S.S. Van Dine

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


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Cleaver

      A man-about-town.

      Kenneth Spotswoode

      A manufacturer.

      Louis Mannix

      An importer.

      Dr. Ambroise Lindquist

      A fashionable neurologist.

      Tony Skeel

      A professional burglar.

      William Elmer Jessup

      Telephone operator.

      Harry Spively

      Telephone operator.

      Alys La Fosse

      A musical-comedy actress.

      Wiley Allen

      A gambler.

      Potts

      A street-cleaner.

      Amos Feathergill

      Assistant District Attorney.

      William M. Moran

      Commanding Officer of the Detective Bureau.

      Ernest Heath

      Sergeant of the Homicide Bureau.

      Snitkin

      Detective of the Homicide Bureau.

      Guilfoyle

      Detective of the Homicide Bureau.

      Burke

      Detective of the Homicide Bureau.

      Tracy

      Detective assigned to District Attorney’s office.

      Deputy-Inspector Conrad Brenner

      Burglar-tools expert.

      Captain Dubois

      Finger-print expert.

      Detective Bellamy

      Finger-print expert.

      Peter Quackenbush

      Official photographer.

      Dr. Doremus

      Medical Examiner.

      Swacker

      Secretary to the District Attorney.

      Currie

      Vance’s valet.

      CHAPTER I

       THE “CANARY”

       Table of Contents

      In the offices of the Homicide Bureau of the Detective Division of the New York Police Department, on the third floor of the Police Headquarters building in Center Street, there is a large steel filing cabinet; and within it, among thousands of others of its kind, there reposes a small green index-card on which is typed: “ODELL, MARGARET. 184 West 71st Street. Sept. 10. Murder: Strangled about 11 p.m. Apartment ransacked. Jewelry stolen. Body found by Amy Gibson, maid.”

      Here, in a few commonplace words, is the bleak, unadorned statement of one of the most astonishing crimes in the police annals of this country—a crime so contradictory, so baffling, so ingenious, so unique, that for many days the best minds of the Police Department and the District Attorney’s office were completely at a loss as to even a method of approach. Each line of investigation only tended to prove that Margaret Odell could not possibly have been murdered. And yet, huddled on the great silken davenport in her living-room lay the girl’s strangled body, giving the lie to so grotesque a conclusion.

      The true story of this crime, as it eventually came to light after a disheartening period of utter darkness and confusion, revealed many strange and bizarre ramifications, many dark recesses of man’s unexplored nature, and the uncanny subtlety of a human mind sharpened by desperate and tragic despair. And it also revealed a hidden page of passional melodrama which, in its essence and organisms, was no less romantic and fascinating than that vivid, theatrical section of the Comédie Humaine which deals with the fabulous love of Baron Nucingen for Esther van Gobseck, and with the unhappy Torpille’s tragic death.

      Margaret Odell was a product of the bohemian demi-monde of Broadway—a scintillant figure who seemed somehow to typify the gaudy and spurious romance of transient gaiety. For nearly two years before her death she had been the most conspicuous and, in a sense, popular figure of the city’s night life. In our grandparents’ day she might have had conferred upon her that somewhat questionable designation, “the toast of the town”; but to-day there are too many aspirants for this classification, too many cliques and violent schisms in the Lepidoptera of our café life, to permit of any one competitor being thus singled out. But, for all the darlings of both professional and lay press-agents, Margaret Odell was a character of unquestioned fame in her little world.

      Her notoriety was due in part to certain legendary tales of her affairs with one or two obscure potentates in the backwashes of Europe. She had spent two years abroad after her first success in “The Bretonne Maid”—a popular musical comedy in which she had been mysteriously raised from obscurity to the rank of “star”—and, one may cynically imagine, her press-agent took full advantage of her absence to circulate vermilion tales of her conquests.

      She had quitted the “Follies” at the close of the season, and during her subsequent spectacular career in the haunts of Broadway’s night life she had been popularly and familiarly called the Canary. Thus it happened that when her dead body was found, brutally strangled, in her apartment, the crime immediately became known, and was always thereafter referred to, as the Canary murder.

      My own participation in the investigation of the Canary murder case—or rather my rôle of Boswellian spectator—constituted one of the most memorable experiences of my life. At the time of Margaret Odell’s murder John F.-X. Markham was District Attorney of New York, having taken office the preceding January. I need hardly remind you that during the four years of his incumbency he distinguished himself