Act Two
(Monday, April 11; 11.30 a. m.)
There is no need to recall here the nation-wide sensation caused by
Robin’s murder. Every one remembers how that startling tragedy was
featured in the country’s press. It was referred to by various
designations. Some newspapers called it the Cock Robin murder. Others,
more alliterative but less accurate,* termed it the Mother Goose
murder. But the signature of the typewritten notes appealed strongly
to the journalistic sense of mystery; and in time the killing of Robin
came to be known as the Bishop murder case. Its strange and fearful
combination of horror and nursery jargon inflamed the public’s
imagination; and the sinister and insane implications of its details
affected the entire country like some grotesque nightmare whose
atmosphere could not be shaken off.
* The old anonymous nursery rhyme, “The Death and Burial of Cock
Robin,” is not, as is commonly supposed, one of the original “Mother
Goose Melodies,” although it has often been included in modern
editions of that famous work.
During the week following the discovery of Robin’s body, the
detectives of the Homicide Bureau, as well as the detectives connected
with the District Attorney’s office, were busy night and day pushing
their inquiries. The receipt of the duplicate Bishop notes by the
leading New York morning papers had dissipated whatever ideas Heath
may have held as to Sperling’s guilt; and though he refused to put his
official imprimatur on the young man’s innocence he threw himself,
with his usual gusto and pertinacity, into the task of finding another
and more plausible culprit. The investigation which he organized and
superintended was as complete as had been that of the Greene murder
case. No avenue which held the meagrest hope of results was
overlooked; and the report he drew up would have given joy even to
those meticulous criminologists of the University of Lausanne.
On the afternoon of the day of the murder he and his men had searched
for the cloth that had been used to wipe up the blood in the
archery-room; but no trace of it was found. Also, a thorough
examination of the Dillard basement was made in the hope of finding
other clews; but although Heath had put the task in the hands of
experts, the result was negative. The only point brought to light was
that the fibre rug near the door had recently been moved so as to
cover the cleansed spot on the cement floor. This fact, however,
merely substantiated the Sergeant’s earlier observation.
The _post-mortem_ report of Doctor Doremus lent color to the now
officially accepted theory that Robin had been killed in the
archery-room and then placed on the range. The autopsy showed that the
blow on the back of his skull had been a particularly violent one and
had been made with a heavy rounded instrument, resulting in a
depressed fracture quite different from the fissured fracture caused
by striking a flat surface. A search was instituted for the weapon
with which the blow had been dealt; but no likely instrument was
turned up.
Though Beedle and Pyne were questioned by Heath several times, nothing
new was learned from them. Pyne insisted that he had been up-stairs
the entire morning in Arnesson’s room, except for a few brief absences
to the linen-closet and the front door, and clung tenaciously to his
denial that he had touched either the body or the bow when sent by
Professor Dillard to find Sperling. The Sergeant, however, was not
entirely satisfied with the man’s testimony.
“That bleary-eyed old cormorant has got something up his sleeve,” he
told Markham disgustedly. “But it would take the rubber hose and the
water cure to make him spill it.”
A canvass of all the houses in 75th Street between West End Avenue and
Riverside Drive was made in the hope of finding a tenant who had
noticed some one entering or emerging from the Dillard wall gate
during the forenoon. But nothing was gained by this tedious campaign.
Pardee, it seemed, was the only resident within view of the Dillard
house who had observed any one in the neighborhood that morning. In
fact, after several days of arduous inquiries along this line the
Sergeant realized that he would have to proceed without any outside or
fortuitous assistance.
The various alibis of the seven persons whom Vance had tabulated in
his notation for Markham, were gone into as thoroughly as
circumstances would permit. It was obviously impossible to check them
completely, for, in the main, they were based solely on the statements
of the individuals involved. Moreover the investigation had to be made
with the utmost care lest suspicion be aroused. The results of these
inquiries were as follows:
1. Arnesson had been seen in the university library by various
people, including an assistant librarian and two students. But
the time covered by their evidence was neither consecutive nor
specific as to the hour.
2. Belle Dillard had played several sets of tennis at the public
courts at 119th Street and Riverside Drive, but because there had
been more than four in her party she had twice relinquished her
place to a friend; and none of the players could state positively
that she had remained at the courts during these periods.
3. The time that Drukker departed from the archery-room was
definitely determined by Sperling; but no one could be found who
had seen him thereafter. He admitted he had met no one he knew in
the park, but insisted he had stopped for a few minutes to play
with some strange children.
4. Pardee had been alone in his study. His old cook and his Japanese
valet had been in the rear of the house, and had not seen him
until lunch time. His alibi therefore was purely a negative one.
5. Mrs. Drukker’s word had to be accepted as to her whereabouts that
morning, for no one had seen her between nine-thirty, when
Drukker went to call on Arnesson, and one o’clock, when the cook
brought up her luncheon.
6. Beedle’s alibi was checked with fairly satisfactory completeness.
Pardee had seen her leave the house at 10.35; and she was
remembered by several of the hucksters at the Jefferson Market
between eleven and twelve.
7. The fact that Sperling had taken the 11.40 train to Scarsdale was
verified; therefore he would have had to leave the Dillard house
at the time he stated—namely: 11.15. The determination of this
point, however, was merely a matter of routine, for he had been
practically eliminated from the case. But if, as Heath explained,
it had been found that he had not taken the 11.40 train, he would
have again become an important possibility.
Pursuing his investigations along more general lines, the Sergeant
went into the histories and associations of the various persons
involved. The task was not a difficult one. All were well known, and
information concerning them was readily accessible; but not one item
was unearthed that could be regarded as even remotely throwing any
light on Robin’s murder. Nothing transpired to give so much as a hint
to the motive for the crime; and after a week’s intensive inquiry and
speculation the case was still cloaked in seemingly impenetrable
mystery.
Sperling had not been released. The _prima facie_ evidence against
him, combined with his absurd confession, made impossible such a step
on the part of the authorities. Markham, however, had held an
unofficial conference with the attorneys whom Sperling’s father had
engaged to handle the case, and some sort of a “gentleman’s agreement”
had, I imagine, been reached; for although the State made no move to
apply for an indictment (despite the fact that the Grand Jury was
sitting at the time), the defense lawyers did not institute _habeas
corpus_ proceedings. All the indications pointed to the supposition
that both Markham and Sperling’s attorneys were waiting for the real
culprit to be apprehended.
Markham had had several interviews with the members of the Dillard
household, in a persistent effort to bring out some trivial point that
might lead to a fruitful line of inquiry; and Pardee had been summoned
to the District Attorney’s office to make an affidavit as to what he
had observed from his window on the morning of the tragedy. Mrs.
Drukker had been interrogated again; but not only did she emphatically
deny having looked out of her window that morning, but she scoffed at
the idea that she had screamed.
Drukker, when re-questioned, modified somewhat his former testimony.
He explained that he might have been mistaken as to the source of the
scream, and suggested that it could have come from the street or from
one of the court windows of the apartment house. In fact, he said, it
was highly unlikely that his mother had uttered the scream, for when
he went to her door a moment later she was humming an old German
nursery song from Humperdinck’s “Hänsel und Gretel.” Markham,
convinced that nothing further was to be learned from either him or
Mrs. Drukker, finally concentrated on the Dillard house itself.
Arnesson attended the informal conferences held in Markham’s office;
but for all his voluble and cynical observations, he appeared to be as
much at sea as the rest of us. Vance chaffed him good-naturedly about
the mathematical formula that was to solve the case, but Arnesson
insisted that a formula could not be worked out until all the factors
of the theorem were available. He appeared to regard the entire affair
as a kind of Juvenalian lark; and Markham on several occasions gave
vent to his exasperation. He reproached Vance for having made Arnesson
an unofficial confrère in the investigation, but Vance defended
himself on the ground that sooner or later Arnesson would supply some
piece of seemingly irrelevant information that could be used as an
advantageous _point de départ_.
“His crimino-mathematical theory is of course rubbish,” said Vance.
“Psychology—not abstract science—will eventually reduce this conundrum
to its elements. But we need material to go on, and Arnesson knows the
inwardness of the Dillard home better than we can ever know it. He
knows the Drukkers, and he knows Pardee; and it goes without saying
that a man who has had the academic honors heaped on him that he has,
possesses an unusually keen mind. As long as he gives his thought and
attention to the case, there’s the chance that he’ll hit upon
something of vital importance to us.”
“You may be right,” grumbled Markham. “But the man’s derisive attitude
gets on my nerves.”
“Be more catholic,” urged Vance. “Consider his ironies in relation to
his scientific speculations. What could be more natural than that a
man who projects his mind constantly into the vast interplanet’ry
reaches, and deals with light-years and infinities and hyperphysical
dimensions, should sniff derisively at the infinitesimals of this
life? . . . Stout fella, Arnesson. Not homey and comfortable perhaps,
but dashed interestin’.”
Vance himself had taken the case with unwonted seriousness. His
Menander translations had been definitely put aside. He became moody
and waspish—a sure sign that his mind was busy with an absorbing
problem. After dinner each night he went into his library and read for
hours—not the classic and æsthetic volumes on which he generally spent
his time, but such books as Bernard Hart’s “The Psychology of
Insanity,” Freud’s “Der Witz und seine Beziehung zum Unbewussten,”
Coriat’s “Abnormal Psychology” and “Repressed Emotions,” Lippo’s
“Komik und Humor,” Daniel A. Huebsch’s “The Murder Complex,” Janet’s
“Les Obsessions et la Psychasthènie,” Donath’s “Über Arithmomanie,”
Riklin’s “Wish Fulfillment and Fairy Tales,” Leppman’s “Die
forensische Bedeutung der Zwangsvorstellungen,” Kuno Fischer’s “Über
den Witz,” Erich Wulffen’s “Kriminalpsychologie,” Hollenden’s “The
Insanity of Genius,” and Groos’s “Die Spiele des Menschen.”
He spent hours going over the police reports. He called twice at the
Dillards’, and on one occasion visited Mrs. Drukker in company with
Belle Dillard. He had a long discussion one night with Drukker and
Arnesson on de Sitter’s conception of physical space as a
Lobatchewskian pseudosphere, his object being, I surmised, to acquaint
himself with Drukker’s mentality. He read Drukker’s book, “World Lines
in Multidimensional Continua”; and spent nearly an entire day studying
Janowski’s and Tarrasch’s analyses of the Pardee gambit.
On Sunday—eight days after the murder of Robin—he said to me:
“_Eheu_, Van! This problem is unbelievedly subtle. No ordin’ry
investigation will ever probe it. It lies in a strange territ’ry of
the brain; and its superficial childishness is its most terrible and
bafflin’ aspect. Nor is the perpetrator going to be content with a
single coup. Cock Robin’s death serves no definitive end. The
perverted imagination that concocted this beastly crime is insatiable;
and unless we can expose the abnormal psychological mechanism back of
it there will be more grim jokes to contend with. . . .”
The very next morning his prognostication was verified. We went to
Markham’s office at eleven o’clock to hear Heath’s report and to
discuss further lines of action. Though nine days had passed since
Robin had been found murdered, no progress had been made in the case,
and the newspapers had grown bitter in their criticisms of the police
and the District Attorney’s office. It was therefore with considerable
depression that Markham greeted us that Monday morning. Heath had not
yet arrived; but when he came a few minutes later it was obvious that
he, too, was discouraged.
“We run up against a brick wall, sir, every way we turn,” he repined,
when he had outlined the results of his men’s activities. “There ain’t
a sign of a motive, and outside of Sperling there’s nobody on the
landscape that we can hang anything on. I’m coming to the conclusion
that it was some stick-up man who ambled into the archery-room that
morning and messed things up.”
“‘Stick-up’ men, Sergeant,” countered Vance, “are deuced
unimaginative, and they’re without a sense of humor; whereas the
johnny who sent Robin on the long, long trail had both imagination and
humor. He wasn’t content merely to kill Robin: he had to turn the act
into an insane joke. Then, lest the public wouldn’t see the point, he
wrote explanat’ry letters to the press.—Does that sound like the
procedure of an itinerant thug?”
Heath smoked unhappily for several minutes without speaking, and at
length turned a gaze of exasperated dismay upon Markham.
“There’s no sense in anything that’s breaking round this town lately,”
he complained. “Just this morning a guy named Sprigg was shot in
Riverside Park, up near 84th Street. Money in his pocket—nothing
taken. Just shot. Young fella—student at Columbia. Lived with his
parents; no enemies. Went out to take his usual walk before going to
class. Found dead half an hour later by a bricklayer.” The Sergeant
chewed viciously on his cigar. “Now we got that homicide to worry
about; and we’ll probably get hell from the newspapers if we don’t
clear it up _pronto_. And there’s nothing—absolutely nothing—to go
on.”
“Still, Sergeant,” said Vance consolingly, “shooting a man is an
ordin’ry event. There are numerous commonplace reasons for that sort
of crime. It’s the scenic and dramatic appurtenances of Robin’s murder
that play havoc with all our processes of deduction. If only it wasn’t
a nursery affair——”
Suddenly he stopped speaking, and his eyelids drooped slightly.
Leaning forward he very deliberately crushed out his cigarette.
“Did you say, Sergeant, that this chap’s name was Sprigg?”
Heath nodded gloomily.
“And I say,”—despite Vance’s effort, there was a note of eagerness in
his tone—“what was his first name?”
Heath gave Vance a look of puzzled surprise; but after a brief pause
he drew forth his battered note-book and riffled the pages.
“John Sprigg,” he answered. “John E. Sprigg.”
Vance took out another cigarette, and lighted it with great care.
“And tell me: was he shot with a .32?”
“Huh?” Heath’s eyes rounded, and his chin shot forward. “Yes,
a .32. . . .”
“And was he shot through the top of his head?”
The Sergeant sprang to his feet, and stared at Vance with ludicrous
bewilderment. Slowly his head moved up and down.
“That’s right.—But how in hell, sir——?”
Vance held up a silencing hand. It was, however, the look on his face,
rather than his gesture, that cut short the query.
“Oh, my precious aunt!” He rose like a man in a daze and gazed fixedly
before him. Had I not known him so well I would have sworn he was
frightened. Then going to the tall window behind Markham’s desk he
stood looking down on the gray stone walls of the Tombs.
“I can’t credit it,” he murmured. “It’s too ghastly. . . . But of
course it’s so! . . .”
Markham’s impatient voice sounded.
“What’s all this mumbling about, Vance? Don’t be so damned mysterious!
How did you happen to know that Sprigg was shot through the crown with
a .32? And what’s the point, anyway?”
Vance turned and met Markham’s eyes.
“Don’t you see?” he asked softly. “It’s the second act of this
devilish parody! . . . Have you forgotten your ‘Mother-Goose’?” And in
a hushed voice that brought a sense of unutterable horror into that
dingy old office he recited:
“‘There was a little man,
And he had a little gun,
And his bullets were made of lead, lead, lead;
He shot Johnny Sprig
Through the middle of his wig,
And knocked it right off of his head, head, head.’”