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

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СКАЧАТЬ 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; “and we fully appreciate his delicacy in so doing. But certain circumst’nces connected with Mr. Benson’s death have inadvertently involved you in the case; and you can best help us and yourself—and particularly Mr. Pfyfe—by telling us what we want to know, and trusting to our discretion and understanding.”

      He had emphasized Pfyfe’s name, giving it a significant intonation; and the woman had glanced down uneasily. Her apprehension was apparent, and when she looked up into Vance’s eyes, she was asking herself: How much does he know? as plainly as if she had spoken the words audibly.

      “I can’t imagine what you want me to tell you,” she said, with an effort at astonishment. “You know that Andy was not in New York that night.” (Her designating of the elegant and superior Pfyfe as “Andy” sounded almost like lèse-majesté.) “He didn’t arrive in the city until nearly nine the next morning.”

      “Didn’t you read in the newspapers about the grey Cadillac that was parked in front of Benson’s house?” Vance, in putting the question, imitated her own astonishment.

      She smiled confidently.

      “That wasn’t Andy’s car. He took the eight o’clock train to New York the next morning. He said it was lucky that he did, seeing that a machine just like his had been at Mr. Benson’s the night before.”

      She had spoken with the sincerity of complete assurance. It was evident that Pfyfe had lied to her on this point.

      Vance did not disabuse her; in fact, he gave her to understand that he accepted her explanation, and consequently dismissed the idea of Pfyfe’s presence in New York on the night of the murder.

      “I had in mind a connection of a somewhat diff’rent nature when I mentioned you and Mr. Pfyfe as having been drawn into the case. I referred to a personal relationship between you and Mr. Benson.”

      She assumed an attitude of smiling indifference.

      “I’m afraid you’ve made another mistake.” She spoke lightly. “Mr. Benson and I were not even friends. Indeed, I scarcely knew him.”

      There was an overtone of emphasis in her denial—a slight eagerness which, in indicating a conscious desire to be believed, robbed her remark of the complete casualness she had intended.

      “Even a business relationship may have its personal side,” Vance reminded her; “especially when the intermediary is an intimate friend of both parties to the transaction.”

      She looked at him quickly; then turned her eyes away.

      “I really don’t know what you’re talking about,” she affirmed; and her face for a moment lost its contours of innocence, and became calculating. “You’re surely not implying that I had any business dealings with Mr. Benson?”

      “Not directly,” replied Vance. “But certainly Mr. Pfyfe had business dealings with him; and one of them, I rather imagined, involved you consid’rably.”

      “Involved me?” She laughed scornfully, but it was a strained laugh.

      “It was a somewhat unfortunate transaction, I fear,” Vance went on, “—unfortunate in that Mr. Pfyfe was necessitated to deal with Mr. Benson; and doubly unfortunate, y’ know, in that he should have had to drag you into it.”

      His manner was easy and assured, and the woman sensed that no display of scorn or contempt, however well simulated, would make an impression upon him. Therefore, she adopted an attitude of СКАЧАТЬ