The Greatest Murder Mysteries of S. S. Van Dine - 12 Titles in One Volume (Illustrated Edition). S.S. Van Dine
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“You say you don’t know the name of Miss Odell’s dinner companion last night. Can you tell us the names of any men she was in the habit of going out with?”
“Miss Odell never mentioned any names to me,” the woman said. “She was very careful about it, too—secretive, you might say. You see, I’m only here in the daytime, and the gentlemen she knew generally came in the evening.”
“And you never heard her speak of any one of whom she was frightened—any one she had reason to fear?”
“No, sir—although there was one man she was trying to get rid of. He was a bad character—I wouldn’t have trusted him anywhere—and I told Miss Odell she’d better look out for him. But she’d known him a long time, I guess, and had been pretty soft on him once.”
“How do you happen to know this?”
“One day, about a week ago,” the maid explained, “I came in after lunch, and he was with her in the other room. They didn’t hear me, because the portières were drawn. He was demanding money, and when she tried to put him off, he began threatening her. And she said something that showed she’d given him money before. I made a noise, and then they stopped arguing; and pretty soon he went out.”
“What did this man look like?” Markham’s interest was reviving.
“He was kind of thin—not very tall—and I’d say he was around thirty. He had a hard face—good-looking, some would say—and pale blue eyes that gave you the shivers. He always wore his hair greased back, and he had a little yellow moustache pointed at the ends.”
“Ah!” said Vance. “Our gigolo!”
“Has this man been here since?” asked Markham.
“I don’t know, sir—not when I was here.”
“That will be all,” said Markham; and the woman went out.
“She didn’t help us much,” complained Heath.
“What!” exclaimed Vance. “I think she did remarkably well. She cleared up several moot points.”
“And just what portions of her information do you consider particularly illuminating?” asked Markham, with ill-concealed annoyance.
“We now know, do we not,” rejoined Vance serenely, “that no one was lying perdu in here when the bonne departed yesterevening.”
“Instead of that fact being helpful,” retorted Markham, “I’d say it added materially to the complications of the situation.”
“It would appear that way, wouldn’t it, now? But, then—who knows?—it may prove to be your brightest and most comfortin’ clue. . . . Furthermore, we learned that some one evidently locked himself in that clothes-press, as witness the shifting of the key, and that, moreover, this occultation did not occur until the abigail had gone, or, let us say, after seven o’clock.”
“Sure,” said Heath with sour facetiousness; “when the side door was bolted and an operator was sitting in the front hall, who swears nobody came in that way.”
“It is a bit mystifyin’,” Vance conceded sadly.
“Mystifying? It’s impossible!” grumbled Markham.
Heath, who was now staring with meditative pugnacity into the closet, shook his head helplessly.
“What I don’t understand,” he ruminated, “is why, if the fellow was hiding in the closet, he didn’t ransack it when he came out, like he did all the rest of the apartment.”
“Sergeant,” said Vance, “you’ve put your finger on the crux of the matter. . . . Y’ know, the neat, undisturbed aspect of that closet rather suggests that the crude person who rifled these charming rooms omitted to give it his attention because it was locked on the inside and he couldn’t open it.”
“Come, come!” protested Markham. “That theory implies that there were two unknown persons in here last night.”
Vance sighed. “Harrow and alas! I know it. And we can’t introduce even one into this apartment logically. . . . Distressin’, ain’t it?”
Heath sought consolation in a new line of thought.
“Anyway,” he submitted, “we know that the fancy fellow with the patent-leather pumps who called here last night at half past nine was probably Odell’s lover, and was grafting on her.”
“And in just what recondite way does that obvious fact help to roll the clouds away?” asked Vance. “Nearly every modern Delilah has an avaricious amoroso. It would be rather singular if there wasn’t such a chap in the offing, what?”
“That’s all right, too,” returned Heath. “But I’ll tell you something, Mr. Vance, that maybe you don’t know. The men that these girls lose their heads over are generally crooks of some kind—professional criminals, you understand. That’s why, knowing that this job was the work of a professional, it don’t leave me cold, as you might say, to learn that this fellow who was threatening Odell and grafting on her was the same one who was prowling round here last night. . . . And I’ll say this, too: the description of him sounds a whole lot like the kind of high-class burglars that hang out at these swell all-night cafés.”
“You’re convinced, then,” asked Vance mildly, “that this job, as you call it, was done by a professional criminal?”
Heath was almost contemptuous in his reply. “Didn’t the guy wear gloves, and use a jimmy? It was a yeggman’s job, all right.”
CHAPTER VIII
THE INVISIBLE MURDERER
(Tuesday, September 11; 11.45 a. m.)
Markham went to the window and stood, his hands behind him, looking down into the little paved rear yard. After several minutes he turned slowly.
“The situation, as I see it,” he said, “boils down to this:—The Odell girl has an engagement for dinner and the theatre with a man of some distinction. He calls for her a little after seven, and they go out together. At eleven o’clock they return. He goes with her into her apartment and remains half an hour. He leaves at half past eleven and asks the phone operator to call him a taxi. While he is waiting the girl screams and calls for help, and, in response to his inquiries, she tells him nothing is wrong and bids him go away. The taxi arrives, and he departs in it. Ten minutes later some one telephones her, and a man answers from her apartment. This morning she is found murdered, and the apartment ransacked.”
He took a long draw on his cigar.
“Now, it is obvious that when she and her escort returned last night, there was another man in this place somewhere; and it is also obvious that the girl was alive after her escort had departed. Therefore, we must conclude that the man who was already in the apartment was the person who murdered her. This conclusion is further corroborated by Doctor Doremus’s report that the crime occurred between eleven and twelve. But since her escort did not leave till half past eleven, and spoke with her after that time, we can put the actual hour of the murder as between half past eleven and midnight. . . . These are the inferable facts from the evidence thus far adduced.”
“There’s not much getting away from ’em,” agreed Heath.
“At any rate, they’re interestin’,” murmured Vance.
Markham, walking up and down earnestly, continued:
“The features of the situation revolving round these inferable facts are as follows:—There was no one hiding in the apartment at seven o’clock—the hour the maid went home. Therefore, the murderer entered the apartment later. First, then, let us consider the side door. At six o’clock—an