The Greatest Murder Mysteries of S. S. Van Dine - 12 Titles in One Volume (Illustrated Edition). S.S. Van Dine
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“I guess I’ll be getting along, too,” he rumbled. “But I’m going to keep this bullet a while. It’s got some peculiar rifling marks on it. You don’t want it specially, do you, Sergeant?”
Heath smiled tolerantly.
“What’ll I do with it, Captain? You keep it. But don’t you dare lose it.”
“I won’t lose it,” Hagedorn assured him, with stodgy seriousness; and, without so much as a glance at either the District Attorney or the Chief Inspector, he waddled from the room with a slightly rolling movement which suggested that of some huge amphibious mammal.
Vance, who was standing beside me near the door, turned and followed Hagedorn into the hall. The two stood talking in low tones for several minutes. Vance appeared to be asking questions, and although I was not close enough to hear their conversation, I caught several words and phrases—“trajectory,” “muzzle velocity,” “angle of fire,” “impetus,” “impact,” “deflection,” and the like—and wondered what on earth had prompted this strange interrogation.
As Vance was thanking Hagedorn for his information Inspector O’Brien entered the hall.
“Learning fast?” he asked, smiling patronizingly at Vance. Then, without waiting for a reply: “Come along, Captain; I’ll drive you down town.”
Markham heard him.
“Have you got room for Dinwiddie, too, Inspector?”
“Plenty, Mr. Markham.”
The three of them went out.
Vance and I were now left alone in the room with Heath and the District Attorney, and, as if by common impulse, we all settled ourselves in chairs, Vance taking one near the dining-room door directly facing the chair in which Benson had been murdered.
I had been keenly interested in Vance’s manner and actions from the moment of his arrival at the house. When he had first entered the room he had adjusted his monocle carefully—an act which, despite his air of passivity, I recognized as an indication of interest. When his mind was alert and he wished to take on external impressions quickly, he invariably brought out his monocle. He could see adequately enough without it, and his use of it, I had observed, was largely the result of an intellectual dictate. The added clarity of vision it gave him seemed subtly to affect his clarity of mind.7
At first he had looked over the room incuriously and watched the proceedings with bored apathy; but during Heath’s brief questioning of his subordinates, an expression of cynical amusement had appeared on his face. Following a few general queries to Assistant District Attorney Dinwiddie, he had sauntered, with apparent aimlessness, about the room, looking at the various articles and occasionally shifting his gaze back and forth between different pieces of furniture. At length he had stooped down and inspected the mark made by the bullet on the wainscot; and once he had gone to the door and looked up and down the hall.
The only thing that had seemed to hold his attention to any extent was the body itself. He had stood before it for several minutes, studying its position, and had even bent over the outstretched arm on the table as if to see just how the dead man’s hand was holding the book. The crossed position of the legs, however, had attracted him most, and he had stood studying them for a considerable time. Finally, he had returned his monocle to his waistcoat pocket, and joined Dinwiddie and me near the door, where he had stood, watching Heath and the other detectives with lazy indifference, until the departure of Captain Hagedorn.
The four of us had no more than taken seats when the patrolman stationed in the vestibule appeared at the door.
“There’s a man from the local precinct station here, sir,” he announced, “who wants to see the officer in charge. Shall I send him in?”
Heath nodded curtly, and a moment later a large red-faced Irishman, in civilian clothes, stood before us. He saluted Heath, but on recognizing the District Attorney, made Markham the recipient of his report.
“I’m Officer McLaughlin, sir—West Forty-seventh Street station,” he informed us; “and I was on duty on this beat last night. Around midnight, I guess it was, there was a big grey Cadillac standing in front of this house—I noticed it particular, because it had a lot of fishing-tackle sticking out the back, and all of its lights were on. When I heard of the crime this morning I reported the car to the station sergeant, and he sent me around to tell you about it.”
“Excellent,” Markham commented; and then, with a nod, referred the matter to Heath.
“May be something in it,” the latter admitted dubiously. “How long would you say the car was here, officer?”
“A good half hour anyway. It was here before twelve, and when I come back at twelve-thirty or thereabouts it was still here. But the next time I come by, it was gone.”
“You saw nothing else? Nobody in the car, or anyone hanging around who might have been the owner?”
“No, sir, I did not.”
Several other questions of a similar nature were asked him; but nothing more could be learned, and he was dismissed.
“Anyway,” remarked Heath, “the car story will be good stuff to hand the reporters.”
Vance had sat through the questioning of McLaughlin with drowsy inattention,—I doubt if he even heard more than the first few words of the officer’s report,—and now, with a stifled yawn, he rose and, sauntering to the center-table, picked up one of the cigarette butts that had been found in the fireplace. After rolling it between his thumb and forefinger and scrutinizing the tip, he ripped the paper open with his thumb-nail, and held the exposed tobacco to his nose.
Heath, who had been watching him gloweringly, leaned suddenly forward in his chair.
“What are you doing there?” he demanded, in a tone of surly truculence.
Vance lifted his eyes in decorous astonishment.
“Merely smelling of the tobacco,” he replied, with condescending unconcern. “It’s rather mild, y’ know, but delicately blended.”
The muscles in Heath’s cheeks worked angrily. “Well, you’d better put it down, sir,” he advised. Then he looked Vance up and down. “Tobacco expert?” he asked, with ill disguised sarcasm.
“Oh, dear no.” Vance’s voice was dulcet. “My specialty is scarab-cartouches of the Ptolemaic dynasties.”
Markham interposed diplomatically.
“You really shouldn’t touch anything around here, Vance, at this stage of the game. You never know what’ll turn out to be important. Those cigarette stubs may quite possibly be significant evidence.”
“Evidence?” repeated Vance sweetly. “My word! You don’t say, really! Most amusin’!”
Markham was plainly annoyed; and Heath was boiling inwardly, but made no further comment: he even forced a mirthless smile. He evidently felt that he had been a little too abrupt with this friend of the District Attorney’s, however much the friend might have deserved being reprimanded.
Heath, however, was no sycophant in the presence of his superiors. He knew his worth and lived up to it with his whole energy, discharging the tasks to which he was assigned with a dogged indifference to his own political well-being. This stubbornness of spirit, and the solidity of character it implied, were respected and valued by the men over him.
He was a large, powerful man, but agile and graceful in his movements, like a highly trained boxer. He had hard, blue eyes, remarkably bright and penetrating, a small nose, a broad oval chin, and a stern straight mouth with lips that appeared always compressed. His hair, which, though he was well along in his forties, was without a trace of greyness, was cropped about the edges, and stood upright in a short bristly pompadour. His voice had an aggressive resonance, but he rarely blustered. In