The Greatest Murder Mysteries of S. S. Van Dine - 12 Titles in One Volume (Illustrated Edition). S.S. Van Dine
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“No, sir, I didn’t!” He shook his head earnestly.
“And you are positive that no one got into the apartment through the front door after Miss Odell left?”
“Positive! I tell you I didn’t leave the board the whole time, and nobody could’ve got by me without my knowing it. There was only one person that called and asked for her——”
“Oh! So some one did call!” snapped Markham. “When was it? And what happened?—Jog your memory before you answer.”
“It wasn’t anything important,” the youth assured him, genuinely frightened. “Just a fella who came in and rang her bell and went right out again.”
“Never mind whether it was important or not.” Markham’s tone was cold and peremptory. “What time did he call?”
“About half past nine.”
“And who was he?”
“A young fella I’ve seen come here several times to see Miss Odell. I don’t know his name.”
“Tell me exactly what took place,” pursued Markham.
Again Spively swallowed hard and wetted his lips.
“It was like this,” he began, with effort. “The fella came in and started walking down the hall, and I said to him: ‘Miss Odell isn’t in.’ But he kept on going, and said: ‘Oh, well, I’ll ring the bell anyway to make sure.’ A telephone call came through just then, and I let him go on. He rang the bell and knocked on the door, but of course there wasn’t any answer; and pretty soon he came on back and said: ‘I guess you were right.’ Then he tossed me half a dollar, and went out.”
“You actually saw him go out?” There was a note of disappointment in Markham’s voice.
“Sure, I saw him go out. He stopped just inside the front door and lit a cigarette. Then he opened the door and turned toward Broadway.”
“ ‘One by one the rosy petals fall,’ ” came Vance’s indolent voice. “A most amusin’ situation!”
Markham was loath to relinquish his hope in the criminal possibilities of this one caller who had come and gone at half past nine.
“What was this man like?” he asked. “Can you describe him?”
Spively sat up straight, and when he answered, it was with an enthusiasm that showed he had taken special note of the visitor.
“He was good-looking, not so old—maybe thirty. And he had on a full-dress suit and patent-leather pumps, and a pleated silk shirt——”
“What, what?” demanded Vance, in simulated unbelief, leaning over the back of the davenport. “A silk shirt with evening dress! Most extr’ordin’ry!”
“Oh, a lot of the best dressers are wearing them,” Spively explained, with condescending pride. “It’s all the fashion for dancing.”
“You don’t say—really!” Vance appeared dumb-founded. “I must look into this. . . . And, by the bye, when this Beau Brummel of the silk shirt paused by the front door, did he take his cigarette from a long flat silver case carried in his lower waistcoat pocket?”
The youth looked at Vance in admiring astonishment.
“How did you know?” he exclaimed.
“Simple deduction,” Vance explained, resuming his recumbent posture. “Large metal cigarette-cases carried in the waistcoat pocket somehow go with silk shirts for evening wear.”
Markham, clearly annoyed at the interruption, cut in sharply with a demand for the operator to proceed with his description.
“He wore his hair smoothed down,” Spively continued, “and you could see it was kind of long; but it was cut in the latest style. And he had a small waxed moustache; and there was a big carnation in the lapel of his coat, and he had on chamois gloves. . . .”
“My word!” murmured Vance. “A gigolo!”
Markham, with the incubus of the night clubs riding him heavily, frowned and took a deep breath. Vance’s observation evidently had launched him on an unpleasant train of thought.
“Was this man short or tall?” he asked next.
“He wasn’t so tall—about my height,” Spively explained. “And he was sort of thin.”
There was an easily recognizable undercurrent of admiration in his tone, and I felt that this youthful telephone operator had seen in Miss Odell’s caller a certain physical and sartorial ideal. This palpable admiration, coupled with the somewhat outré clothes affected by the youth, permitted us to read between the lines of his remarks a fairly accurate description of the man who had unsuccessfully rung the dead girl’s bell at half past nine the night before.
When Spively had been dismissed, Markham rose and strode about the room, his head enveloped in a cloud of cigar smoke, while Heath sat stolidly watching him, his brows knit.
Vance stood up and stretched himself.
“The absorbin’ problem, it would seem, remains in statu quo,” he remarked airily. “How, oh how, did the fair Margaret’s executioner get in?”
“You know, Mr. Markham,” rumbled Heath sententiously, “I’ve been thinking that the fellow may have come here earlier in the afternoon—say, before that side door was locked. Odell herself may have let him in and hidden him when the other man came to take her to dinner.”
“It looks that way,” Markham admitted. “Bring the maid in here again, and we’ll see what we can find out.”
When the woman had been brought in, Markham questioned her as to her actions during the afternoon, and learned that she had gone out at about four to do some shopping, and had returned about half past five.
“Did Miss Odell have any visitor with her when you got back?”
“No, sir,” was the prompt answer. “She was alone.”
“Did she mention that any one had called?”
“No, sir.”
“Now,” continued Markham, “could any one have been hidden in this apartment when you went home at seven?”
The maid was frankly astonished, and even a little horrified.
“Where could any one hide?” she asked, looking round the apartment.
“There are several possible places,” Markham suggested: “in the bathroom, in one of the clothes-closets, under the bed, behind the window draperies. . . .”
The woman shook her head decisively. “No one could have been hidden,” she declared. “I was in the bathroom half a dozen times, and I got Miss Odell’s gown out of the clothes-closet in the bedroom. As soon as it began to get dark I drew all the window-shades myself. And as for the bed, it’s built almost down to the floor; no one could squeeze under it.” (I glanced closely at the bed, and realized that this statement was quite true.)
“What about the clothes-closet in this room?” Markham put the question hopefully, but again the maid shook her head.
“Nobody was in there. That’s where I keep my own hat and coat, and I took them out myself when I was getting ready to go. I even put away one of Miss Odell’s old dresses in that closet before I left.”
“And you are absolutely certain,” reiterated Markham, “that no one could have been hidden anywhere in these rooms at the time you went home?”
“Absolutely, sir.”
“Do you happen to remember if the key of this clothes-closet was on the inside or the outside of the lock when you opened the door to get your hat?”
The woman paused, and looked thoughtfully at the