him. Those œdematous eyelids veil a pair of particularly crafty eyes. Indeed, it was largely his studied pose of fatuousness that led me to suggest that you aid and abet in the investigation.”
Markham leaned back and narrowed his eyes.
“What’s in your mind, Vance?”
“I told you. A psychic seizure—same like Chester’s subliminal visitation.”
Markham knew, by this elusive answer, that for the moment Vance had no intention of being more definite; and after a moment of scowling silence he turned to the telephone.
“If I’m to take on this case, I’d better find out who has charge of it and get what preliminary information I can.”
He called up Inspector Moran, the commanding officer of the Detective Bureau. After a brief conversation he turned to Vance with a smile.
“Your friend, Sergeant Heath, has the case in hand. He happened to be in the office just now, and is coming here immediately.”6
In less than fifteen minutes Heath arrived. Despite the fact that he had been up most of the night, he appeared unusually alert and energetic. His broad, pugnacious features were as imperturbable as ever, and his pale-blue eyes held their habitual penetrating intentness. He greeted Markham with an elaborate, though perfunctory, handshake; and then, seeing Vance, relaxed his features into a good-natured smile.
“Well, if it isn’t Mr. Vance! What have you been up to, sir?”
Vance rose and shook hands with him.
“Alas, Sergeant, I’ve been immersed in the terra-cotta ornamentation of Renaissance façades, and other such trivialities, since I saw you last.7 But I’m happy to note that crime is picking up again. It’s a deuced drab world without a nice murky murder now and then, don’t y’ know.”
Heath cocked an eye, and turned inquiringly to the District Attorney. He had long since learned how to read between the lines of Vance’s badinage.
“It’s this Greene case, Sergeant,” said Markham.
“I thought so.” Heath sat down heavily, and inserted a black cigar between his lips. “But nothing’s broken yet. We’re rounding up all the regulars, and looking into their alibis for last night. But it’ll take several days before the check-up’s complete. If the bird who did the job hadn’t got scared before he grabbed the swag, we might be able to trace him through the pawnshops and fences. But something rattled him, or he wouldn’t have shot up the works the way he did. And that’s what makes me think he may be a new one at the racket. If he is, it’ll make our job harder.” He held a match in cupped hands to his cigar, and puffed furiously. “What did you want to know about the prowl, sir?”
Markham hesitated. The Sergeant’s matter-of-fact assumption that a common burglar was the culprit disconcerted him.
“Chester Greene was here,” he explained presently; “and he seems convinced that the shooting was not the work of a thief. He asked me, as a special favor, to look into the matter.”
Heath gave a derisive grunt.
“Who but a burglar in a panic would shoot down two women?”
“Quite so, Sergeant.” It was Vance who answered. “Still, the lights were turned on in both rooms, though the women had gone to bed an hour before; and there was an interval of several minutes between the two shots.”
“I know all that.” Heath spoke impatiently. “But if an amachoor did the job, we can’t tell exactly what did happen up-stairs there last night. When a bird loses his head——”
“Ah! There’s the rub. When a thief loses his head, d’ye see, he isn’t apt to go from room to room turning on the lights, even assuming he knows where and how to turn them on. And he certainly isn’t going to dally around for several minutes in a black hall between such fantastic operations, especially after he has shot some one and alarmed the house, what? It doesn’t look like panic to me; it looks strangely like design. Moreover, why should this precious amateur of yours be cavorting about the boudoirs up-stairs when the loot was in the dining-room below?”
“We’ll learn all about that when we’ve got our man,” countered Heath doggedly.
“The point is, Sergeant,” put in Markham, “I’ve given Mr. Greene my promise to look into the matter, and I wanted to get what details I could from you. You understand, of course,” he added mollifyingly, “that I shall not interfere with your activities in any way. Whatever the outcome of the case, your department will receive entire credit.”
“Oh, that’s all right, sir.” Experience had taught Heath that he had nothing to fear in the way of lost kudos when working with Markham. “But I don’t think, in spite of Mr. Vance’s ideas, that you’ll find much in the Greene case to warrant attention.”
“Perhaps not,” Markham admitted. “However, I’ve committed myself, and I think I’ll run out this afternoon and look over the situation, if you’ll give me the lie of the land.”
“There isn’t much to tell.” Heath chewed on his cigar cogitatingly. “A Doctor Von Blon—the Greene family physician—phoned Headquarters about midnight. I’d just got in from an up-town stick-up call, and I hopped out to the house with a couple of the boys from the Bureau. I found the two women, like you know, one dead and the other unconscious—both shot. I phoned Doc Doremus,8 and then looked the place over. Mr. Feathergill came along and lent a hand; but we didn’t find much of anything. The fellow that did the job musta got in by the front door some way, for there was a set of footprints in the snow coming and going, besides Doctor Von Blon’s. But the snow was too flaky to get any good impressions. It stopped snowing along about eleven o’clock last night; and there’s no doubt that the prints belonged to the burglar, for no one else, except the doctor, had come or gone after the storm.”
“An amateur housebreaker with a front-door key to the Greene mansion,” murmured Vance. “Extr’ordin’ry!”
“I’m not saying he had a key, sir,” protested Heath. “I’m simply telling you what we found. The door mighta been unlatched by mistake; or some one mighta opened it for him.”
“Go on with the story, Sergeant,” urged Markham, giving Vance a reproving look.
“Well, after Doc Doremus got there and made an examination of the older woman’s body and inspected the younger one’s wound, I questioned all the family and the servants—a butler, two maids, and a cook. Chester Greene and the butler were the only ones who had heard the first shot, which was fired about half past eleven. But the second shot roused old Mrs. Greene—her room adjoins the younger daughter’s. The rest of the household had slept through all the excitement; but this Chester fellow had woke ’em all up by the time I got there. I talked to all of ’em, but nobody knew anything. After a coupla hours I left a man inside and another outside, and came away. Then I set the usual machinery going; and this morning Captain Dubois went over the place the best he could for finger-prints. Doc Doremus has got the body for an autopsy, and we’ll get a report to-night. But there’ll be nothing helpful from that quarter. She was fired on from in front at close range—almost a contact shot. And the other woman—the young one—was all powder-marked, and her nightgown was burnt. She was shot from behind.—That’s about all the dope.”
“Have you been able to get any sort of a statement from the younger one?”
“Not yet. She was unconscious last night, and this morning she was too weak to talk. But the doctor—Von Blon—said we could probably question her this afternoon. We may get something out of her, in case she got a look at the bird before he shot her.”
“That suggests something to me, Sergeant.”