The Greatest Murder Mysteries of S. S. Van Dine - 12 Titles in One Volume (Illustrated Edition). S.S. Van Dine
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Название: The Greatest Murder Mysteries of S. S. Van Dine - 12 Titles in One Volume (Illustrated Edition)
Автор: S.S. Van Dine
Издательство: Bookwire
Жанр: Языкознание
isbn: 9788027222896
isbn:
He paused, and gave Markham a smile of cynical affability.
“Observe, please, that each member of this quintette meets all the demands of presumptive guilt: each one fulfills the legal requirements as to time, place, opportunity, means, motive, and conduct. The only drawback, d’ ye see, is that all five are quite innocent. A most discomposin’ fact—but there you are. . . . Now, if all the people against whom there’s the slightest suspicion, are innocent, what’s to be done? . . . Annoyin’, ain’t it?”
He picked up the alibi reports.
“There’s pos’tively nothing to be done but to go on checking up these alibis.”
I could not imagine what goal he was trying to reach by these apparently irrelevant digressions; and Markham, too, was mystified. But neither of us doubted for a moment that there was method in his madness.
“Let’s see,” he mused. “The Major’s is the next in order. What do you say to tackling it? It shouldn’t take long: he lives near here; and the entire alibi hinges on the evidence of the night-boy at his apartment-house.—Come!” He got up.
“How do you know the boy is there now?” objected Markham.
“I ’phoned a while ago and found out.”
“But this is damned nonsense!”
Vance now had Markham by the arm, playfully urging him toward the door.
“Oh, undoubtedly,” he agreed. “But I’ve often told you, old dear, you take life much too seriously.”
Markham, protesting vigorously, held back, and endeavored to disengage his arm from the other’s grip. But Vance was determined; and after a somewhat heated dispute, Markham gave in.
“I’m about through with this hocus-pocus,” he growled, as we got into a taxicab.
“I’m through already,” said Vance.
CHAPTER XXIII
CHECKING AN ALIBI
(Thursday, June 20; 10.30 a.m.)
The Chatham Arms, where Major Benson lived, was a small exclusive bachelor apartment-house in Forty-sixth Street, midway between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. The entrance, set in a simple and dignified façade, was flush with the street, and only two steps above the pavement. The front door opened into a narrow hallway with a small reception room, like a cul-de-sac, on the left. At the rear could be seen the elevator; and beside it, tucked under a narrow flight of iron stairs which led round the elevator shaft, was a telephone switchboard.
When we arrived two youths in uniform were on duty, one lounging in the door of the elevator, the other seated at the switchboard.
Vance halted Markham near the entrance.
“One of these boys, I was informed over the telephone, was on duty the night of the thirteenth. Find out which one it was, and scare him into submission by your exalted title of District Attorney. Then turn him over to me.”
Reluctantly Markham walked down the hallway. After a brief interrogation of the boys, he led one of them into the reception room, and peremptorily explained what he wanted.19
First floor of Chatham Arms Apartment in West Forty-sixth Street
Vance began his questioning with the confident air of one who has no doubt whatever as to another’s exact knowledge.
“What time did Major Benson get home the night his brother was shot?”
The boy’s eyes opened wide.
“He came in about ’leven—right after show time,” he answered, with only a momentary hesitation.
(I have set down the rest of the questions and answers in dramatic-dialogue form, for purposes of space economy.)
Vance: He spoke to you, I suppose?
Boy: Yes, sir. He told me he’d been to the theatre, and said what a rotten show it was—and that he had an awful headache.
Vance: How do you happen to remember so well what he said a week ago?
Boy: Why, his brother was murdered that night!
Vance: And the murder caused so much excitement that you naturally recalled everything that happened at the time in connection with Major Benson?
Boy: Sure—he was the murdered guy’s brother.
Vance: When he came in that night did he say anything about the day of the month?
Boy: Nothin’ except that he guessed his bad luck in pickin’ a bum show was on account of it bein’ the thirteenth.
Vance: Did he say anything else?
Boy (grinning): He said he’d make the thirteenth my lucky day, and he gave me all the silver he had in his pocket—nickels and dimes and quarters and one fifty-cent piece.
Vance: How much altogether?
Boy: Three dollars and forty-five cents.
Vance: And then he went to his room?
Boy: Yes, sir—I took him up. He lives on the third floor.
Vance: Did he go out again later?
Boy: No, sir.
Vance: How do you know?
Boy: I’d ’ve seen him. I was either answerin’ the switchboard or runnin’ the elevator all night. He couldn’t ’ve got out without my seein’ him.
Vance: Were you alone on duty?
Boy: After ten o’clock there’s never but one boy on.
Vance: And there’s no other way a person could leave the house except by the front door?
Boy: СКАЧАТЬ