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your obsession that either Miss St. Clair or Captain Leacock is guilty, what? . . . And won’t you relent and unshackle the Captain as I begged you to?”
He extended his arms in a theatrical gesture of supplication.
Markham’s wrath was at the breaking-point, but he got up deliberately and, going to the woman, held out his hand.
“Miss St. Clair,” he said kindly—and again I was impressed by the bigness of the man—, “I wish to assure you that I have dismissed the idea of your guilt, and also Captain Leacock’s, from what Mr. Vance terms my incredibly rigid and unreceptive mind. . . . I forgive him, however, because he has saved me from doing you a very grave injustice. And I will see that you have your Captain back as soon as the papers can be signed for his release.”
As we walked out onto Riverside Drive, Markham turned savagely on Vance.
“So! I was keeping her precious Captain locked up, and you were pleading with me to let him go! You know damned well I didn’t think either one of them was guilty—you—you lounge lizard!”
Vance sighed.
“Dear me! Don’t you want to be of any help at all in this case?” he asked sadly.
“What good did it do you to make an ass of me in front of that woman?” spluttered Markham. “I can’t see that you got anywhere, with all your tomfoolery.”
“What!” Vance registered utter amazement. “The testimony you’ve heard to-day is going to help immeasurably in convicting the culprit. Furthermore, we now know about the gloves and hand-bag, and who the lady was that called at Benson’s office, and what Miss St. Clair did between twelve and one, and why she dined alone with Alvin, and why she first had tea with him, and how the jewels came to be there, and why the Captain took her his gun and then threw it away, and why he confessed. . . . My word! Doesn’t all this knowledge soothe you? It rids the situation of so much débris.”
He stopped and lit a cigarette.
“The really important thing the lady told us was that her friends knew she invariably departed at midnight when she went out of an evening. Don’t overlook or belittle that point, old dear; it’s most pert’nent. I told you long ago that the person who shot Benson knew she was dining with him that night.”
“You’ll be telling me next you know who killed him,” Markham scoffed.
Vance sent a ring of smoke circling upward.
“I’ve known all along who shot the blighter.”
Markham snorted derisively.
“Indeed! And when did this revelation burst upon you?”
“Oh, not more than five minutes after I entered Benson’s house that first morning,” replied Vance.
“Well, well! Why didn’t you confide in me, and avoid all these trying activities?”
“Quite impossible,” Vance explained jocularly. “You were not ready to receive my apocryphal knowledge. It was first necess’ry to lead you patiently by the hand out of the various dark forests and morasses into which you insisted upon straying. You’re so dev’lishly unimag’native, don’t y’ know.”
A taxicab was passing, and he hailed it.
“Eighty-seven West Forty-eighth Street,” he directed.
Then he took Markham’s arm confidingly.
“Now for a brief chat with Mrs. Platz. And then—then I shall pour into your ear all my maidenly secrets.”
CHAPTER XXI
SARTORIAL REVELATIONS
(Wednesday, June 19; 5.30 p.m.)
The housekeeper regarded our visit that afternoon with marked uneasiness. Though she was a large powerful woman, her body seemed to have lost some of its strength, and her face showed signs of prolonged anxiety. Snitkin informed us, when we entered, that she had carefully read every newspaper account of the progress of the case, and had questioned him interminably on the subject.
She entered the living-room with scarcely an acknowledgment of our presence, and took the chair Vance placed for her like a woman resigning herself to a dreaded but inevitable ordeal. When Vance looked at her keenly, she gave him a frightened glance and turned her face away, as if, in the second their eyes met, she had read his knowledge of some secret she had been jealously guarding.
Vance began his questioning without prelude or protasis.
“Mrs. Platz, was Mr. Benson very particular about his toupee—that is, did he often receive his friends without having it on?”
The woman appeared relieved.
“Oh, no, sir—never.”
“Think back, Mrs. Platz. Has Mr. Benson never, to your knowledge, been in anyone’s company without his toupee?”
She was silent for some time, her brows contracted.
“Once I saw him take off his wig and show it to Colonel Ostrander, an elderly gentleman who used to call here very often. But Colonel Ostrander was an old friend of his. He told me they lived together once.”
“No one else?”
Again she frowned thoughtfully.
“No,” she said, after several minutes.
“What about the tradespeople?”
“He was very particular about them. . . . And strangers, too,” she added. “When he used to sit in here in hot weather without his wig, he always pulled the shade on that window.” She pointed to the one nearest the hallway. “You can look in it from the steps.”
“I’m glad you brought up that point,” said Vance. “And anyone standing on the steps could tap on the window or the iron bars, and attract the attention of anyone in this room?”
“Oh, yes, sir—easily. I did it myself once, when I went on an errand and forgot my key.”
“It’s quite likely, don’t you think, that the person who shot Mr. Benson obtained admittance that way?”
“Yes, sir.” She grasped eagerly at the suggestion.
“The person would have had to know Mr. Benson pretty well to tap on the window instead of ringing the bell. Don’t you agree with me, Mrs. Platz?”
“Yes—sir.” Her tone was doubtful: evidently the point was a little beyond her.
“If a stranger had tapped on the window would Mr. Benson have admitted him without his toupee?”
“Oh, no—he wouldn’t have let a stranger in.”
“You are sure the bell didn’t ring that night?”
“Positive, sir.” The answer was very emphatic.
“Is there a light on the front steps?”
“No, sir.”
“If Mr. Benson had looked out of the window to see who was tapping, could he have recognized the person at night?”
The woman hesitated.
“I don’t know—I don’t think so.”
“Is there any way you can see through the front door who is outside, without opening it?”
“No, sir. Sometimes I wished there was.”
“Then, if the person knocked on the window, Mr. Benson must have recognized the voice?”
“It looks that way, sir.”
“And you’re certain no