The Curtain Falls
(Tuesday, April 26; 11 a. m.)
Twenty minutes later Vance rejoined us in the Dillard drawing-room.
“She’s going to be all right,” he announced, sinking into a chair and
lighting a cigarette. “She was only unconscious, had fainted from
shock and fright; and she was half-suffocated.” His face darkened.
“There were bruises on her little wrist. She probably struggled in
that empty house when she failed to find Humpty Dumpty; and then the
beast forced her into the closet and locked the door. No time to kill
her, d’ ye see. Furthermore, killing wasn’t in the book. ‘Little Miss
Muffet’ wasn’t killed—merely frightened away. She’d have died, though,
from lack of air. And _he_ was safe: no one could hear her
crying. . . .”
Markham’s eyes rested on Vance affectionately.
“I’m sorry I tried to hold you back,” he said simply. (For all his
conventionally legal instincts, there was a fundamental bigness to his
nature.) “You were right in forcing the issue, Vance. . . . And you,
too, Sergeant. We owe a great deal to your determination and faith.”
Heath was embarrassed.
“Oh, that’s all right, sir. You see, Mr. Vance had me all worked up
about the kid. And I like kids, sir.”
Markham turned an inquisitive look on Vance.
“You expected to find the child alive?”
“Yes; but drugged or stunned perhaps. I didn’t think of her as dead,
for that would have contravened the Bishop’s joke.”
Heath had been pondering some troublous point.
“What I can’t get through my head,” he said, “is why this Bishop,
who’s been so damn careful about everything else, should leave the
door of the Drukker house unlocked.”
“We were expected to find the child,” Vance told him. “Everything was
made easy for us. Very considerate of the Bishop, what? But we weren’t
supposed to find her till to-morrow—after the papers had received the
Little-Miss-Muffet notes. They were to have been our clew. But we
anticipated the gentleman.”
“But why weren’t the notes sent yesterday?”
“It was no doubt the Bishop’s original intention to post his poetry
last night; but I imagine he decided it was best for his purpose to
let the child’s disappearance attract public attention first.
Otherwise the relationship between Madeleine Moffat and little Miss
Muffet might have been obscured.”
“Yeh!” snarled Heath through his teeth. “And by to-morrow the kid
woulda been dead. No chance then of her identifying him.”
Markham looked at his watch and rose with determination.
“There’s no point in waiting for Arnesson’s return. The sooner we
arrest him the better.” He was about to give Heath an order when Vance
intervened.
“Don’t force the issue, Markham. You haven’t any real evidence against
the man. It’s too delicate a situation for aggression. We must go
carefully or we’ll fail.”
“I realize that the finding of the typewriter and the note-book is not
conclusive,” concurred Markham. “But the identification by the
child——”
“Oh, my dear fellow! What weight would a jury attach to a frightened
five-year-old girl’s identification without powerful contribut’ry
evidence? A clever lawyer could nullify it in five minutes. And even
assuming you could make the identification hold, what would it boot
you? It wouldn’t connect Arnesson in any way with the Bishop murders.
You could only prosecute him for attempted kidnapping,—the child’s
unharmed, remember. And if you should, through a legal miracle, get a
doubtful conviction, Arnesson would receive at most a few years in the
bastille. That wouldn’t end this horror. . . . No, no. You mustn’t be
precipitate.”
Reluctantly Markham resumed his seat. He saw the force of Vance’s
argument.
“But we can’t let this thing go on,” he declared ferociously. “We must
stop this maniac some way.”
“Some way—yes.” Vance began pacing the room restlessly. “We may be
able to wangle the truth out of him by subterfuge: he doesn’t know yet
that we’ve found the child. . . . It’s possible Professor Dillard
could assist us——” He halted and stood looking down at the floor.
“Yes! That’s our one chance. We must confront Arnesson with what we
know when the professor is present. The situation is sure to force an
issue of some kind. The professor now will do all in his power to help
convict Arnesson.”
“You believe he knows more than he had told us?”
“Undoubtedly. I’ve told you so from the first. And when he hears of
the Little-Miss-Muffet episode, it’s not unlikely he’ll supply us with
the evidence we need.”
“It’s a long chance.” Markham was pessimistic. “But it can do no harm
to try. In any event, I shall arrest Arnesson before I leave here, and
hope for the best.”
A few moments later the front door opened and Professor Dillard
appeared in the hall opposite the archway. He scarcely acknowledged
Markham’s greeting—he was scanning our faces as if trying to read the
meaning of our unexpected visit. Finally he put a question.
“You have, perhaps, thought over what I said last night?”
“Not only have we thought it over,” said Markham, “but Mr. Vance has
found the thing that was disturbing you. After we left here he showed
me a copy of ‘The Pretenders.’”
“Ah!” The exclamation was like a sigh of relief. “For days that play
has been in my mind, poisoning every thought. . . .” He looked up
fearfully. “What does it mean?”
Vance answered the question.
“It means, sir, that you’ve led us to the truth. We’re waiting now for
Mr. Arnesson.—And I think it would be well if we had a talk with you
in the meantime. You may be able to help us.”
The old man hesitated.
“I had hoped not to be made an instrument in the boy’s conviction.”
His voice held a tragic paternal note. But presently his features
hardened; a vindictive light shone in his eyes; and his hand tightened
over the knob of his stick. “However, I can’t consider my own feelings
now. Come; I will do what I can.”
On reaching the library he paused by the sideboard and poured himself
a glass of port. When he had drunk it he turned to Markham with a look
of apology.
“Forgive me. I’m not quite myself.” He drew forward the little chess
table and placed glasses on it for all of us. “Please overlook my
discourtesy.” He filled the glasses and sat down.
We drew up chairs. There was none of us, I think, who did not feel the
need of a glass of wine after the harrowing events we had just passed
through.
When we had settled ourselves the professor lifted heavy eyes to
Vance, who had taken a seat opposite to him.
“Tell me everything,” he said. “Don’t try to spare me.”
Vance drew out his cigarette-case.
“First, let me ask you a question. Where was Mr. Arnesson between five
and six yesterday afternoon?”
“I—don’t know.” There was a reluctance in the words. “He had tea here
in the library; but he went out about half past four, and I didn’t see
him again until dinner time.”
Vance regarded the other sympathetically for a moment, then he said:
“We’ve found the typewriter on which the Bishop notes were printed. It
was in an old suit-case hidden in the attic of this house.”
The professor showed no sign of being startled.
“You were able to identify it?”
“Beyond any doubt. Yesterday a little girl named Madeleine Moffat
disappeared from the playground in the park. There was a sheet of
paper in the machine, and on it had already been typed: ‘Little Miss
Muffet sat on a tuffet.’”
Professor Dillard’s head sank forward.
“Another insane atrocity! If only I hadn’t waited till last night to
warn you——!”
“No great harm has been done,” Vance hastened to inform him. “We found
the child in time: she’s out of danger now.”
“Ah!”
“She had been locked in the hall-closet on the top floor of the
Drukker house. We had thought she was here somewhere—which is how we
came to search your attic.”
There was a silence; then the professor asked:
“What more have you to tell me?”
“Drukker’s note-book containing his recent quantum researches was
stolen from his room the night of his death. We found this note-book
in the attic with the typewriter.”
“He stooped even to that?” It was not a question, but an exclamation
of incredulity. “Are you sure of your conclusions? Perhaps if
I had made no suggestion last night—had not sowed the seed of
suspicion. . . .”
“There can be no doubt,” declared Vance softly. “Mr. Markham intends
to arrest Mr. Arnesson when he returns from the university. But to be
frank with you, sir: we have practically no legal evidence, and it is
a question in Mr. Markham’s mind whether or not the law can even hold
him. The most we can hope for is a conviction for attempted kidnapping
through the child’s identification.”
“Ah, yes . . . the child would know.” A bitterness crept into the old
man’s eyes. “Still, there should be some means of obtaining justice
for the other crimes.”
Vance sat smoking pensively, his eyes on the wall beyond. At last he
spoke with quiet gravity.
“If Mr. Arnesson were convinced that our case against him was a strong
one, he might choose suicide as a way out. That perhaps would be the
most humane solution for every one.”
Markham was about to make an indignant protest, but Vance anticipated
him.
“Suicide is not an indefensible act _per se_. The Bible, for instance,
contains many accounts of heroic suicide. What finer example of
courage than Rhazis’, when he threw himself from the tower to escape
the yoke of Demetrius?* There was gallantry, too, in the death of
Saul’s sword-bearer, and in the self-hanging of Ahithophel. And surely
the suicides of Samson and Judas Iscariot had virtue. History is
filled with notable suicides—Brutus and Cato of Utica, Hannibal,
Lucretia, Cleopatra, Seneca. . . . Nero killed himself lest he fall
into the hands of Otho and the Pretorian guards. In Greece we have the
famous self-destruction of Demosthenes; and Empedocles threw himself
in the crater of Etna. Aristotle was the first great thinker to
advance the dictum that suicide is an anti-social act, but, according
to tradition, he himself took poison after the death of Alexander. And
in modern times let us not forget the sublime gesture of Baron
Nogi. . . .”
* I admit that the name of Rhazis was unfamiliar to me; and when I
looked it up later I found that the episode to which Vance referred
does not appear in the Anglican Bible, but in the second book of
Maccabees in the Apocrypha.
“All that is no justification of the act,” Markham retorted. “The
law——”
“Ah, yes—the law. In Chinese law every criminal condemned to death has
the option of suicide. The Codex adopted by the French National
Assembly at the end of the eighteenth century abolished all
punishments for suicide; and in the _Sachsenspiegel_—the principal
foundation of Teuton law—it is plainly stated that suicide is not a
punishable act. Moreover, among the Donatists, Circumcellions and
Patricians suicide was considered pleasing to the gods. And even in
More’s Utopia there was a synod to pass on the right of the individual
to take his own life. . . . Law, Markham, is for the protection of
society. What of a suicide that makes possible that protection? Are we
to invoke a legal technicality, when, by so doing, we actually lay
society open to continued danger? Is there no law higher than those on
the statute books?”
Markham was sorely troubled. He rose and walked the length of the room
and back, his face dark with anxiety. When he sat down again he looked
at Vance a long while, his fingers drumming with nervous indecision on
the table.
“The innocent of course must be considered,” he said in a voice of
discouragement. “As morally wrong as suicide is, I can see your point
that at times it may be theoretically justified.” (Knowing Markham as
I did, I realized what this concession had cost him; and I realized,
too, for the first time, how utterly hopeless he felt in the face of
the scourge of horror which it was his duty to wipe out.)
The old professor nodded understandingly.
“Yes, there are some secrets so hideous that it is well for the world
not to know them. A higher justice may often be achieved without the
law taking its toll.”
As he spoke the door opened, and Arnesson stepped into the room.
“Well, well. Another conference, eh?” He gave us a quizzical leer, and
threw himself into a chair beside the professor. “I thought the case
had been adjudicated, so to speak. Didn’t Pardee’s suicide put _finis_
to the affair?”
Vance looked straight into the man’s eyes.
“We’ve found little Miss Muffet, Mr. Arnesson.”
The other’s eyebrows went up with sardonic amusement.
“Sounds like a charade. What am I supposed to answer: ‘How’s little
Jack Horner’s thumb?’ Or, should I inquire into the health of Jack
Sprat?”
Vance did not relax his steady gaze.
“We found her in the Drukker house, locked in a closet,” he amplified,
in a low, even tone.
Arnesson became serious, and an involuntary frown gathered on his
forehead. But this slackening of pose was only transient. Slowly his
mouth twisted into a smirk.
“You policemen are so efficient. Fancy finding little Miss Muffet so
soon. Remarkable.” He wagged his head in mock admiration. “However,
sooner or later it was to be expected.—And what, may I ask, is to be
the next move?”
“We also found the typewriter,” pursued Vance, ignoring the question.
“And Drukker’s stolen note-book.”
Arnesson was at once on his guard.
“Did you really?” He gave Vance a canny look. “Where were these
tell-tale objects?”
“Up-stairs—in the attic.”
“Aha! Housebreaking?”
“Something like that.”
“Withal,” Arnesson scoffed, “I can’t see that you have a cast-iron
case against any one. A typewriter is not like a suit of clothes that
fits only one person. And who can say how Drukker’s note-book found
its way into our attic?—You must do better than that, Mr. Vance.”
“There is, of course, the factor of opportunity. The Bishop is a
person who could have been on hand at the time of each murder.”
“That is the flimsiest of contributory evidence,” the man countered.
“It would not help much toward a conviction.”
“We might be able to show why the murderer chose the sobriquet of
Bishop.”
“Ah! That unquestionably would help.” A cloud settled on Arnesson’s
face, and his eyes became reminiscent. “I’d thought of that, too.”
“Oh, had you, now?” Vance watched him closely. “And there’s another
piece of evidence I haven’t mentioned. Little Miss Muffet will be able
to identify the man who led her to the Drukker house and forced her
into the closet.”
“So! The patient has recovered?”
“Oh, quite. Doing nicely, in fact. We found her, d’ ye see,
twenty-four hours before the Bishop intended us to.”
Arnesson was silent. He was staring down at his hands which, though
folded, were working nervously. Finally he spoke.
“And if, in spite of everything, you were wrong. . . .”
“I assure you, Mr. Arnesson,” said Vance quietly, “that I _know_ who
is guilty.”
“You positively frighten me!” The man had got a grip on himself, and
he retorted with biting irony. “If, by any chance, I myself were the
Bishop, I’d be inclined to admit defeat. . . . Still, it’s quite
obvious that it was the Bishop who took the chessman to Mrs. Drukker
at midnight; and I didn’t return home with Belle until half past
twelve that night.”
“So you informed her. As I recall, you looked at your watch and told
her what time it was.—Come, now: what time was it?”
“That’s correct—half past twelve.”
Vance sighed and tapped the ash from his cigarette.
“I say, Mr. Arnesson; how good a chemist are you?”
“One of the best,” the man grinned. “Majored in it.—What then?”
“When I was searching the attic this morning I discovered a little
wall-closet in which some one had been distilling hydrocyanic acid
from potassium ferrocyanide. There was a chemist’s gas-mask on hand,
and all the paraphernalia. Bitter-almond odor still lurking in the
vicinity.”
“Quite a treasure-trove, our attic. A sort of haunt of Loki, it would
seem.”
“It was just that,” returned Vance gravely, “—the den of an evil
spirit.”
“Or else the laboratory of a modern Doctor Faustus. . . . But why the
cyanide, do you think?”
“Precaution, I’d say. In case of trouble the Bishop could step out of
the picture painlessly. Everything in readiness, don’t y’ know.”
Arnesson nodded.
“Quite a correct attitude on his part. Really decent of him, in fact.
No use putting people to unnecessary bother if you’re cornered. Yes,
very correct.”
Professor Dillard had sat during this sinister dialogue with one hand
pressed to his eyes, as though in pain. Now he turned sorrowfully to
the man he had fathered for so many years.
“Many great men, Sigurd, have justified suicide——” he began; but
Arnesson cut him short with a cynical laugh.
“Faugh! Suicide needs no justification. Nietzsche laid the bugaboo of
voluntary death. ‘_Auf eine stolze Art sterben, wenn es nicht mehr
möglich ist, auf eine stolze Art zu leben. Der Tod unter den
verächtlichsten Bedingungen, ein unfreier Tod, ein Tod zur unrechten
Zeit ist ein Feiglings-Tod. Wir haben es nicht in der Hand, zu
verhindern, geboren zu werden: aber wir können diesen Fehler—denn
bisweilen ist es ein Fehler—wieder gut machen. Wenn man sich
abschafft, tut man die achtungswürdigste Sache, die es giebt: man
verdient beinahe damit, zu leben._’*—Memorized that passage from
‘Götzen-Dämmerung’ in my youth. Never forgot it. A sound doctrine.”
* “One should die proudly when it is no longer possible to live
proudly. The death which takes place in the most contemptible
circumstances, the death that is not free, the death which occurs at
the wrong time, is the death of a coward. We have not the power to
prevent ourselves from being born; but this error—for sometimes it
is an error—can be rectified if we choose. The man who does away
with himself, performs the most estimable of deeds; he almost
deserves to live for having done so.”
“Nietzsche had many famous predecessors who also upheld suicide,”
supplemented Vance. “Zeno the Stoic left us a passionate dithyramb
defending voluntary death. And Tacitus, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius,
Cato, Kant, Fichte, Diderot, Voltaire and Rousseau, all wrote
apologias for suicide. Schopenhauer protested bitterly against the
fact that suicide was regarded as a crime in England. . . . And yet, I
wonder if the subject can be formulated. Somehow I feel that it’s too
personal a matter for academic discussion.”
The professor agreed sadly.
“No one can know what goes on in the human heart in that last dark
hour.”
During this discussion Markham had been growing impatient and uneasy;
and Heath, though at first rigid and watchful, had begun to unbend. I
could not see that Vance had made the slightest progress; and I was
driven to the conclusion that he had failed signally in accomplishing
his purpose of ensnaring Arnesson. However, he did not appear in the
least perturbed. I even got the impression that he was satisfied with
the way things were going. But I did notice that, despite his outer
calm, he was intently alert. His feet were drawn back and poised; and
every muscle in his body was taut. I began to wonder what the outcome
of this terrible conference would be.
The end came swiftly. A short silence followed the professor’s remark.
Then Arnesson spoke.
“You say you know who the Bishop is, Mr. Vance. That being the case,
why all this palaver?”
“There was no great haste.” Vance was almost casual. “And there was
the hope of tying up a few loose ends,—hung juries are so
unsatisfact’ry, don’t y’ know. . . . Then again, this port is
excellent.”
“The port? . . . Ah yes.” Arnesson glanced at our glasses, and turned
an injured look on the professor. “Since when have I been a
teetotaler, sir?”
The other gave a start, hesitated, and rose.
“I’m sorry, Sigurd. It didn’t occur to me . . . you never drink in the
forenoon.” He went to the sideboard and, filling another glass, placed
it, with an unsteady hand, before Arnesson. Then he refilled the other
glasses.
No sooner had he resumed his seat than Vance uttered an exclamation of
surprise. He had half risen and was leaning forward, his hands resting
on the edge of the table, his eyes fixed with astonishment on the
mantel at the end of the room.
“My word! I never noticed that before. . . . Extr’ordin’ry!”
So unexpected and startling had been his action, and so tense was the
atmosphere, that involuntarily we swung about and looked in the
direction of his fascinated gaze.
“A Cellini plaque!” he exclaimed. “The Nymph of Fontainebleau!
Berenson told me it was destroyed in the seventeenth century. I’ve
seen its companion piece in the Louvre. . . .”
A red flush of angry indignation mounted to Markham’s cheeks; and for
myself I must say that, familiar as I was with Vance’s idiosyncrasies
and intellectual passion for rare antiques, I had never before known
him to exhibit such indefensible bad taste. It seemed unbelievable
that he would have let himself be distracted by an _objet-d’art_ in
such a tragic hour.
Professor Dillard frowned at him with consternation.
“You’ve chosen a strange time, sir, to indulge your enthusiasm for
art,” was his scathing comment.
Vance appeared abashed and chagrined. He sank back in his seat,
avoiding our eyes, and began turning the stem of his glass between his
fingers.
“You are quite right, sir,” he murmured. “I owe you an apology.”
“The plaque, incidentally,” the professor added, by way of mitigating
the severity of his rebuke, “is merely a copy of the Louvre piece.”
Vance, as if to hide his confusion, raised his wine to his lips. It
was a highly unpleasant moment: every one’s nerves were on edge; and,
in automatic imitation of his action, we lifted our glasses too.
Vance gave a swift glance across the table and, rising, went to the
front window, where he stood, his back to the room. So unaccountable
was his hasty departure that I turned and watched him wonderingly.
Almost at the same moment the edge of the table was thrust violently
against my side, and simultaneously there came a crash of glassware.
I leapt to my feet and gazed down with horror at the inert body
sprawled forward in the chair opposite, one arm and shoulder flung
across the table. A short silence of dismay and bewilderment followed.
Each of us seemed momentarily paralyzed. Markham stood like a graven
image, his eyes fastened on the table; and Heath, staring and
speechless, clung rigidly to the back of his chair.
“_Good Gad!_”
It was Arnesson’s astonished ejaculation that snapped the tension.
Markham went quickly round the table and bent over Professor Dillard’s
body.
“Call a doctor, Arnesson,” he ordered.
Vance turned wearily from the window and sank into a chair.
“Nothing can be done for him,” he said, with a deep sigh of fatigue.
“He prepared for a swift and painless death when he distilled his
cyanide.—The Bishop case is over.”
Markham was glaring at him with dazed incomprehension.
“Oh, I’ve half-suspected the truth ever since Pardee’s death,” Vance
went on, in answer to the other’s unspoken question. “But I wasn’t
sure of it until last night when he went out of his way to hang the
guilt on Mr. Arnesson.”
“Eh? What’s that?” Arnesson turned from the telephone.
“Oh, yes,” nodded Vance. “You were to pay the penalty. You’d been
chosen from the first as the victim. He even suggested the possibility
of your guilt to us.”
Arnesson did not seem as surprised as one would have expected.
“I knew the professor hated me,” he said. “He was intensely jealous of
my interest in Belle. And he was losing his intellectual grip—I’ve
seen that for months. I’ve done all the work on his new book, and he’s
resented every academic honor paid me. I’ve had an idea he was back of
all this deviltry; but I wasn’t sure. I didn’t think, though, he’d try
to send me to the electric-chair.”
Vance got up and, going to Arnesson, held out his hand.
“There was no danger of that.—And I want to apologize for the way I’ve
treated you this past half hour. Merely a matter of tactics. Y’ see,
we hadn’t any real evidence, and I was hopin’ to force his hand.”
Arnesson grinned sombrely.
“No apology necessary, old son. I knew you didn’t have your eye on me.
When you began riding me I saw it was only technique. Didn’t know what
you were after, but I followed your cues the best I could. Hope I
didn’t bungle the job.”
“No, no. You turned the trick.”
“Did I?” Arnesson frowned with deep perplexity. “But what I don’t
understand is why he should have taken the cyanide when he thought it
was I you suspected.”
“That particular point we’ll never know,” said Vance. “Maybe he feared
the girl’s identification. Or he may have seen through my deception.
Perhaps he suddenly revolted at the idea of shouldering you with the
onus. . . . As he himself said, no one knows what goes on in the human
heart during the last dark hour.”
Arnesson did not move. He was looking straight into Vance’s eyes with
penetrating shrewdness.
“Oh, well,” he said at length; “we’ll let it go at that. . . . Anyway,
thanks!”