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

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СКАЧАТЬ where could they have been concealed so that our searchers didn’t run across them?”

      “As to that, now, I couldn’t say. They may have been taken out of the house altogether.”

      There was a silence for several minutes. Then Markham spoke.

      “The finding of the galoshes pretty well proves your theory, Vance. But do you realize what confronts us now? If your reasoning is correct, the guilty person is some one with whom we’ve been talking this morning. It’s an appalling thought. I’ve gone over in my mind every member of that household; and I simply can’t regard any one of them as a potential mass-murderer.”

      “Sheer moral prejudice, old dear.” Vance’s voice assumed a note of raillery. “I’m a bit cynical myself, and the only person at the Greene mansion I’d eliminate as a possibility would be Frau Mannheim. She’s not sufficiently imaginative to have planned this accumulative massacre. But as regards the others, I could picture any one of ’em as being at the bottom of this diabolical slaughter. It’s a mistaken idea, don’t y’ know, to imagine that a murderer looks like a murderer. No murderer ever does. The only people who really look like murderers are quite harmless. Do you recall the mild and handsome features of the Reverend Richeson of Cambridge? Yet he gave his inamorata cyanide of potassium. The fact that Major Armstrong was a meek and gentlemanly looking chap did not deter him from feeding arsenic to his wife. Professor Webster of Harvard was not a criminal type; but the dismembered spirit of Doctor Parkman doubtless regards him as a brutal slayer. Doctor Lamson, with his philanthropic eyes and his benevolent beard, was highly regarded as a humanitarian; but he administered aconitine rather cold-bloodedly to his crippled brother-in-law. Then there was Doctor Neil Cream, who might easily have been mistaken for the deacon of a fashionable church; and the soft-spoken and amiable Doctor Waite. . . . And the women! Edith Thompson admitted putting powdered glass in her husband’s gruel, though she looked like a pious Sunday-school teacher. Madeleine Smith certainly had a most respectable countenance. And Constance Kent was rather a beauty—a nice girl with an engaging air; yet she cut her little brother’s throat in a thoroughly brutal manner. Gabrielle Bompard and Marie Boyer were anything but typical of the donna delinquente; but the one strangled her lover with the cord of her dressing-gown, and the other killed her mother with a cheese-knife. And what of Madame Fenayrou——?”

      “Enough!” protested Markham. “Your lecture on criminal physiognomy can go over a while. Just now I’m trying to adjust my mind to the staggering inferences to be drawn from your finding of those galoshes.” A sense of horror seemed to weigh him down. “Good God, Vance! There must be some way out of this nightmare you’ve propounded. What member of that household could possibly have walked in on Rex Greene and shot him down in broad daylight?”

      “’Pon my soul, I don’t know.” Vance himself was deeply affected by the sinister aspects of the case. “But some one in that house did it—some one the others don’t suspect.”

      “That look on Julia’s face, and Chester’s amazed expression—that’s what you mean, isn’t it? They didn’t suspect either. And they were horrified at the revelation—when it was too late. Yes, all those things fit in with your theory.”

      “But there’s one thing that doesn’t fit, old man.” Vance gazed at the table perplexedly. “Rex died peacefully, apparently unaware of his murderer. Why wasn’t there also a look of horror on his face? His eyes couldn’t have been shut when the revolver was levelled at him, for he was standing, facing the intruder. It’s inexplicable—mad!”

      He beat a nervous tattoo on the table, his brows contracted.

      “And there’s another thing, Markham, that’s incomprehensible about Rex’s death. His door into the hall was open; but nobody up-stairs heard the shot—nobody up-stairs. And yet Sproot—who was down-stairs, in the butler’s pantry behind the dining-room—heard it distinctly.”

      “It probably just happened that way,” Markham argued, almost automatically. “Sound acts fantastically sometimes.”

      Vance shook his head.

      “Nothing has ‘just happened’ in this case. There’s a terrible logic about everything—a carefully planned reason behind each detail. Nothing has been left to chance. Still, this very systematization of the crime will eventually prove the murderer’s downfall. When we can find a key to any one of the anterooms, we’ll know our way into the main chamber of horrors.”

      At that moment Markham was summoned to the telephone. When he returned his expression was puzzled and uneasy.

      “It was Swacker. Von Blon is at my office now—he has something to tell me.”

      “Ah! Very interestin’,” commented Vance.

      We drove to the District Attorney’s office, and Von Blon was shown in at once.

      “I may be stirring up a mare’s nest,” he began apologetically, after he had seated himself on the edge of a chair. “But I felt I ought to inform you of a curious thing that happened to me this morning. At first I thought I would tell the police, but it occurred to me they might misunderstand; and I decided to place the matter before you to act upon as you saw fit.”

      Plainly he was uncertain as to how the subject should be broached, and Markham waited patiently with an air of polite indulgence.

      “I phoned the Greene house as soon as I made the—ah—discovery,” Von Blon went on hesitantly. “But I was informed you had left for the office; so, as soon as I had lunched, I came directly here.”

      “Very good of you, doctor,” murmured Markham.

      Again Von Blon hesitated, and his manner became exaggeratedly ingratiating.

      “The fact is, Mr. Markham, I am in the habit of carrying a rather full supply of emergency drugs in my medicine-case. . . .”

      “Emergency drugs?”

      “Strychnine, morphine, caffeine, and a variety of hypnotics and stimulants. I find it often convenient——”

      “And it was in connection with these drugs you wished to see me?”

      “Indirectly—yes.” Von Blon paused momentarily to arrange his words. “To-day it happened that I had in my case a fresh tube of soluble quarter-grain morphine tablets, and a Parke-Davis carton of four tubes of strychnine—thirtieths. . . .”

      “And what about this supply of drugs, doctor?”

      “The fact is, the morphine and the strychnine have disappeared.”

      Markham bent forward, his eyes curiously animated.

      “They were in my case this morning when I left my office,” Von Blon explained; “and I made only two brief calls before I went to the Greenes’. I missed the tubes when I returned to my office.”

      Markham studied the doctor a moment.

      “And you think it improbable that the drugs were taken from your case during either of your other calls?”

      “That’s just it. At neither place was the case out of my sight for a moment.”

      “And at the Greenes’?” Markham’s agitation was growing rapidly.

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