The Ten O’Clock Appointment
(Sunday, September 16; 10 a. m.)
A fine drizzle was falling the next morning when we rose; and a
chill—the first forerunner of winter—was in the air. We had breakfast
in the library at half past eight, and at nine o’clock Vance’s
car—which had been ordered the night before—called for us. We rode
down Fifth Avenue, now almost deserted in its thick blanket of yellow
fog, and called for Markham at his apartment in West 12th Street. He
was waiting for us in front of the house, and stepped quickly into the
car with scarcely a word of greeting. From his anxious, preoccupied
look I knew that he was depending a good deal on what Skeel had to
tell him.
We had turned into West Broadway beneath the Elevated tracks before
any of us spoke. Then Markham voiced a doubt which was plainly an
articulation of his troubled ruminations.
“I’m wondering if, after all, this fellow Skeel can have any important
information to give us. His phone call was very strange. Yet he spoke
confidently enough regarding his knowledge. No dramatics, no request
for immunity—just a plain, assured statement that he knew who murdered
the Odell girl, and had decided to come clean.”
“It’s certain he himself didn’t strangle the lady,” pronounced Vance.
“My theory, as you know, is that he was hiding in the clothes-press
when the shady business was being enacted; and all along I’ve clung
lovingly to the idea that he was _au secret_ to the entire
proceedings. The keyhole of that closet door is on a direct line with
the end of the davenport where the lady was strangled; and if a rival
was operating at the time of his concealment, it’s not unreasonable to
assume that he peered forth—eh, what? I questioned him on this point,
you remember; and he didn’t like it a bit.”
“But, in that case——”
“Oh, I know. There are all kinds of erudite objections to my wild
dream.—Why didn’t he give the alarm? Why didn’t he tell us about it
before? Why this? and why that? . . . I make no claim to omniscience,
y’ know; I don’t even pretend to have a logical explanation for the
various _traits d’union_ of my vagary. My theory is only sketched in,
as it were. But I’m convinced, nevertheless, that the modish Tony
knows who killed his _bona roba_ and looted her apartment.”
“But of the three persons who possibly could have got into the Odell
apartment that night—namely, Mannix, Cleaver, and Lindquist—Skeel
evidently knows only one—Mannix.”
“Yes—to be sure. And Mannix, it would seem, is the only one of the
trio who knows Skeel. . . . An interestin’ point.”
Heath met us at the Franklin Street entrance to the Criminal Courts
Building. He, too, was anxious and subdued, and he shook hands with us
in a detached manner devoid of his usual heartiness.
“I’ve got Snitkin running the elevator,” he said, after the briefest
of salutations. “Burke’s in the hall up-stairs, and Emery is with him,
waiting to be let into Swacker’s office.”
We entered the deserted and almost silent building and rode up to the
fourth floor. Markham unlocked his office door and we passed in.
“Guilfoyle, the man who’s tailing Skeel,” Heath explained, when we
were seated, “is to report by phone to the Homicide Bureau as soon as
the Dude leaves his rooms.”
It was now twenty minutes to ten. Five minutes later Swacker arrived.
Taking his stenographic note-book, he stationed himself just inside of
the swinging door of Markham’s private sanctum, where he could hear
all that was said without being seen. Markham lit a cigar, and Heath
followed suit. Vance was already smoking placidly. He was the calmest
person in the room, and lay back languorously in one of the great
leather chairs as though immune to all cares and vicissitudes. But I
could tell by the over-deliberate way he flicked his ashes into the
receiver that he, too, was uneasy.
Five or six minutes passed in complete silence. Then the Sergeant gave
a grunt of annoyance.
“No, sir,” he said, as if completing some unspoken thought, “I can’t
get a slant on this business. The finding of that jewellery, now, all
nicely wrapped up . . . and then the Dude offering to squeal. . . .
There’s no sense to it.”
“It’s tryin’, I know, Sergeant; but it’s not altogether senseless.”
Vance was gazing lazily at the ceiling. “The chap who confiscated
those baubles didn’t have any use for them. He didn’t want them, in
fact—they worried him abominably.”
The point was too complex for Heath. The previous day’s developments
had shaken the foundation of all his arguments; and he lapsed again
into brooding silence.
At ten o’clock he rose impatiently and, going to the hall door, looked
out. Returning, he compared his watch with the office clock and began
pacing restlessly. Markham was attempting to sort some papers on his
desk, but presently he pushed them aside with an impatient gesture.
“He ought to be coming along now,” he remarked, with an effort at
cheerfulness.
“He’ll come,” growled Heath, “or he’ll get a free ride.” And he
continued his pacing.
A few minutes later he turned abruptly and went out into the hall. We
could hear him calling to Snitkin down the elevator shaft, but when he
came back into the office his expression told us that as yet there was
no news of Skeel.
“I’ll call up the Bureau,” he decided, “and see what Guilfoyle had to
report. At least we’ll know then when the Dude left his house.”
But when the Sergeant had been connected with Police Headquarters he
was informed that Guilfoyle had as yet made no report.
“That’s damn funny,” he commented, hanging up the receiver.
It was now twenty minutes past ten. Markham was growing restive. The
tenacity with which the Canary murder case had resisted all his
efforts toward a solution had filled him with discouragement; and he
had hoped, almost desperately, that this morning’s interview with
Skeel would clear up the mystery, or at least supply him with
information on which definite action could be taken. Now, with Skeel
late for this all-important appointment, the strain was becoming
tense.
He pushed back his chair nervously and, going to the window, gazed out
into the dark haze of fine rain. When he returned to his desk his face
was set.
“I’ll give our friend until half past ten,” he said grimly. “If he
isn’t here then, Sergeant, you’d better call up the local
station-house and have them send a patrol-wagon for him.”
There was another few minutes of silence. Vance lolled in his chair
with half-closed eyes, but I noticed that, though he still held his
cigarette, he was not smoking. His forehead was puckered by a frown,
and he was very quiet. I knew that some unusual problem was occupying
him. His lethargy had in it a quality of intentness and concentration.
As I watched him he suddenly sat up straight, his eyes open and alert.
He tossed his dead cigarette into the receiver with a jerky movement
that attested to some inner excitation.
“Oh, my word!” he exclaimed. “It really can’t be, y’ know! And
yet”—his face darkened—“and yet, by Jove, that’s it! . . . What an ass
I’ve been—what an unutterable ass! . . . Oh!”
He sprang to his feet; then stood looking down at the floor like a man
dazed, afraid of his own thoughts.
“Markham, I don’t like it—I don’t like it at all.” He spoke almost as
if he were frightened. “I tell you, there’s something terrible going
on—something uncanny. The thought of it makes my flesh creep. . . . I
must be getting old and sentimental,” he added, with an effort at
lightness; but the look in his eyes belied his tone. “Why didn’t I see
this thing yesterday? . . . But I let it go on. . . .”
We were all staring at him in amazement. I had never seen him affected
in this way before, and the fact that he was habitually so cynical and
aloof, so adamant to emotion and impervious to outside influences,
gave his words and actions an impelling and impressive quality.
After a moment he shook himself slightly, as if to throw off the pall
of horror that had descended upon him, and, stepping to Markham’s
desk, he leaned over, resting on both hands.
“Don’t you see?” he asked. “Skeel’s not coming. No use to wait—no use
of our having come here in the first place. We have to go to him. He’s
waiting for us. . . . Come! Get your hat.”
Markham had risen, and Vance took him firmly by the arm.
“You needn’t argue,” he persisted. “You’ll have to go to him sooner or
later. You might as well go now, don’t y’ know.—My word! What a
situation!”
He had led Markham, astonished and but mildly protesting, into the
middle of the room, and he now beckoned to Heath with his free hand.
“You, too, Sergeant. Sorry you had all this trouble. My fault. I
should have foreseen this thing. A devilish shame; but my mind was on
Monets all yesterday afternoon. . . . You know where Skeel lives?”
Heath nodded mechanically. He had fallen under the spell of Vance’s
strange and dynamic importunities.
“Then don’t wait.—And, Sergeant! You’d better bring Burke or Snitkin
along. They won’t be needed here—nobody’ll be needed here any more
to-day.”
Heath looked inquiringly to Markham for counsel; his bewilderment had
thrown him into a state of mute indecision. Markham nodded his
approval of Vance’s suggestions, and, without a word, slipped into his
raincoat. A few minutes later the four of us, accompanied by Snitkin,
had entered Vance’s car and were lurching up-town. Swacker had been
sent home; the office had been locked up; and Burke and Emery had
departed for the Homicide Bureau to await further instructions.
Skeel lived in 35th Street, near the East River, in a dingy, but once
pretentious, house which formerly had been the residence of some old
family of the better class. It now had an air of dilapidation and
decay; there was rubbish in the areaway; and a large sign announcing
rooms for rent was posted in one of the ground-floor windows.
As we drew up before it Heath sprang to the street and looked sharply
about him. Presently he espied an unkempt man slouching in the doorway
of a grocery-store diagonally opposite, and beckoned to him. The man
shambled over furtively.
“It’s all right, Guilfoyle,” the Sergeant told him. “We’re paying the
Dude a social visit.—What’s the trouble? Why didn’t you report?”
Guilfoyle looked surprised.
“I was told to phone in when he left the house, sir. But he ain’t left
yet. Mallory tailed him home last night round ten o’clock, and I
relieved Mallory at nine this morning. The Dude’s still inside.”
“Of course he’s still inside, Sergeant,” said Vance, a bit
impatiently.
“Where’s his room situated, Guilfoyle?” asked Heath.
“Second floor, at the back.”
“Right. We’re going in.—Stand by.”
“Look out for him,” admonished Guilfoyle. “He’s got a gat.”
Heath took the lead up the worn steps which led from the pavement to
the little vestibule. Without ringing, he roughly grasped the
door-knob and shook it. The door was unlocked, and we stepped into the
stuffy lower hallway.
A bedraggled woman of about forty, in a disreputable dressing-gown,
and with hair hanging in strings over her shoulders, emerged suddenly
from a rear door and came toward us unsteadily, her bleary eyes
focused on us with menacing resentment.
“Say!” she burst out, in a rasping voice. “What do youse mean by
bustin’ in like this on a respectable lady?” And she launched forth
upon a stream of profane epithets.
Heath, who was nearest her, placed his large hand over her face, and
gave her a gentle but firm shove backward.
“You keep outa this, Cleopatra!” he advised her, and began to ascend
the stairs.
The second-floor hallway was dimly lighted by a small flickering
gas-jet, and at the rear we could distinguish the outlines of a single
door set in the middle of the wall.
“That’ll be Mr. Skeel’s abode,” observed Heath.
He walked up to it and, dropping one hand in his right coat-pocket,
turned the knob. But the door was locked. He then knocked violently
upon it, and placing his ear to the jamb, listened. Snitkin stood
directly behind him, his hand also in his pocket. The rest of us
remained a little in the rear.
Heath had knocked a second time when Vance’s voice spoke up from the
semidarkness.
“I say, Sergeant, you’re wasting time with all that formality.”
“I guess you’re right,” came the answer after a moment of what seemed
unbearable silence.
Heath bent down and looked at the lock. Then he took some instrument
from his pocket and inserted it into the keyhole.
“You’re right,” he repeated. “The key’s gone.”
He stepped back and, balancing on his toes like a sprinter, sent his
shoulders crashing against the panel directly over the knob. But the
lock held.
“Come on, Snitkin,” he ordered.
The two detectives hurled themselves against the door. At the third
onslaught there was a splintering of wood and a tearing of the lock’s
bolt through the moulding. The door swung drunkenly inward.
The room was in almost complete darkness. We all hesitated on the
threshold, while Snitkin crossed warily to one of the windows and sent
the shade clattering up. The yellow-gray light filtered in, and the
objects of the room at once took definable form. A large,
old-fashioned bed projected from the wall on the right.
“Look!” cried Snitkin, pointing; and something in his voice sent a
shiver over me.
We pressed forward. On the foot of the bed, at the side toward the
door, sprawled the crumpled body of Skeel. Like the Canary, he had
been strangled. His head hung back over the foot-board, his face a
hideous distortion. His arms were outstretched and one leg trailed
over the edge of the mattress, resting on the floor.
“Thuggee,” murmured Vance. “Lindquist mentioned it.—Curious!”
Heath stood staring fixedly at the body, his shoulders hunched. His
normal ruddiness of complexion was gone, and he seemed like a man
hypnotized.
“Mother o’ God!” he breathed, awe-stricken. And, with an involuntary
motion, he crossed himself.
Markham was shaken also. He set his jaw rigidly.
“You’re right, Vance.” His voice was strained and unnatural.
“Something sinister and terrible has been going on here. . . . There’s
a fiend loose in this town—a werewolf.”
“I wouldn’t say that, old man.” Vance regarded the murdered Skeel
critically. “No, I wouldn’t say that. Not a werewolf. Just a desperate
human being. A man of extremes, perhaps—but quite rational, and
logical—oh, how deuced logical!”