The Greatest Works of S. S. Van Dine (Illustrated Edition). S.S. Van DineЧитать онлайн книгу.
business. She’s no ball of fluff. She has a solid, honest streak in her—a bit of Teutonic blood, I’d say.” He paused meditatively. “Y’ know, Markham, I have a suspicion you’ll hear from little Miss Katinka again.”
“Crystal-gazing, eh?” mumbled Markham.
“Oh, dear no!” Vance was looking lazily out of the window. “But I did enter the silence, so to speak, and indulged in a bit of craniological contemplation.”
“I thought I noticed you ogling the girl,” said Markham. “But since her hair was bobbed and she had her hat on, how could you analyse the bumps?—if that’s the phrase you phrenologists use.”
“Forget not Goldsmith’s preacher,” Vance admonished. “Truth from his lips prevailed, and those who came to scoff remained et cetera. . . . To begin with, I’m no phrenologist. But I believe in epochal, racial, and heredit’ry variations in skulls. In that respect I’m merely an old-fashioned Darwinian. Every child knows that the skull of the Piltdown man differs from that of the Cromagnard; and even a lawyer could distinguish an Aryan head from a Ural-Altaic head, or a Maylaic from a Negrillo. And, if one is versed at all in the Mendelian theory, heredit’ry cranial similarities can be detected. . . . But all this erudition is beyond you, I fear. Suffice it to say that, despite the young woman’s hat and hair, I could see the contour of her head and the bone structure in her face; and I even caught a glimpse of her ear.”
“And thereby deduced that we’d hear from her again,” added Markham scornfully.
“Indirectly—yes,” admitted Vance. Then, after a pause: “I say, in view of Miss Hoffman’s revelation, do not Colonel Ostrander’s comments of yesterday begin to take on a phosph’rescent aspect?”
“Look here!” said Markham impatiently. “Cut out these circumlocutions, and get to the point.”
Vance turned slowly from the window, and regarded him pensively.
“Markham—I put the question academically—doesn’t Pfyfe’s forged check, with its accompanying confession and its shortly-due note, constitute a rather strong motive for doing away with Benson?”
Markham sat up suddenly.
“You think Pfyfe guilty—is that it?”
“Well, here’s the touchin’ situation: Pfyfe obviously signed Benson’s name to a check, told him about it, and got the surprise of his life when his dear old pal asked him for a ninety-day note to cover the amount, and also for a written confession to hold over him to insure payment. . . . Now consider the subs’quent facts:—First, Pfyfe called on Benson a week ago and had a quarrel in which the check was mentioned,—Damon was prob’bly pleading with Pythias to extend the note, and was vulgarly informed that there was ‘nothing doing’. Secondly, Benson was shot two days later, less than a week before the note fell due. Thirdly, Pfyfe was at Benson’s house the hour of the shooting, and not only lied to you about his whereabouts, but bribed a garage owner to keep silent about his car. Fourthly, his explanation, when caught, of his unrewarded search for Haig and Haig was, to say the least, a bit thick. And don’t forget that the original tale of his lonely quest for nature’s solitudes in the Catskills—with his mysterious stop-over in New York to confer a farewell benediction upon some anonymous person—was not all that one could have hoped for in the line of plausibility. Fifthly, he is an impulsive gambler, given to taking chances; and his experiences in South Africa would certainly have familiarized him with fire-arms. Sixthly, he was rather eager to involve Leacock, and did a bit of caddish tale-bearing to that end, even informing you that he saw the Captain on the spot at the fatal moment. Seventhly—but why bore you? Have I not supplied you with all the factors you hold so dear,—what are they now?—motive, time, place, opportunity, conduct? All that’s wanting is the criminal agent. But then, the Captain’s gun is at the bottom of the East River; so you’re not very much better off in his case, what?”
Markham had listened attentively to Vance’s summary. He now sat in rapt silence gazing down at the desk.
“How about a little chat with Pfyfe before you make any final move against the Captain?” suggested Vance.
“I think I’ll take your advice,” answered Markham slowly, after several minutes’ reflection. Then he picked up the telephone. “I wonder if he’s at his hotel now.”
“Oh, he’s there,” said Vance. “Watchful waitin’ and all that.”
Pfyfe was in; and Markham requested him to come at once to the office.
“There’s another thing I wish you’d do for me,” said Vance, when the other had finished telephoning. “The fact is, I’m longing to know what everyone was doing during the hour of Benson’s dissolution—that is, between midnight and one a. m. on the night of the thirteenth, or to speak pedantically, the morning of the fourteenth.”
Markham looked at him in amazement.
“Seems silly, doesn’t it?” Vance went on blithely. “But you put such faith in alibis—though they do prove disappointin’ at times, what? There’s Leacock, for instance. If that hall-boy had told Heath to toddle along and sell his violets, you couldn’t do a blessed thing to the Captain. Which shows, d’ ye see, that you’re too trustin’. . . . Why not find out where everyone was? Pfyfe and the Captain were at Benson’s; and they’re about the only ones whose whereabouts you’ve looked into. Maybe there were others hovering around Alvin that night. There may have been a crush of friends and acquaintances on hand—a regular soirée, y’ know. . . . Then again, checking up on all these people will supply the desolate Sergeant with something to take his mind off his sorrows.”
Markham knew, as well as I, that Vance would not have made a suggestion of this kind unless actuated by some serious motive; and for several moments he studied the other’s face intently, as if trying to read his reason for this unexpected request.
“Who, specifically,” he asked, “is included in your ‘everyone’?” He took up his pencil and held it poised above a sheet of paper.
“No one is to be left out,” replied Vance. “Put down Miss St. Clair—Captain Leacock—the Major—Pfyfe—Miss Hoffman——”
“Miss Hoffman!”
“Everyone! . . . Have you Miss Hoffman? Now jot down Colonel Ostrander——”
“Look here!” cut in Markham.
“—and I may have one or two others for you later. But that will do nicely for a beginning.”
Before Markham could protest further, Swacker came in to say that Heath was waiting outside.
“What about our friend Leacock, sir?” was the Sergeant’s first question.
“I’m holding that up for a day or so,” explained Markham. “I want to have another talk with Pfyfe before I do anything definite.” And he told Heath about the visit of Major Benson and Miss Hoffman.
Heath inspected the envelope and its enclosures, and then handed them back.
“I don’t see anything in that,” he said. “It looks to me like a private deal between Benson and this fellow Pfyfe.—Leacock’s our man; and the sooner I get him locked up, the better I’ll feel.”
“That may be to-morrow,” Markham encouraged him. “So don’t feel downcast over this little delay. . . . You’re keeping the Captain under surveillance, aren’t you?”
“I’ll say so,” grinned Heath.
Vance turned to Markham.
“What about that list of names you made out for the Sergeant?” he asked ingenuously. “I understood you to say something about alibis.”
Markham hesitated, frowning. Then he handed Heath the paper containing the names Vance had called off to him.
“As a matter of caution, Sergeant,” he said morosely, “I wish you’d get me the alibis