The Greatest Murder Mysteries of S. S. Van Dine - 12 Titles in One Volume (Illustrated Edition). S.S. Van Dine
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living-room trusting to the voluntary return of the criminal.”
“Either course would achieve success as quickly as the one you are now pursuing,” Vance said.
“Not being gifted with your singular insight,” retorted Markham, “I can only follow the inadequate processes of human reasoning.”
“No doubt,” Vance agreed commiseratingly. “And the results of your activities thus far force me to the conclusion that a man with a handful of legalistic logic can successfully withstand the most obst’nate and heroic assaults of ordin’ry commonsense.”
Markham was piqued.
“Still harping on the St. Clair woman’s innocence, eh? However, in view of the complete absence of any tangible evidence pointing elsewhere, you must admit I have no choice of courses.”
“I admit nothing of the kind,” Vance told him; “for, I assure you, there is an abundance of evidence pointing elsewhere. You simply failed to see it.”
“You think so!” Vance’s nonchalant cocksureness had at last overthrown Markham’s equanimity. “Very well, old man; I hereby enter an emphatic denial to all your fine theories; and I challenge you to produce a single piece of this evidence which you say exists.”
He threw his words out with asperity, and gave a curt, aggressive gesture with his extended fingers, to indicate that, as far as he was concerned, the subject was closed.
Vance, too, I think, was pricked a little.
“Y’ know, Markham old dear, I’m no avenger of blood, or vindicator of the honor of society. The rôle would bore me.”
Markham smiled loftily, but made no reply.
Vance smoked meditatively for a while. Then, to my amazement, he turned calmly and deliberately to Markham, and said in a quiet, matter-of-fact voice:
“I’m going to accept your challenge. It’s a bit alien to my tastes; but the problem, y’ know, rather appeals to me: it presents the same diff’culties as the Concert Champêtre affair,—a question of disputed authorship, as it were.”15
Markham abruptly suspended the motion of lifting his cigar to his lips. He had scarcely intended his challenge literally: it had been uttered more in the nature of a verbal defiance; and he scrutinized Vance a bit uncertainly. Little did he realize that the other’s casual acceptance of his unthinking and but half-serious challenge, was to alter the entire criminal history of New York.
“Just how do you intend to proceed?” he asked.
Vance waved his hand carelessly.
“Like Napoleon, je m’en gage, et puis je vois. However, I must have your word that you’ll give me every possible assistance, and will refrain from all profound legal objections.”
Markham pursed his lips. He was frankly perplexed by the unexpected manner in which Vance had met his defiance. But immediately he gave a good-natured laugh, as if, after all, the matter was of no serious consequence.
“Very well,” he assented. “You have my word. . . . And now what?”
After a moment Vance lit a fresh cigarette, and rose languidly.
“First,” he announced, “I shall determine the exact height of the guilty person. Such a fact will, no doubt, come under the head of indicat’ry evidence—eh, what?”
Markham stared at him incredulously.
“How, in Heaven’s name, are you going to do that?”
“By those primitive deductive methods to which you so touchingly pin your faith,” he answered easily. “But come; let us repair to the scene of the crime.”
He moved toward the door, Markham reluctantly following in a state of perplexed irritation.
“But you know the body was removed,” the latter protested; “and the place by now has no doubt been straightened up.”
“Thank Heaven for that!” murmured Vance. “I’m not particularly fond of corpses; and untidiness, y’ know, annoys me frightfully.”
As we emerged into Madison Avenue, he signalled to the commissionnaire for a taxicab, and without a word, urged us into it.
“This is all nonsense,” Markham declared ill-naturedly, as we started on our journey up town. “How do you expect to find any clues now? By this time everything has been obliterated.”
“Alas, my dear Markham,” lamented Vance, in a tone of mock solicitude, “how woefully deficient you are in philosophic theory! If anything, no matter how inf’nitesimal, could really be obliterated, the universe, y’ know, would cease to exist,—the cosmic problem would be solved, and the Creator would write Q.E.D. across an empty firmament. Our only chance of going on with this illusion we call Life, d’ ye see, lies in the fact that consciousness is like an inf’nite decimal point. Did you, as a child, ever try to complete the decimal, one-third, by filling a whole sheet of paper with the numeral three? You always had the fraction, one-third, left, don’t y’ know. If you could have eliminated the smallest one-third, after having set down ten thousand threes, the problem would have ended. So with life, my dear fellow. It’s only because we can’t erase or obliterate anything that we go on existing.”
He made a movement with his fingers, putting a sort of tangible period to his remarks, and looked dreamily out of the window up at the fiery film of sky.
Markham had settled back into his corner, and was chewing morosely at his cigar. I could see he was fairly simmering with impotent anger at having let himself be goaded into issuing his challenge. But there was no retreating now. As he told me afterward, he was fully convinced he had been dragged forth out of a comfortable chair, on a patent and ridiculous fool’s errand.
10. The following conversation in which Vance explains his psychological methods of criminal analysis, is, of course, set down from memory. However, a proof of this passage was sent to him with a request that he revise and alter it in whatever manner he chose; so that, as it now stands, it describes Vance’s theory in practically his own words.
11. I don’t know what case Vance was referring to; but there are several instances of this device on record, and writers of detective fiction have often used it. The latest instance is to be found in G. K. Chesterton’s The Innocence of Father Brown, in the story entitled “The Wrong Shape.”
12. It was Pearson and Goring who, about twenty years ago, made an extensive investigation and tabulation of professional criminals in England, the results of which showed (1) that criminal careers began mostly between the ages of 16 and 21; (2) that over ninety per cent of criminals were mentally normal; and (3) that more criminals had criminal older brothers than criminal fathers.
13. Sir Basil Thomson, K.C.B., former Assistant Commissioner of Metropolitan Police, London, writing in The Saturday Evening Post several years after this conversation, said: “Take, for example, the proverb that murder will out, which is employed whenever one out of many thousands of undiscovered murderers is caught through a chance coincidence that captures the popular imagination. It is because murder will not out that the pleasant shock of surprise when it does out calls for a proverb to enshrine the phenomenon. The poisoner who is brought to justice has almost invariably proved to have killed other victims without exciting suspicion until he has grown careless.”
14. In “Popular Fallacies About Crime” Sir Basil Thomson also upheld this point of view.