The Greatest Murder Mysteries of S. S. Van Dine - 12 Titles in One Volume (Illustrated Edition). S.S. Van Dine

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      CHAPTER VIII

       VANCE ACCEPTS A CHALLENGE

       Table of Contents

      (Saturday, June 15; 4 p.m.)

      After Markham had telephoned Heath the details of the interview, we returned to the Stuyvesant Club. Ordinarily the District Attorney’s office shuts down at one o’clock on Saturdays; but to-day the hour had been extended because of the importance attaching to Miss St. Clair’s visit. Markham had lapsed into an introspective silence which lasted until we were again seated in the alcove of the Club’s lounge-room. Then he spoke irritably.

      “Damn it! I shouldn’t have let her go. . . . I still have a feeling she’s guilty.”

      Vance assumed an air of gushing credulousness.

      “Oh, really? I dare say you’re so psychic. Been that way all your life, no doubt. And haven’t you had lots and lots of dreams that came true? I’m sure you’ve often had a ’phone call from someone you were thinking about at the moment. A delectable gift. Do you read palms, also? . . . Why not have the lady’s horoscope cast?”

      “I have no evidence as yet,” Markham retorted, “that your belief in her innocence is founded on anything more substantial than your impressions.”

      “Ah, but it is,” averred Vance. “I know she’s innocent. Furthermore, I know that no woman could possibly have fired the shot.”

      “Don’t get the erroneous idea in your head that a woman couldn’t have manipulated a forty-five army Colt.”

      “Oh, that?” Vance dismissed the notion with a shrug. “The material indications of the crime don’t enter into my calculations, y’ know,—I leave ’em entirely to you lawyers and the lads with the bulging deltoids. I have other, and surer, ways of reaching conclusions. That’s why I told you that if you arrested any woman for shooting Benson you’d be blundering most shamefully.”

      Markham grunted indignantly.

      “And yet you seem to have repudiated all processes of deduction whereby the truth may be arrived at. Have you, by any chance, entirely renounced your faith in the operations of the human mind?”

      “Ah, there speaks the voice of God’s great common people!” exclaimed Vance. “Your mind is so typical, Markham. It works on the principle that what you don’t know isn’t knowledge, and that, since you don’t understand a thing, there is no explanation. A comfortable point of view. It relieves one from all care and uncertainty. Don’t you find the world a very sweet and wonderful place?”

      Markham adopted an attitude of affable forbearance.

      “You spoke at lunch time, I believe, of one infallible method of detecting crime. Would you care to divulge this profound and priceless secret to a mere district attorney?”

Vance bowed with exaggerated courtesy.¹⁰

      “Delighted, I’m sure,” he returned. “I referred to the science of individual character and the psychology of human nature. We all do things, d’ ye see, in a certain individual way, according to our temp’raments. Every human act—no matter how large or how small—is a direct expression of a man’s personality, and bears the inev’table impress of his nature. Thus, a musician, by looking at a sheet of music, is able to tell at once whether it was composed, for example, by Beethoven, or Schubert, or Debussy, or Chopin. And an artist, by looking at a canvas, knows immediately whether it is a Corot, a Harpignies, a Rembrandt, or a Franz Hals. And just as no two faces are exactly alike, so no two natures are exactly alike: the combination of ingredients which go to make up our personalities, varies in each individual. That is why, when twenty artists, let us say, sit down to paint the same subject, each one conceives and executes it in a different manner. The result in each case is a distinct and unmistakable expression of the personality of the painter who did it. . . . It’s really rather simple, don’t y’ know.”

      “Your theory, doubtless, would be comprehensible to an artist,” said Markham, in a tone of indulgent irony. “But its metaphysical refinements are, I admit, considerably beyond the grasp of a vulgar worldling like myself.”

      “ ‘The mind inclined to what is false rejects the nobler course,’ ” murmured Vance, with a sigh.

      “There is,” argued Markham, “a slight difference between art and crime.”

      “Psychologically, old chap, there’s none,” Vance amended evenly. “Crimes possess all the basic factors of a work of art—approach, conception, technique, imagination, attack, method, and organization. Moreover, crimes vary fully as much in their manner, their aspects, and their general nature, as do works of art. Indeed, a carefully planned crime is just as direct an expression of the individual as is a painting, for instance. And therein lies the one great possibility of detection. Just as an expert æsthetician can analyze a picture and tell you who painted it, or the personality and temp’rament of the person who painted it, so can the expert psychologist analyze a crime and tell you who committed it—that is, if he happens to be acquainted with the person—, or else can describe to you, with almost mathematical surety, the criminal’s nature and character. . . . And that, my dear Markham, is the only sure and inev’table means of determining human guilt. All others are mere guess-work, unscientific, uncertain, and—perilous.”