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up! . . . It looks to me like a get-away.”
Markham frowned. Heath’s report clearly troubled him; but before he could answer, Vance spoke.
“Why this perturbation, Sergeant? You’re watching the Captain. I’m sure he can’t slip from your vigilant clutches.”
Markham looked at Vance a moment; then turned to Heath.
“Let it go at that. But if Leacock attempts to leave the city, nab him.”
Heath went out sullenly.
“By the bye, Markham,” said Vance; “don’t make an appointment for half past twelve to-day. You already have one, don’t y’ know. And with a lady.”
Markham put down his pen, and stared.
“What new damned nonsense is this?”
“I made an engagement for you. Called the lady by ’phone this morning. I’m sure I woke the dear up.”
Markham spluttered, striving to articulate his angry protest.
Vance held up his hand soothingly.
“And you simply must keep the engagement. Y’ see, I told her it was you speaking; and it would be shocking taste not to appear. . . . I promise, you won’t regret meeting her,” he added. “Things looked so sadly befuddled last night,—I couldn’t bear to see you suffering so. Cons’quently, I arranged for you to see Mrs. Paula Banning—Pfyfe’s Éloïse, y’ know. I’m pos’tive she’ll be able to dispel some of this inspissated gloom that’s enveloping you.”
“See here, Vance!” Markham growled. “I happen to be running this office——” He stopped abruptly, realizing the hopelessness of making head-way against the other’s blandness. Moreover, I think, the prospect of interviewing Mrs. Paula Banning was not wholly alien to his inclinations. His resentment slowly ebbed, and when he again spoke his voice was almost matter-of-fact.
“Since you’ve committed me, I’ll see her. But I’d rather Pfyfe wasn’t in such close communication with her. He’s apt to drop in—with preconcerted unexpectedness.”
“Funny,” murmured Vance. “I thought of that myself. . . . That’s why I ’phoned him last night that he could return to Long Island.”
“You ’phoned him——!”
“Awf’lly sorry and all that,” Vance apologized. “But you’d gone to bed. Sleep was knitting up your ravell’d sleave of care; and I couldn’t bring myself to disturb you. . . . Pfyfe was so grateful, too. Most touchin’. Said his wife also would be grateful. He was pathetically consid’rate about Mrs. Pfyfe. But I fear he’ll need all his velvety forensic powers to explain his absence.”
“In what other quarters have you involved me during my absence?” asked Markham acrimoniously.
“That’s all,” replied Vance, rising and strolling to the window.
He stood looking out, smoking thoughtfully. When he turned back to the room, his bantering air had gone. He sat down facing Markham.
“The Major has practically admitted to us,” he said, “that he knows more about this affair than he has told. You naturally can’t push the point, in view of his hon’rable attitude in the matter. And yet, he’s willing for you to find out what he knows, as long as he doesn’t tell you himself,—that was unquestionably the stand he took last night. Now, I believe there’s a way you can find out without calling upon him to go against his principles. . . . You recall Miss Hoffman’s story of the eavesdropping; and you also recall that he told you he heard a conversation which, in the light of Benson’s murder, became significant. It’s quite prob’ble, therefore, that the Major’s knowledge has to do with something connected with the business of the firm, or at least with one of the firm’s clients.”
Vance slowly lit another cigarette.
“My suggestion is this: call up the Major, and ask permission to send a man to take a peep at his ledger accounts and his purchase and sales books. Tell him you want to find out about the transactions of one of his clients. Intimate that it’s Miss St. Clair—or Pfyfe, if you like. I have a strange mediumistic feeling that, in this way, you’ll get on the track of the person he’s shielding. And I’m also assailed by the premonition that he’ll welcome your interest in his ledger.”
The plan did not appeal to Markham as feasible or fraught with possibilities; and it was evident he disliked making such a request of Major Benson. But so determined was Vance, so earnestly did he argue his point, that in the end Markham acquiesced.
“He was quite willing to let me send a man,” said Markham, hanging up the receiver. “In fact, he seemed eager to give me every assistance.”
“I thought he’d take kindly to the suggestion,” said Vance. “Y’ see, if you discover for yourself whom he suspects, it relieves him of the onus of having tattled.”
Markham rang for Swacker.
“Call up Stitt and tell him I want to see him here before noon—that I have an immediate job for him.”
“Stitt,” Markham explained to Vance, “is the head of a firm of public accountants over in the New York Life Building. I use him a good deal on work like this.”
Shortly before noon Stitt came. He was a prematurely old young man, with a sharp, shrewd face and a perpetual frown. The prospect of working for the District Attorney pleased him.
Markham explained briefly what was wanted, and revealed enough of the case to guide him in his task. The man grasped the situation immediately, and made one or two notes on the back of a dilapidated envelope.
Vance also, during the instructions, had jotted down some notations on a piece of paper.
Markham stood up and took his hat.
“Now, I suppose, I must keep the appointment you made for me,” he complained to Vance. Then: “Come, Stitt, I’ll take you down with us in the judges’ private elevator.”
“If you don’t mind,” interposed Vance, “Mr. Stitt and I will forgo the honor, and mingle with the commoners in the public lift. We’ll meet you downstairs.”
Taking the accountant by the arm, he led him out through the main waiting-room. It was ten minutes, however, before he joined us.
We took the subway to Seventy-second Street and walked up West End Avenue to Mrs. Paula Banning’s address. She lived in a small apartment-house just around the corner in Seventy-fifth Street. As we stood before her door, waiting for an answer to our ring, a strong odor of Chinese incense drifted out to us.
“Ah! That facilitates matters,” said Vance, sniffing. “Ladies who burn joss-sticks are invariably sentimental.”
Mrs. Banning was a tall, slightly adipose woman of indeterminate age, with straw-colored hair and a pink-and-white complexion. Her face in repose possessed a youthful and vacuous innocence; but the expression was only superficial. Her eyes, a very light blue, were hard; and a slight puffiness about her cheek-bones and beneath her chin attested to years of idle and indulgent living. She was not unattractive, however, in a vivid, flamboyant way; and her manner, when she ushered us into her over-furnished and rococo living-room, was one of easy-going good-fellowship.
When we were seated and Markham had apologized for our intrusion, Vance at once assumed the rôle of interviewer. During his opening explanatory remarks he appraised the woman carefully, as if seeking to determine the best means of approaching her for the information he wanted.
After a few minutes of verbal reconnoitring, he asked permission to smoke, and offered Mrs. Banning one of his cigarettes, which she accepted. Then he smiled at her in a spirit of appreciative geniality, and relaxed comfortably in his chair. He conveyed the impression that he was fully prepared to sympathize with anything she might tell him.
“Mr. Pfyfe strove very hard to keep you entirely out of this affair,” said Vance;