S.S. Van Dine

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


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to dinner in my apartment—a social devoir. But I refrained—with consid’rable effort, I admit—from putting arsenic in the Pontet Canet. The Borgias and I, y’ see, merely belong in different psychological categ’ries. On the other hand, had I been resolved to do murder, I would—like those resourceful cinquecento patricians—have created my own opportunity. . . . And there’s the rub:—one can either make an opportunity or disguise the fact that he had it, with false alibis and various other tricks. You remember the case of the murderer who called the police to break into his victim’s house before the latter had been killed, saying he suspected foul play, and who then preceded the policemen indoors and stabbed the man as they were trailing up the stairs.”11

      “Well, what of actual proximity, or presence,—the proof of a person being on the scene of the crime at the time it was committed?”

      “Again misleading,” Vance declared. “An innocent person’s presence is too often used as a shield by the real murderer who is actu’lly absent. A clever criminal can commit a crime from a distance through an agency that is present. Also, a clever criminal can arrange an alibi and then go to the scene of the crime disguised and unrecognized. There are far too many convincing ways of being present when one is believed to be absent—and vice versa. . . . But we can never part from our individualities and our natures. And that is why all crime inev’tably comes back to human psychology—the one fixed, undisguisable basis of deduction.”

      “It’s a wonder to me,” said Markham, “in view of your theories, that you don’t advocate dismissing nine-tenths of the police force and installing a gross or two of those psychological machines so popular with the Sunday Supplement editor.”

      Vance smoked a minute meditatively.

      “I’ve read about ’em. Int’restin’ toys. They can no doubt indicate a certain augmented emotional stress when the patient transfers his attention from the pious platitudes of Dr. Frank Crane to a problem in spherical trigonometry. But if an innocent person were harnessed up to the various tubes, galvanometers, electro-magnets, glass plates, and brass knobs of one of these apparatuses, and then quizzed about some recent crime, your indicat’ry needle would cavort about like a Russian dancer as a result of sheer nervous panic on the patient’s part.”

      Markham smiled patronizingly.

      “And I suppose the needle would remain static with a guilty person in contact?”

      “Oh, on the contr’ry.” Vance’s tone was unruffled. “The needle would bob up and down just the same—but not because he was guilty. If he was stupid, for instance, the needle would jump as a result of his resentment at a seemingly newfangled third-degree torture. And if he was intelligent, the needle would jump because of his suppressed mirth at the puerility of the legal mind for indulging in such nonsense.”

      “You move me deeply,” said Markham. “My head is spinning like a turbine. But there are those of us poor worldlings who believe that criminality is a defect of the brain.”

      “I am floored by your erudition,” declared Markham, as he signalled to a passing attendant and ordered another cigar. “I console myself, however, with the fact that, as a rule, murder will leak out.”

      Vance smoked his cigarette in silence, looking thoughtfully out through the window up at the hazy June sky.

      Markham grunted good-naturedly. He was busy cutting and lighting his cigar.

      “In the present case, at any rate,” Markham reminded him, “we are neither waiting inactively for the murder to out, nor sitting in Benson’s living-room trusting to the voluntary return of the criminal.”

      “Either course would achieve success as quickly as the one you are now pursuing,” Vance said.

      “Not being gifted with your singular insight,” retorted Markham, “I can only follow the inadequate processes of human reasoning.”

      “No doubt,” Vance agreed commiseratingly. “And the results of your activities thus far force me to the conclusion that a man with a handful of legalistic logic can successfully withstand the most obst’nate and heroic assaults of ordin’ry commonsense.”

      Markham was piqued.

      “Still harping on the St. Clair woman’s innocence, eh? However, in view of the complete absence of any tangible evidence pointing elsewhere, you must admit I have no choice of courses.”

      “I admit nothing of the kind,” Vance told him; “for, I assure you, there is an abundance of evidence pointing elsewhere. You simply failed to see it.”

      “You think so!” Vance’s nonchalant cocksureness had at last overthrown Markham’s equanimity. “Very well, old man; I hereby enter an emphatic denial to all your fine theories; and I challenge you to produce a single piece of this evidence which you say exists.”

      He threw his words out with asperity, and gave a curt, aggressive gesture with his extended fingers, to indicate that, as far as he was concerned, the subject was closed.

      Vance, too, I think, was pricked a little.

      “Y’ know, Markham old dear, I’m no avenger of blood, or vindicator of the honor of society. The rôle would bore me.”

      Markham smiled loftily, but made no reply.

      Vance smoked meditatively for a while. Then, to my amazement, he turned calmly and deliberately to Markham, and said in a quiet, matter-of-fact voice: