The Greatest Works of S. S. Van Dine (Illustrated Edition). S.S. Van Dine

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СКАЧАТЬ . . . It’s most humiliatin’.”

      He sat down at the piano and played the opening bars of Brahms’s Capriccio No. 1.

      “Needs tuning,” he muttered; and, sauntering to the Boule cabinet, he ran his finger over the marquetry. “Pretty and all that,” he said, “but a bit fussy. Good example, though. The deceased’s aunt from Seattle should get a very fair price for it.” He regarded a pendent girandole at the side of the cabinet. “Rather nice, that, if the original candles hadn’t been supplanted with modern frosted bulbs.” He paused before the little china clock on the mantel. “Gingerbread. I’m sure it kept atrocious time.” Passing on to the escritoire, he examined it critically. “Imitation French Renaissance. But rather dainty, what?” Then his eye fell on the waste-paper basket, and he picked it up. “Silly idea,” he commented, “—making a basket out of vellum. The artistic triumph of some lady interior decorator, I’ll wager. Enough vellum here to bind a set of Epictetus. But why ruin the effect with hand-painted garlands? The æsthetic instinct has not as yet invaded these fair States—decidedly not.”

      Setting the basket down, he studied it meditatively for a moment. Then he leaned over and took from it the piece of crumpled wrapping-paper to which he had referred the previous day.

      “This doubtless contained the lady’s last purchase on earth,” he mused. “Very touchin’. Are you sentimental about such trifles, Markham? Anyway, the purple string round it was a godsend to Skeel. . . . What knickknack, do you suppose, paved the way for the frantic Tony’s escape?”

      He opened the paper, revealing a broken piece of corrugated cardboard and a large square dark-brown envelope.

      “Ah, to be sure! Phonograph records.” He glanced about the apartment. “But, I say, where did the lady keep the bally machine?”

      “You’ll find it in the foyer,” said Markham wearily, without turning. He knew that Vance’s chatter was only the outward manifestation of serious and perplexed thinking; and he was waiting with what patience he could muster.

      Vance sauntered idly through the glass doors into the little reception-hall, and stood gazing abstractedly at a console phonograph of Chinese Chippendale design which stood against the wall at one end. The squat cabinet was partly covered with a prayer-rug, and upon it sat a polished bronze flower-bowl.

      “At any rate, it doesn’t look phonographic,” he remarked. “But why the prayer-rug?” He examined it casually. “Anatolian—probably called a Cæsarian for sale purposes. Not very valuable—too much on the Oushak type. . . . Wonder what the lady’s taste in music was. Victor Herbert, doubtless.” He turned back the rug and lifted the lid of the cabinet. There was a record already on the machine, and he leaned over and looked at it.

      “My word! The Andante from Beethoven’s C-Minor Symphony!” he exclaimed cheerfully. “You know the movement, of course, Markham. The most perfect Andante ever written.” He wound up the machine. “I think a little good music might clear the atmosphere and volatilize our perturbation, what?”

      Markham paid no attention to his banter; he was still gazing dejectedly out of the window.

      Vance started the motor, and placing the needle on the record, returned to the living-room. He stood staring at the davenport, concentrating on the problem in hand. I sat in the wicker chair by the door waiting for the music. The situation was getting on my nerves, and I began to feel fidgety. A minute or two passed, but the only sound which came from the phonograph was a faint scratching. Vance looked up with mild curiosity, and walked back to the machine. Inspecting it cursorily, he once more set it in operation. But though he waited several minutes, no music came forth.

      “I say! That’s deuced queer, y’ know,” he grumbled, as he changed the needle and rewound the motor.

      Markham had now left the window, and stood watching him with good-natured tolerance. The turn-table of the phonograph was spinning, and the needle was tracing its concentric revolutions; but still the instrument refused to play. Vance, with both hands on the cabinet, was leaning forward, his eyes fixed on the silently revolving record with an expression of amused bewilderment.

      “The sound-box is probably broken,” he said. “Silly machines, anyway.”

      “The difficulty, I imagine,” Markham chided him, “lies in your patrician ignorance of so vulgar and democratic a mechanism.—Permit me to assist you.”

      He moved to Vance’s side, and I stood looking curiously over his shoulder. Everything appeared to be in order, and the needle had now almost reached the end of the record. But only a faint scratching was audible.

      Markham stretched forth his hand to lift the sound-box. But his movement was never completed.

      At that moment the little apartment was filled with several terrifying treble screams, followed by two shrill calls for help. A cold chill swept my body, and there was a tingling at the roots of my hair.

      After a short silence, during which the three of us remained speechless, the same feminine voice said in a loud, distinct tone: “No; nothing is the matter. I’m sorry. . . . Everything is all right. . . . Please go home, and don’t worry.”

      The needle had come to the end of the record. There was a slight click, and the automatic device shut off the motor. The almost terrifying silence that followed was broken by a sardonic chuckle from Vance.

      “Well, old dear,” he remarked languidly, as he strolled back into the living-room, “so much for your irrefutable facts!”

      There came a loud knocking on the door, and the officer on duty outside looked in with a startled face.

      “It’s all right,” Markham informed him in a husky voice. “I’ll call you when I want you.”

      Vance lay down on the davenport and took out another cigarette. Having lighted it, he stretched his arms far over his head and extended his legs, like a man in whom a powerful physical tension had suddenly relaxed.

      “’Pon my soul, Markham, we’ve all been babes in the woods,” he drawled. “An incontrovertible alibi—my word! If the law supposes that, as Mr. Bumble said, the law is a ass, a idiot.—Oh, Sammy, Sammy, vy worn’t there a alleybi! . . . Markham, I blush to admit it, but it’s you and I who’ve been the unutterable asses.”

      Markham had been standing by the instrument like a man dazed, his eyes riveted hypnotically on the telltale record. Slowly he came into the room and threw himself wearily into a chair.

      “Those precious facts of yours!” continued Vance. “Stripped of their carefully disguised appearance, what are they?—Spotswoode prepared a phonograph record—a simple enough task. Every one makes ’em nowadays——”

      “Yes. He told me he had a workshop at his home on Long Island where he tinkered a bit.”

      “He really didn’t need it, y’ know. But it facilitated things, no doubt. The voice on the record is merely his own in falsetto—better for the purpose than a woman’s, for it’s stronger and more penetrating. As for the label, he simply soaked it off of an ordin’ry record, and pasted it on his own. He brought the lady several new records that night, and concealed this one among them. After the theatre he enacted his gruesome little drama and then carefully set the stage so that the police would think it was a typical burglar’s performance. When this had been done, he placed the record on the machine, set it going, and calmly walked out. He had placed the prayer-rug and СКАЧАТЬ