The Greatest Works of S. S. Van Dine (Illustrated Edition). S.S. Van Dine
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Название: The Greatest Works of S. S. Van Dine (Illustrated Edition)
Автор: S.S. Van Dine
Издательство: Bookwire
Жанр: Языкознание
isbn: 9788027222902
isbn:
Markham shook his head with emphasis.
“Vance, there’s no human way to get round those facts. They’re firmly established; and they preclude Spotswoode’s guilt as effectively and finally as though he had been at the North Pole that night.”
Vance was unmoved.
“I admit everything you say,” he rejoined. “But as I have stated before, when material facts and psychological facts conflict, the material facts are wrong. In this case, they may not actually be wrong, but they’re deceptive.”
“Very well, magnus Apollo!” The situation was too much for Markham’s exacerbated nerves. “Show me how Spotswoode could have strangled the girl and ransacked the apartment, and I’ll order Heath to arrest him.”
“’Pon my word, I can’t do it,” expostulated Vance. “Omniscience was denied me. But—deuce take it!—I think I’ve done rather well in pointing out the culprit. I never agreed to expound his technic, don’t y’ know.”
“So! Your vaunted penetration amounts only to that, does it? Well, well! Here and now I become a professor of the higher mental sciences, and I pronounce solemnly that Doctor Crippen murdered the Odell girl. To be sure, Crippen’s dead; but that fact doesn’t interfere with my newly adopted psychological means of deduction. Crippen’s nature, you see, fits perfectly with all the esoteric and recondite indications of the crime. To-morrow I’ll apply for an order of exhumation.”
Vance looked at him with waggish reproachfulness, and sighed.
“Recognition of my transcendent genius, I see, is destined to be posthumous. Omnia post obitum fingit majora vetustas. In the meantime I bear the taunts and jeers of the multitude with a stout heart. My head is bloody, but unbowed.”
He looked at his watch, and then seemed to become absorbed with some line of thought.
“Markham,” he said, after several minutes, “I’ve a concert at three o’clock, but there’s an hour to spare. I want to take another look at that apartment and its various approaches. Spotswoode’s trick—and I’m convinced it was nothing more than a trick—was enacted there; and if we are ever to find the explanation, we shall have to look for it on the scene.”
I had got the impression that Markham, despite his emphatic denial of the possibility of Spotswoode’s guilt, was not entirely unconvinced. Therefore, I was not surprised when, with only a half-hearted protest, he assented to Vance’s proposal to revisit the Odell apartment.
CHAPTER XXIX
BEETHOVEN’S “ANDANTE”
(Tuesday, September 18; 2 p. m.)
Less than half an hour later we again entered the main hall of the little apartment building in 71st Street. Spively, as usual, was on duty at the switchboard. Just inside the public reception-room the officer on guard reclined in an easy chair, a cigar in his mouth. On seeing the District Attorney, he rose with forced alacrity.
“When you going to open things up, Mr. Markham?” he asked. “This rest-cure is ruinin’ my health.”
“Very soon, I hope, officer,” Markham told him. “Any more visitors?”
“Nobody, sir.” The man stifled a yawn.
“Let’s have your key to the apartment.—Have you been inside?”
“No, sir. Orders were to stay out here.”
We passed into the dead girl’s living-room. The shades were still up, and the sunlight of midday was pouring in. Nothing apparently had been touched: not even the overturned chairs had been righted. Markham went to the window and stood, his hands behind him, surveying the scene despondently. He was laboring under a growing uncertainty, and he watched Vance with a cynical amusement which was far from spontaneous.
Vance, after lighting a cigarette, proceeded to inspect the two rooms, letting his eyes rest searchingly on the various disordered objects. Presently he went into the bathroom and remained several minutes. When he came out he carried a towel with several dark smudges on it.
“This is what Skeel used to erase his finger-prints,” he said, tossing the towel on the bed.
“Marvellous!” Markham rallied him. “That, of course, convicts Spotswoode.”
“Tut, tut! But it helps substantiate my theory of the crime.” He walked to the dressing-table and sniffed at a tiny silver atomizer. “The lady used Coty’s Chypre,” he murmured. “Why will they all do it?”
“And just what does that help substantiate?”
“Markham dear, I’m absorbing atmosphere. I’m attuning my soul to the apartment’s vibrations. Do let me attune in peace. I may have a visitation at any moment—a revelation from Sinai, as it were.”
He continued his round of investigation, and at last passed out into the main hall, where he stood, one foot holding open the door, looking about him with curious intentness. When he returned to the living-room, he sat down on the edge of the rosewood table, and surrendered himself to gloomy contemplation. After several minutes he gave Markham a sardonic grin.
“I say! This is a problem. Dash it all, it’s uncanny!”
“I had an idea,” scoffed Markham, “that sooner or later you’d revise your deductions in regard to Spotswoode.”
Vance stared idly at the ceiling.
“You’re devilish stubborn, don’t y’ know. Here I am trying to extricate you from a deuced unpleasant predicament, and all you do is to indulge in caustic observations calculated to damp my youthful ardor.”
Markham left the window and seated himself on the arm of the davenport facing Vance. His eyes held a worried look.
“Vance, don’t get me wrong. Spotswoode means nothing in my life. If he did this thing, I’d like to know it. Unless this case is cleared up, I’m in for an ungodly walloping by the newspapers. It’s not to my interests to discourage any possibility of a solution. But your conclusion about Spotswoode is impossible. There are too many contradictory facts.”
“That’s just it, don’t y’ know. The contradict’ry indications are far too perfect. They fit together too beautifully; they’re almost as fine as the forms in a Michelangelo statue. They’re too carefully co-ordinated, d’ ye see, to have been merely a haphazard concatenation of circumstances. They signify conscious design.”
Markham rose and, slowly returning to the window, stood looking out into the little rear yard.
“If I could grant your premise that Spotswoode killed the girl,” he said, “I could follow your syllogism. But I can’t very well convict a man on the grounds that his defense is too perfect.”
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