The Greatest Murder Mysteries of S. S. Van Dine - 12 Titles in One Volume (Illustrated Edition). S.S. Van Dine
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the allurin’ twins. Don’t see any way to go beyond them.” He frowned and sipped his coffee. “My original quartet is dwindling, and I don’t like it. It narrows the thing down too much—there’s no scope for the mind, as it were, in only two choices. What if we should succeed in eliminating Cleaver and Mannix? Where would we be—eh, what? Nowhere—simply nowhere. And yet, one of the quartet is guilty; let’s cling to that consolin’ fact. It can’t be Spotswoode and it can’t be Lindquist. Cleaver and Mannix remain: two from four leaves two. Simple arithmetic, what? The only trouble is, this case isn’t simple. Lord, no!—I say, how would the equation work out if we used algebra, or spherical trigonometry, or differential calculus? Let’s cast it in the fourth dimension—or the fifth, or the sixth. . . .” He held his temples in both hands. “Oh, promise, Markham—promise me that you’ll hire a kind, gentle keeper for me.”
“I know how you feel. I’ve been in the same mental state for a week.”
“It’s the quartet idea that’s driving me mad,” moaned Vance. “It wrings me to have my tetrad lopped off in such brutal fashion. I’d set my young trustin’ heart on that quartet, and now it’s only a pair. My sense of order and proportion has been outraged. . . . I want my quartet.”
“I’m afraid you’ll have to be satisfied with two of them,” Markham returned wearily. “One of them can’t qualify, and one is in bed. You might send some flowers to the hospital, if it would cheer you any.”
“One is in bed—one is in bed,” repeated Vance. “Well, well—to be sure! And one from four leaves three. More arithmetic. Three! . . . On the other hand, there is no such thing as a straight line. All lines are curved; they transcribe circles in space. They look straight, but they’re not. Appearances, y’ know—so deceptive! . . . Let’s enter the silence, and substitute mentation for sight.”
He gazed up out of the great windows into Fifth Avenue. For several moments he sat smoking thoughtfully. When he spoke again, it was in an even, deliberate voice.
“Markham, would it be difficult for you to invite Mannix and Cleaver and Spotswoode to spend an evening—this evening, let us say—in your apartment?”
Markham set down his cup with a clatter, and regarded Vance narrowly.
“What new harlequinade is this?”
“Fie on you! Answer my question.”
“Well—of course—I might arrange it,” replied Markham hesitantly. “They’re all more or less under my jurisdiction at present.”
“So that such an invitation would be rather in line with the situation—eh, what? And they wouldn’t be likely to refuse you, old dear—would they?”
“No; I hardly think so. . . .”
“And if, when they had assembled in your quarters, you should propose a few hands of poker, they’d probably accept, without thinking the suggestion strange?”
“Probably,” said Markham, nonplussed at Vance’s amazing request. “Cleaver and Spotswoode both play, I know; and Mannix doubtless knows the game. But why poker? Are you serious, or has your threatened dementia already overtaken you?”
“Oh, I’m deuced serious.” Vance’s tone left no doubt as to the fact. “The game of poker, d’ ye see, is the crux of the matter. I knew Cleaver was an old hand at the game; and Spotswoode, of course, played with Judge Redfern last Monday night. So that gave me a basis for my plan. Mannix, we’ll assume, also plays.”
He leaned forward, speaking earnestly.
“Nine-tenths of poker, Markham, is psychology; and if one understands the game, one can learn more of a man’s inner nature at a poker table in an hour than during a year’s casual association with him. You rallied me once when I said I could lead you to the perpetrator of any crime by examining the factors of the crime itself. But naturally I must know the man to whom I am to lead you; otherwise I cannot relate the psychological indications of the crime to the culprit’s nature. In the present case, I know the kind of man who committed the crime; but I am not sufficiently acquainted with the suspects to point out the guilty one. However, after our game of poker, I hope to be able to tell you who planned and carried out the Canary’s murder.”16
Markham gazed at him in blank astonishment. He knew that Vance played poker with amazing skill, and that he possessed an uncanny knowledge of the psychological elements involved in the game; but he was unprepared for the latter’s statement that he might be able to solve the Odell murder by means of it. Yet Vance had spoken with such undoubted earnestness that Markham was impressed. I knew what was passing in his mind almost as well as if he had voiced his thoughts. He was recalling the way in which Vance had, in a former murder case, put his finger unerringly on the guilty man by a similar process of psychological deduction. And he was also telling himself that, however incomprehensible and seemingly extravagant Vance’s requests were, there was always a fundamentally sound reason behind them.
“Damn it!” he muttered at last. “The whole scheme seems idiotic. . . . And yet, if you really want a game of poker with these men, I’ve no special objection. It’ll get you nowhere—I’ll tell you that beforehand. It’s stark nonsense to suppose that you can find the guilty man by such fantastic means.”
“Ah, well,” sighed Vance, “a little futile recreation will do us no harm.”
“But why do you include Spotswoode?”
“Really, y’ know, I haven’t the slightest notion—except, of course, that he’s one of my quartet. And we’ll need an extra hand.”
“Well, don’t tell me afterwards that I’m to lock him up for murder. I’d have to draw the line. Strange as it may seem to your layman’s mind, I wouldn’t care to prosecute a man, knowing that it was physically impossible for him to have committed the crime.”
“As to that,” drawled Vance, “the only obstacles that stand in the way of physical impossibilities are material facts. And material facts are notoriously deceivin’. Really, y’ know, you lawyers would do better if you ignored them entirely.”
Markham did not deign to answer such heresy, but the look he gave Vance was most expressive.
15. The treatise referred to by Vance was Handbuch für Untersuchungsrichter als System der Kriminalistik.
16. Recently I ran across an article by Doctor George A. Dorsey, professor of anthropology at the University of Chicago, and author of “Why We Behave Like Human Beings,” which bore intimate testimony to the scientific accuracy of Vance’s theory. In it Doctor Dorsey said: “Poker is a cross-section of life. The way a man behaves in a poker game is the way he behaves in life. . . . His success or failure lies in the way his physical organism responds to the stimuli supplied by the game. . . . I have studied humanity all my life from the anthropologic and psychological view-point. And I have yet to find a better laboratory exercise than to observe the manners of men as they see my raise and come back at me. . . . The psychologist’s verbalized, visceral, and manual behaviors are functioning at their highest in a poker game. . . . I can truthfully say that I learned about men from poker.”
CHAPTER XXVII
A GAME OF POKER
(Monday, September 17; 9 p. m.)
Vance and I went home after lunch, and at about four o’clock Markham telephoned to say that he had made the necessary arrangements for the evening with Spotswoode, Mannix, and Cleaver. Immediately following this confirmation Vance left the house, and did not return until nearly