Miss Hoffman told us of his requesting her not to mention the package, I was sure of it. Alvin took them home on the afternoon of the thirteenth, and the major undoubtedly knew it. This fact, I imagine, influenced his decision to end Alvin’s life that night. He wanted those baubles, Markham.”
He rose jauntily and stepped to the door.
“And now it remains only to find ’em.… The murderer took ’em away with him; they couldn’t have left the house any other way. Therefore, they’re in this apartment. If the major had taken them to the office, someone might have seen them; and if he had placed them in a safe deposit box, the clerk at the bank might have remembered the episode. Moreover, the same psychology that applied to the gun applies to the jewels. The major has acted throughout on the assumption of his innocence; and, as a matter of fact, the trinkets were safer here than elsewhere. There’d be time enough to dispose of them when the affair blew over.… Come with me a moment, Markham. It’s painful, I know; and your heart’s too weak for an anaesthetic.”
Markham followed him down the passageway in a kind of daze. I felt a great sympathy for the man, for now there was no question that he knew Vance was serious in his demonstration of the major’s guilt. Indeed, I have always felt that Markham suspected the true purpose of Vance’s request to investigate the major’s alibi, and that his opposition was due as much to his fear of the results as to his impatience with the other’s irritating methods. Not that he would have balked ultimately at the truth, despite his long friendship for Major Benson; but he was struggling—as I see it now—with the inevitability of circumstances, hoping against hope that he had read Vance incorrectly and that, by vigorously contesting each step of the way, he might alter the very shape of destiny itself.
Vance led the way to the living room and stood for five minutes inspecting the various pieces of furniture, while Markham remained in the doorway watching him through narrowed lids, his hands crowded deep into his pockets.
“We could, of course, have an expert searcher rake the apartment over inch by inch,” observed Vance. “But I don’t think it necess’ry. The major’s a bold, cunning soul. Witness his wide square forehead, the dominating stare of his globular eyes, the perpendicular spine, and the indrawn abdomen. He’s forthright in all his mental operations. Like Poe’s Minister D—, he would recognize the futility of painstakingly secreting the jewels in some obscure corner. And anyhow, he had no object in secreting them. He merely wished to hide ’em where there’d be no chance of their being seen. This naturally suggests a lock and key, what? There was no such cache in the bedroom—which is why I came here.”
He walked to a squat rosewood desk in the corner, and tried all its drawers; but they were unlocked. He next tested the table drawer; but that, too, was unlocked. A small Spanish cabinet by the window proved equally disappointing.
“Markham, I simply must find a locked drawer,” he said.
He inspected the room again and was about to return to the bedroom when his eye fell on a Circassian-walnut humidor half hidden by a pile of magazines on the undershelf of the center table. He stopped abruptly and, going quickly to the box, endeavored to lift the top. It was locked.
“Let’s see,” he mused: “what does the major smoke? Romeo y Julieta Perfeccionados, I believe—but they’re not sufficiently valuable to keep under lock and key.”
He picked up a strong bronze paper knife lying on the table and forced its point into the crevice of the humidor just above the lock.
“You can’t do that!” cried Markham; and there was as much pain as reprimand in his voice.
Before he could reach Vance, however, there was a sharp click, and the lid flew open. Inside was a blue velvet jewel case.
“Ah! ‘Dumb jewels more quick than words,’” said Vance, stepping back. Markham stood staring into the humidor with an expression of tragic distress. Then slowly he turned and sank heavily into a chair.
“Good God!” he murmured. “I don’t know what to believe.”
“In that respect,” returned Vance, “you’re in the same disheartenin’ predic’ment as all the philosophers. But you were ready enough, don’t y’ know, to believe in the guilt of half a dozen innocent people. Why should you gag at the major, who actu’lly is guilty?”
His tone was contemptuous, but a curious, inscrutable look in his eyes belied his voice; and I remembered that, although these two men were welded in an indissoluble friendship, I had never heard a word of sentiment, or even sympathy, pass between them.
Markham had leaned forward in an attitude of hopelessness, elbows on knees, his head in his hands.
“But the motive!” he urged. “A man doesn’t shoot his brother for a handful of jewels.”
“Certainly not,” agreed Vance. “The jewels were a mere addendum. There was a vital motive—rest assured. And, I fancy, when you get your report from the expert accountant, all—or at least a goodly part—will be revealed.”
“So that was why you wanted his books examined?”
Markham stood up resolutely. “Come. I’m going to see this thing through.”
Vance did not move at once. He was intently studying a small antique candlestick of oriental design on the mantel.
“I say!” he muttered. “That’s a dev’lish fine copy!”
CHAPTER 24
THE ARREST
(Thursday, June 20; noon.)
On leaving the apartment, Markham took with him the pistol and the case of jewels. In the drug store at the corner of Sixth Avenue he telephoned Heath to meet him immediately at the office and to bring Captain Hagedorn. He also telephoned Stitt, the public accountant, to report as soon as possible.
“You observe, I trust,” said Vance, when we were in the taxicab headed for the Criminal Courts Building, “the great advantage of my methods over yours. When one knows at the outset who committed a crime, one isn’t misled by appearances. Without that foreknowledge, one is apt to be deceived by a clever alibi, for example.… I asked you to secure the alibis because, knowing the major was guilty, I thought he’d have prepared a good one.”
“But why ask for all of them? And why waste time trying to disprove Colonel Ostrander’s?”
“What chance would I have had of securing the major’s alibi if I had not injected his name surreptitiously, as it were, into a list of other names?… And had I asked you to check the major’s alibi first, you’d have refused. I chose the colonel’s alibi to start with because it seemed to offer a loophole—and I was lucky in the choice. I knew that if I could puncture one of the other alibis, you would be more inclined to help me test the major’s.”
“But if, as you say, you knew from the first that the major was guilty, why, in God’s name, didn’t you tell me, and save me this week of anxiety?”
“Don’t be ingenuous, old man,” returned Vance. “If I had accused the major at the beginning, you’d have had me arrested for scandalum magnatum and criminal libel. It was only by deceivin’ you every minute about the major’s guilt, and drawing a whole school of red herrings across the trail, that I was able to get you to accept the fact even today. And yet, not once did I actu’lly lie to you. I was constantly throwing out suggestions, and pointing to significant facts, in the hope that you’d see the light for yourself; but you ignored all my intimations, or else misinterpreted them, with the most irritatin’ perversity.”
Markham was silent a moment. “I see what you mean. But why did you keep setting up these straw men and then knocking them over?”
“You were bound, body and soul, to circumst’ntial evidence,” Vance pointed out. “It was only by letting you see that it led you nowhere that I was able to foist the major on you. There was no evidence against him—he naturally saw to that. No one even regarded him as a possibility: fratricide has been held as inconceivable—a lusus