The Philo Vance Megapack. S.S. Van Dine

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ It seemed natural that the closet might have been kept locked—I didn’t give it a second thought.… And the next night he telephoned me to the club here. He had first called my home on Long Island and learned that I was staying here. I had never seen him before—didn’t know of his existence. But, it seems, he had equipped himself with a knowledge of my identity—probably some of the money I gave to the woman went to him. What a muck heap I had fallen into!… When he phoned, he mentioned the phonograph, and I knew he had found out something. I met him in the Waldorf lobby, and he told me the truth: there was no doubting his word. When he saw I was convinced, he demanded so enormous a sum that I was staggered.”

      Spotswoode lit a cigarette with steady fingers.

      “Mr. Markham, I am no longer a rich man. The truth is, I am on the verge of bankruptcy. The business my father left me has been in a receiver’s hands for nearly a year. The Long Island estate on which I live belongs to my wife. Few people know these things, but unfortunately they are true. It would have been utterly impossible for me to raise the amount Skeel demanded, even had I been inclined to play the coward. I did, however, give him a small sum to keep him quiet for a few days, promising him all he asked as soon as I could convert some of my holdings. I hoped in the interim to get possession of the record and thus spike his guns. But in that I failed; and so, when he threatened to tell you everything, I agreed to bring the money to his home late Saturday night. I kept the appointment, with the full intention of killing him. I was careful about entering, but he had helped me by explaining when and how I could get in without being seen. Once there, I wasted no time. The first moment he was off his guard I seized him—and gloried in the act. Then, locking the door and taking the key, I walked out of the house quite openly, and returned here to the club.—That’s all, I think.”

      Vance was watching him musingly.

      “So when you raised my bet last night,” he said, “the amount represented a highly important item in your exchequer.”

      Spotswoode smiled faintly. “It represented practically every cent I had in the world.”

      “Astonishin’! And would you mind if I asked you why you selected the label of Beethoven’s Andante for your record?”

      “Another miscalculation,” the man said wearily. “It occurred to me that if anyone should, by any chance, open the phonograph before I could return and destroy the record, he wouldn’t be as likely to want to hear the classics as he would a more popular selection.”

      “And one who detests popular music had to find it! I fear, Mr. Spotswoode, that an unkind fate sat in at your game.”

      “Yes.… If I were religiously inclined, I might talk poppycock about retribution and divine punishment.”

      “I’d like to ask you about the jewelry,” said Markham. “It’s not sportsmanlike to do it, and I wouldn’t suggest it, except that you’ve already confessed voluntarily to the main points at issue.”

      “I shall take no offense at any question you desire to ask, sir,” Spotswoode answered. “After I had recovered my letters from the document box, I turned the rooms upside down to give the impression of a burglary—being careful to use gloves, of course. And I took the woman’s jewelry for the same reason. Parenthetically, I had paid for most of it. I offered it as a sop to Skeel, but he was afraid to accept it; and finally I decided to rid myself of it. I wrapped it in one of the club newspapers and threw it in a wastebin near the Flatiron Building.”

      “You wrapped it in the morning Herald,” put in Heath. “Did you know that Pop Cleaver reads nothing but the Herald?”

      “Sergeant!” Vance’s voice was a cutting reprimand. “Certainly Mr. Spotswoode was not aware of that fact—else he would not have selected the Herald.”

      Spotswoode smiled at Heath with pitying contempt. Then, with an appreciative glance at Vance, he turned back to Markham.

      “An hour or so after I had disposed of the jewels, I was assailed by the fear that the package might be found and the paper traced. So I bought another Herald and put it on the rack.” He paused. “Is that all?”

      Markham nodded.

      “Thank you—that’s all; except that I must now ask you to go with these officers.”

      “In that case,” said Spotswoode quietly, “there’s a small favor I have to ask of you, Mr. Markham. Now that the blow has fallen, I wish to write a certain note—to my wife. But I want to be alone when I write it. Surely you understand that desire. It will take but a few moments. Your men may stand at the door—I can’t very well escape.… The victor can afford to be generous to that extent.”

      Before Markham had time to reply, Vance stepped forward and touched his arm.

      “I trust,” he interposed, “that you won’t deem it necess’ry to refuse Mr. Spotswoode’s request.”

      Markham looked at him hesitantly.

      “I guess you’ve pretty well earned the right to dictate, Vance,” he acquiesced.

      Then he ordered Heath and Snitkin to wait outside in the hall, and he and Vance and I went into the adjoining room. Markham stood, as if on guard, near the door; but Vance, with an ironical smile, sauntered to the window and gazed out into Madison Square.

      “My word, Markham!” he declared. “There’s something rather colossal about that chap. Y’ know, one can’t help admiring him. He’s so eminently sane and logical.”

      Markham made no response. The drone of the city’s midafternoon noises, muffled by the closed windows, seemed to intensify the ominous silence of the little bedchamber where we waited.

      Then came a sharp report from the other room.

      Markham flung open the door. Heath and Snitkin were already rushing toward Spotswoode’s prostrate body, and were bending over it when Markham entered. Immediately he wheeled about and glared at Vance, who now appeared in the doorway.

      “He’s shot himself!”

      “Fancy that,” said Vance.

      “You—you knew he was going to do that?” Markham spluttered.

      “It was rather obvious, don’t y’ know.”

      Markham’s eyes flashed angrily.

      “And you deliberately interceded for him—to give him the opportunity?”

      “Tut, tut, my dear fellow!” Vance reproached him. “Pray don’t give way to conventional moral indignation. However unethical—theoretically—it may be to take another’s life, a man’s own life is certainly his to do with as he chooses. Suicide is his inalienable right. And under the paternal tyranny of our modern democracy, I’m rather inclined to think it’s about the only right he has left, what?”

      He glanced at his watch and frowned.

      “D’ ye know, I’ve missed my concert, bothering with your beastly affairs,” he complained amiably, giving Markham an engaging smile; “and now you’re actually scolding me. ’Pon my word, old fellow, you’re deuced ungrateful!”

36 The treatise referred to by Vance was Handbuch für Untersuchungsrichter СКАЧАТЬ