VANCE MAKES AN EXPERIMENT
(_Friday, July 13; 2.15 p.m._)
Vance went direct to the end cabinet before which Kyle’s body had been
found, and dropped the two sofa pillows on the floor. Then he looked
again speculatively at the upper edge of the cabinet.
“I wonder…,” he murmured. “Dash it all! I’m almost afraid to carry on.
If I should be wrong, this entire case would come topplin’ about my
head.…”
“Come, come!” Markham was growing impatient. “Soliloquies have gone
out of date, Vance. If you have anything to show me, let’s get it over
with.”
“Right you are.”
Vance stepped to the ash-tray and resolutely crushed out his
cigarette. Returning to the cabinet he beckoned to Markham and Heath.
“By way of _præludium_,” he began, “I want to call your attention to
this curtain. You will observe that the brass ring at the end has been
slipped off of the rod and is now hanging down.”
For the first time I noticed that the small ring on the corner of the
curtain was not strung on the rod, and that the left edge of the
curtain sagged correspondingly.
“You will also observe,” Vance continued, “that the curtain of this
cabinet is only half drawn. It’s as if some one had started to draw
the curtain and, for some reason, had stopped. When I saw the
partly-drawn curtain this morning it struck me as a bit peculiar, for
obviously the curtain should have been entirely closed or else
entirely open. We may assume that the curtain was closed when Kyle
arrived here--we have Hani’s word for it that he had pulled shut the
curtain of this particular cabinet because of the disorder of its
contents; and Doctor Bliss mentioned to Kyle on the telephone that the
new treasures were in the end cabinet--_the cabinet with the drawn
curtain_.… Now, in order to open the curtain, one has only to make a
single motion of the arm--that is to say, one has only to take hold of
the left-hand edge of it and pull it to the right: the brass rings
would slide easily over the metal pole.… But what do we find? We find
the curtain only half drawn! Kyle unquestionably would not have opened
the curtain half-way to inspect the contents of the cabinet.
Therefore, I concluded that something must have halted the curtain at
the half-way point, and that Kyle died before he could draw the
curtain entirely open.… I say, Markham; are you with me?”
“Go on.” Markham had become interested. Heath, too, was watching Vance
with close attention.
“Perpend, then. Kyle was found dead directly in front of this end
cabinet; and he had died as the result of having been struck over the
head by the heavy diorite statue of Sakhmet. This statue, as we know,
had been placed by Hani on the top of the cabinet. When I observed
that the curtain of the cabinet had been only partly opened and then
discovered that the first brass ring of the curtain--the ring on the
extreme left end--was not on the rod, I began to speculate--especially
as I was familiar with Doctor Bliss’s orderly habits. Had that ring
been off of the rod last night when Doctor Bliss came into the museum,
you may rest assured he would have seen it.…”
“Are you suggesting, Vance,” asked Markham, “that the ring was
deliberately taken off of the rod some time this morning--and for a
purpose?”
“Yes! At some time between Doctor Bliss’s phone call to Kyle last
night and Kyle’s arrival this morning, I believe that some one removed
that ring from the rod--and, as you say, for a purpose!”
“What purpose?” Heath put the question. His voice was aggressive and
antagonistic.
“That remains to be seen, Sergeant.” Vance spoke with scarcely any
modulation of tone. “I’ll admit I have a rather definite theory about
it. In fact, I had a theory about it the moment I saw the position in
which Kyle’s body lay and learned that Hani had placed the statue atop
the end cabinet. The partly drawn curtain and the unstrung brass ring
substantiated that theory.”
“I think I understand what’s in your mind, Vance.” Markham nodded
slowly. “Was that why you inspected the top of the cabinet and got
Hani to show you exactly where he had placed the statue?”
“Precisely. And not only did I find what I was looking for, but Hani
confirmed my suspicions when he pointed to the spot where he had set
the statue. That spot was several inches back from the edge of the
cabinet; but there was also a deep scratch at the very edge and a
second outline of the statue’s base in the dust, showing that the
statue had been moved forward after Hani had put it in place.”
“But Doctor Bliss admitted he moved it last night before retiring,”
suggested Markham.
“He said only that he had straightened the statue,” Vance answered.
“And the two impressions made in the dust by the front of the statue’s
base are exactly parallel, so that the adjustment to which Doctor
Bliss referred could not have been the moving of the statue six inches
forward.”
“I see what you mean.… Your theory is that some one moved the statue
to the very edge of the cabinet after Doctor Bliss had straightened
it. And it’s not an unreasonable assumption.”
Heath, who had been listening sullenly with half-shut eyes, suddenly
mounted one of the chairs in front of the cabinet and peered over the
moulding.
“I want to see this,” he mumbled. Presently he descended and wagged
his head heavily at Markham. “It’s like Mr. Vance says, all right.…
But what’s all this hocus-pocus got to do with the case?”
“That’s what I’m endeavorin’ to ascertain, Sergeant,” smiled Vance.
“It may have nothing to do with it. On the other hand.…”
He leaned over and, with considerable effort, lifted the statue of
Sakhmet. (As I have said, the statue was about two feet high. It was
solidly sculptured and had a heavy thick base. I later lifted the
statue to test it, and I should say it weighed at least thirty
pounds.) Vance, stepping on a chair, placed the statue, with great
precision, on top of the cabinet at the very edge of the moulding.
Having carefully superimposed its base over the outlines in the dust,
he drew the curtain shut. Then he took the free brass ring in his left
hand, turned the corner of the curtain back until the ring reached the
left-hand edge of the statue, tipped the statue to the right, and
placed the ring just under the forward edge of the statue’s base.
Having done this, he reached into his coat pocket and drew forth the
object he had found on the top of the cabinet. He held it up to us.
“What I discovered, Markham,” he explained, “was a three-inch section
of a pencil, carefully cut and trimmed. I assumed that it was a
home-made ‘upright’ such as is used in figure-4 traps.… Let us see if
it works.”
He tipped the statue forward and propped the piece of pencil under the
rear edge of the statue’s base. He took his hands away, and the statue
stood leaning toward us, perilously balanced. For a moment it seemed
as if it might topple over of its own accord, but the prepared pencil
was apparently the exact length necessary to tilt the statue forward
without quite upsetting its equilibrium.
“So far my theory checks.” Vance stepped down from the chair. “Now, we
will proceed with the experiment.”
He moved the chair to one side, and arranged the two sofa pillows over
the spot where Kyle’s head had lain at the foot of Anûbis. Then he
straightened up, and faced the District Attorney.
“Markham,” he said sombrely, “I present you with a possibility. Regard
the position of that curtain; consider the position of the loose brass
ring--under the edge of the statue; observe the tilting attitude of
Our Lady of Vengeance; and then picture the arrival of Kyle this
morning. He had been informed that the new treasures were in the end
cabinet, with the curtain drawn. He told Brush not to disturb Doctor
Bliss because he was going into the museum to inspect the contents of
the recent shipment.”
He paused and deliberately lighted a cigarette. By his slow, lazy
movements I knew that his nerves were tense.
“I am not suggesting,” he continued, “that Kyle met his end as the
result of a death trap. In fact, I do not even know if my
reconstructed trap will work. But I am advancing the theory as a
possibility; for if the defense attorneys can show that Kyle could
have been murdered by some one other than Doctor Bliss--that is, _by
an absent person_--then your case against him would receive a decided
setback.…”
He stepped over to the statue of Anûbis. Lifting up the lower
left-hand corner of the curtain, he stood close against the west wall
of the museum.
“Let us say that Kyle, after taking his position before this end
cabinet, reached out and drew the curtain aside. Now, what would have
happened--provided the death trap had actually been set?…”
He gave the curtain a sharp jerk to the right. It moved over the rod
until it was caught and held half-way across by the brass ring that
had been inserted beneath Sakhmet’s base. The jar dislodged the statue
from its perilously balanced position. It toppled forward and fell
with a terrific thud upon the sofa pillows, in the exact spot where
Kyle’s head had lain.
There were several moments of silence. Markham continued to smoke, his
eyes focussed on the fallen statue. He was frowning and thoughtful.
Heath, however, was frankly astounded. Apparently he had not
considered the possibility of a death trap, and Vance’s demonstration
had everted, to a great extent, all his set theories. He glared at the
statue of Sakhmet with perplexed amazement, his cigar held tightly
between his teeth.
Vance was the first to speak.
“The experiment seems to have worked, don’t y’ know. Really, I think
I’ve demonstrated the possibility of Kyle’s having been killed while
alone in the museum.… Kyle was rather short in stature, and there was
sufficient distance between the top of the cabinet and Kyle’s head for
the statue to have gained a deadly momentum. The width of the cabinet
is only a little over two feet, so that it would have been inevitable
that the statue would hit him on the head, provided he had been
standing in front of it. And he obviously would have stood directly in
front of it when he pulled the curtain. The weight of the statue is
sufficient to have caused the terrific fracture of his skull; and the
position of the statue across the back of his head is wholly
consistent with his having been killed by a carefully planned trap.”
Vance made a slight gesture of emphasis.
“You must admit, Markham, that the demonstration I’ve just given you
makes plausible the guilt of any absent person, and consequently
removes one of your strongest counts against Doctor Bliss--namely,
proximity and opportunity.… And this fact, taken in connection with
the opium found in the coffee, gives him a convincing, though not an
absolute, alibi.”
“Yes.…” Markham spoke with deliberate and pensive slowness. “The
negative clews you have found tend to counteract the direct clews of
the scarab and the financial report and the bloody footprints. There’s
no doubt about it: the doctor could present a strong defense.…”
“A reasonable doubt, as it were--eh, what?” Vance grinned. “A
beautiful phrase--meaningless, of course, but typically legal. As if
the mind of man were ever capable of being reasonable!… And don’t
overlook the fact, Markham, that, if the doctor had merely intended to
brain Kyle with the statue of Sakhmet, the evidences of the death trap
would not have been present. If his object was only to kill Kyle, why
should the whittled pencil--in the shape of an ‘upright’--have been on
top of the cabinet?”
“You’re perfectly right,” Markham admitted. “A shrewd defense attorney
could make a shambles of the case I have against the doctor.”
“And consider your direct evidence for a moment.” Vance seated himself
and crossed his legs. “The scarab pin, which was found beside the
body, could have been palmed by any one at the conference last night,
and deliberately placed beside the murdered body. Or, if the doctor
had been put to sleep by the opium in his coffee, it would have been
an easy matter for the murderer to have taken the pin from the desk
this morning--the door into the study, y’ know, was never locked. And
what would have been simpler than to have taken the financial report
at the same time, and slipped it into Kyle’s dead hand?… As for the
bloody footprints: any member of the household could have taken the
tennis shoe from Doctor Bliss’s bedroom and made the prints in the
blood and then chucked the shoe in the waste-basket while the doctor
slept under the influence of the opiate.… And that closed east window
on the court: doesn’t that closed window, with its drawn shade,
indicate that some one in the study didn’t want the neighbors next
door to see what was going on?”
Vance took a slow draw on his cigarette and blew out a long spiral of
smoke.
“I’m no Demosthenes, Markham, but I’d take Doctor Bliss’s case in any
court, and guarantee him an acquittal.”
Markham had begun walking up and down, his hands behind his back.
“The presence of this death trap and of the opium in the coffee cup,”
he conceded at length, “casts an entirely new light on the case. It
throws the affair wide open and makes possible and even plausible some
one else’s guilt.” He stopped suddenly and looked sharply at Heath.
“What’s your opinion, Sergeant?”
Heath was obviously in a quandary.
“I’m going cuckoo,” he confessed, after a pause. “I thought we had the
damn affair sewed up in an air-tight bag, and now Mr. Vance pulls a
lot of his subtle stuff and hands the doc a loophole.” He gave Vance a
belligerent glare. “Honest to Gawd, Mr. Vance, you shoulda been a
lawyer.” His contempt was devastating.
Markham could not help smiling, but Vance shook his head sadly and
looked at the Sergeant with an exaggeratedly injured air.
“Oh, I say, Sergeant; must you be insultin’?” he protested
whimsically. “I’m only tryin’ to save you and Mr. Markham from making
a silly blunder. And what thanks do I get? I’m told I should have been
a lawyer! Alack and welladay!”
“Let’s forgo the cynicism.” Markham was too upset to fall in with
Vance’s frivolous attitude. “You’ve made your point. And, in doing so,
you’ve saddled me with a serious and weighty problem.”
“Still and all,” pursued Heath, “there’s plenty of evidence against
Bliss.”
“Quite true, Sergeant.” Vance had again become thoughtful. “But I’m
afraid that evidence will not bear the closest scrutiny.”
“You think, I take it,” said Markham, “that the evidence was
deliberately planted--that the actual murderer maliciously placed
these clews so that they would point to Doctor Bliss.”
“Is such a technic so unusual?” asked Vance. “Hasn’t many a murderer
sought to throw suspicion on some one else? Isn’t criminal history
filled with cases of innocent men being convicted on convincing
circumstantial evidence? And is it not entirely possible that the
misleading evidence in such cases was deliberately planted by the real
culprits?”
“Still,” Markham returned, “I can’t afford, at this stage of the game,
to ignore entirely the indicatory evidence pointing to Doctor Bliss. I
must be able to prove a plot against him before I can completely
exonerate him.”
“And the arrest?”
Markham hesitated. He realized, I think, the hopelessness of his case
now that Vance had unearthed so many contradictory bits of evidence.
“It’s impossible, of course,” he concluded, “to order the doctor’s
arrest at present, in view of the extenuating factors you’ve brought
to light.… But,” he added grimly, “I’m certainly not going to ignore
altogether the evidence against him.”
“And just what does one do in such legalistically complicated
circumstances?”
Markham smoked for a while in troubled silence.
“I’m going to keep Bliss under close surveillance,” he pronounced
finally. Then he turned to Heath. “Sergeant, you may order your men to
release the doctor. But make arrangements to have him followed day and
night.”
“That suits me, sir.” Heath started toward the front stairs.
“And Sergeant,” Markham called; “tell Doctor Bliss he is not to leave
the house until I have seen him.”
Heath disappeared on his errand.