The Greatest Murder Mysteries of S. S. Van Dine - 12 Titles in One Volume (Illustrated Edition). S.S. Van Dine
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don’t think there’s anything else for the present. . . . How about it, Sergeant? Anything further you want to ask?”
Heath pondered a moment.
“No, I can’t think of anything more just now. . . . But you, Mrs. Platz,” he added, turning a cold glance on the woman, “will stay here in this house till you’re given permission to leave. We’ll want to question you later. But you’re not to talk to anyone else—understand? Two of my men will be here for a while yet.”
Vance, during the interview, had been jotting down something on the fly-leaf of a small pocket address-book, and as Heath was speaking, he tore out the page and handed it to Markham. Markham glanced at it frowningly and pursed his lips. Then after a few moments’ hesitation, he addressed himself again to the housekeeper.
“You mentioned, Mrs. Platz, that Mr. Benson was liked by everyone. Did you yourself like him?”
The woman shifted her eyes to her lap.
“Well, sir,” she replied reluctantly, “I was only working for him, and I haven’t got any complaint about the way he treated me.”
Despite her words, she gave the impression that she either disliked Benson extremely or greatly disapproved of him. Markham, however, did not push the point.
“And by the way, Mrs. Platz,” he said next, “did Mr. Benson keep any fire-arms about the house? For instance, do you know if he owned a revolver?”
For the first time during the interview, the woman appeared agitated, even frightened.
“Yes, sir, I—think he did,” she admitted, in an unsteady voice.
“Where did he keep it?”
The woman glanced up apprehensively, and rolled her eyes slightly as if weighing the advisability of speaking frankly. Then she replied in a low voice:
“In that hidden drawer there in the center-table. You—you use that little brass button to open it with.”
Heath jumped up, and pressed the button she had indicated. A tiny, shallow drawer shot out; and in it lay a Smith and Wesson thirty-eight revolver with an inlaid pearl handle. He picked it up, broke the carriage, and looked at the head of the cylinder.
“Full,” he announced laconically.
An expression of tremendous relief spread over the woman’s features, and she sighed audibly.
Markham had risen and was looking at the revolver over Heath’s shoulder.
“You’d better take charge of it, Sergeant,” he said; “though I don’t see exactly how it fits in with the case.”
He resumed his seat, and glancing at the notation Vance had given him, turned again to the housekeeper.
“One more question, Mrs. Platz. You said Mr. Benson came home early and spent his time before dinner in this room. Did he have any callers during that time?”
I was watching the woman closely, and it seemed to me that she quickly compressed her lips. At any rate, she sat up a little straighter in her chair before answering.
“There wasn’t no one, as far as I know.”
“But surely you would have known if the bell rang,” insisted Markham. “You would have answered the door, wouldn’t you?”
“There wasn’t no one,” she repeated, with a trace of sullenness.
“And last night: did the door-bell ring at all after you had retired?”
“No, sir.”
“You would have heard it, even if you’d been asleep?”
“Yes, sir. There’s a bell just outside my door, the same as in the kitchen. It rings in both places. Mr. Benson had it fixed that way.”
Markham thanked her and dismissed her. When she had gone, he looked at Vance questioningly.
“What idea did you have in your mind when you handed me those questions?”
“I might have been a bit presumptuous, y’ know,” said Vance; “but when the lady was extolling the deceased’s popularity, I rather felt she was over-doing it a bit. There was an unconscious implication of antithesis in her eulogy, which suggested to me that she herself was not ardently enamored of the gentleman.”
“And what put the notion of fire-arms into your mind?”
“That query,” explained Vance, “was a corollary of your own questions about barred windows and Benson’s fear of burglars. If he was in a funk about house-breakers or enemies, he’d be likely to have weapons at hand—eh, what?”
“Well, anyway, Mr. Vance,” put in Heath, “your curiosity unearthed a nice little revolver that’s probably never been used.”
“By the bye, Sergeant,” returned Vance, ignoring the other’s good-humored sarcasm, “just what do you make of that nice little revolver?”
“Well, now,” Heath replied, with ponderous facetiousness, “I deduct that Mr. Benson kept a pearl-handled Smith and Wesson in a secret drawer of his center-table.”
“You don’t say—really!” exclaimed Vance in mock admiration. “Pos’tively illuminatin’!”
Markham broke up this raillery.
“Why did you want to know about visitors, Vance? There obviously hadn’t been anyone here.”
“Oh, just a whim of mine. I was assailed by an impulsive yearning to hear what La Platz would say.”
Heath was studying Vance curiously. His first impressions of the man were being dispelled, and he had begun to suspect that beneath the other’s casual and debonair exterior there was something of a more solid nature than he had at first imagined. He was not altogether satisfied with Vance’s explanations to Markham, and seemed to be endeavoring to penetrate to his real reasons for supplementing the District Attorney’s interrogation of the housekeeper. Heath was astute, and he had the worldly man’s ability to read people; but Vance, being different from the men with whom he usually came in contact, was an enigma to him.
At length he relinquished his scrutiny, and drew up his chair to the table with a spirited air.
“And now, Mr. Markham,” he said crisply, “we’d better outline our activities so as not to duplicate our efforts. The sooner I get my men started, the better.”
Markham assented readily.
“The investigation is entirely up to you, Sergeant. I’m here to help wherever I’m needed.”
“That’s very kind of you, sir,” Heath returned. “But it looks to me as though there’d be enough work for all parties. . . . Suppose I get to work on running down the owner of the hand-bag, and send some men out scouting among Benson’s night-life cronies,—I can pick up some names from the housekeeper, and they’ll be a good starting point. And I’ll get after that Cadillac, too. . . . Then we ought to look into his lady friends—I guess he had enough of ’em.”
“I may get something out of the Major along that line,” supplied Markham. “He’ll tell me anything I want to know. And I can also look into Benson’s business associates through the same channel.”
“I was going to suggest that you could do that better than I could,” Heath rejoined. “We ought to run into something pretty quick that’ll give us a line to go on. And I’ve got an idea that when we locate the lady he took to dinner last night and brought back here, we’ll know a lot more than we do now.”
“Or a lot less,” murmured Vance.
Heath looked up quickly, and grunted with an air of massive petulance.
“Let me tell you something, Mr. Vance,” he said, “—since I understand you want to learn something about these affairs: when anything goes