Vance Demonstrates
(Monday, September 17; 11.30 a. m.)
Half an hour later we entered the little apartment-house in 71st
Street. Despite the plausibility of Heath’s case against Jessup,
Markham was not entirely satisfied with the arrest; and Vance’s
attitude had sown further seeds of doubt in his mind. The strongest
point against Jessup was that relating to the bolting and unbolting of
the side door; and when Vance had asserted that he was able to
demonstrate how Skeel could have manipulated his own entrance and
exit, Markham, though only partly convinced, had agreed to accompany
him. Heath, too, was interested, and, though supercilious, had
expressed a willingness to go along.
Spively, scintillant in his chocolate-colored suit, was at the
switchboard, and stared at us apprehensively. But when Vance suggested
pleasantly that he take a ten-minute walk round the block, he appeared
greatly relieved, and lost no time in complying.
The officer on guard outside of the Odell apartment came forward and
saluted.
“How goes it?” asked Heath. “Any visitors?”
“Only one—a toff who said he’d known the Canary and wanted to see the
apartment. I told him to get an order from you or the District
Attorney.”
“That was correct, officer,” said Markham; then, turning to Vance:
“Probably Spotswoode—poor devil.”
“Quite,” murmured Vance. “So persistent! Rosemary and all that. . . .
Touchin’.”
Heath told the officer to go for a half-hour’s stroll; and we were
left alone.
“And now, Sergeant,” said Vance cheerfully, “I’m sure you know how to
operate a switchboard. Be so kind as to act as Spively’s understudy
for a few minutes—there’s a good fellow. . . . But, first, please bolt
the side door—and be sure that you bolt it securely, just as it was on
the fatal night.”
Heath grinned good-naturedly.
“Sure thing.” He put his forefinger to his lips mysteriously, and,
crouching, tiptoed down the hall like a burlesque detective in a
farce. After a few moments he came tiptoeing back to the switchboard,
his finger still on his lips. Then, glancing surreptitiously about him
with globular eyes, he put his mouth to Vance’s ear.
“His-s-s-t!” he whispered. “The door’s bolted. G-r-r-r. . . .” He sat
down at the switchboard. “When does the curtain go up, Mr. Vance?”
“It’s up, Sergeant.” Vance fell in with Heath’s jocular mood. “Behold!
The hour is half past nine on Monday night. You are Spively—not nearly
so elegant; and you forgot the moustache—but still Spively. And I am
the bedizened Skeel. For the sake of realism, please try to imagine me
in chamois gloves and a pleated silk shirt. Mr. Markham and Mr. Van
Dine here represent ‘the many-headed monster of the pit.’—And, by the
bye, Sergeant, let me have the key to the Odell apartment: Skeel had
one, don’t y’ know.”
Heath produced the key and handed it over, still grinning.
“A word of stage-direction,” Vance continued. “When I have departed by
the front door, you are to wait exactly three minutes, and then knock
at the late Canary’s apartment.”
He sauntered to the front door and, turning, walked back toward the
switchboard. Markham and I stood behind Heath in the little alcove,
facing the front of the building.
“Enter Mr. Skeel!” announced Vance. “Remember, it’s half past nine.”
Then, as he came abreast of the switchboard: “Dash it all! You forgot
your lines, Sergeant. You should have told me that Miss Odell was out.
But it doesn’t matter. . . . Mr. Skeel continues to the lady’s
door . . . thus.”
He walked past us, and we heard him ring the apartment bell. After a
brief pause, he knocked on the door. Then he came back down the hall.
“I guess you were right,” he said, quoting the words of Skeel as
reported by Spively; and went on to the front door. Stepping out into
the street, he turned toward Broadway.
For exactly three minutes we waited. None of us spoke. Heath had
become serious, and his accelerated puffing on his cigar bore evidence
of his state of expectancy. Markham was frowning stoically. At the end
of the three minutes Heath rose and hurried up the hall, with Markham
and me at his heels. In answer to his knock, the apartment door was
opened from the inside. Vance was standing in the little foyer.
“The end of the first act,” he greeted us airily. “Thus did Mr. Skeel
enter the lady’s boudoir Monday night after the side door had been
bolted, without the operator’s seeing him.”
Heath narrowed his eyes, but said nothing. Then he suddenly swung
round and looked down the rear passageway to the oak door at the end.
The handle of the bolt was in a vertical position, showing that the
catch had been turned and that the door was unbolted. Heath regarded
it for several moments; then he turned his eyes toward the
switchboard. Presently he let out a gleeful whoop.
“Very good, Mr. Vance—very good!” he proclaimed, nodding his head
knowingly. “That was easy, though. And it don’t take psychology to
explain it.—After you rang the apartment bell, you ran down this rear
hallway and unbolted the door. Then you ran back and knocked. After
that you went out the front entrance, turned toward Broadway, swung
round across the street, came in the alley, walked in the side door,
and quietly let yourself into the apartment behind our backs.”
“Simple, wasn’t it?” agreed Vance.
“Sure.” The Sergeant was almost contemptuous. “But that don’t get you
nowhere. Anybody coulda figured it out if that had been the only
problem connected with Monday night’s operations. But it’s the
rebolting of that side door, after Skeel had gone, that’s been
occupying my mind. Skeel might’ve—might’ve, mind you—got in the way
you did. But he couldn’t have got out that way, because the door was
bolted the next morning. And if there was some one here to bolt the
door after him, then that same person could’ve unbolted the door for
him earlier, without his doing the ten-foot dash down the rear hall to
unbolt the door himself at half past nine. So I don’t see that your
interesting little drama helps Jessup out any.”
“Oh, but the drama isn’t over,” Vance replied. “The curtain is about
to go up on the next act.”
Heath lifted his eyes sharply.
“Yeah?” His tone was one of almost jeering incredulity, but his
expression was searching and dubious. “And you’re going to show us how
Skeel got out and bolted the door on the inside without Jessup’s
help?”
“That is precisely what I intend to do, my Sergeant.”
Heath opened his mouth to speak, but thought better of it. Instead, he
merely shrugged his shoulders and gave Markham a sly look.
“Let us repair to the public atrium,” proceeded Vance; and he led us
into the little reception-room diagonally opposite to the switchboard.
This room, as I have explained, was just beyond the staircase, and
along its rear wall ran the little passageway to the side door. (A
glance at the accompanying diagram will clarify the arrangement.)
Vance shepherded us ceremoniously to chairs, and cocked his eye at the
Sergeant.
“You will be so good as to rest here until you hear me knock at the
side door. Then come and open it for me.” He went toward the archway.
“Once more I personate the departed Mr. Skeel; so picture me again _en
grande tenue_—sartorially radiant. . . . The curtain ascends.”
[Illustration: A detail of the ground-floor plan appearing in Chapter
III, focused specifically on the apartment building’s main hallway.
The main hallway runs north from the front door. Halfway down is a
niche in which the switchboard operator sits, and the staircase
leading up is directly across from this niche. North from the stairs
is the reception room. The main hallway ends in the door to the Odell
apartment, and a passageway runs east from this point, featureless
except for the door at its end that leads into the court and the
alleyway.]
He bowed and, stepping from the reception-room into the main hall,
disappeared round the corner into the rear passageway.
Heath shifted his position restlessly and gave Markham a questioning,
troubled look.
“Will he pull it off, sir, do you think?” All jocularity had gone out
of his tone.
“I can’t see how.” Markham was scowling. “If he does, though, it will
knock the chief underpinning from your theory of Jessup’s guilt.”
“I’m not worrying,” declared Heath. “Mr. Vance knows a lot; he’s got
ideas. But how in hell——?”
He was interrupted by a loud knocking on the side door. The three of
us sprang up simultaneously and hurried round the corner of the main
hall. The rear passageway was empty. There was no door or aperture of
any kind on either side of it. It consisted of two blank walls; and at
the end, occupying almost its entire width, was the oak door which led
to the court. Vance could have disappeared only through that oak door.
And the thing we all noticed at once—for our eyes had immediately
sought it—was the horizontal position of the bolt-handle. This meant
that the door was bolted.
Heath was not merely astonished—he was dumbfounded. Markham had halted
abruptly, and stood staring down the empty passageway as if he saw a
ghost. After a momentary hesitation Heath walked rapidly to the door.
But he did not open it at once. He went down on his knees before the
lock and scrutinized the bolt carefully. Then he took out his
pocket-knife and inserted the blade into the crack between the door
and the casing. The point halted against the inner moulding, and the
edge of the blade scraped upon the circular bolt. There was no
question that the heavy oak casings and mouldings of the door were
solid and well fitted, and that the bolt had been securely thrown from
the inside. Heath, however, was still suspicious, and, grasping the
door-knob, he tugged at it violently. But the door held firmly. At
length he threw the bolt-handle to a vertical position and opened the
door. Vance was standing in the court, placidly smoking and inspecting
the brickwork of the alley wall.
“I say, Markham,” he remarked, “here’s a curious thing. This wall, d’
ye know, must be very old. It wasn’t built in these latter days of
breathless efficiency. The beauty-loving mason who erected it laid the
bricks in Flemish bond instead of the Running—or Stretcher—bond of our
own restless age. And up there a bit”—he pointed toward the rear
yard—“is a Rowlock and Checkerboard pattern. Very neat and very
pretty—more pleasing even than the popular English Cross bond. And the
mortar joints are all V-tooled. . . . Fancy!”
Markham was fuming.
“Damn it, Vance! I’m not building brick walls. What I want to know is
how you got out here and left the door bolted on the inside.”
“Oh, that!” Vance crushed out his cigarette and re-entered the
building. “I merely made use of a bit of clever criminal mechanism.
It’s very simple, like all truly effective appliances—oh, simple
beyond words. I blush at its simplicity. . . . Observe!”
[Illustration: The latch of a door bolt set at an angle, with a pair
of tweezers clipped onto it lengthwise. A string hangs down from the
handle of the tweezers.]
He took from his pocket a tiny pair of tweezers to the end of which
was tied a piece of purple twine about four feet long. Placing the
tweezers over the vertical bolt-handle, he turned them at a very
slight angle to the left and then ran the twine under the door so that
about a foot of it projected over the sill. Stepping into the court,
he closed the door. The tweezers still held the bolt-handle as in a
vise, and the string extended straight to the floor and disappeared
under the door into the court. The three of us stood watching the bolt
with fascinated attention. Slowly the string became taut, as Vance
gently pulled upon the loose end outside, and then the downward tug
began slowly but surely to turn the bolt-handle. When the bolt had
been thrown and the handle was in a horizontal position, there came a
slight jerk on the string. The tweezers were disengaged from the
bolt-handle, and fell noiselessly to the carpeted floor. Then as the
string was pulled from without, the tweezers disappeared under the
crack between the bottom of the door and the sill.
“Childish, what?” commented Vance, when Heath had let him in. “Silly,
too, isn’t it? And yet, Sergeant dear, that’s how the deceased Tony
left these premises last Monday night. . . . But let’s go into the
lady’s apartment, and I’ll tell you a story. I see that Mr. Spively
has returned from his promenade; so he can resume his telephonic
duties and leave us free for a _causerie_.”
“When did you think up that hocus-pocus with the tweezers and string?”
demanded Markham irritably, when we were seated in the Odell
living-room.
“I didn’t think it up at all, don’t y’ know,” Vance told him
carelessly, selecting a cigarette with annoying deliberation. “It was
Mr. Skeel’s idea. Ingenious lad—eh, what?”
“Come, come!” Markham’s equanimity was at last shaken. “How can you
possibly know that Skeel used this means of locking himself out?”
“I found the little apparatus in his evening clothes yesterday
morning.”
“What!” cried Heath belligerently. “You took that outa Skeel’s room
yesterday during the search, without saying anything about it?”
“Oh, only after your ferrets had passed it by. In fact, I didn’t even
look at the gentleman’s clothes until your experienced searchers had
inspected them and relocked the wardrobe door. Y’ see, Sergeant, this
little thingumbob was stuffed away in one of the pockets of Skeel’s
dress waistcoat, under the silver cigarette-case. I’ll admit I went
over his evening suit rather lovin’ly. He wore it, y’ know, on the
night the lady departed this life, and I hoped to find some slight
indication of his collaboration in the event. When I found this little
eyebrow-plucker, I hadn’t the slightest inkling of its significance.
And the purple twine attached to it bothered me frightfully, don’t y’
know. I could see that Mr. Skeel didn’t pluck his eyebrows; and even
if he had been addicted to the practice, why the twine? The tweezers
are a delicate little gold affair—just what the ravishin’ Margaret
might have used; and last Tuesday morning I noticed a small lacquer
tray containing similar toilet accessories on her dressing-table near
the jewel-case.—But that wasn’t all.”
He pointed to the little vellum waste-basket beside the escritoire, in
which lay a large crumpled mass of heavy paper.
“I also noticed that piece of discarded wrapping-paper stamped with
the name of a well-known Fifth Avenue novelty shop; and this morning,
on my way down-town, I dropped in at the shop and learned that they
make a practice of tying up their bundles with purple twine.
Therefore, I concluded that Skeel had taken the tweezers and the twine
from this apartment during his visit here that eventful night. . . .
Now, the question was: Why should he have spent his time tying strings
to eyebrow-pluckers? I confess, with maidenly modesty, that I couldn’t
find an answer. But this morning when you told of arresting Jessup,
and emphasized the rebolting of the side door after Skeel’s departure,
the fog lifted, the sun shone, the birds began to sing. I became
suddenly mediumistic: I had a psychic seizure. The whole _modus
operandi_ came to me—as they say—in a flash. . . . I told you, Markham
old thing, it would take spiritualism to solve this case.”