On the Archery Range
(Saturday, April 2; 12.30 p. m.)
Slowly Markham brought his eyes back to Vance.
“It’s mad,” he remarked, like a man confronted with something at once
inexplicable and terrifying.
“Tut, tut!” Vance waved his hand airily. “That’s plagiarism. I said it
first.” (He was striving to overcome his own sense of perplexity by a
lightness of attitude.) “And now there really should be an _inamorata_
to bewail Mr. Robin’s passing. You recall, perhaps, the stanza:
“Who’ll be chief mourner?
‘I,’ said the dove,
‘I mourn my lost love;
I’ll be chief mourner.’”
Markham’s head jerked slightly, and his fingers beat a nervous tattoo
on the table.
“Good God, Vance! There is a girl in the case. And there’s a
possibility that jealousy lies at the bottom of this thing.”
“Fancy that, now! I’m afraid the affair is going to develop into a
kind of _tableau-vivant_ for grown-up kindergartners, what? But
that’ll make our task easier. All we’ll have to do is to find the
fly.”
“The fly?”
“The _Musca domestica_, to speak pedantically. . . . My dear Markham,
have you forgotten?——
“Who saw him die?
‘I,’ said the fly,
‘With my little eye;
I saw him die.’”
“Come down to earth!” Markham spoke with acerbity. “This isn’t a
child’s game. It’s damned serious business.”
Vance nodded abstractedly.
“A child’s game is sometimes the most serious business in life.” His
words held a curious, far-away tone. “I don’t like this thing—I don’t
at all like it. There’s too much of the child in it—the child born old
and with a diseased mind. It’s like some hideous perversion.” He took
a deep inhalation on his cigarette, and made a slight gesture of
repugnance. “Give me the details. Let’s find out where we stand in
this topsy-turvy land.”
Markham again seated himself.
“I haven’t many details. I told you practically everything I know of
the case over the phone. Old Professor Dillard called me shortly
before I communicated with you——”
“Dillard? By any chance, Professor Bertrand Dillard?”
“Yes. The tragedy took place at his house.—You know him?”
“Not personally. I know him only as the world of science knows him—as
one of the greatest living mathematical physicists. I have most of his
books.—How did he happen to call you?”
“I’ve known him for nearly twenty years. I had mathematics under him
at Columbia, and later did some legal work for him. When Robin’s body
was found he phoned me at once—about half past eleven. I called up
Sergeant Heath at the Homicide Bureau and turned the case over to
him—although I told him I’d come along personally later on. Then I
phoned you. The Sergeant and his men are waiting for me now at the
Dillard home.”
“What’s the domestic situation there?”
“The professor, as you probably know, resigned his chair some ten
years ago. Since then he’s been living in West 75th Street, near the
Drive. He took his brother’s child—a girl of fifteen—to live with him.
She’s around twenty-five now. Then there’s his protégé, Sigurd
Arnesson, who was a classmate of mine at college. The professor
adopted him during his junior year. Arnesson is now about forty, an
instructor in mathematics at Columbia. He came to this country from
Norway when he was three, and was left an orphan five years later.
He’s something of a mathematical genius, and Dillard evidently saw the
makings of a great physicist in him and adopted him.”
“I’ve heard of Arnesson,” nodded Vance. “He recently published some
modifications of Mie’s theory on the electrodynamics of moving
bodies. . . . And do these three—Dillard, Arnesson and the girl—live
alone?”
“With two servants. Dillard appears to have a very comfortable income.
They’re not very much alone, however. The house is a kind of shrine
for mathematicians, and quite a _cénacle_ has developed. Moreover, the
girl, who has always gone in for outdoor sports, has her own little
social set. I’ve been at the house several times, and there have
always been visitors about—either a serious student or two of the
abstract sciences up-stairs in the library, or some noisy young people
in the drawing-room below.”
“And Robin?”
“He belonged to Belle Dillard’s set—an oldish young society man who
held several archery records. . . .”
“Yes, I know. I just looked up the name in this book on archery. A Mr.
J. C. Robin seems to have made the high scores in several recent
championship meets. And I noted, too, that a Mr. Sperling has been the
runner-up in several large archery tournaments.—Is Miss Dillard an
archer as well?”
“Yes, quite an enthusiast. In fact, she organized the Riverside
Archery Club. Its permanent ranges are at Sperling’s home in
Scarsdale; but Miss Dillard has rigged up a practice range in the side
yard of the professor’s 75th-Street house. It was on this range that
Robin was killed.”
“Ah! And, as you say, the last person known to have been with him was
Sperling. Where is our sparrow now?”
“I don’t know. He was with Robin shortly before the tragedy; but when
the body was found he had disappeared. I imagine Heath will have news
on that point.”
“And wherein lies the possible motive of jealousy you referred to?”
Vance’s eyelids had drooped lazily, and he smoked with leisurely but
precise deliberation—a sign of his intense interest in what was being
told him.
“Professor Dillard mentioned an attachment between his niece and
Robin; and when I asked him who Sperling was and what his status was
at the Dillard house, he intimated that Sperling was also a suitor for
the girl’s hand. I didn’t go into the situation over the phone, but
the impression I got was that Robin and Sperling were rivals, and that
Robin had the better of it.”
“And so the sparrow killed Cock Robin.” Vance shook his head
dubiously. “It won’t do. It’s too dashed simple; and it doesn’t
account for the fiendishly perfect reconstruction of the Cock-Robin
rhyme. There’s something deeper—something darker and more horrible—in
this grotesque business.—Who, by the by, found Robin?”
“Dillard himself. He had stepped out on the little balcony at the rear
of the house, and saw Robin lying below on the practice range, with an
arrow through his heart. He went down-stairs immediately—with
considerable difficulty, for the old man suffers abominably from
gout—and, seeing that the man was dead, phoned me.—That’s all the
advance information I have.”
“Not what you’d call a blindin’ illumination, but still a bit
suggestive.” Vance got up. “Markham old dear, prepare for something
rather bizarre—and damnable. We can rule out accidents and
coincidence. While it’s true that ordin’ry target arrows—which are
made of soft wood and fitted with little bevelled piles—could easily
penetrate a person’s clothing and chest wall, even when driven with a
medium weight bow, the fact that a man named ‘Sparrow’ should kill a
man named Cochrane Robin, _with a bow and arrow_, precludes any
haphazard concatenation of circumstances. Indeed, this incredible set
of events proves conclusively that there has been a subtle, diabolical
intent beneath the whole affair.” He moved toward the door. “Come, let
us find out something more about it at what the Austrian police
officials eruditely call the _situs criminis_.”
We left the house at once and drove up-town in Markham’s car. Entering
Central Park at Fifth Avenue we emerged through the 72nd-Street gate,
and a few minutes later were turning off of West End Avenue into 75th
Street. The Dillard house—number 391—was on our right, far down the
block toward the river. Between it and the Drive, occupying the entire
corner, was a large fifteen-story apartment house. The professor’s
home seemed to nestle, as if for protection, in the shadow of this
huge structure.
The Dillard house was of gray, weather-darkened limestone, and
belonged to the days when homes were built for permanency and comfort.
The lot on which it stood had a thirty-five-foot frontage, and the
house itself was fully twenty-five feet across. The other ten feet of
the lot, which formed an areaway separating the house from the
apartment structure, was shut off from the street by a ten-foot stone
wall with a large iron door in the centre.
The house was of modified Colonial architecture. A short flight of
shallow steps led from the street to a narrow brick-lined porch
adorned with four white Corinthian pillars. On the second floor a
series of casement windows, paned with rectangular leaded glass,
extended across the entire width of the house. (These, I learned
later, were the windows of the library.) There was something restful
and distinctly old-fashioned about the place: it appeared like
anything but the scene of a gruesome murder.
Two police cars were parked near the entrance when we drove up, and a
dozen or so curious onlookers had gathered in the street. A patrolman
lounged against one of the fluted columns of the porch, gazing at the
crowd before him with bored disdain.
An old butler admitted us and led us into the drawing-room on the left
of the entrance hall, where we found Sergeant Ernest Heath and two
other men from the Homicide Bureau. The Sergeant, who was standing
beside the centre-table smoking, his thumbs hooked in the armholes of
his waistcoat, came forward and extended his hand in a friendly
greeting to Markham.
“I’m glad you got here, sir,” he said; and the worried look in his
cold blue eyes seemed to relax a bit. “I’ve been waiting for you.
There’s something damn fishy about this case.”
He caught sight of Vance, who had paused in the background, and his
broad pugnacious features crinkled in a good-natured grin.
“Howdy, Mr. Vance. I had a sneaking idea you’d be lured into this
case. What you been up to these many moons?” I could not help
comparing this genuine friendliness of the Sergeant’s attitude with
the hostility of his first meeting with Vance at the time of the
Benson case. But much water had run under the bridge since that first
encounter in the murdered Alvin’s garish living-room; and between
Heath and Vance there had grown up a warm attachment, based on a
mutual respect and a frank admiration for each other’s capabilities.
Vance held out his hand, and a smile played about the corners of his
mouth.
“The truth is, Sergeant, I’ve been endeavorin’ to discover the lost
glories of an Athenian named Menander, a dramatic rival of Philemon’s.
Silly, what?”
Heath grunted disdainfully.
“Well, anyhow, if you’re as good at it as you are at discovering
crooks, you’ll probably get a conviction.” It was the first compliment
I had ever heard pass his lips, and it attested not only to his
deep-seated admiration for Vance, but also to his own troubled and
uncertain state of mind.
Markham sensed the Sergeant’s mental insecurity, and asked somewhat
abruptly: “Just what seems to be the difficulty in the present case?”
“I didn’t say there was any difficulty, sir,” Heath replied. “It looks
as though we had the bird who did it dead to rights. But I ain’t
satisfied, and—oh, hell! Mr. Markham . . . it ain’t natural; it don’t
make sense.”
“I think I understand what you mean.” Markham regarded the Sergeant
appraisingly. “You’re inclined to think that Sperling’s guilty?”
“Sure, he’s guilty,” declared Heath with over-emphasis. “But that’s
not what’s worrying me. To tell you the truth, I don’t like the name
of this guy who was croaked—especially as he was croaked with a bow
and arrow. . . .” He hesitated, a bit shamefaced. “Don’t it strike you
as peculiar, sir?”
Markham nodded perplexedly.
“I see that you, too, remember your nursery rhymes,” he said, and
turned away.
Vance fixed a waggish look on Heath.
“You referred to Mr. Sperling just now as a ‘bird,’ Sergeant. The
designation was most apt. _Sperling_, d’ ye see, means ‘sparrow’ in
German. And it was a sparrow, you recall, who killed Cock Robin with
an arrow. . . . A fascinatin’ situation—eh, what?”
The Sergeant’s eyes bulged slightly, and his lips fell apart. He
stared at Vance with almost ludicrous bewilderment.
“I said this here business was fishy!”
“I’d say, rather, it was avian, don’t y’ know.”
“You _would_ call it something nobody’d understand,” Heath retorted
truculently. It was his wont to become bellicose when confronted with
the inexplicable.
Markham intervened diplomatically.
“Let’s have the details of the case, Sergeant. I take it you’ve
questioned the occupants of the house.”
“Only in a general way, sir.” Heath flung one leg over the corner of
the centre-table and relit his dead cigar. “I’ve been waiting for you
to show up. I knew you were acquainted with the old gentleman
up-stairs; so I just did the routine things. I put a man out in the
alley to see that nobody touches the body till Doc Doremus
arrives,*—he’ll be here when he finishes lunch.—I phoned the
finger-print men before I left the office, and they oughta be on the
job any minute now; though I don’t see what good they can do. . . .”
* Heath was referring to Doctor Emanuel Doremus, the Chief Medical
Examiner of New York.
“What about the bow that fired the arrow?” put in Vance.
“That was our one best bet; but old Mr. Dillard said he picked it up
from the alley and brought it in the house. He probably gummed up any
prints it mighta had.”
“What have you done about Sperling?” asked Markham.
“I got his address—he lives in a country house up Westchester way—and
sent a coupla men to bring him here as soon as they could lay hands on
him. Then I talked to the two servants—the old fellow that let you in,
and his daughter, a middle-aged woman who does the cooking. But
neither of ’em seemed to know anything, or else they’re acting
dumb.—After that I tried to question the young lady of the house.” The
Sergeant raised his hands in a gesture of irritated despair. “But she
was all broke up and crying; so I thought I’d let _you_ have the
pleasure of interviewing her.—Snitkin and Burke”—he jerked his thumb
toward the two detectives by the front window—“went over the basement
and the alley and back yard trying to pick up something; but drew a
blank.—And that’s all I know so far. As soon as Doremus and the
finger-print men get here, and after I’ve had a heart-to-heart talk
with Sperling, then I’ll get the ball to rolling and clean up the
works.”
Vance heaved an audible sigh.
“You’re so sanguine, Sergeant! Don’t be disappointed if your ball
turns out to be a parallelopiped that won’t roll. There’s something
deuced oddish about this nursery extravaganza; and, unless all the
omens deceive me, you’ll be playing blind-man’s-buff for a long time
to come.”
“Yeh?” Heath gave Vance a look of despondent shrewdness. It was
evident he was more or less of the same opinion.
“Don’t let Mr. Vance dishearten you, Sergeant,” Markham rallied him.
“He’s permitting his imagination to run away with him.” Then with an
impatient gesture he turned toward the door. “Let’s look over the
ground before the others arrive. Later I’ll have a talk with Professor
Dillard and the other members of the household. And, by the way,
Sergeant, you didn’t mention Mr. Arnesson. Isn’t he at home?”
“He’s at the university; but he’s expected to return soon.”
Markham nodded and followed the Sergeant into the main hall. As we
passed down the heavily-carpeted passage to the rear, there was a
sound on the staircase, and a clear but somewhat tremulous woman’s
voice spoke from the semi-darkness above.
“Is that you, Mr. Markham? Uncle thought he recognized your voice.
He’s waiting for you in the library.”
“I’ll join your uncle in a very few minutes, Miss Dillard.” Markham’s
tone was paternal and sympathetic. “And please wait with him, for I
want to see you, too.”
With a murmured acquiescence, the girl disappeared round the head of
the stairs.
We moved on to the rear door of the lower hall. Beyond was a narrow
passageway terminating in a flight of wooden steps which led to the
basement. At the foot of these steps we came into a large,
low-ceilinged room with a door giving directly upon the areaway at the
west side of the house. This door was slightly ajar, and in the
opening stood the man from the Homicide Bureau whom Heath had set to
guard the body.
The room had obviously once been a basement storage; but it had been
altered and redecorated, and now served as a sort of club-room. The
cement floor was covered with fibre rugs, and one entire wall was
painted with a panorama of archers throughout the ages. In an oblong
panel on the left was a huge illustrated reproduction of an archery
range labelled “Ayme for Finsburie Archers—London 1594,” showing
Bloody House Ridge in one corner, Westminster Hall in the centre, and
Welsh Hall in the foreground. There were a piano and a phonograph in
the room; numerous comfortable wicker chairs; a varicolored divan; an
enormous wicker centre-table littered with all manner of sports
magazines; and a small bookcase filled with works on archery. Several
targets rested in one corner, their gold discs and concentric
chromatic rings making brilliant splashes of color in the sunlight
which flooded in from the two rear windows. One wall space near the
door was hung with long bows of varying sizes and weights; and near
them was a large old-fashioned tool-chest. Above it was suspended a
small cupboard, or ascham, strewn with various odds and ends of
tackle, such as bracers, shooting-gloves, piles, points of aim, and
bow strings. A large oak panel between the door and the west window
contained a display of one of the most interesting and varied
collections of arrows I had ever seen.
This panel attracted Vance particularly, and adjusting his monocle
carefully, he strolled over to it.
“Hunting and war arrows,” he remarked. “Most inveiglin’. . . . _Ah!_
One of the trophies seems to have disappeared. Taken down with
considerable haste, too. The little brass brad that held it in place
is shockingly bent.”
On the floor stood several quivers filled with target arrows. He
leaned over and, withdrawing one, extended it to Markham.
“This frail shaft may not look as if it would penetrate the human
breast; but target arrows will drive entirely through a deer at eighty
yards. . . . Why, then, the missing hunting arrow from the panel? An
interestin’ point.”
Markham frowned and compressed his lips; and I realized that he had
been clinging to the forlorn hope that the tragedy might have been an
accident. He tossed the arrow hopelessly on a chair, and walked toward
the outer door.
“Let’s take a look at the body and the lie of the land,” he said
gruffly.
As we emerged into the warm spring sunlight a sense of isolation came
over me. The narrow paved areaway in which we stood seemed like a
canyon between steep stone walls. It was four or five feet below the
street level, which was reached by a short flight of steps leading to
the gate in the wall. The blank, windowless rear wall of the apartment
house opposite extended upwards for 150 feet; and the Dillard house
itself, though only four stories high, was the equivalent of six
stories gauged by the architectural measurements of to-day. Though we
were standing out of doors in the heart of New York, no one could see
us except from the few side windows of the Dillard house and from a
single bay window of the house on 76th Street, whose rear yard
adjoined that of the Dillard grounds.
This other house, we were soon to learn, was owned by a Mrs. Drukker;
and it was destined to play a vital and tragic part in the solution of
Robin’s murder. Several tall willow trees acted as a mask to its rear
windows; and only the bay window at the side of the house had an
unobstructed view of that part of the areaway in which we stood.
I noticed that Vance had his eye on this bay window, and as he studied
it I saw a flicker of interest cross his face. It was not until much
later that afternoon that I was able to guess what had caught and held
his attention.
The archery range extended from the wall of the Dillard lot on 75th
Street all the way to a similar street wall of the Drukker lot on 76th
Street, where a butt of hay bales had been erected on a shallow bed of
sand. The distance between the two walls was 200 feet, which, as I
learned later, made possible a sixty-yard range, thus permitting
target practice for all the standard archery events, with the one
exception of the York Round for men.
The Dillard lot was 135 feet deep, the depth of the Drukker lot
therefore being sixty-five feet. A section of the tall ironwork fence
that separated the two rear yards had been removed where it had once
transected the space now used for the archery range. At the further
end of the range, backing against the western line of the Drukker
property, was another tall apartment house occupying the corner of
76th Street and Riverside Drive. Between these two gigantic buildings
ran a narrow alleyway, the range end of which was closed with a high
board fence in which had been set a small door with a lock.
[Illustration: An architectural diagram showing a city block between
75th and 76th Street. The main cross road, Riverside Drive, is faced
by two tall buildings, marked “Apartment House”. These buildings
occupy the front half of the city block. Prof. Dillard’s house sits
behind one of them, facing 75th Street. Behind the other building is
Drukker’s house, facing 76th Street. Between these two houses are
their back yards. The alley separating the houses from the apartment
buildings has been converted into an archery range. Gates prevent
access to the archery range from the sidewalks. There is also a narrow
alley between the two apartment buildings that ends in a third gate to
the range. Facing Prof. Dillard’s house on the opposite side of 75th
Street is a smaller building marked “Pardee’s house”.]
For purposes of clarity I am incorporating in this record a diagram of
the entire scene; for the arrangement of the various topographical and
architectural details had a very important bearing on the solution of
the crime. I would call attention particularly to the following
points:—first, to the little second-story balcony at the rear of the
Dillard house, which projects slightly over the archery range;
secondly, to the bay window (on the second floor) of the Drukker
house, whose southern angle has a view of the entire archery range
toward 75th Street; and thirdly, to the alleyway between the two
apartment houses, which leads from Riverside Drive into the Dillard
rear yard.
The body of Robin lay almost directly outside of the archery-room
door. It was on its back, the arms extended, the legs slightly drawn
up, the head pointing toward the 76th-Street end of the range. Robin
had been a man of perhaps thirty-five, of medium height, and with an
incipient corpulency. There was a rotund puffiness to his face, which
was smooth-shaven except for a narrow blond moustache. He was clothed
in a two-piece sport suit of light gray flannel, a pale-blue silk
shirt, and tan Oxfords with thick rubber soles. His hat—a
pearl-colored felt fedora—was lying near his feet.
Beside the body was a large pool of coagulated blood which had formed
in the shape of a huge pointing hand. But the thing which held us all
in a spell of fascinated horror was the slender shaft that extended
vertically from the left side of the dead man’s breast. The arrow
protruded perhaps twenty inches, and where it had entered the body
there was the large dark stain of the hemorrhage. What made this
strange murder seem even more incongruous were the beautifully
fletched feathers on the arrow. They had been dyed a bright red; and
about the shaftment were two stripes of turquoise blue—giving the
arrow a gala appearance. I had a feeling of unreality about the
tragedy, as though I were witnessing a scene in a sylvan play for
children.
Vance stood looking down at the body with half-closed eyes, his hands
in his coat pockets. Despite the apparent indolence of his attitude I
could tell that he was keenly alert, and that his mind was busy
co-ordinating the factors of the scene before him.
“Dashed queer, that arrow,” he commented. “Designed for big
game; . . . undoubtedly belongs to that ethnological exhibit we just
saw. And a clean hit—directly into the vital spot, between the ribs
and without the slightest deflection. Extr’ordin’ry! . . . I say,
Markham; such marksmanship isn’t human. A chance shot might have done
it; but the slayer of this johnny wasn’t leaving anything to chance.
That powerful hunting arrow, which was obviously wrenched from the
panel inside, shows premeditation and design——” Suddenly he bent over
the body. “Ah! Very interestin’. The nock of the arrow is broken
down,—I doubt if it would even hold a taut string.” He turned to
Heath. “Tell me, Sergeant: where did Professor Dillard find the
bow?—not far from that club-room window, what?”
Heath gave a start.
“Right outside the window, in fact, Mr. Vance. It’s in on the piano
now, waiting for the finger-print men.”
“The professor’s sign-manual is all they’ll find, I’m afraid.” Vance
opened his case and selected another cigarette. “And I’m rather
inclined to believe that the arrow itself is innocent of prints.”
Heath was scrutinizing Vance inquisitively.
“What made you think the bow was found near the window, Mr. Vance?” he
asked.
“It seemed the logical place for it, in view of the position of Mr.
Robin’s body, don’t y’ know.”
“Shot from close range, you mean?”
Vance shook his head.
“No, Sergeant. I was referring to the fact that the deceased’s feet
are pointing toward the basement door, and that, though his arms are
extended, his legs are drawn up. Is that the way you’d say a man would
fall who’d been shot through the heart?”
Heath considered the point.
“No-o,” he admitted. “He’d likely be more crumpled up; or, if he did
fall over back, his legs would be straight out and his arms drawn in.”
“Quite.—And regard his hat. If he had fallen backwards it would be
behind him, not at his feet.”
“See here, Vance,” Markham demanded sharply; “what’s in your mind?”
“Oh, numberless things. But they all boil down to the wholly
irrational notion that this defunct gentleman wasn’t shot with a bow
and arrow at all.”
“Then why, in God’s name——”
“Exactly! Why the utter insanity of the elaborate stage-setting?—My
word, Markham! This business is ghastly.”
As Vance spoke the basement door opened, and Doctor Doremus,
shepherded by Detective Burke, stepped jauntily into the areaway. He
greeted us breezily and shook hands all round. Then he fixed a fretful
eye on Heath.
“By Gad, Sergeant!” he complained, pulling his hat down to an even
more rakish angle. “I only spend three hours out of the twenty-four
eating my meals; and you invariably choose those three hours to worry
me with your confounded bodies. You’re ruining my digestion.” He
looked about him petulantly and, on seeing Robin, whistled softly.
“For Gad’s sake! A nice fancy murder you picked out for me this time!”
He knelt down and began running his practised fingers over the body.
Markham stood for a moment looking on, but presently he turned to
Heath.
“While the doctor’s busy with his examination, Sergeant, I’ll go
up-stairs and have a chat with Professor Dillard.” Then he addressed
himself to Doremus. “Let me see you before you go, doctor.”
“Oh, sure.” Doremus did not so much as look up. He had turned the body
on one side, and was feeling the base of the skull.