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put his finger on the points of difference, he none the less senses at once which man’s breeding is genuine and instinctive and which man’s is imitative and self-conscious.”
He blew a wreath of smoke toward the ceiling, and settled more deeply into his chair.
“Now, Markham, just what are the universally recognized features of a sordid crime of robbery and murder? . . . Brutality, disorder, haste, ransacked drawers, cluttered desks, broken jewel-cases, rings stripped from the victim’s fingers, severed pendant chains, torn clothing, tipped-over chairs, upset lamps, broken vases, twisted draperies, strewn floors, and so forth. Such are the accepted immemorial indications—eh, what? But—consider a moment, old chap. Outside of fiction and the drama, in how many crimes do they all appear—all in perfect ordination, and without a single element to contradict the general effect? That is to say, how many actual crimes are technically perfect in their settings? . . . None! And why? Simply because nothing actual in this life—nothing that is spontaneous and genuine—runs to accepted form in every detail. The law of chance and fallibility invariably steps in.”
He made a slight indicative gesture.
“But regard this particular crime: look at it closely. What do you find? You will perceive that its mise-en-scène has been staged, and its drama enacted, down to every minute detail—like a Zola novel. It is almost mathematically perfect. And therein, d’ ye see, lies the irresistible inference of its having been carefully premeditated and planned. To use an art term, it is a tickled-up crime. Therefore, its conception was not spontaneous. . . . And yet, don’t y’ know, I can’t point out any specific flaw; for its great flaw lies in its being flawless. And nothing flawless, my dear fellow, is natural or genuine.”
Markham was silent for a while.
“You deny even the remote possibility of a common thief having murdered the girl?” he asked at length; and now there was no hint of sarcasm in his voice.
“If a common thief did it,” contended Vance, “then there’s no science of psychology, there are no philosophic truths, and there are no laws of art. If it was a genuine crime of robbery, then, by the same token, there is no difference whatever between an old master and a clever technician’s copy.”
“You’d entirely eliminate robbery as the motive, I take it.”
“The robbery,” Vance affirmed, “was only a manufactured detail. The fact that the crime was committed by a highly astute person indicates unquestionably that there was a far more potent motive behind it. Any man capable of so ingenious and clever a piece of deception is obviously a person of education and imagination; and he most certainly would not have run the stupendous risk of killing a woman unless he had feared some overwhelming disaster—unless, indeed, her continuing to live would have caused him greater mental anguish, and would have put him in greater jeopardy, even than the crime itself. Between two colossal dangers, he chose the murder as the lesser.”
Markham did not speak at once: he seemed lost in reflection. But presently he turned and, fixing Vance with a dubious stare, said:
“What about that chiselled jewel-box? A professional burglar’s jimmy wielded by an experienced hand doesn’t fit into your æsthetic hypothesis—it is, in fact, diametrically opposed to such a theory.”
“I know it only too well.” Vance nodded slowly. “And I’ve been harried and hectored by that steel chisel ever since I beheld the evidence of its work that first morning. . . . Markham, that chisel is the one genuine note in an otherwise spurious performance. It’s as if the real artist had come along at the moment the copyist had finished his faked picture, and painted in a single small object with the hand of a master.”
“But doesn’t that bring us back inevitably to Skeel?”
“Skeel—ah, yes. That’s the explanation, no doubt; but not the way you conceive it. Skeel ripped the box open—I don’t question that; but—deuce take it!—it’s the only thing he did do: it’s the only thing that was left for him to do. That’s why he got only a ring which La Belle Marguerite was not wearing that night. All her other baubles—to wit, those that adorned her—had been stripped from her and were gone.”
“Why are you so positive on this point?”
“The poker, man—the poker! . . . Don’t you see? That amateurish assault upon the jewel-case with a cast-iron coal-prodder couldn’t have been made after the case had been prized open—it would have had to be made before. And that seemingly insane attempt to break steel with cast iron was part of the stage-setting. The real culprit didn’t care if he got the case open or not. He merely wanted it to look as if he had tried to get it open; so he used the poker and then left it lying beside the dinted box.”
“I see what you mean.” This point, I think, impressed Markham more strongly than any other Vance had raised; for the presence of the poker on the dressing-table had not been explained away either by Heath or Inspector Brenner. . . . “Is that the reason you questioned Skeel as if he might have been present when your other visitor was there?”
“Exactly. By the evidence of the jewel-case I knew he either was in the apartment when the bogus crime of robbery was being staged, or else had come upon the scene when it was over and the stage-director had cleared out. . . . From his reactions to my questions I rather fancy he was present.”
“Hiding in the closet?”
“Yes. That would account for the closet not having been disturbed. As I see it, it wasn’t ransacked, for the simple and rather grotesque reason that the elegant Skeel was locked within. How else could that one clothes-press have escaped the rifling activities of the pseudo-burglar? He wouldn’t have omitted it deliberately, and he was far too thorough-going to have overlooked it accidentally.—Then there are the finger-prints on the knob. . . .”
Vance lightly tapped on the arm of his chair.
“I tell you, Markham old dear, you simply must build your conception of the crime on this hypothesis, and proceed accordingly. If you don’t, each edifice you rear will come toppling about your ears.”
14. I sent a proof of the following paragraphs to Vance, and he edited and corrected them; so that, as they now stand, they represent his theories in practically his own words.
CHAPTER XV
FOUR POSSIBILITIES
(Wednesday, September 12; evening)
When Vance finished speaking, there was a long silence. Markham, impressed by the other’s earnestness, sat in a brown study. His ideas had been shaken. The theory of Skeel’s guilt, to which he had clung from the moment of the identification of the finger-prints, had, it must be admitted, not entirely satisfied him, although he had been able to suggest no alternative. Now Vance had categorically repudiated this theory and at the same time had advanced another which, despite its indefiniteness, had nevertheless taken into account all the physical points of the case; and Markham, at first antagonistic, had found himself, almost against his will, becoming more and more sympathetic to this new point of view.
“Damn it, Vance!” he said. “I’m not in the least convinced by your theatrical theory. And yet, I feel a curious undercurrent of plausibility in your analyses. . . . I wonder——”
He turned sharply, and scrutinized the other steadfastly for a moment.
“Look here! Have you any one in mind as the protagonist of the drama you’ve outlined?”
“’Pon my word, I haven’t the slightest notion as to who killed the lady,” Vance assured him. “But if you are ever to find the murderer, you must look for a shrewd, superior man with nerves of iron, who was in imminent danger of being irremediably ruined by the girl—a man of inherent cruelty and vindictiveness;