American Sherlocks

by Nick Rennison

  Jacot was now trembling like a leaf.

  ‘Before God, Mr Osgood,’ he cried, ‘it’s all true enough. But I know no more about it now than you know. I did nothing – nothing. I was only the agent of Dr Grimm who met this woman, the agent of the others. She led me on – like a fool – women, women –’

  ‘Let me see,’ interrupted Clare. ‘The number 2330 is not the Ritz, of course. Hello. Information. What is the street address of 2330? The York Arms – Fifty-eighth. Thank you. Mr Osgood – your car, please.’

  They pulled up with a jolt before the York Arms and the hall boy was subsidized to show them to the Vaccaro apartments.

  As Lawson and Osgood half tumbled into a sitting room, they stopped short before Signora Ascoli, tall, imperious, in a diaphanous morning gown.

  It needed no word from any of them to tell her that she was cornered. There was Jacot himself cringing in the rear. Facing her was the woman she had seen at the Ritz who had caused her hasty departure and had aroused suspicion that after all Dr Grimm might have spoken with the hated polizia.

  Quickly she glided, almost like a serpent, to a stand and seized a bottle of acid. Before she could pour it into a long brass tube, Lawson with his heavy cane had dashed the bottle to the floor where the acid ate into and blackened the wood.

  Another moment and Clare had seized the tube itself. From it she drew a long strip of canvas. As it unwound Osgood cried in delight, ‘At last! My lost Ginevra Benci safe!’

  ‘Subito… Giorgio… Urgenzia…’ cried the woman, dashing into a bedroom, through another door.

  They followed. There stood Vaccaro – his escape cut off. With a hasty sentence or two in low Italian, she flung her arms about his neck. For one long moment they held each other in a passionate embrace.

  ‘He is the thief,’ cried Jacot who had heard and translated the words. ‘He planned it from his knowledge of art: he did it under the spell of those eyes – eyes like those in the painting itself – for which a man would risk all – honor, life. I see it. This meant money for both – love.’

  Jacot paused, horrified. The faces of the lovers had changed even as he was speaking. Together, locked in an unrelaxing grasp they sank back on the divan.

  Staring at the intruders lay Vaccaro unable to move a muscle, hearing but powerless to speak, as if ebbing away. Lawson looked quickly from one to the other of the pair. The already hardening features of Giulia Ascoli told the story.

  ‘Ricinus again,’ he muttered. ‘The poison by which they killed others.’

  Clare had reached down and withdrawn carefully from the jewelled hand of the Ascoli woman a little ring which she held out to Osgood.

  ‘The poison ring of the Borgias,’ he cried in amazement, ‘taken from my own collection. See, it has a hollow in the part that encircles the stone, with a point and a little concealed spring. It is a formidable and easy weapon – see – the fatal scratch could be given while shaking hands while blinded by the passion of the embrace.’

  ‘It was that poisoned fang that sent your faithful curator to his death,’ remarked Clare, quietly regarding the awesome ring. ‘It would have sent others, too, who knew too much about the stolen picture, the money, the murder.’

  Jacot was in a palsy.

  ‘Another day and I should have followed Grimm,’ he shivered, turning to Clare with a new respect that even the susceptible little art dealer had never felt for the sex. ‘Mademoiselle, I owe you my life.’

  CRAIG KENNEDY

  Created by Arthur B Reeve (1880-1936)

  Known as ‘The Scientific Detective’, Craig Kennedy is barely remembered today but he was once enormously popular, particularly in the USA. He appeared not only in short stories and novels but silent film serials and comic strips. As late as 1952, there was a 26-episode TV series entitled Craig Kennedy, Criminologist. A professor of chemistry who applied his knowledge of science and an array of technological inventions to the solution of baffling crimes, Kennedy was the brainchild of Arthur B Reeve. Born in New York State and educated at Princeton, Reeve originally intended to be a lawyer but turned instead to journalism. After writing a series of articles about the use of cutting-edge science in detective work, he was inspired to create Kennedy who made his debut in a short story published in the magazine Cosmopolitan in December 1910. More than eighty further stories and over a dozen novels followed. The Kennedy stories, narrated by the scientific detective’s admiring sidekick, the journalist Walter Jameson, can often seem dated today. The technology that Reeve proclaims as close to miraculous is often very old hat (X-rays, lie detectors, Dictaphones) but the tales themselves remain entertaining and lively.

  THE AZURE RING

  Files of newspapers and innumerable clippings from the press bureaus littered Kennedy’s desk in rank profusion. Kennedy himself was so deeply absorbed that I had merely said good evening as I came in and had started to open my mail. With an impatient sweep of his hand, however, he brushed the whole mass of newspapers into the waste-basket.

  ‘It seems to me, Walter,’ he exclaimed in disgust, ‘that this mystery is considered insoluble for the very reason which should make it easy to solve – the extraordinary character of its features.’

  Inasmuch as he had opened the subject, I laid down the letter I was reading. ‘I’ll wager I can tell you just why you made that remark, Craig,’ I ventured. ‘You’re reading up on that Wainwright-Templeton affair.’

  ‘You are on the road to becoming a detective yourself, Walter,’ he answered with a touch of sarcasm. ‘Your ability to add two units to two other units and obtain four units is almost worthy of Inspector O’Connor. You are right and within a quarter of an hour the district attorney of Westchester County will be here. He telephoned me this afternoon and sent an assistant with this mass of dope. I suppose he’ll want it back,’ he added, fishing the newspapers out of the basket again. ‘But, with all due respect to your profession, I’ll say that no one would ever get on speaking terms with the solution of this case if he had to depend solely on the newspaper writers.’

  ‘No?’ I queried, rather nettled at his tone.

  ‘No,’ he repeated emphatically. ‘Here one of the most popular girls in the fashionable suburb of Williston, and one of the leading younger members of the bar in New York, engaged to be married, are found dead in the library of the girl’s home the day before the ceremony. And now, a week later, no one knows whether it was an accident due to the fumes from the antique charcoal-brazier, or whether it was a double suicide, or suicide and murder, or a double murder, or – or – why, the experts haven’t even been able to agree on whether they have discovered poison or not,’ he continued, growing as excited as the city editor did over my first attempt as a cub reporter.

  ‘They haven’t agreed on anything except that on the eve of what was, presumably, to have been the happiest day of their lives two of the best known members of the younger set are found dead, while absolutely no one, as far as is known, can be proved to have been near them within the time necessary to murder them. No wonder the coroner says it is simply a case of asphyxiation. No wonder the district attorney is at his wits’ end. You fellows have hounded them with your hypotheses until they can’t see the facts straight. You suggest one solution and before –’

  The door-bell sounded insistently, and without waiting for an answer a tall, spare, loose-jointed individual stalked in and laid a green bag on the table.

  ‘Good evening, Professor Kennedy,’ he began brusquely. ‘I am District Attorney Whitney, of Westchester. I see you have been reading up on the case. Quite right.’

  ‘Quite wrong,’ answered Craig. ‘Let me introduce my friend, Mr Jameson, of the Star. Sit down. Jameson knows what I think of the way the newspapers have handled this case. I was about to tell him as you came in that I intended to disregard everything that had been printed, to start out with you as if it were a fresh subject and get the fact
s at first-hand. Let’s get right down to business. First tell us just how it was that Miss Wainwright and Mr Templeton were discovered and by whom.’

  The district attorney loosened the cords of the green bag and drew out a bundle of documents. ‘I’ll read you the affidavit of the maid who found them,’ he said, fingering the documents nervously. ‘You see, John Templeton had left his office in New York early that afternoon, telling his father that he was going to visit Miss Wainwright. He caught the three-twenty train, reached Williston all right, walked to the Wainwright house, and, in spite of the bustle of preparation for the wedding, the next day, he spent the rest of the afternoon with Miss Wainwright. That’s where the mystery begins. They had no visitors. At least, the maid who answers the bell says they had none. She was busy with the rest of the family, and I believe the front door was not locked – we don’t lock our doors in Williston, except at night.’

  He had found the paper and paused to impress these facts on our minds.

  ‘Mrs Wainwright and Miss Marian Wainwright, the sister, were busy about the house. Mrs Wainwright wished to consult Laura about something. She summoned the maid and asked if Mr Templeton and Miss Wainwright were in the house. The maid replied that she would see, and this is her affidavit. Ahem! I’ll skip the legal part: “I knocked at the library door twice, but obtaining no answer, I supposed they had gone out for a walk or perhaps a ride across country as they often did. I opened the door partly and looked in. There was a silence in the room, a strange, queer silence. I opened the door further and, looking toward the davenport in the corner, I saw Miss Laura and Mr Templeton in such an awkward position. They looked as if they had fallen asleep. His head was thrown back against the cushions of the davenport, and on his face was a most awful look. It was discoloured. Her head had fallen forward on his shoulder, sideways, and on her face, too, was the same terrible stare and the same discolouration. Their right hands were tightly clasped.

  ‘“I called to them. They did not answer. Then the horrible truth flashed on me. They were dead. I felt giddy for a minute, but quickly recovered myself, and with a cry for help I rushed to Mrs Wainwright’s room, shrieking that they were dead. Mrs Wainwright fainted. Miss Marian called the doctor on the telephone and helped us restore her mother. She seemed perfectly cool in the tragedy, and I do not know what we servants should have done if she had not been there to direct us. The house was frantic, and Mr Wainwright was not at home.

  ‘“I did not detect any odour when I opened the library door. No glasses or bottles or vials or other receptacles which could have held poison were discovered or removed by me, or to the best of my knowledge and belief by anyone else.”’

  ‘What happened next?’ asked Craig eagerly.

  ‘The family physician arrived and sent for the coroner immediately, and later for myself. You see, he thought at once of murder.’

  ‘But the coroner, I understand, thinks differently,’ prompted Kennedy.

  ‘Yes, the coroner has declared the case to be accidental. He says that the weight of evidence points positively to asphyxiation. Still, how can it be asphyxiation? They could have escaped from the room at any time; the door was not locked. I tell you, in spite of the fact that the tests for poison in their mouths, stomachs, and blood have so far revealed nothing, I still believe that John Templeton and Laura Wainwright were murdered.’

  Kennedy looked at his watch thoughtfully. ‘You have told me just enough to make me want to see the coroner himself,’ he mused. ‘If we take the next train out to Williston with you, will you engage to get us a half-hour talk with him on the case, Mr Whitney?’

  ‘Surely. But we’ll have to start right away. I’ve finished my other business in New York. Inspector O’Connor – ah, I see you know him – has promised to secure the attendance of anyone whom I can show to be a material witness in the case. Come on, gentlemen: I’ll answer your other questions on the train.’

  As we settled ourselves in the smoker, Whitney remarked in a low voice, ‘You know, someone has said that there is only one thing more difficult to investigate and solve than a crime whose commission is surrounded by complicated circumstances and that is a crime whose perpetration is wholly devoid of circumstances.’

  ‘Are you so sure that this crime is wholly devoid of circumstances?’ asked Craig.

  ‘Professor,’ he replied, ‘I’m not sure of anything in this case. If I were I should not require your assistance. I would like the credit of solving it myself, but it is beyond me. Just think of it: so far we haven’t a clue, at least none that shows the slightest promise, although we have worked night and day for a week. It’s all darkness. The facts are so simple that they give us nothing to work on. It is like a blank sheet of paper.’

  Kennedy said nothing, and the district attorney proceeded: ‘I don’t blame Mr Nott, the coroner, for thinking it an accident. But to my mind, some master criminal must have arranged this very baffling simplicity of circumstances. You recall that the front door was unlocked. This person must have entered the house unobserved, not a difficult thing to do, for the Wainwright house is somewhat isolated. Perhaps this person brought along some poison in the form of a beverage, and induced the two victims to drink. And then, this person must have removed the evidences as swiftly as they were brought in and by the same door. That, I think, is the only solution.’

  ‘That is not the only solution. It is one solution,’ interrupted Kennedy quietly.

  ‘Do you think someone in the house did it?’ I asked quickly.

  ‘I think,’ replied Craig, carefully measuring his words, ‘that if poison was given them it must have been by someone they both knew pretty well.’

  No one said a word, until at last I broke the silence. ‘I know from the gossip of the Star office that many Williston people say that Marian was very jealous of her sister Laura for capturing the catch of the season. Williston people don’t hesitate to hint at it.’

  Whitney produced another document from that fertile green bag. It was another affidavit. He handed it to us. It was a statement signed by Mrs Wainwright, and read:

  ‘Before God, my daughter Marian is innocent. If you wish to find out all, find out more about the past history of Mr Templeton before he became engaged to Laura. She would never in the world have committed suicide. She was too bright and cheerful for that, even if Mr Templeton had been about to break off the engagement. My daughters Laura and Marian were always treated by Mr Wainwright and myself exactly alike. Of course they had their quarrels, just as all sisters do, but there was never, to my certain knowledge, a serious disagreement, and I was always close enough to my girls to know. No, Laura was murdered by someone outside.’

  Kennedy did not seem to attach much importance to this statement. ‘Let us see,’ he began reflectively. ‘First, we have a young woman especially attractive and charming in both person and temperament. She is just about to be married and, if the reports are to be believed, there was no cloud on her happiness. Secondly, we have a young man whom everyone agrees to have been of an ardent, energetic, optimistic temperament. He had everything to live for, presumably. So far, so good. Everyone who has investigated this case, I understand, has tried to eliminate the double-suicide and the suicide-and-murder theories. That is all right, providing the facts are as stated. We shall see, later, when we interview the coroner. Now, Mr Whitney, suppose you tell us briefly what you have learned about the past history of the two unfortunate lovers.’

  ‘Well, the Wainwrights are an old Westchester family, not very wealthy, but of the real aristocracy of the county. There were only two children, Laura and Marian. The Templetons were much the same sort of family. The children all attended a private school at White Plains, and there also they met Schuyler Vanderdyke. These four constituted a sort of little aristocracy in the school. I mention this because Vanderdyke later became Laura’s first husband. This marriage with Templeton was a second venture.’

 
‘How long ago was she divorced?’ asked Craig attentively.

  ‘About three years ago. I’m coming to that in a moment. The sisters went to college together, Templeton to law school, and Vanderdyke studied civil engineering. Their intimacy was pretty well broken up, all except Laura’s and Vanderdyke’s. Soon after he graduated he was taken into the construction department of the Central Railroad by his uncle, who was a vice-president, and Laura and he were married. As far as I can learn he had been a fellow of convivial habits at college, and about two years after their marriage his wife suddenly became aware of what had long been well known in Williston, that Vanderdyke was paying marked attention to a woman named Miss Laporte in New York.

  ‘No sooner had Laura Vanderdyke learned of this intimacy of her husband,’ continued Whitney, ‘than she quietly hired private detectives to shadow him, and on their evidence she obtained a divorce. The papers were sealed, and she resumed her maiden name.

  ‘As far as I can find out, Vanderdyke then disappeared from her life. He resigned his position with the railroad and joined a party of engineers exploring the upper Amazon. Later he went to Venezuela. Miss Laporte also went to South America about the same time, and was for a time in Venezuela, and later in Peru.

  ‘Vanderdyke seems to have dropped all his early associations completely, though at present I find he is back in New York raising capital for a company to exploit a new asphalt concession in the interior of Venezuela. Miss Laporte has also reappeared in New York as Mrs Ralston, with a mining claim in the mountains of Peru.’

  ‘And Templeton?’ asked Craig. ‘Had he had any previous matrimonial ventures?’

  ‘No, none. Of course he had had love affairs, mostly with the country-club set. He had known Miss Laporte pretty well, too, while he was in law school in New York. But when he settled down to work he seems to have forgotten all about the girls for a couple of years or so. He was very anxious to get ahead, and let nothing stand in his way. He was admitted to the bar and taken in by his father as junior member of the firm of Templeton, Mills & Templeton. Not long ago he was appointed a special master to take testimony in the get-rich-quick-company prosecutions, and I happen to know that he was making good in the investigation.’