The Casino Murder Case

by S. S. Van Dine

  There were three roulette tables set down the centre of the room, two black-jack, or vingt-et-un, tables at the middle of the east and west walls, four chuck-a-luck tables, or bird cages, in the four corners, and an elaborate dice table at the far end, between the windows. At the rear of the Gold Room, to the west, was a private card room, with a row of small individual tables where any form of solitaire could be played, and a dealer to look on and to pay or collect, according to the luck and skill of the player. Adjoining this room, to the east, was a crystal bar with a wide archway leading into the main salon. Here only the finest liquors and wines were served. These two rooms had evidently been the main dining-room and the breakfast-room of the old Kinkaid mansion. A cashier’s cage had been constructed in what had once been a linen closet, to the left of the bar.

  Richard Kinkaid’s private office had been constructed by shutting off the front end of the upper hallway. It had one door leading into the bar and another into the Gold Room. This office was about ten feet square and was paneled in walnut—a sombre yet beautifully appointed room, with a single frosted-glass window opening on the front court.

  (I mention the office here because it played so important a part in the final terrible climax of the tragedy that was soon to begin before our eyes.)

  When, that Saturday night, we had reached the narrow hall on the second floor, that led, through a wide draped entrance, into the main salon, Vance glanced casually into the two playing rooms and then turned into the bar.

  “I think, Van, we’ll have ample time for a sip of champagne,” he said, with a curious restraint in his voice. “Our young friend is sitting in the lounge, quite by himself, apparently absorbed in computations. Lynn is a system player; and all manner of prelimin’ries are necess’ry before he can begin. If anything untoward is going to befall him tonight, he is either blissfully unaware of it or serenely indifferent. However, there’s no one in the room now who could reasonably be interested in his existence—or his non-existence, for that matter—so we might as well bide a wee in here.”

  He ordered a bottle of 1904 Krug, and settled back, with outward placidity, in the sprawling chair beside the little table on which the wine was served. But, despite his apparently languid manner, I knew that some unusual tension had taken hold of him: this was obvious to me from the slow, deliberate way in which he took his cigarette from his mouth and broke the ashes in the exact centre of the tray.

  We had scarcely finished our champagne when Morgan Bloodgood, emerging from a rear door, passed through the bar toward the main salon. He was a tall, slight man with a high, somewhat bulging forehead, a thin straight aquiline nose, heavy, almost flabby, lips, a pointed chin, and prominent Darwinian ears with abnormally large tragi and receding lobes. His eyes were hard and smouldering and of a peculiar gray-green cast; and they were so deeply sunken as to appear in almost perpetual shadow. His hair was thin and sand-colored; and his complexion was sallow to the point of bloodlessness. Yet he was not an unattractive man. There was coolness and calm in the ensemble of his features—an immobility that gave the impression of latent power and profound trains of thought. Though I knew he was barely thirty, he could easily have passed for a man of forty or more.

  When he caught sight of Vance he paused and nodded with reserved pleasantry.

  “Going to try your luck tonight, Mr. Vance?” he asked in a deep mild voice.

  “By all means,” Vance returned, smiling only with his lips. Then he added: “I have a new system, don’t y’ know.”

  “That’s bully for the house,” grinned Bloodgood. “Based on Laplace or von Kries?” (I thought I detected a suggestion of sarcasm in his voice.)

  “Oh, my dear fellow!” Vance replied. “Really, now! I rarely go in for abstruse mathematics: I leave that branch of research to experts. I prefer Napoleon’s simple maxim: ‘Je m’engage et puis je vois.’”

  “That’s as good—or as bad—as any other system,” Bloodgood retorted. “They all amount to the same thing in the end.” And with a stiff bow he passed on into the Gold Room.

  Through the divided portières we saw him take his place at the wheel of the centre roulette table.

  Vance put down his glass and, carefully lighting another Régie, rose leisurely.

  “I opine the time to mingle has come,” he murmured, as he moved toward the archway leading into the Gold Room.

  As we entered the salon the door of Kinkaid’s office opened, and Kinkaid appeared. On seeing Vance he smiled professionally, and greeted him in a tone of stereotyped geniality:

  “Good evening, sir. You’re quite a stranger here.”

  “Charmed not to have been entirely forgotten, don’t y’ know,” Vance returned dulcetly. “Especially,” he added, in a steady, flat voice, “as one of my objects in comin’ tonight was to see you.”

  Kinkaid stiffened almost imperceptibly.

  “Well, you see me, don’t you?” he asked, with a cold smile and a simulated air of good-nature.

  “Oh, quite.” Vance, too, became facetiously cordial. “But I should infinitely prefer seein’ you in the restful Jacobean surroundings of your private office.”

  Kinkaid looked at Vance with narrowed searching eyes. Vance returned the gaze steadily, without permitting the smile to fade from his lips.

  Without a word Kinkaid turned and reopened the office door, stepping aside to let Vance and me precede him. He followed us, and closed the door behind him. Then he stood stiffly and, with steady eyes on Vance, waited.

  Vance lifted his cigarette to his lips, took a deep inhalation, and blew a ribbon of smoke toward the ceiling.

  “I say, might we sit down?” he asked casually.

  “By all means—if you’re tired.” Kinkaid spoke in a metallic voice, his face an expressionless mask.

  “Thanks awfully.” Vance ignored the other’s attitude, and settling himself in one of the low leather-covered chairs near the door, crossed his knees in lazy comfort.

  Despite Kinkaid’s unfriendly manner, I felt that the man was not at bottom antagonistic to his guest, but that, as a hardened gambler, he was assuming a defensive bearing in the face of some possible menace the nature of which was unknown to him. He knew, as every one else in the city knew, that Vance was closely, even though unofficially, associated with the District Attorney; and it occurred to me that Kinkaid probably thought Vance had come to him as proxy on some unpleasant official mission. His reaction to such a suspicion would naturally have been this belligerently guarded attitude.

  Richard Kinkaid, his superficial appearance as the conventional gambler notwithstanding, was a cultured and intelligent man. He had been an honor student at college, and held two academic degrees. He spoke several languages fluently and, in his younger days, had been an archæologist of considerable note. He had written two books on his travels in the Orient, both of which may be found today in every public library.

  He was a large man, nearly six feet tall; and despite his tendency to corpulency, it was obvious that he was powerfully built. His iron-gray hair, cut in a short pompadour, looked very light in contrast with his ruddy complexion. His face was oval, but his coarse features gave him an aspect of ruggedness. His brow was low and broad; his nose short, flat and irregular; and his mouth was pinched and hard—a long, straight, immobile slit. His eyes, however, were the outstanding feature of his face. They were small, and the lids sloped downward at the outer corners, like those of a man with Bright’s disease, so that the pupils seemed always to be above the centres of the visible orbs, giving to his expression a sardonic, almost sinister, cast. There were shrewdness, perseverance, subtlety, cruelty and aloofness in his eyes.

  As he stood before us that night, one hand resting on the beautifully carved flat-top desk at the window, the other stuffed deep into the side pocket of his dinner jacket, he kept his gaze fixed on Vance, without displaying either annoyance or concern: his was the perfect “poker face.”

  “What I wished to see you about, Mr. Kinkaid,” Vance
remarked at length, “is a letter I received this morning. It occurred to me it might interest you, inasmuch as your name was not too fondly mentioned in it. In fact, it intimately concerns the various members of your family.”

  Kinkaid continued to gaze at Vance without change of expression. Nor did he speak or make the slightest move.

  Vance contemplated the end of his cigarette for a moment. Then he said:

  “I think it might be best if you perused this letter yourself.”

  He reached into his pocket and handed the two type-written pages to Kinkaid, who took them indifferently and opened them.

  I watched him closely as he read. No new expression appeared in his eyes, and his lips did not move; but the color of his face deepened perceptibly, and, when he had reached the end, the muscles in his cheeks were working spasmodically. His fat neck bulged over his collar, and ugly splotches of red spread over it.

  The hand in which he held the letter dropped jerkily to his side, as if the muscles of his arm were tense; and he slowly lifted his gaze until it met Vance’s eyes.

  “Well, what about it?” he asked through his teeth.

  Vance moved his hand in a slight negative gesture of rejection.

  “I’m not placin’ any bets just now,” he said quietly. “I’m takin’ them.”

  “And suppose I’m not betting?” retorted Kinkaid.

  “Oh, that’s quite all right.” Vance smiled icily. “Every one’s prerogative, don’t y’ know.”

  Kinkaid hesitated a moment; then he grunted deep in his throat and sat down in the chair before the desk, placing the letter before him. After a minute or so of silence he thumped the letter with his knuckles and shrugged.

  “I’d say it was the work of some crank.” His tone was at once light and contemptuous.

  “No, no. Really, now, Mr. Kinkaid,” Vance protested blandly. “That won’t do—it won’t at all do. You’ve chosen the wrong number, as it were. You lose that chip. Why not make another selection?”

  “What the hell!” exploded Kinkaid. He swung round in the swivel chair and glared at Vance with cold, penetrating menace. “I’m no damned detective,” he went on, his lips scarcely moving. “What has the letter to do with me, anyway?”

  Vance did not reply. Instead he met Kinkaid’s vindictive gaze with cool, steady calm—a calm at once impersonal and devastating. I have never envied any one the task of out-staring Vance. There was a subtle psychological power in his gaze, when he wished to exert it, that could not be resisted by the strongest natures that sought to oppose him through the projection of that inner character which is conveyed by the direct stare.

  Kinkaid, with all his forcefulness of mind, had met his match. He knew that Vance’s gaze would neither drop nor shift; and in that silent communication that takes place between two strong adversaries when they look deep into each other’s eyes—that strange wordless duel of personalities—Kinkaid capitulated.

  “Very well,” he said, with a good-natured smile. “I’ll place another wager—if that’ll help you any.” He glanced over the letter again. “There’s a hell of a lot of truth here. Whoever wrote this knows something about the family situation.”

  “You use a typewriter yourself—eh, what?” asked Vance.

  Kinkaid started and then forced a laugh.

  “Just about as rotten as that,” he returned, waving his hand toward the letter.

  Vance nodded sympathetically.

  “I’m no good at it myself,” he remarked lightly, “Beastly invention, the typewriter... But I say, do you think any one intends to harm young Llewellyn?”

  “I don’t know, but I hope so,” Kinkaid snapped, with an ugly grin. “He needs killing.”

  “Why not do it yourself then?” Vance’s tone was matter-of-fact.

  Kinkaid chuckled unpleasantly.

  “I’ve often thought of it. But he’s hardly worth the risk.”

  “Still,” mused Vance, “you seem more or less tolerant of your nephew in public.”

  “Family prejudice, I suppose,” Kinkaid said. “The curse of nepotism. My sister dotes on him.”

  “He spends considerable time here at the Casino.” The remark was half question, half statement.

  Kinkaid nodded.

  “Trying to annex some of the Kinkaid money which his mother won’t supply him too freely. And I humor him. Why not? He plays a system.” Kinkaid snorted. “I wish they’d all play a system. It’s the hit-or-miss babies that cut down the profits.”

  Vance turned the conversation back to the letter.

  “Do you believe,” he asked, “that there’s a tragedy hanging over your family?”

  “Isn’t there one hanging over every family?” Kinkaid returned. “But if anything’s going to happen to Lynn I hope it doesn’t happen in the Casino.”

  “At any rate,” persisted Vance, “the letter insists that I come here tonight and watch the johnnie.”

  Kinkaid waved his hand.

  “I’d discount that.”

  “But you just admitted that there is a lot of truth in the letter.”

  Kinkaid sat motionless for a while, his eyes, like two small shining disks, fixed on the wall. At length he leaned forward and looked squarely at Vance.

  “I’ll be frank with you, Mr. Vance,” he said earnestly. “I’ve a hell of a good idea who wrote that letter. Simply a case of mania and cold feet... Forget it.”

  “My word!” murmured Vance. “That’s dashed interestin’.” He crushed out his cigarette and, rising, picked up the letter, refolded it, and put it back into his pocket. “Sorry to have troubled you and all that... I think, however, I’ll loiter a bit.”

  Kinkaid neither rose nor said a word as we went out into the Gold Room.

  Footnotes

  * It is interesting to note that this same method of selecting and training dealers has been followed at Agua Caliente.

  † Kinkaid even employed the European roulette wheels with only the single “0”.

  ‡ I imagine Kinkaid got his idea for these enormous attendants from the impressive giants in the entrance-hall of the Savoy dining-room in London.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The First Tragedy

  (Saturday, October 15; 11.15 p.m.)

  THE PLACE HAD already begun to fill. There were at least a hundred “members” playing at the various tables and standing chatting in small groups. There was a gala, colorful atmosphere in the great room, coupled with a tinge of excitement and tension. The Japanese orderlies, in native costume, were darting about noiselessly on their various errands; and on either side of the arched entrance stood two uniformed attendants. No movement, however innocent, of any person escaped the ever-watchful eyes of these sentinels. It was a fashionable gathering; and I had no difficulty in identifying many prominent persons from social and financial circles.

  Lynn Llewellyn was still sitting in a corner of the lounge, busily engaged with pencil and note-book and apparently oblivious to all the activity going on about him.

  Vance strolled down the length of the room, greeting a few acquaintances on his way. He paused at the chuck-a-luck table near the east front window and bought a stack of chips. These he wagered on the “one,” doubling each time up to five, and then beginning again. It was incredible how many “ones” showed up on the dice in the cage; and after fifteen minutes Vance had won nearly a thousand dollars. He seemed restless, though, and took his winnings indifferently.

  Turning again to the centre of the room he walked to the roulette table operated by Bloodgood. He looked on for several turns of the wheel from behind a chair, and then sat down to join the play. He was facing the lounge alcove, and as he took his place at the table he glanced casually in that direction and let his eyes rest for a moment on Llewellyn, who was still deep in thought.

  The selections for the next turn of the wheel had been made,—there were only five or six players engaged at the time,—and Bloodgood stood with the ball poised against his middle finger in the trough of th
e bowl, ready to project it on its indeterminate convolutions. But for some reason he did not flip it at once.

  “Faites votre jeu, monsieur,” he called in a facetious sing-song, looking directly at Vance.

  Vance turned his head quickly and met the slightly cynical smile on Bloodgood’s heavy lips.

  “Thanks awfully for the personal signal,” he said, with exaggerated graciousness; and, leaning far up the table toward the wheel, he placed a hundred-dollar bill on the green area marked “0” at the head of the three columns of figures. “My system tells me to play the ‘house number’ tonight.”

  The faint smile on Bloodgood’s lips faded, and his eyebrows went up a trifle. Then he spun the wheel dexterously.

  It was a long play, for the ball had been given a terrific impetus and it danced back and forth for some time between the grooved wheel and the sides of the bowl. At length it seemed to settle in one of the numbered compartments, though the wheel was still spinning too rapidly to permit the reading of the numerals; but it leaped out again, made one or two gyrations, and finally came to rest in the green slot—the “house number.”

  A hum went up round the table as the rake gathered in all the other stakes; but though I watched Bloodgood’s face closely, I could not detect the slightest change of expression:—he was the perfect unemotional croupier.

  “Your system seems to be working,” he remarked to Vance, as he moved out a stack of thirty-five yellow chips. “Vous vous engagez, et puis vous voyez... Mais, qu’est-ce que vous espérez voir, monsieur?”

  “I haven’t the groggiest notion,” returned Vance, gathering up his bill and the chips. “I’m not hopin’—I’m driftin’.”

  “In any event, you’re lucky tonight,” smiled Bloodgood.

  “I wonder...” Vance slid his winnings into his pocket and turned from the table.