The Second Tragedy
(Friday, November 12; 8 a. m.)
The day after we had taken leave of Markham at his office the rigor of
the weather suddenly relaxed. The sun came out, and the thermometer
rose nearly thirty degrees. Toward night of the second day, however, a
fine, damp snow began to fall, spreading a thin white blanket over the
city; but around eleven the skies were again clear.
I mention these facts because they had a curious bearing on the second
crime at the Greene mansion. Footprints again appeared on the front
walk; and, as a result of the clinging softness of the snow, the
police also found tracks in the lower hall and on the marble stairs.
Vance had spent Wednesday and Thursday in his library reading
desultorily and checking Vollard’s catalogue of Cézanne’s
water-colors. The three-volume edition of the “Journal de Eugène
Delacroix”* lay on his writing-table; but I noticed that he did not so
much as open it. He was restless and distracted, and his long silences
at dinner (which we ate together in the living-room before the great
log fire) told me only too clearly that something was perturbing him.
Moreover, he had sent notes cancelling several social engagements, and
had given orders to Currie, his valet and domestic factotum, that he
was “out” to callers.
* E. Plon, Nourrit et Cie., Paris, 1893.
As he sat sipping his cognac at the end of dinner on Thursday night,
his eyes idly tracing the forms in the Renoir _Beigneuse_ above the
mantel, he gave voice to his thoughts.
“’Pon my word, Van, I can’t shake the atmosphere of that damnable
house. Markham is probably right in refusing to take the matter
seriously—one can’t very well chivy a bereaved family simply because
I’m oversensitive. And yet”—he shook himself slightly—“it’s most
annoyin’. Maybe I’m becoming weak and emotional. What if I should
suddenly go in for Whistlers and Böcklins! Could you endure it?
_Miserere nostri!_ . . . No, it won’t come to that. But—dash it
all!—that Greene murder is haunting my slumbers like a lamia. And the
business isn’t over yet. There’s a horrible incompleteness about
what’s already occurred. . . .”
It was scarcely eight o’clock on the following morning when Markham
brought us the news of the second Greene tragedy. I had risen early,
and was having my coffee in the library when Markham came in, brushing
past the astonished Currie with only a curt nod.
“Get Vance out right away—will you, Van Dine?” he began, without even
a word of greeting. “Something serious has happened.”
I hastened to fetch Vance, who grumblingly slipped into a camel’s-hair
dressing-gown and came leisurely into the library.
“My dear Markham!” he reproached the District Attorney. “Why pay your
social calls in the middle of the night?”
“This isn’t a social call,” Markham told him tartly. “Chester Greene
has been murdered.”
“Ah!” Vance rang for Currie, and lighted a cigarette. “Coffee for two
and clothes for one,” he ordered, when the man appeared. Then he sank
into a chair before the fire and gave Markham a waggish look. “That
same unique burglar, I suppose. A perseverin’ lad. Did the family
plate disappear this time?”
Markham gave a mirthless laugh.
“No, the plate’s intact; and I think we can now eliminate the burglar
theory. I’m afraid your premonitions were correct—damn your uncanny
faculty!”
“Pour out your heart-breakin’ story.” Vance, for all his levity, was
extraordinarily interested. His moodiness of the past two days had
given way to an almost eager alertness.
“It was Sproot who phoned the news to Headquarters a little before
midnight. The operator in the Homicide Bureau caught Heath at home,
and the Sergeant was at the Greene house inside of half an hour. He’s
there now—phoned me at seven this morning. I told him I’d hurry out,
so I didn’t get many details over the wire. All I know is that Chester
Greene was fatally shot last night at almost the exact hour that the
former shootings occurred—a little after half past eleven.”
“Was he in his own room at the time?” Vance was pouring the coffee
which Currie had brought in.
“I believe Heath did mention he was found in his bedroom.”
“Shot from the front?”
“Yes, through the heart, at very close range.”
“Very interestin’. A duplication of Julia’s death, as it were.” Vance
became reflective. “So the old house has claimed another victim. But
why Chester? . . . Who found him, incidentally?”
“Sibella, I think Heath said. Her room, you remember, is next to
Chester’s, and the shot probably roused her. But we’d better be
going.”
“Am I invited?”
“I wish you would come.” Markham made no effort to hide his desire to
have the other accompany him.
“Oh, I had every intention of doing so, don’t y’ know.” And Vance left
the room abruptly to get dressed.
It took the District Attorney’s car but a few minutes to reach the
Greene mansion from Vance’s house in East 38th Street. A patrolman
stood guard outside the great iron gates, and a plain-clothes man
lounged on the front steps beneath the arched doorway.
Heath was in the drawing-room talking earnestly to Inspector Moran,
who had just arrived; and two men from the Homicide Bureau stood by
the window awaiting orders. The house was peculiarly silent: no member
of the family was to be seen.
The Sergeant came forward at once. His usual ruddiness of complexion
was gone and his eyes were troubled. He shook hands with Markham, and
then gave Vance a look of friendly welcome.
“You had the right dope, Mr. Vance. Somebody’s ripping things wide
open here; and it isn’t swag they’re after.”
Inspector Moran joined us, and again the hand-shaking ceremony took
place.
“This case is going to stir things up considerably,” he said. “And
we’re in for an unholy scandal if we don’t clean it up quickly.”
The worried look in Markham’s eyes deepened.
“The sooner we get to work, then, the better. Are you going to lend a
hand, Inspector?”
“There’s no need, I think,” Moran answered quietly. “I’ll leave the
police end entirely with Sergeant Heath; and now that you—and Mr.
Vance—are here, I’d be of no use.” He gave Vance a pleasant smile, and
made his adieus. “Keep in touch with me, Sergeant, and use all the men
you want.”*
* Inspector William M. Moran, who died last summer, had been
the commanding officer of the Detective Bureau for eight
years. He was a man of rare and unusual qualities, and with
his death the New York Police Department lost one of its most
efficient and trustworthy officials. He had formerly been a
well-known up-State banker who had been forced to close his
doors during the 1907 panic.
When he had gone Heath gave us the details of the crime.
At about half past eleven, after the family and the servants had
retired, the shot was fired. Sibella was reading in bed at the time
and heard it distinctly. She rose immediately and, after listening for
several moments, stole up the servants’ stairs—the entrance to which
was but a few feet from her door. She wakened the butler, and the two
of them then went to Chester’s room. The door was unlocked, and the
lights in the room were burning. Chester Greene was sitting, slightly
huddled, in a chair near the desk. Sproot went to him, but saw that he
was dead, and immediately left the room, locking the door. He then
telephoned to the police and to Doctor Von Blon.
“I got here before Von Blon did,” Heath explained. “The doctor was out
again when the butler phoned, and didn’t get the message till nearly
one o’clock. I was damn glad of it, because it gave me a chance to
check up on the footprints outside. The minute I turned in at the gate
I could see that somebody had come and gone, the same as last time;
and I whistled for the man on the beat to guard the entrance until
Snitkin arrived. Then I came on in, keeping along the edge of the
walk; and the first thing I noticed when the butler opened the door
was a little puddle of water on the rug in the hall. Somebody had
recently tracked the soft snow in. I found a coupla other puddles in
the hall, and there were some wet imprints on the steps leading
up-stairs. Five minutes later Snitkin gave me the signal from the
street, and I put him to work on the footprints outside. The tracks
were plain, and Snitkin was able to get some pretty accurate
measurements.”
After Snitkin had been put to work on the footprints, the Sergeant, it
seemed, went up-stairs to Chester’s room and made an examination. But
he found nothing unusual, aside from the murdered man in the chair,
and after half an hour descended again to the dining-room, where
Sibella and Sproot were waiting. He had just begun his questioning of
them when Doctor Von Blon arrived.
“I took him up-stairs,” said Heath, “and he looked at the body. He
seemed to want to stick around, but I told him he’d be in the way. So
he talked to Miss Greene out in the hall for five or ten minutes, and
then left.”
Shortly after Doctor Von Blon’s departure two other men from the
Homicide Bureau arrived, and the next two hours were spent in
interrogating the members of the household. But nobody, except
Sibella, admitted even hearing the shot. Mrs. Greene was not
questioned. When Miss Craven, the nurse, who slept on the third floor,
was sent in to her, she reported that the old lady was sleeping
soundly; and the Sergeant decided not to disturb her. Nor was Ada
awakened: according to the nurse, the girl had been asleep since nine
o’clock.
Rex Greene, however, when interviewed, contributed one vague and, as
it seemed, contradictory bit of evidence. He had been lying awake, he
said, at the time the snowfall ceased, which was a little after
eleven. Then, about ten minutes later, he had imagined he heard a
faint shuffling noise in the hall and the sound of a door closing
softly. He had thought nothing of it, and only recalled it when
pressed by Heath. A quarter of an hour afterward he had looked at his
watch. It was then twenty-five minutes past eleven; and very soon
after that he had fallen asleep.
“The only queer thing about his story,” commented Heath, “is the time.
If he’s telling the tale straight, he heard this noise and the door
shutting twenty minutes or so before the shot was fired. And nobody in
the house was up at that time. I tried to shake him on the question of
the exact hour, but he stuck to it like a leech. I compared his watch
with mine, and it was O. K. Anyhow, there’s nothing much to the story.
The wind mighta blown a door shut, or he mighta heard a noise out in
the street and thought it was in the hall.”
“Nevertheless, Sergeant,” put in Vance, “if I were you I’d file Rex’s
story away for future meditation. Somehow it appeals to me.”
Heath looked up sharply and was about to ask a question; but he
changed his mind and said merely: “It’s filed.” Then he finished his
report to Markham.
After interrogating the occupants of the house he had gone back to the
Bureau, leaving his men on guard, and set the machinery of his office
in operation. He had returned to the Greene mansion early that
morning, and was now waiting for the Medical Examiner, the
finger-print experts, and the official photographer. He had given
orders for the servants to remain in their quarters, and had
instructed Sproot to serve breakfast to all the members of the family
in their own rooms.
“This thing’s going to take work, sir,” he concluded. “And it’s going
to be touchy going, too.”
Markham nodded gravely, and glanced toward Vance, whose eyes were
resting moodily on an old oil-painting of Tobias Greene.
“Does this new development help co-ordinate any of your former
impressions?” he asked.
“It at least substantiates the feeling I had that this old house reeks
with a deadly poison,” Vance replied. “This thing is like a witches’
sabbath.” He gave Markham a humorous smile. “I’m beginning to think
your task is going to take on the nature of exorcising devils.”
Markham grunted.
“I’ll leave the magic potions to you. . . . Sergeant, suppose we take
a look at the body before the Medical Examiner gets here.”
Heath led the way without a word. When we reached the head of the
stairs he took a key from his pocket and unlocked the door of
Chester’s room. The electric lights were still burning—sickly yellow
disks in the gray daylight which filtered in from the windows above
the river.
The room, long and narrow, contained an anachronistic assortment of
furniture. It was a typical man’s apartment, with an air of
comfortable untidiness. Newspapers and sports magazines cluttered the
table and desk; ash-trays were everywhere; an open cellaret stood in
one corner; and a collection of golf-clubs lay on the tapestried
Chesterfield. The bed, I noticed, had not been slept in.
In the centre of the room, beneath an old-fashioned cut-glass
chandelier, was a Chippendale “knee-hole” desk, beside which stood a
sleepy-hollow chair. It was in this chair that the body of Chester
Greene, clad in dressing-gown and slippers, reclined. He was slumped a
little forward, the head turned slightly back and resting against the
tufted upholstery. The light from the chandelier cast a spectral
illumination on his face; and the sight of it laid a spell of horror
on me. The eyes, normally prominent, now seemed to be protruding from
their sockets in a stare of unutterable amazement; and the sagging
chin and flabby parted lips intensified this look of terrified wonder.
Vance was studying the dead man’s features intently.
“Would you say, Sergeant,” he asked, without looking up, “that Chester
and Julia saw the same thing as they passed from this world?”
Heath coughed uneasily.
[Illustration: Chester’s bedroom. In the center of the room is a
knee-hole desk and a chair labelled “arm chair in which Chester was
shot.” The bed is against one wall, and on the opposite wall are doors
leading to a closet and a bathroom.]
“Well,” he admitted, “something surprised them, and that’s a fact.”
“Surprised them! Sergeant, you should thank your Maker that you are
not cursed with an imagination. The whole truth of this fiendish
business lies in those bulbous eyes and that gaping mouth. Unlike Ada,
both Julia and Chester saw the thing that menaced them; and it left
them stunned and aghast.”
“Well, we can’t get any information outa _them_.” Heath’s practicality
as usual was uppermost.
“Not oral information, certainly. But, as Hamlet put it, murder,
though it have no tongue, will speak with most miraculous organ.”
“Come, come, Vance. Be tangible.” Markham spoke with acerbity. “What’s
in your mind?”
“’Pon my word, I don’t know. It’s too vague.” He leaned over and
picked up a small book from the floor just beneath where the dead
man’s hand hung over the arm of the chair. “Chester apparently was
immersed in literature at the time of his taking off.” He opened the
book casually. “‘Hydrotherapy and Constipation.’ Yes, Chester was just
the kind to worry about his colon. Some one probably told him that
intestinal stasis interfered with the proper stance. He’s no doubt
clearing the asphodel from the Elysian fields at the present moment
preparat’ry to laying out a golf-course.”
He became suddenly serious.
“You see what this book means, Markham? Chester was sitting here
reading when the murderer came in. Yet he did not so much as rise or
call out. Furthermore, he let the intruder stand directly in front of
him. He did not even lay down his book, but sat back in his chair
relaxed. Why? Because the murderer was some one Chester knew—and
trusted! And when the gun was suddenly brought forth and pointed at
his heart, he was too astounded to move. And in that second of
bewilderment and unbelief the trigger was pulled and the bullet
entered his heart.”
Markham nodded slowly, in deep perplexity, and Heath studied the
attitude of the dead man more closely.
“That’s a good theory,” the Sergeant conceded finally. “Yes, he musta
let the bird get right on top of him without suspecting anything. Same
like Julia did.”
“Exactly, Sergeant. The two murders constitute a most suggestive
parallel.”
“Still and all, there’s one point you’re overlooking.” Heath’s brow
was roughened in a troubled frown. “Chester’s door mighta been
unlocked last night, seeing as he hadn’t gone to bed, and so this
person coulda walked in without any trouble. But Julia, now, was
already undressed and in bed; and she always locked her door at night.
Now, how would you say this person with the gun got into Julia’s room,
Mr. Vance?”
“There’s no difficulty about that. Let us say, as a tentative
hypothesis, that Julia had disrobed, switched off the lights, and
climbed into her queenly bed. Then came a tap on the door—perhaps a
tap she recognized. She rose, put on the lights, opened the door, and
again repaired to her bed for warmth while she held parley with her
visitor. Maybe—who knows?—the visitor sat on the edge of the bed
during the call. Then suddenly the visitor produced the revolver and
fired, and made a hurried exit, forgetting to switch the lights off.
Such a theory—though I don’t insist on the details—would square neatly
with my idea regarding Chester’s caller.”
“It may’ve been like you say,” admitted Heath dubiously. “But why all
the hocus-pocus when it came to shooting Ada? That job was done in the
dark.”
“The rationalistic philosophers tell us, Sergeant”—Vance became
puckishly pedantic—“that there’s a reason for everything, but that the
finite mind is woefully restricted. The altered technic of our elusive
culprit when dealing with Ada is one of the things that is obscure.
But you’ve touched a vital point. If we could discover the reason for
this reversal of our _inconnu’s_ homicidal tactics, I believe we’d be
a lot forrader in our investigation.”
Heath made no reply. He stood in the centre of the room running his
eye over the various objects and pieces of furniture. Presently he
stepped to the clothes-closet, pulled open the door, and turned on a
pendant electric light just inside. As he stood gloomily peering at
the closet’s contents there was a sound of heavy footsteps in the hall
and Snitkin appeared in the open door. Heath turned and, without
giving his assistant time to speak, asked gruffly:
“How did you make out with those footprints?”
“Got all the dope here.” Snitkin crossed to the Sergeant, and held out
a long Manila envelope. “There wasn’t no trouble in checking the
measurements and cutting the patterns. But they’re not going to be a
hell of a lot of good, I’m thinking. There’s ten million guys more or
less in this country who coulda made ’em.”
Heath had opened the envelope and drawn forth a thin white cardboard
pattern which looked like an inner sole of a shoe.
“It wasn’t no pigmy who made this print,” he remarked.
“That’s the catch in it,” explained Snitkin. “The size don’t mean
nothing much, for it ain’t a shoe-track. Those footprints were made by
galoshes, and there’s no telling how much bigger they were than the
guy’s foot. They mighta been worn over a shoe anywheres from a size
eight to a size ten, and with a width anywheres from an A to a D.”
Heath nodded with obvious disappointment.
“You’re sure about ’em being galoshes?” He was reluctant to let what
promised to be a valuable clew slip away.
“You can’t get around it. The rubber tread was distinct in several
places, and the shallow, scooped heel stood out plain as day. Anyhow,
I got Jerym* to check up on my findings.”
* Captain Anthony P. Jerym was one of the shrewdest and most
painstaking criminologists of the New York Police Department.
Though he had begun his career as an expert in the Bertillon
system of measurements, he had later specialized in
footprints—a subject which he had helped to elevate to an
elaborate and complicated science. He had spent several years
in Vienna studying Austrian methods, and had developed a means
of scientific photography for footprints which gave him rank
with such men as Londe, Burais, and Reiss.
Snitkin’s gaze wandered idly to the floor of the clothes-closet.
“Those are the kind of things that made the tracks.” He pointed to a
pair of high arctics which had been thrown carelessly under a
boot-shelf. Then he leaned over and picked up one of them. As his eye
rested on it he gave a grunt. “This looks like the size, too.” He took
the pattern from the Sergeant’s hand and laid it on the sole of the
overshoe. It fitted as perfectly as if the two had been cut
simultaneously.
Heath was startled out of his depression.
“Now, what in hell does that mean!”
Markham had drawn near.
“It might indicate, of course, that Chester went out somewhere last
night late.”
“But that don’t make sense, sir,” objected Heath. “If he’d wanted
anything at that hour of the night he’d have sent the butler. And,
anyway, the shops in this neighborhood were all closed by that time,
for the tracks weren’t made till after it had stopped snowing at
eleven.”
“And,” supplemented Snitkin, “you can’t tell by the tracks whether the
guy that made ’em left the house and came back, or came to the house
and went away, for there wasn’t a single print on top of the other.”
Vance was standing at the window looking out.
“That, now, is a most interestin’ point, Sergeant,” he commented. “I’d
file it away along with Rex’s story for prayerful consideration.” He
sauntered back to the desk and looked at the dead man thoughtfully.
“No, Sergeant,” he continued; “I can’t picture Chester donning
gum-shoes and sneaking out into the night on a mysterious errand. I’m
afraid we’ll have to find another explanation for those footprints.”
“It’s damn funny, just the same, that they should be the exact size of
these galoshes.”
“If,” submitted Markham, “the footprints were not Chester’s, then
we’re driven to the assumption that the murderer made them.”
Vance slowly took out his cigarette-case.
“Yes,” he agreed, “I think we may safely assume that.”