a statuette of the Goddess Kuan Yin from the Ming Dynasty, a number of very fine Renaissance wood-cuts, and several specimens of Byzantine, Carolingian and early French ivory carvings.
His Egyptian treasures included a gold jug from Zakazik, a statuette of the Lady Nai (as lovely as the one in the Louvre), two beautifully carved steles of the First Theban Age, various small sculptures comprising rare representations of Hapi and Amset, and several Arrentine bowls carved with Kalathiskos dancers. On top of one of his embayed Jacobean book cases in the library, where most of his modern paintings and drawings were hung, was a fascinating group of African sculpture—ceremonial masks and statuette-fetishes from French Guinea, the Sudan, Nigeria, the Ivory Coast, and the Congo.
A definite purpose has animated me in speaking at such length about Vance’s art instinct, for, in order to understand fully the melodramatic adventures which began for him on that June morning, one must have a general idea of the man’s penchants and inner promptings. His interest in art was an important—one might almost say the dominant—factor in his personality. I have never met a man quite like him—a man so apparently diversified, and yet so fundamentally consistent.
Vance was what many would call a dilettante. But the designation does him injustice. He was a man of unusual culture and brilliance. An aristocrat by birth and instinct, he held himself severely aloof from the common world of men. In his manner there was an indefinable contempt for inferiority of all kinds. The great majority of those with whom he came in contact regarded him as a snob. Yet there was in his condescension and disdain no trace of spuriousness. His snobbishness was intellectual as well as social. He detested stupidity even more, I believe, than he did vulgarity or bad taste. I have heard him on several occasions quote Fouché’s famous line: C’est plus qu’un crime; c’est une faute. And he meant it literally.
Vance was frankly a cynic, but he was rarely bitter: his was a flippant, Juvenalian cynicism. Perhaps he may best be described as a bored and supercilious, but highly conscious and penetrating, spectator of life. He was keenly interested in all human reactions; but it was the interest of the scientist, not the humanitarian. Withal he was a man of rare personal charm. Even people who found it difficult to admire him, found it equally difficult not to like him. His somewhat quixotic mannerisms and his slightly English accent and inflection—a heritage of his post-graduate days at Oxford—impressed those who did not know him well, as affectations. But the truth is, there was very little of the poseur about him.
He was unusually good-looking, although his mouth was ascetic and cruel, like the mouths on some of the Medici portraits2; moreover, there was a slightly derisive hauteur in the lift of his eyebrows. Despite the aquiline severity of his lineaments his face was highly sensitive. His forehead was full and sloping—it was the artist’s, rather than the scholar’s, brow. His cold grey eyes were widely spaced. His nose was straight and slender, and his chin narrow but prominent, with an unusually deep cleft. When I saw John Barrymore recently in Hamlet I was somehow reminded of Vance; and once before, in a scene of Cæsar and Cleopatra played by Forbes-Robertson, I received a similar impression.3
Vance was slightly under six feet, graceful, and giving the impression of sinewy strength and nervous endurance. He was an expert fencer, and had been the Captain of the University’s fencing team. He was mildly fond of outdoor sports, and had a knack of doings things well without any extensive practice. His golf handicap was only three; and one season he had played on our championship polo team against England. Nevertheless, he had a positive antipathy to walking, and would not go a hundred yards on foot if there was any possible means of riding.
In his dress he was always fashionable—scrupulously correct to the smallest detail—yet unobtrusive. He spent considerable time at his clubs: his favorite was the Stuyvesant, because, as he explained to me, its membership was drawn largely from the political and commercial ranks, and he was never drawn into a discussion which required any mental effort. He went occasionally to the more modern operas, and was a regular subscriber to the symphony concerts and chamber-music recitals.
Incidentally, he was one of the most unerring poker players I have ever seen. I mention this fact not merely because it was unusual and significant that a man of Vance’s type should have preferred so democratic a game to bridge or chess, for instance, but because his knowledge of the science of human psychology involved in poker had an intimate bearing on the chronicles I am about to set down.
Vance’s knowledge of psychology was indeed uncanny. He was gifted with an instinctively accurate judgment of people, and his study and reading had co-ordinated and rationalized this gift to an amazing extent. He was well grounded in the academic principles of psychology, and all his courses at college had either centered about this subject or been subordinated to it. While I was confining myself to a restricted area of torts and contracts, constitutional and common law, equity, evidence and pleading, Vance was reconnoitring the whole field of cultural endeavor. He had courses in the history of religions, the Greek classics, biology, civics and political economy, philosophy, anthropology, literature, theoretical and experimental psychology, and ancient and modern languages.4 But it was, I think, his courses under Münsterberg and William James that interested him the most.
Vance’s mind was basically philosophical—that is, philosophical in the more general sense. Being singularly free from the conventional sentimentalities and current superstitions, he could look beneath the surface of human acts into actuating impulses and motives. Moreover, he was resolute both in his avoidance of any attitude that savored of credulousness, and in his adherence to cold, logical exactness in his mental processes.
“Until we can approach all human problems,” he once remarked, “with the clinical aloofness and cynical contempt of a doctor examining a guinea-pig strapped to a board, we have little chance of getting at the truth.”
Vance led an active, but by no means animated, social life—a concession to various family ties. But he was not a social animal.—I can not remember ever having met a man with so undeveloped a gregarious instinct,—and when he went forth into the social world it was generally under compulsion. In fact, one of his “duty” affairs had occupied him on the night before that memorable June breakfast; otherwise, we would have consulted about the Cézannes the evening before; and Vance groused a good deal about it while Currie was serving our strawberries and eggs Bénédictine. Later on I was to give profound thanks to the God of Coincidence that the blocks had been arranged in just that pattern; for had Vance been slumbering peacefully at nine o’clock when the District Attorney called, I would probably have missed four of the most interesting and exciting years of my life; and many of New York’s shrewdest and most desperate criminals might still be at large.
Vance and I had just settled back in our chairs for our second cup of coffee and a cigarette when Currie, answering an impetuous ringing of the front-door bell, ushered the District Attorney into the living-room.
“By all that’s holy!” he exclaimed, raising his hands in mock astonishment. “New York’s leading flâneur and art connoisseur is up and about!”
“And I am suffused with blushes at the disgrace of it,” Vance replied.
It was evident, however, that the District Attorney was not in a jovial mood. His face suddenly sobered.
“Vance, a serious thing has brought me here. I’m in a great hurry, and merely dropped by to keep my promise. . . . The fact is, Alvin Benson has been murdered.”
Vance lifted his eyebrows languidly.
“Really, now,” he drawled. “How messy! But he no doubt deserved it. In any event, that’s no reason why you should repine. Take a chair and have a cup of Currie’s incomp’rable coffee.” And before the other could protest, he rose and pushed a bell-button.
Markham hesitated a second or two.
“Oh, well. A couple of minutes won’t make any difference. But only a gulp.” And he sank into a chair facing us.