fingerprints,” he said, tossing the towel on the bed.
“Marvelous!” Markham rallied him. “That, of course, convicts Spotswoode.”
“Tut, tut! But it helps substantiate my theory of the crime.” He walked to the dressing table and sniffed at a tiny silver atomizer. “The lady used Coty’s Chypre,” he murmured. “Why will they all do it?”
“And just what does that help substantiate?”
“Markham dear, I’m absorbing atmosphere. I’m attuning my soul to the apartment’s vibrations. Do let me attune in peace. I may have a visitation at any moment—a revelation from Sinai, as it were.”
He continued his round of investigation and at last passed out into the main hall, where he stood, one foot holding open the door, looking about him with curious intentness. When he returned to the living room, he sat down on the edge of the rosewood table and surrendered himself to gloomy contemplation. After several minutes he gave Markham a sardonic grin.
“I say! This is a problem. Dash it all, it’s uncanny!”
“I had an idea,” scoffed Markham, “that sooner or later you’d revise your deductions in regard to Spotswoode.”
Vance stared idly at the ceiling.
“You’re devilish stubborn, don’t y’ know. Here I am trying to extricate you from a deuced unpleasant predicament, and all you do is to indulge in caustic observations calculated to damp my youthful ardor.”
Markham left the window and seated himself on the arm of the davenport facing Vance. His eyes held a worried look.
“Vance, don’t get me wrong. Spotswoode means nothing in my life. If he did this thing, I’d like to know it. Unless this case is cleared up, I’m in for an ungodly walloping by the newspapers. It’s not to my interests to discourage any possibility of a solution. But your conclusion about Spotswoode is impossible. There are too many contradictory facts.”
“That’s just it, don’t y’ know. The contradic’try indications are far too perfect. They fit together too beautifully; they’re almost as fine as the forms in a Michelangelo statue. They’re too carefully coordinated, d’ ye see, to have been merely a haphazard concatenation of circumstances. They signify conscious design.”
Markham rose and, slowly returning to the window, stood looking out into the little rear yard.
“If I could grant your premise that Spotswoode killed the girl,” he said, “I could follow your syllogism. But I can’t very well convict a man on the grounds that his defense is too perfect.”
“What we need, Markham, is inspiration. The mere contortions of the sibyl are not enough.” Vance took a turn up and down the room. “What really infuriates me is that I’ve been outwitted. And by a manufacturer of automobile access’ries!… It’s most humiliatin’.”
He sat down at the piano and played the opening bars of Brahms’s Capriccio No. 1. “Needs tuning,” he muttered; and, sauntering to the Boule cabinet, he ran his finger over the marquetry. “Pretty and all that,” he said, “but a bit fussy. Good example, though. The deceased’s aunt from Seattle should get a very fair price for it.” He regarded a pendent girandole at the side of the cabinet. “Rather nice, that, if the original candles hadn’t been supplanted with modern frosted bulbs.” He paused before the little china clock on the mantel. “Gingerbread. I’m sure it kept atrocious time.” Passing on to the escritoire, he examined it critically. “Imitation French Renaissance. But rather dainty, what?” Then his eye fell on the wastepaper basket, and he picked it up. “Silly idea,” he commented, “—making a basket out of vellum. The artistic triumph of some lady interior decorator, I’ll wager. Enough vellum here to bind a set of Epictetus. But why ruin the effect with hand-painted garlands? The aesthetic instinct has not as yet invaded these fair States—decidedly not.”
Setting the basket down, he studied it meditatively for a moment. Then he leaned over and took from it the piece of crumpled wrapping paper to which he had referred the previous day.
“This doubtless contained the lady’s last purchase on earth,” he mused. “Very touchin’. Are you sentimental about such trifles, Markham? Anyway, the purple string round it was a godsend to Skeel.… What knickknack, do you suppose, paved the way for the frantic Tony’s escape?”
He opened the paper, revealing a broken piece of corrugated cardboard and a large square dark-brown envelope.
“Ah, to be sure! Phonograph records.” He glanced about the apartment. “But, I say, where did the lady keep the bally machine?”
“You’ll find it in the foyer,” said Markham wearily, without turning. He knew that Vance’s chatter was only the outward manifestation of serious and perplexed thinking; and he was waiting with what patience he could muster.
Vance sauntered idly through the glass doors into the little reception hall, and stood gazing abstractedly at a console phonograph of Chinese Chippendale design which stood against the wall at one end. The squat cabinet was partly covered with a prayer rug, and upon it sat a polished bronze flower bowl.
“At any rate, it doesn’t look phonographic,” he remarked. “But why the prayer rug?” He examined it casually. “Anatolian—probably called a Caesarian for sale purposes. Not very valuable—too much on the Oushak type.… Wonder what the lady’s taste in music was. Victor Herbert, doubtless.” He turned back the rug and lifted the lid of the cabinet. There was a record already on the machine, and he leaned over and looked at it.
“My word! The Andante from Beethoven’s C-Minor Symphony!” he exclaimed cheerfully. “You know the movement, of course, Markham. The most perfect Andante ever written.” He wound up the machine. “I think a little music might clear the atmosphere and volatilize our perturbation, what?”
Markham paid no attention to his banter; he was still gazing dejectedly out of the window.
Vance started the motor, and placing the needle on the record, returned to the living room. He stood staring at the davenport, concentrating on the problem in hand. I sat in the wicker chair by the door waiting for the music. The situation was getting on my nerves, and I began to feel fidgety. A minute or two passed, but the only sound which came from the phonograph was a faint scratching. Vance looked up with mild curiosity, and walked back to the machine. Inspecting it cursorily, he once more set it in operation. But though he waited several minutes, no music came forth.
“I say! That’s deuced queer, y’ know,” he grumbled, as he changed the needle and rewound the motor.
Markham had now left the window and stood watching him with good-natured tolerance. The turntable of the phonograph was spinning, and the needle was tracing its concentric revolutions; but still the instrument refused to play. Vance, with both hands on the cabinet, was leaning forward, his eyes fixed on the silently revolving record with an expression of amused bewilderment.
“The sound box is probably broken,” he said. “Silly machines, anyway.”
“The difficulty, I imagine,” Markham chided him, “lies in your patrician ignorance of so vulgar and democratic a mechanism. Permit me to assist you.”
He moved to Vance’s side, and I stood looking curiously over his shoulder. Everything appeared to be in order, and the needle had now almost reached the end of the record. But only a faint scratching was audible.
Markham stretched forth his hand to lift the sound box. But his movement was never completed.
At that moment the little apartment was filled with several terrifying treble screams, followed by two shrill calls for help. A cold chill swept my body, and there was a tingling at the roots of my hair.
After a short silence, during which the three of us remained speechless, the same feminine voice said in a loud, distinct tone: “No; nothing is the matter. I’m sorry.… Everything is all right.… Please go home, and don’t worry.”
The needle