The Pack in Full Cry
(Tuesday, September 11; afternoon)
On our way down-town that morning we were delayed for a considerable
time in the traffic congestion just north of Madison Square, and
Markham anxiously looked at his watch.
“It’s past noon,” he said. “I think I’ll stop at the club and have a
bite of lunch. . . . I presume that eating at this early hour would be
too plebeian for so exquisite a hothouse flower as you.”
Vance considered the invitation.
“Since you deprived me of my breakfast,” he decided, “I’ll permit you
to buy me some eggs _Bénédictine_.”
A few minutes later we entered the almost empty grill of the
Stuyvesant Club, and took a table near one of the windows looking
southward over the treetops of Madison Square.
Shortly after we had given our order a uniformed attendant entered
and, bowing deferentially at the District Attorney’s elbow, held out
an unaddressed communication sealed in one of the club’s envelopes.
Markham read it with an expression of growing curiosity, and as he
studied the signature a look of mild surprise came into his eyes. At
length he looked up and nodded to the waiting attendant. Then,
excusing himself, he left us abruptly. It was fully twenty minutes
before he returned.
“Funny thing,” he said. “That note was from the man who took the Odell
woman to dinner and the theatre last night. . . . A small world,” he
mused. “He’s staying here at the club—he’s a non-resident member and
makes it his headquarters when he’s in town.”
“You know him?” Vance put the question disinterestedly.
“I’ve met him several times—chap named Spotswoode.” Markham seemed
perplexed. “He’s a man of family, lives in a country house on Long
Island, and is regarded generally as a highly respectable member of
society—one of the last persons I’d suspect of being mixed up with the
Odell girl. But, according to his own confession, he played around a
good deal with her during his visits to New York—‘sowing a few belated
wild oats,’ as he expressed it—and last night took her to Francelle’s
for dinner and to the Winter Garden afterwards.”
“Not my idea of an intellectual, or even edifyin’, evening,” commented
Vance. “And he selected a deuced unlucky day for it. . . . I say,
imagine opening the morning paper and learning that your _petite dame_
of the preceding evening had been strangled! Disconcertin’, what?”
“He’s certainly disconcerted,” said Markham. “The early afternoon
papers were out about an hour ago, and he’d been phoning my office
every ten minutes, when I suddenly walked in here. He’s afraid his
connection with the girl will leak out and disgrace him.”
“And won’t it?”
“I hardly see the necessity. No one knows who her escort was last
evening; and since he obviously had nothing to do with the crime,
what’s to be gained by dragging him into it? He told me the whole
story, and offered to stay in the city as long as I wanted him to.”
“I infer, from the cloud of disappointment that enveloped you when you
returned just now, that his story held nothing hopeful for you in the
way of clues.”
“No,” Markham admitted. “The girl apparently never spoke to him of her
intimate affairs; and he couldn’t give me a single helpful suggestion.
His account of what happened last night agreed perfectly with
Jessup’s. He called for the girl at seven, brought her home at about
eleven, stayed with her half an hour or so, and then left her. When he
heard her call for help he was frightened, but on being assured by her
there was nothing wrong, he concluded she had dozed off into a
nightmare, and thought no more of it. He drove direct to the club
here, arriving about ten minutes to twelve. Judge Redfern, who saw him
descend from the taxi, insisted on his coming up-stairs and playing
poker with some men who were waiting in the Judge’s rooms for him.
They played until three o’clock this morning.”
“Your Long Island Don Juan has certainly not supplied you with any
footprints in the snow.”
“Anyway, his coming forward at this time closes one line of inquiry
over which we might have wasted considerable time.”
“If many more lines of inquiry are closed,” remarked Vance dryly,
“you’ll be in a distressin’ dilemma, don’t y’ know.”
“There are enough still open to keep me busy,” said Markham, pushing
back his plate and calling for the check. He rose; then pausing,
regarded Vance meditatingly. “Are you sufficiently interested to want
to come along?”
“Eh, what? My word! . . . Charmed, I’m sure. But, I say, sit down just
a moment—there’s a good fellow!—till I finish my coffee.”
I was considerably astonished at Vance’s ready acceptance, careless
and bantering though it was, for there was an exhibition of old
Chinese prints at the Montross Galleries that afternoon, which he had
planned to attend. A Riokai and a Moyeki, said to be very fine
examples of Sung painting, were to be shown; and Vance was
particularly eager to acquire them for his collection.
We rode with Markham to the Criminal Courts building and, entering by
the Franklin Street door, took the private elevator to the District
Attorney’s spacious but dingy private office which overlooked the
gray-stone ramparts of the Tombs. Vance seated himself in one of the
heavy leather-upholstered chairs near the carved oak table on the
right of the desk, and lighted a cigarette with an air of cynical
amusement.
“I await with anticipat’ry delight the grinding of the wheels of
justice,” he confided, leaning back lazily.
“You are doomed not to hear the first turn of those wheels,” retorted
Markham. “The initial revolution will take place outside of this
office.” And he disappeared through a swinging door which led to the
judges’ chambers.
Five minutes later he returned, and sat down in the high-backed swivel
chair at his desk, with his back to the four tall narrow windows in
the south wall of the office.
“I just saw Judge Redfern,” he explained—“it happened to be the midday
recess—and he verified Spotswoode’s statement in regard to the poker
game. The Judge met him outside of the club at ten minutes before
midnight, and was with him until three in the morning. He noted the
time because he had promised his guests to be back at half past
eleven, and was twenty minutes late.”
“Why all this substantiation of an obviously unimportant fact?” asked
Vance.
“A matter of routine,” Markham told him, slightly impatient. “In a
case of this kind every factor, however seemingly remote to the main
issue, must be checked.”
“Really, y’ know, Markham”—Vance laid his head back on the chair and
gazed dreamily at the ceiling—“one would think that this eternal
routine, which you lawyer chaps worship so devoutly, actually got one
somewhere occasionally; whereas it never gets one anywhere. Remember
the Red Queen in ‘Through the Looking-Glass——’”
“I’m too busy at present to debate the question of routine _versus_
inspiration,” Markham answered brusquely, pressing a button beneath
the edge of his desk.
Swacker, his youthful and energetic secretary, appeared at the door
which communicated with a narrow inner chamber between the District
Attorney’s office and the main waiting-room.
“Yes, Chief?” The secretary’s eyes gleamed expectantly behind his
enormous horn-rimmed glasses.
“Tell Ben to send me in a man at once.”*
* “Ben” was Colonel Benjamin Hanlon, the commanding officer
of the Detective Division attached to the District Attorney’s
office.
Swacker went out through the corridor door, and a minute or two later
a suave, rotund man, dressed immaculately and wearing a pince-nez,
entered, and stood before Markham with an ingratiating smile.
“Morning, Tracy.” Markham’s tone was pleasant but curt. “Here’s a list
of four witnesses in connection with the Odell case that I want
brought down here at once—the two phone operators, the maid, and the
janitor. You’ll find them at 184 West 71st Street: Sergeant Heath is
holding them there.”
“Right, sir.” Tracy took the memorandum, and with a priggish, but by
no means inelegant, bow went out.
During the next hour Markham plunged into the general work that had
accumulated during the forenoon, and I was amazed at the man’s
tremendous vitality and efficiency. He disposed of as many important
matters as would have occupied the ordinary business man for an entire
day. Swacker bobbed in and out with electric energy, and various
clerks appeared at the touch of a buzzer, took their orders, and were
gone with breathless rapidity. Vance, who had sought diversion in a
tome of famous arson trials, looked up admiringly from time to time,
and shook his head in mild reproach at such spirited activity.
It was just half past two when Swacker announced the return of Tracy
with the four witnesses; and for two hours Markham questioned and
cross-questioned them with a thoroughness and an insight that even I,
as a lawyer, had rarely seen equalled. His interrogation of the two
phone operators was quite different from his casual questioning of
them earlier in the day; and if there had been a single relevant
omission in their former testimony, it would certainly have been
caught now by Markham’s gruelling catechism. But when, at last, they
were told they could go, no new information had been brought to light.
Their stories now stood firmly grounded: no one—with the exception of
the girl herself and her escort, and the disappointed visitor at half
past nine—had entered the front door and passed down the hall to the
Odell apartment from seven o’clock on; and no one had passed out that
way. The janitor reiterated stubbornly that he had bolted the side
door a little after six, and no amount of wheedling or aggression
could shake his dogged certainty on that point. Amy Gibson, the maid,
could add nothing to her former testimony. Markham’s intensive
examination of her produced only repetitions of what she had already
told him.
Not one new possibility—not one new suggestion—was brought out. In
fact, the two hours’ interlocutory proceedings resulted only in
closing up every loophole in a seemingly incredible situation. When,
at half past four, Markham sat back in his chair with a weary sigh,
the chance of unearthing a promising means of approach to the
astonishing problem seemed more remote than ever.
Vance closed his treatise on arson, and threw away his cigarette.
“I tell you, Markham old chap,” he grinned, “this case requires
umbilicular contemplation, not routine. Why not call in an Egyptian
seeress with a _flair_ for crystal-gazing?”
“If this sort of thing goes on much longer,” returned Markham
dispiritedly, “I’ll be tempted to take your advice.”
Just then Swacker looked in through the door to say that Inspector
Brenner was on the wire. Markham picked up the telephone receiver, and
as he listened he jotted down some notes on a pad. When the call had
ended, he turned to Vance.
“You seemed disturbed over the condition of the steel jewel-case we
found in the bedroom. Well, the expert on burglar tools just called
up; and he verifies his opinion of this morning. The case was pried
open with a specially made cold chisel such as only a professional
burglar would carry or would know how to use. It had an
inch-and-three-eighths bevelled bit and a one-inch flat handle. It was
an old instrument—there was a peculiar nick in the blade—and is the
same one that was used in a successful house-break on upper Park
Avenue early last summer. . . . Does that highly exciting information
ameliorate your anxiety?”
“Can’t say that it does.” Vance had again become serious and
perplexed. “In fact, it makes the situation still more
fantastic. . . . I could see a glimmer of light—eerie and unearthly,
perhaps, but still a perceptible illumination—in all this murkiness if
it wasn’t for that jewel-case and the steel chisel.”
Markham was about to answer when Swacker again looked in and informed
him that Sergeant Heath had arrived and wanted to see him.
Heath’s manner was far less depressed than when we had taken leave of
him that morning. He accepted the cigar Markham offered him, and
seating himself at the conference table in front of the District
Attorney’s desk, drew out a battered note-book.
“We’ve had a little good luck,” he began. “Burke and Emery—two of the
men I put on the case—got a line on Odell at the first place they made
inquiries. From what they learned, she didn’t run around with many
men—limited herself to a few live wires, and played the game with what
you’d call _finesse_. . . . The principal one—the man who’s been seen
most with her—is Charles Cleaver.”
Markham sat up.
“I know Cleaver—if it’s the same one.”
“It’s him, all right,” declared Heath. “Former Brooklyn Tax
Commissioner; been interested in a pool-room for pony-betting over in
Jersey City ever since. Hangs out at the Stuyvesant Club, where he can
hobnob with his old Tammany Hall cronies.”
“That’s the one,” nodded Markham. “He’s a kind of professional
gay-dog—known as Pop, I believe.”
Vance gazed into space.
“Well, well,” he murmured. “So old Pop Cleaver was also entangled with
our subtle and sanguine Dolores. She certainly couldn’t have loved him
for his _beaux yeux_.”
“I thought, sir,” went on Heath, “that, seeing as how Cleaver is
always in and out of the Stuyvesant Club, you might ask him some
questions about Odell. He ought to know something.”
“Glad to, Sergeant.” Markham made a note on his pad. “I’ll try to get
in touch with him to-night. . . . Any one else on your list?”
“There’s a fellow named Mannix—Louis Mannix—who met Odell when she was
in the ‘Follies’; but she chucked him over a year ago, and they
haven’t been seen together since. He’s got another girl now. He’s the
head of the firm of Mannix and Levine, fur importers, and is one of
your night-club rounders—a heavy spender. But I don’t see much use of
barking up that tree—his affair with Odell went cold too long ago.”
“Yes,” agreed Markham; “I think we can eliminate him.”
“I say, if you keep up this elimination much longer,” observed Vance,
“you won’t have anything left but the lady’s corpse.”
“And then, there’s the man who took her out last night,” pursued
Heath. “Nobody seems to know his name—he must’ve been one of those
discreet, careful old boys. I thought at first he might have been
Cleaver, but the descriptions don’t tally. . . . And by the way, sir,
here’s a funny thing: when he left Odell last night he took the taxi
down to the Stuyvesant Club, and got out there.”
Markham nodded. “I know all about that, Sergeant. And I know who the
man was; and it wasn’t Cleaver.”
Vance was chuckling.
“The Stuyvesant Club seems to be well in the forefront of this case,”
he said. “I do hope it doesn’t suffer the sad fate of the
Knickerbocker Athletic.”*
* Vance was here referring to the famous Molineux case,
which, in 1898, sounded the death-knell of the old
Knickerbocker Athletic Club at Madison Avenue and 45th
Street. But it was commercialism that ended the Stuyvesant’s
career. This club, which stood on the north side of Madison
Square, was razed a few years later to make room for a
skyscraper.
Heath was intent on the main issue.
“Who was the man, Mr. Markham?”
Markham hesitated, as if pondering the advisability of taking the
other into his confidence. Then he said: “I’ll tell you his name, but
in strict confidence. The man was Kenneth Spotswoode.”
He then recounted the story of his being called away from lunch, and
of his failure to elicit any helpful suggestions from Spotswoode. He
also informed Heath of his verification of the man’s statements
regarding his movements after meeting Judge Redfern at the club.
“And,” added Markham, “since he obviously left the girl before she was
murdered, there’s no necessity to bother him. In fact, I gave him my
word I’d keep him out of it for his family’s sake.”
“If you’re satisfied, sir, I am.” Heath closed his note-book and put
it away. “There’s just one other little thing. Odell used to live on
110th Street, and Emery dug up her former landlady and learned that
this fancy guy the maid told us about used to call on her regularly.”
“That reminds me, Sergeant.” Markham picked up the memorandum he had
made during Inspector Brenner’s phone call. “Here’s some data the
Professor gave me about the forcing of the jewel-case.”
Heath studied the paper with considerable eagerness. “Just as I
thought!” He nodded his head with satisfaction. “Clear-cut
professional job, by somebody who’s been in the line of work before.”
Vance roused himself.
“Still, if such is the case,” he said, “why did this experienced
burglar first use the insufficient poker? And why did he overlook the
living-room clothes-press?”
“I’ll find all that out, Mr. Vance, when I get my hands on him,”
asserted Heath, with a hard look in his eyes. “And the guy I want to
have a nice quiet little chat with is the one with the pleated silk
shirt and the chamois gloves.”
“_Chacun à son goût_,” sighed Vance. “For myself, I have no yearning
whatever to hold converse with him. Somehow, I can’t just picture a
professional looter trying to rend a steel box with a cast-iron
poker.”
“Forget the poker,” Heath advised gruffly. “He jimmied the box with a
steel chisel; and that same chisel was used last summer in another
burglary on Park Avenue. What about _that?_”
“Ah! That’s what torments me, Sergeant. If it wasn’t for that
disturbin’ fact, d’ ye see, I’d be lightsome and _sans souci_ this
afternoon, inviting my soul over a dish of tea at Claremont.”
Detective Bellamy was announced, and Heath sprang to his feet.
“That’ll mean news about those finger-prints,” he prophesied
hopefully.
Bellamy entered unemotionally, and walked up to the District
Attorney’s desk.
“Cap’n Dubois sent me over,” he said. “He thought you’d want the
report on those Odell prints.” He reached into his pocket and drew out
a small flat folder which, at a sign from Markham, he handed to Heath.
“We identified ’em. Both made by the same hand, like Cap’n Dubois
said; and that hand belonged to Tony Skeel.”
“‘Dude’ Skeel, eh?” The Sergeant’s tone was vibrant with suppressed
excitement. “Say, Mr. Markham, that gets us somewhere. Skeel’s an
ex-convict and an artist in his line.”
He opened the folder and took out an oblong card and a sheet of blue
paper containing eight or ten lines of typewriting. He studied the
card, gave a satisfied grunt, and handed it to Markham. Vance and I
stepped up and looked at it. At the top was the familiar
rogues’-gallery photograph showing the full face and profile of a
regular-featured youth with thick hair and a square chin. His eyes
were wide-set and pale, and he wore a small, evenly trimmed moustache
with waxed, needle-point ends. Below the double photograph was a brief
tabulated description of its sitter, giving his name, aliases,
residence, and Bertillon measurements, and designating the character
of his illegal profession. Underneath were ten little squares arranged
in two rows, each containing a finger-print impression made in black
ink—the upper row being the impressions of the right hand, the lower
row those of the left.
“So that’s the _arbiter elegantiarum_ who introduced the silk shirt
for full-dress wear! My word!” Vance regarded the identification card
satirically. “I wish he’d start a craze for gaiters with
dinner-jackets—these New York theatres are frightfully drafty in
winter.”
Heath put the card back in the folder, and glanced over the
typewritten paper that had accompanied it.
“He’s our man, and no mistake, Mr. Markham. Listen to this: ‘Tony
(Dude) Skeel. Two years Elmira Reformatory, 1902 to 1904. One year in
the Baltimore County jail for petit larceny, 1906. Three years in San
Quentin for assault and robbery, 1908 to 1911. Arrested Chicago for
house-breaking, 1912; case dismissed. Arrested and tried for burglary
in Albany, 1913; no conviction. Served two years and eight months in
Sing Sing for house-breaking and burglary, 1914 to 1916.’” He folded
the paper and put it, with the card, into his breast-pocket. “Sweet
little record.”
“That dope what you wanted?” asked the imperturbable Bellamy.
“I’ll say!” Heath was almost jovial.
Bellamy lingered expectantly with one eye on the District Attorney;
and Markham, as if suddenly remembering something, took out a box of
cigars and held it out.
“Much obliged, sir,” said Bellamy, helping himself to two _Mi
Favoritas_; and putting them into his waistcoat pocket with great
care, he went out.
“I’ll use your phone now, if you don’t mind, Mr. Markham,” said Heath.
He called the Homicide Bureau.
“Look up Tony Skeel—Dude Skeel—pronto, and bring him in as soon as you
find him,” were his orders to Snitkin. “Get his address from the
files, and take Burke and Emery with you. If he’s hopped it, send out
a general alarm and have him picked up—some of the boys’ll have a line
on him. Lock him up without booking him, see? . . . And, listen.
Search his room for burglar tools: he probably won’t have any laying
around, but I specially want a one-and-three-eighths-inch chisel with
a nick in the blade. . . . I’ll be at Headquarters in half an hour.”
He hung up the receiver and rubbed his hands together.
“Now we’re sailing,” he rejoiced.
Vance had gone to the window, and stood staring down on the “Bridge of
Sighs,” his hands thrust deep into his pockets. Slowly he turned, and
fixed Heath with a contemplative eye.
“It simply won’t do, don’t y’ know,” he asserted. “Your friend, the
Dude, may have ripped open that bally box, but his head isn’t the
right shape for the rest of last evening’s performance.”
Heath was contemptuous.
“Not being a phrenologist, I’m going by the shape of his
finger-prints.”
“A woeful error in the technic of criminal approach, _sergente mio_,”
replied Vance dulcetly. “The question of culpability in this case
isn’t so simple as you imagine. It’s deuced complicated. And this
glass of fashion and mould of form whose portrait you’re carryin’ next
to your heart has merely added to its intricacy.”