Didn’t want to be seen and spoil any game Odell mighta been playing.”
“Most considerate of him to keep out of the way of the belles poires,” drawled Vance. “Touchin’ loyalty, what?”
“You don’t believe the rat, do you, Mr. Vance?” asked Heath, with indignant surprise.
“Can’t say that I do. But our Antonio at least spins a consistent yarn.”
“Too damn consistent to suit me,” growled the sergeant.
“That’s all you could get out of him?” It was plain that Markham was not pleased with the results of Heath’s third degree of Skeel.
“That’s about all, sir. He stuck to his story like a leech.”
“You found no chisel in his room?”
Heath admitted that he hadn’t. “But you couldn’t expect him to keep it around,” he added.
Markham pondered the facts for several minutes. “I can’t see that we’ve got a very good case, however much we may be convinced of Skeel’s guilt. His alibi may be thin, but taken in connection with the phone operator’s testimony, I’m inclined to think it would hold tight in court.”
“What about the ring, sir?” Heath was desperately disappointed. “And what about his threats, and his fingerprints, and his record of similar burglaries?”
“Contributory factors only,” Markham explained. “What we need for a murder is more than a prima facie case. A good criminal lawyer could have him discharged in twenty minutes, even if I could secure an indictment. It’s not impossible, you know, that the woman gave him the ring a week ago—you recall that the maid said he was demanding money from her about that time. And there’s nothing to show that the fingerprints were not actually made late Monday afternoon. Moreover, we can’t connect him in any way with the chisel, for we don’t know who did the Park Avenue job last summer. His whole story fits the facts perfectly; and we haven’t anything contradictory to offer.”
Heath shrugged helplessly; all the wind had been taken out of his sails.
“What do you want done with him?” he asked desolately.
Markham considered—he, too, was discomfited.
“Before I answer, I think I’ll have a go at him myself.”
He pressed a buzzer and ordered a clerk to fill out the necessary requisition. When it had been signed in duplicate, he sent Swacker with it to Ben Hanlon.
“Do ask him about those silk shirts,” suggested Vance. “And find out, if you can, if he considers a white waistcoat de rigueur with a dinner jacket.”
“This office isn’t a male millinery shop,” snapped Markham.
“But, Markham dear, you won’t learn anything else from this Petronius.”
Ten minutes later a deputy sheriff from the Tombs entered with his handcuffed prisoner.
Skeel’s appearance that morning belied his sobriquet of “Dude.” He was haggard and pale; his ordeal of the previous night had left its imprint upon him. He was unshaven; his hair was uncombed; the ends of his moustache drooped; and his cravat was awry. But despite his bedraggled condition, his manner was jaunty and contemptuous. He gave Heath a defiant leer and faced the district attorney with swaggering indifference.
To Markham’s questions he doggedly repeated the same story he had told Heath. He clung tenaciously to every detail of it with the ready accuracy of a man who had painstakingly memorized a lesson and was thoroughly familiar with it. Markham coaxed, threatened, bullied. All hint of his usual affability was gone; he was like an inexorable dynamic machine. But Skeel, whose nerves seemed to be made of iron, withstood the vicious fire of his cross-questioning without wincing; and, I confess, his resistance somewhat aroused my admiration despite my revulsion toward him and all he stood for.
After half an hour Markham gave up, completely baffled in his efforts to elicit any damaging admissions from the man. He was about to dismiss him when Vance rose languidly and strolled to the district attorney’s desk. Seating himself on the edge of it, he regarded Skeel with impersonal curiosity.
“So you’re a devotee of Khun Khan, eh?” he remarked indifferently. “Silly game, what? More interestin’ than Conquain or Rum, though. Used to be played in the London clubs. Of East Indian origin, I believe.… You still play it with two decks, I suppose, and permit round-the-corner mating?”
An involuntary frown gathered on Skeel’s forehead. He was used to violent district attorneys and familiar with the bludgeoning methods of the police, but here was a type of inquisitor entirely new to him; and it was plain that he was both puzzled and apprehensive. He decided to meet this novel antagonist with a smirk of arrogant amusement.
“By the bye,” continued Vance, with no change in tone, “can anyone hidden in the clothes press of the Odell living room see the davenport through the keyhole?”
Suddenly all trace of a smile was erased from the man’s features.
“And I say,” Vance hurried on, his eyes fixed steadily on the other, “why didn’t you give the alarm?”
I was watching Skeel closely, and though his set expression did not alter, I saw the pupils of his eyes dilate. Markham, also, I think, noted this phenomenon.
“Don’t bother to answer,” pursued Vance, as the man opened his lips to speak. “But tell me: didn’t the sight shake you up a bit?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Skeel retorted with sullen impertinence. But, for all his sangfroid, one sensed an uneasiness in his manner. There was an overtone of effort in his desire to appear indifferent, which robbed his words of complete conviction.
“Not a pleasant situation, that.” Vance ignored his retort. “How did you feel, crouching there in the dark, when the closet doorknob was turned and someone tried to get in?” His eyes were boring into the man, though his voice retained its casual intonation.
The muscles of Skeel’s face tightened, but he did not speak.
“Lucky thing you took the precaution of locking yourself in—eh, what?” Vance went on. “Suppose he’d got the door open—my word! Then what?…”
He paused and smiled with a kind of silky sweetness which was more impressive than any glowering aggression.
“I say, did you have your steel chisel ready for him? Maybe he’d have been too quick and strong for you—maybe there would have been thumbs pressing against your larnyx, too, before you could have struck him—eh?… Did you think of that, there in the dark?… No, not precisely a pleasant situation. A bit gruesome, in fact.”
“What are you raving about?” Skeel spat out insolently. “You’re balmy.” But his swagger had been forgotten, and a look akin to horror had passed across his face. This slackening of pose was momentary, however; almost at once his smirk returned, and his head swayed in contempt.
Vance sauntered back to his chair and stretched himself in it listlessly, as if all his interest in the case had again evaporated.
Markham had watched the little drama attentively, but Heath had sat smoking with ill-concealed annoyance. The silence that followed was broken by Skeel.
“Well, I suppose I’m to be railroaded. Got it all planned, have you?… Try and railroad me!” He laughed harshly. “My lawyer’s Abe Rubin, and you might phone him that I’d like to see him.”34
Markham, with a gesture of annoyance, waved to the deputy sheriff to take Skeel back to the Tombs.
“What were you trying to get at?” he asked Vance when the man was gone.
“Just an elusive notion in the depths of my being struggling for the light.” Vance smoked placidly a moment.