Markham regarded him with a quizzical frown.

  “Do you believe, Vance, that Hani was in this room after Mrs. Bliss and Salveter had gone up-stairs?”

  “It’s possible. In fact, it seems more likely that it was Hani than either Mrs. Bliss or Salveter.”

  “If the front door had been unlatched,” Markham offered, “it might conceivably have been some one from the outside.”

  “Your hypothetical thug?” asked Vance dryly. “Dropped in here, perhaps, for a bit of caffein stimulant before tackling his victim in the museum.” He did not give Markham time to reply, but went to the door. “Come. Let’s chivy the occupants of the drawing-room. We need more data—oh, many more data.”

  He led the way up-stairs. As we walked along the heavily carpeted upper hall toward the drawing-room door, the sound of an angry high-pitched voice came to us. Mrs. Bliss was speaking; and I caught the final words of a sentence.

  “…should have waited.”

  Then Salveter answered in a hoarse, tense tone: “Meryt! You’re insane…”

  Vance cleared his throat, and there was silence.

  Before we entered the room, however, Hennessey beckoned mysteriously to Heath from the front of the hall. The Sergeant stepped forward past the drawing-room door, and the rest of us, sensing some revelation, followed him.

  “You know that bird Scarlett who you told me to let go,” Hennessey reported in a stage whisper; “well, just as he was going out he turned suddenly and ran up-stairs. I was going to chase him, but since you O.K.’d him, I thought it was all right. A coupla minutes later he came down and went away without a word. Then I got to thinking that maybe I shoulda followed him up-stairs…”

  “You acted correctly, Hennessey.” Vance spoke before the Sergeant could reply. “No reason why he shouldn’t have gone up-stairs—probably went there to speak to Doctor Bliss.”

  Hennessey appeared relieved and looked hopefully toward Heath, who merely grunted disdainfully.

  “And, by the by, Hennessey,” Vance continued; “when the Egyptian came up-stairs the first time, did he go directly to the floor above, or did he tarry in the drawing-room en route?”

  “He went in and spoke to the missus…”

  “Did you hear anything he said?”

  “Naw. It sounded to me like they was parleying in one of those foreign languages.”

  Vance turned to Markham and said in a low voice: “That’s why I sent Hani up-stairs alone. I had an idea he’d grasp the opportunity to commune with Mrs. Bliss.” He again spoke to Hennessey. “How long was Hani in the drawing-room?”

  “A minute or two maybe—not long.” The detective was growing apprehensive. “Shouldn’t I have let him go in?”

  “Oh, certainly… And then what happened?”

  “The guy comes outa the room, looking worried, and goes up-stairs. Pretty soon he comes down again carrying a tin can in his hand. ‘What you got there, Abdullah?’ I asks. ‘Something Mr. Vance sent me to get. Any objection?’ he says. ‘Not if you’re on the level; but I don’t like your looks,’ I answers. And then he gives me the high hat and goes down-stairs.”

  “Perfect, Hennessey.” Vance nodded encouragingly and, taking Markham by the arm, walked back toward the drawing-room. “I think we’d better question Mrs. Bliss.”

  As we entered the woman rose to greet us. She had been sitting by the front window, and Salveter was leaning against the folding doors leading to the dining-room. They had obviously taken these positions when they heard us in the hall, for as we came up-stairs they had been speaking at very close quarters.

  “We are sorry to have to annoy you, Mrs. Bliss,” Vance began, courteously. “But it’s necess’ry that we question you at this time.”

  She waited without the slightest movement or change of expression, and I distinctly received the impression that she was resentful of our intrusion.

  “And you, Mr. Salveter,” Vance went on, shifting his gaze to the man, “will please go to your room. We’ll confer with you later.”

  Salveter seemed disconcerted and worried.

  “May I not be present—?” he began.

  “You may not,” Vance cut in with unwonted severity; and I noticed that even Markham was somewhat surprised at his manner. “Hennessey!” Vance called toward the door, and the detective appeared almost simultaneously. “Escort this gentleman to his room, and see that he communicates with no one until we send for him.”

  Salveter, with an appealing look toward Mrs. Bliss, walked out of the room, the detective at his side.

  “Pray be seated, madam.” Vance approached the woman and, after she had sat down, took a chair facing her. “We are going to ask you several intimate questions, and if you really want the murderer of Mr. Kyle brought to justice you will not resent those questions but will answer them frankly.”

  “The murderer of Mr. Kyle is a despicable and unworthy creature,” she answered in a hard, strained voice; “and I will gladly do anythi
ng I can to help you.” She did not look at Vance, but concentrated her gaze on an enormous honey-colored carnelian ring of intaglio design which she wore on the forefinger of her right hand.

  Vance’s eyebrows went up slightly.

  “You think, then, we did right in releasing your husband?”

  I could not understand the purport of Vance’s question; and the woman’s answer confused me still further. She raised her head slowly and regarded each one of us in turn. Finally she said:

  “Doctor Bliss is a very patient man. Many people have wronged him. I am not even sure that Hani is altogether loyal to him. But my husband is not a fool—he is even too clever at times. I do not put murder beyond him—or beyond any one, for that matter. Murder may sometimes be the highest form of courage. However, if my husband had killed Mr. Kyle he would not have been stupid about it—certainly he would not have left evidence pointing to himself…” She glanced again at her folded hands. “But if he had been contemplating murder, Mr. Kyle would not have been the object of his crime. There are others whom he had more reason for wanting out of the way.”

  “Hani, for instance?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Or Mr. Salveter?”

  “Almost any one but Mr. Kyle,” the woman answered, without a perceptible modulation of voice.

  “Anger could have dictated the murder.” Vance spoke like a man discussing a purely academic topic. “If Mr. Kyle had refused to continue financing the excavations—”

  “You do not know my husband. He has the most equable temper I have ever seen. Passion is alien to his nature. He makes no move without long deliberation.”

  “The scholar’s mind,” Vance murmured. “Yes, I have always had that impression of him.” He took out his cigarette-case. “Do you mind if I smoke?”

  “Do you mind if I do?”

  Vance leapt to his feet and extended his case.

  “Ah—Régies!” She selected a cigarette. “You are very fortunate, Mr. Vance. There were none left in Turkey when I applied for a shipment.”

  “I am doubly fortunate that I am able to offer you one.” Vance lighted her cigarette and resumed his seat. “Who, do you think, Mrs. Bliss, was most benefited by Mr. Kyle’s death?” He put the question carelessly, but I could see he was watching her closely.