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 woman nodded; but this time I detected a look of mild astonishment in her eyes.
“Was that key always kept on the inside of the door?”
“No; it was always on the outside.”
Heath shot Vance a curious look. Then, after a moment’s frowning contemplation of the knob, he waved his hand to the detective who had brought the maid in.
“Take her back to the reception-room, Snitkin, and get a detailed description from her of all the Odell jewellery. . . . And keep her outside; I’ll want her again.”
When Snitkin and the maid had gone out, Vance lay back lazily on the davenport, where he had sat during the interview, and sent a spiral of cigarette smoke toward the ceiling.
“Rather illuminatin’, what?” he remarked. “The dusky demoiselle got us considerably forrader. Now we know that the closet key is on the wrong side of the door, and that our fille de joie went to the theatre with one of her favorite inamorati, who presumably brought her home shortly before she took her departure from this wicked world.”
“You think that’s helpful, do you?” Heath’s tone was contemptuously triumphant. “Wait till you hear the crazy story the telephone operator’s got to tell.”
“All right, Sergeant,” put in Markham impatiently. “Suppose we get on with the ordeal.”
“I’m going to suggest, Mr. Markham, that we question the janitor first. And I’ll show you why.” Heath went to the entrance door of the apartment, and opened it. “Look here for just a minute, sir.”
He stepped out into the main hall, and pointed down the little passageway on the left. It was about ten feet in length, and ran between the Odell apartment and the blank rear wall of the reception-room. At the end of it was a solid oak door which gave on the court at the side of the house.
“That door,” explained Heath, “is the only side or rear entrance to this building; and when that door is bolted nobody can get into the house except by the front entrance. You can’t even get into the building through the other apartments, for every window on this floor is barred. I checked up on that point as soon as I got here.”
He led the way back into the living-room.
“Now, after I’d looked over the situation this morning,” he went on, “I figured that our man had entered through that side door at the end of the passageway, and had slipped into this apartment without the night operator seeing him. So I tried the side door to see if it was open. But it was bolted on the inside—not locked, mind you, but bolted. And it wasn’t a slip-bolt, either, that could have been jimmied or worked open from the outside, but a tough old-fashioned turn-bolt of solid brass. . . . And now I want you to hear what the janitor’s got to say about it.”
Markham nodded acquiescence, and Heath called an order to one of the officers in the hall. A moment later a stolid, middle-aged German, with sullen features and high cheek-bones, stood before us. His jaw was clamped tight, and he shifted his eyes from one to the other of us suspiciously.
Heath straightway assumed the rôle of inquisitor.
“What time do you leave here at night?” He had, for some reason, assumed a belligerent manner.
“Six o’clock—sometimes earlier, sometimes later.” The man spoke in a surly monotone. He was obviously resentful at this unexpected intrusion upon his orderly routine.
“And what time do you get here in the morning?”
“Eight o’clock, regular.”
“What time did you go home last night?”
“About six—maybe quarter past.”
Heath paused and finally lighted the cigar on which he had been chewing at intervals during the past hour.
“Now, tell me about that side door,” he went on, with undiminished aggressiveness. “You told me you lock it every night before you leave—is that right?”
“Ja—that’s right.” The man nodded his head affirmatively several times. “Only I don’t lock it—I bolt it.”
“All right, you bolt it, then.” As Heath talked his cigar bobbed up and down between his lips: smoke and words came simultaneously from his mouth, “And last night you bolted it as usual about six o’clock?”
“Maybe a quarter past,” the janitor amended, with Germanic precision.
“You’re sure you bolted it last night?” The question was almost ferocious.
“Ja, ja. Sure, I am. I do it every night. I never miss.”
The man’s earnestness left no doubt that the door in question had indeed been bolted on the inside at about six o’clock of the previous evening. Heath, however, belabored the point for several minutes, only to be reassured doggedly that the door had been bolted. At last the janitor was dismissed.
“Really, y’ know, Sergeant,” remarked Vance with an amused smile, “that honest Rheinlander bolted the door.”
“Sure, he did,” spluttered Heath; “and I found it still bolted this morning at quarter of eight. That’s just what messes things up so nice and pretty. If that door was bolted from six o’clock last evening until eight o’clock this morning, I’d appreciate having some one drive up in a hearse and tell me how the Canary’s little playmate got in here last night. And I’d also like to know how he got out.”
“Why not through the main entrance?” asked Markham. “It seems the only logical way left, according to your own findings.”
“That’s how I had it figured out, sir,” returned Heath. “But wait till you hear what the phone operator has to say.”
“And the phone operator’s post,” mused Vance, “is in the main hall half-way between the front door and this apartment. Therefore, the gentleman who caused all the disturbance hereabouts last night would have had to pass within a few feet of the operator both on arriving and departing—eh, what?”
“That’s it!” snapped Heath. “And, according to the operator, no such person came or went.”
Markham seemed to have absorbed some of Heath’s irritability.
“Get the fellow in here, and let me question him,” he ordered.
Heath obeyed with a kind of malicious alacrity.
CHAPTER VI
A CALL FOR HELP
(Tuesday, September 11; 11 a. m.)
Jessup made a good impression from the moment he entered the room. He was a serious, determined-looking man in his early thirties, rugged and well built; and there was a squareness to his shoulders that carried a suggestion of military training. He walked with a decided limp—his right foot dragged perceptibly—and I noted that his left arm had been stiffened into a permanent arc, as if by an unreduced fracture of the elbow. He was quiet and reserved, and his eyes were steady and intelligent. Markham at once motioned him to a wicker chair beside the closet door, but he declined it, and stood before the District Attorney in a soldierly attitude of respectful attention. Markham opened the interrogation with several personal questions. It transpired that Jessup had been a sergeant in the World War,10 had twice been seriously wounded, and had been invalided home shortly before the Armistice. He had held his present post of telephone operator for over a year.
“Now, Jessup,” continued Markham, “there are things connected with last night’s tragedy that you can tell us.”
“Yes, sir.” There was no doubt that