A Nameless Visitor
(Tuesday, September 11; 11.15 a. m.)
Heath had stepped out into the hall, and now returned with the day
telephone operator, a sallow thin young man who, we learned, was named
Spively. His almost black hair, which accentuated the pallor of his
face, was sleeked back from his forehead with pomade; and he wore a
very shallow moustache which barely extended beyond the alæ of his
nostrils. He was dressed in an exaggeratedly dapper fashion, in a
dazzling chocolate-colored suit cut very close to his figure, a pair
of cloth-topped buttoned shoes, and a pink shirt with a stiff
turn-over collar to match. He appeared nervous, and immediately sat
down in the wicker chair by the door, fingering the sharp creases of
his trousers, and running the tip of his tongue over his lips.
Markham went straight to the point.
“I understand you were at the switchboard yesterday afternoon and last
night until ten o’clock. Is that correct?”
Spively swallowed hard, and nodded his head. “Yes, sir.”
“What time did Miss Odell go out to dinner?”
“About seven o’clock. I’d just sent to the restaurant next door for
some sandwiches——”
“Did she go alone?” Markham interrupted his explanation.
“No. A fella called for her.”
“Did you know this ‘fella’?”
“I’d seen him a couple of times calling on Miss Odell, but I didn’t
know who he was.”
“What did he look like?” Markham’s question was uttered with hurried
impatience.
Spively’s description of the girl’s escort tallied with Jessup’s
description of the man who had accompanied her home, though Spively
was more voluble and less precise than Jessup had been. Patently, Miss
Odell had gone out at seven and returned at eleven with the same man.
“Now,” resumed Markham, putting an added stress on his words, “I want
to know who else called on Miss Odell between the time she went out to
dinner and ten o’clock when you left the switchboard.”
Spively was puzzled by the question, and his thin arched eyebrows
lifted and contracted.
“I—don’t understand,” he stammered. “How could any one call on Miss
Odell when she was out?”
“Some one evidently did,” said Markham. “And he got into her
apartment, and was there when she returned at eleven.”
The youth’s eyes opened wide, and his lips fell apart.
“My God, sir!” he exclaimed. “So that’s how they murdered her!—laid in
wait for her! . . .” He stopped abruptly, suddenly realizing his own
proximity to the mysterious chain of events that had led up to the
crime. “But nobody got into her apartment while I was on duty,” he
blurted, with frightened emphasis. “Nobody! I never left the board
from the time she went out until quitting time.”
“Couldn’t any one have come in the side door?”
“What! Was it unlocked?” Spively’s tone was startled. “It never is
unlocked at night. The janitor bolts it when he leaves at six.”
“And you didn’t unbolt it last night for any purpose? Think!”
“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 dumbfounded. “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 closet door.
“It was on the outside, where it always was,” she announced, after
several moments’ reflection. “I remember because it caught in the
chiffon of the old dress I put away.”
Markham frowned and then resumed his questioning.
“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.”