A Motor Ride
(November 12–November 25)
The inquiry was pushed according to the best traditions of the Police
Department. Captain Carl Hagedorn, the firearms expert,* made a minute
scientific examination of the bullets. The same revolver, he found,
had fired all three shots: the peculiar rifling told him this; and he
was able to state that the revolver was an old Smith & Wesson of a
style whose manufacture had been discontinued. But, while these
findings offered substantiation to the theory that Chester Greene’s
missing gun was the one used by the murderer, they added nothing to
the facts already established or suspected. Deputy Inspector Conrad
Brenner, the burglar-tools expert,† had conducted an exhaustive
examination of the scene for evidential signs of a forced entrance,
but had found no traces whatever of a housebreaker.
* Captain Hagedorn was the expert who supplied Vance with the
technical data in the Benson murder case, which made it
possible for him to establish the height of the murderer.
† It was Inspector Brenner who examined and reported on the
chiselled jewel-box in the “Canary” murder case.
Dubois and his assistant Bellamy—the two leading finger-print
authorities of the New York Police Department—went so far as to take
finger-prints of every member of the Greene household, including
Doctor Von Blon; and these were compared with the impressions found in
the hallways and in the rooms where the shootings had occurred. But
when this tedious process was over not an unidentified print remained;
and all those that had been found and photographed were logically
accounted for.
Chester Greene’s galoshes were taken to Headquarters and turned over
to Captain Jerym, who carefully compared them with the measurements
and the patterns made by Snitkin. No new fact concerning them,
however, was discovered. The tracks in the snow, Captain Jerym
reported, had been made either by the galoshes given him or by another
pair of the exact size and last. Beyond this statement he could not,
he said, conscientiously go.
It was established that no one in the Greene mansion, with the
exception of Chester and Rex, owned galoshes; and Rex’s were number
seven—three sizes smaller than those found in Chester’s
clothes-closet. Sproot used only storm-rubbers, size eight; and Doctor
Von Blon, who affected gaiters in winter, always wore rubber sandals
during stormy weather.
The search for the missing revolver occupied several days. Heath
turned the task over to men trained especially in this branch of work,
and supplied them with a search-warrant in case they should meet with
any opposition. But no obstacle was put in their way. The house was
systematically ransacked from basement to attic. Even Mrs. Greene’s
quarters were subjected to a search. The old lady had at first
objected, but finally gave her consent, and even seemed a bit
disappointed when the men had finished. The only room that was not
gone over was Tobias Greene’s library. Owing to the fact that Mrs.
Greene had never let the key go out of her possession, and had
permitted no one to enter the room since her husband’s death, Heath
decided not to force the issue when she refused pointblank to deliver
the key. Every other nook and corner of the house, however, was combed
by the Sergeant’s men. But no sign of the revolver rewarded their
efforts.
The autopsies revealed nothing at variance with Doctor Doremus’s
preliminary findings. Julia and Chester had each died instantaneously
from the effects of a bullet entering the heart, shot from a revolver
held at close range. No other possible cause of death was present in
either body; and there were no indications of a struggle.
No unknown or suspicious person had been seen near the Greene mansion
on the night of either murder, although several people were found who
had been in the neighborhood at the time; and a bootmaker, who lived
on the second floor of the Narcoss Flats in 53d Street, opposite to
the house, stated that he had been sitting at his window, smoking his
bedtime pipe, during the time of both shootings, and could swear that
no one had passed down that end of the street.
However, the guard which had been placed over the Greene mansion was
not relaxed. Men were on duty day and night at both entrances to the
estate, and every one entering or leaving the premises was closely
scrutinized. So close a watch was kept that strange tradesmen found it
inconvenient and at times difficult to make ordinary deliveries.
The reports that were turned in concerning the servants were
unsatisfactory from the standpoint of detail; but all the facts
unearthed tended to eliminate each subject from any possible
connection with the crimes. Barton, the younger maid, who had quitted
the Greene establishment the morning after the second tragedy, proved
to be the daughter of respectable working people living in Jersey
City. Her record was good, and her companions all appeared to be
harmless members of her own class.
Hemming, it turned out, was a widow who, up to the time of her
employment with the Greenes, had kept house for her husband, an
iron-worker, in Altoona, Pa. She was remembered even there among her
former neighbors as a religious fanatic who had led her husband
sternly and exultantly in the narrow path of enforced rectitude. When
he was killed by a furnace explosion she declared it was the hand of
God striking him down for some secret sin. Her associates were few:
they were in the main members of a small congregation of East Side
Anabaptists.
The summer gardener of the Greenes—a middle-aged Pole named
Krimski—was discovered in a private saloon in Harlem, well under the
benumbing influence of synthetic whiskey—a state of beatific lassitude
he had maintained, with greater or lesser steadfastness, since the end
of summer. He was at once eliminated from police consideration.
The investigation into the habits and associates of Mrs. Mannheim and
Sproot brought nothing whatever to light. Indeed, the habits of these
two were exemplary, and their contacts with the outside world so
meagre as to be regarded almost as non-existent. Sproot had no visible
friends, and his acquaintances were limited to an English valet in
Park Avenue and the tradespeople of the neighborhood. He was solitary
by nature, and what few recreations he permitted himself were indulged
in unaccompanied. Mrs. Mannheim had rarely left the premises of the
Greene house since she had taken up her duties there at the time of
her husband’s death, and apparently knew no one in New York outside of
the household.
These reports dashed whatever hopes Sergeant Heath may have harbored
of finding a solution to the Greene mystery by way of a possible
accomplice in the house itself.
“I guess we’ll have to give up the idea of an inside job,” he lamented
one morning in Markham’s office a few days after the shooting of
Chester Greene.
Vance, who was present, eyed him lazily.
“I shouldn’t say that, don’t y’ know, Sergeant. On the contr’ry, it
was indubitably an inside job, though not just the variety you have in
mind.”
“You mean you think some member of the family did it?”
“Well—perhaps: something rather along that line.” Vance drew on his
cigarette thoughtfully. “But that’s not exactly what I meant. It’s a
situation, a set of conditions—an atmosphere, let us say—that’s
guilty. A subtle and deadly poison is responsible for the crimes. And
that poison is generated in the Greene mansion.”
“A swell time I’d have trying to arrest an atmosphere—or a poison
either, for the matter of that,” snorted Heath.
“Oh, there’s a flesh-and-blood victim awaiting your manacles
somewhere, Sergeant—the agent, so to speak, of the atmosphere.”
Markham, who had been conning the various reports of the case, sighed
heavily, and settled back in his chair.
“Well, I wish to Heaven,” he interposed bitterly, “that he’d give us
some hint as to his identity. The papers are at it hammer and tongs.
There’s been another delegation of reporters here this morning.”
The fact was that rarely had there been in New York’s journalistic
history a case which had so tenaciously seized upon the public
imagination. The shooting of Julia and Ada Greene had been treated
sensationally but perfunctorily; but after Chester Greene’s murder an
entirely different spirit animated the newspaper stories. Here was
something romantically sinister—something which brought back forgotten
pages of criminal history.* Columns were devoted to accounts of the
Greene family history. Genealogical archives were delved into for
remote titbits. Old Tobias Greene’s record was raked over, and stories
of his early life became the common property of the man in the street.
Pictures of all the members of the Greene family accompanied these
spectacular tales; and the Greene mansion itself, photographed from
every possible angle, was used regularly to illustrate the flamboyant
accounts of the crimes so recently perpetrated there.
* Among the famous cases mentioned as being in some manner
comparable to the Greene shootings were the mass murders of
Landru, Jean-Baptiste Troppmann, Fritz Haarmann, and Mrs.
Belle Gunness; the tavern murders of the Benders; the Van der
Linden poisonings in Holland; the Bela Kiss tin-cask
stranglings; the Rugeley murders of Doctor William Palmer; and
the beating to death of Benjamin Nathan.
The story of the Greene murders spread over the entire country, and
even the press of Europe found space for it. The tragedy, taken in
connection with the social prominence of the family and the romantic
history of its progenitors, appealed irresistibly to the morbidity and
the snobbery of the public.
It was natural that the police and the District Attorney’s office
should be hounded by the representatives of the press; and it was also
natural that both Heath and Markham should be sorely troubled by the
fact that all their efforts to lay hands on the criminal had come to
naught. Several conferences had been called in Markham’s office, at
each of which the ground had been carefully reploughed; but not one
helpful suggestion had been turned up. Two weeks after the murder of
Chester Greene the case began to take on the aspect of a stalemate.
During that fortnight, however, Vance had not been idle. The situation
had caught and held his interest, and not once had he dismissed it
from his mind since that first morning when Chester Greene had applied
to Markham for help. He said little about the case, but he had
attended each of the conferences; and from his casual comments I knew
he was both fascinated and perplexed by the problem it presented.
So convinced was he that the Greene mansion itself held the secret to
the crimes enacted there that he had made it a point to call at the
house several times without Markham. Markham, in fact, had been there
but once since the second crime. It was not that he was shirking his
task. There was, in reality, little for him to do; and the routine
duties of his office were particularly heavy at that time.*
* The famous impure-milk scandal was then to the fore, and the
cases were just appearing on the court calendar. Also, at that
time, there was an anti-gambling campaign in progress in New
York; and the District Attorney’s office had charge of all the
prosecutions.
Sibella had insisted that the funerals of Julia and Chester be
combined in one service, which was held in the private chapel of
Malcomb’s Undertaking Parlors. Only a few intimate acquaintances were
notified (though a curious crowd gathered outside the building,
attracted by the sensational associations of the obsequies); and the
interment at Woodlawn Cemetery was strictly private. Doctor Von Blon
accompanied Sibella and Rex to the chapel, and sat with them during
the services. Ada, though improving rapidly, was still confined to the
house; and Mrs. Greene’s paralysis of course made her attendance
impossible, although I doubt if she would have gone in any case, for
when the suggestion was made that the services be held at home she had
vetoed it emphatically.
It was on the day after the funeral that Vance paid his first
unofficial visit to the Greene mansion. Sibella received him without
any show of surprise.
“I’m so glad you’ve come,” she greeted him, almost gaily. “I knew you
weren’t a policeman the first time I saw you. Imagine a policeman
smoking _Régie_ cigarettes! And I’m dying for some one to talk to. Of
course, all the people I know avoid me now as they would a pestilence.
I haven’t had an invitation since Julia passed from this silly life.
Respect for the dead, I believe they call it. And just when I most
need diversion!”
She rang for the butler and ordered tea.
“Sproot makes much better tea than he does coffee, thank Heaven!” she
ran on, with a kind of nervous detachment. “What a sweet day we had
yesterday! Funerals are hideous farces. I could hardly keep a straight
face when the officiating reverend doctor began extolling the glories
of the departed. And all the time—poor man—he was eaten up with morbid
curiosity. I’m sure he enjoyed it so much that he wouldn’t complain if
I entirely forgot to send him a check for his kind words. . . .”
The tea was served, but before Sproot had withdrawn Sibella turned to
him pettishly.
“I simply can’t stand any more tea. I want a Scotch high-ball.” She
lifted her eyes to Vance inquiringly, but he insisted that he
preferred tea; and the girl drank her high-ball alone.
“I crave stimulation these days,” she explained airily. “This moated
grange, so to speak, is getting on my young and fretful nerves. And
the burden of being a celebrity is quite overwhelming. I really have
become a celebrity, you know. In fact, all the Greenes are quite
famous now. I never imagined a mere murder or two could give a family
such positively irrational prominence. I’ll probably be in Hollywood
yet.”
She gave a laugh which struck me as a trifle strained.
“It’s just too jolly! Even mother is enjoying it. She gets all the
papers and reads every word that’s written about us—which is a
blessing, let me tell you. She’s almost forgotten to find fault; and I
haven’t heard a word about her spine for days. The Lord tempers the
wind—or is it something about an ill wind I’m trying to quote? I
always get my classical references confused. . . .”
She ran on in this flippant vein for half an hour or so. But whether
her callousness was genuine or merely a brave attempt to counteract
the pall of tragedy that hung over her I couldn’t make out. Vance
listened, interested and amused. He seemed to sense a certain
emotional necessity in the girl to relieve her mind; but long before
we went away he had led the conversation round to commonplace matters.
When we rose to go Sibella insisted that we come again.
“You’re so comforting, Mr. Vance,” she said. “I’m sure you’re not a
moralist; and you haven’t once condoled with me over my bereavements.
Thank Heaven, we Greenes have no relatives to swoop down on us and
bathe us in tears. I’m sure I’d commit suicide if we had.”
Vance and I called twice more within the week, and were received
cordially. Sibella’s high spirits were always the same. If she felt
the horror that had descended so suddenly and unexpectedly upon her
home, she managed to hide it well. Only in her eagerness to talk
freely and in her exaggerated efforts to avoid all sign of mourning
did I sense any effects on her of the terrible experience she had been
through.
Vance on none of his visits referred directly to the crimes; and I
became deeply puzzled by his attitude. He was trying to learn
something—of that I was positive. But I failed to see what possible
progress he could make by the casual methods he was pursuing. Had I
not known him better I might have suspected him of being personally
interested in Sibella; but such a notion I dismissed simultaneously
with its formulation. I noticed, however, that after each call he
became unaccountably pensive; and one evening, after we had had tea
with Sibella, he sat for an hour before the fire in his living-room
without turning a page of the volume of da Vinci’s “Trattato della
Pittura” which lay open before him.
On one of his visits to the Greene mansion he had met and talked with
Rex. At first the youth had been surly and resentful of our presence;
but before we went away he and Vance were discussing such subjects as
Einstein’s general-relativity theory, the Moulton-Chamberlin
planetesimal hypothesis, and Poincaré’s science of numbers, on a plane
quite beyond the grasp of a mere layman like myself. Rex had warmed up
to the discussion in an almost friendly manner, and at parting had
even offered his hand for Vance to shake.
On another occasion Vance had asked Sibella to be permitted to pay his
respects to Mrs. Greene. His apologies to her—which he gave a
semiofficial flavor—for all the annoyance caused by the police
immediately ingratiated him in the old lady’s good graces. He was most
solicitous about her health, and asked her numerous questions
regarding her paralysis—the nature of her spinal pains and the
symptoms of her restlessness. His air of sympathetic concern drew from
her an elaborate and detailed jeremiad.
Twice Vance talked to Ada, who was now up and about, but with her arm
still in a sling. For some reason, however, the girl appeared almost
_farouche_ when approached by him. One day when we were at the house
Von Blon called, and Vance seemed to go out of his way to hold him in
conversation.
As I have said, I could not fathom his motive in all this apparently
desultory social give-and-take. He never broached the subject of the
tragedies except in the most indirect way; he appeared, rather, to
avoid the topic deliberately. But I did notice that, however casual
his manner, he was closely studying every one in the house. No nuance
of tone, no subtlety of reaction, escaped him. He was, I knew, storing
away impressions, analyzing minute phases of conduct, and probing
delicately into the psychological mainsprings of each person he talked
to.
We had called perhaps four or five times at the Greene mansion when an
episode occurred which must be recounted here in order to clarify a
later development of the case. I thought little of it at the time,
but, though seemingly trivial, it was to prove of the most sinister
significance before many days had passed. In fact, had it not been for
this episode there is no telling to what awful lengths the gruesome
tragedy of the Greenes might have gone; for Vance—in one of those
strange mental flashes of his which always seemed wholly intuitive but
were, in reality, the result of long, subtle reasoning—remembered the
incident at a crucial moment, and related it swiftly to other
incidents which in themselves appeared trifling, but which, when
co-ordinated, took on a tremendous and terrible importance.
During the second week following Chester Greene’s death the weather
moderated markedly. We had several beautiful clear days, crisp,
sunshiny, and invigorating. The snow had almost entirely disappeared,
and the ground was firm, without any of the slush that usually follows
a winter thaw. On Thursday Vance and I called at the Greene mansion
earlier than on any previous visit, and we saw Doctor Von Blon’s car
parked before the gate.
“Ah!” Vance observed. “I do hope the family Paracelsus is not
departing immediately. The man lures me; and his exact relationship to
the Greene family irks my curiosity.”
Von Blon, as a matter of fact, was preparing to go as we entered the
hallway. Sibella and Ada, bundled in their furs, stood just behind
him; and it was evident that they were accompanying him.
“It was such a pleasant day,” explained Von Blon, somewhat
disconcertedly, “I thought I’d take the girls for a drive.”
“And you and Mr. Van Dine must come with us,” chimed in Sibella,
smiling hospitably at Vance. “If the doctor’s temperamental driving
affects your heart action, I promise to take the wheel myself. I’m
really an expert chauffeur.”
I surprised a look of displeasure on Von Blon’s face; but Vance
accepted the invitation without demur; and in a few moments we were
riding across town, comfortably installed in the doctor’s big Daimler,
with Sibella in front, next to the driver’s seat, and Ada between
Vance and me in the tonneau.
We went north on Fifth Avenue, entered Central Park, and, emerging at
the 72d Street entrance, headed for Riverside Drive. The Hudson River
lay like a sheet of blue-grass below us, and the Jersey palisades in
the still clear air of early afternoon were as plainly etched as a
Degas drawing. At Dyckman Street we went up Broadway, and turned west
on the Spuyten Duyvil Road to Palisade Avenue overlooking the old
wooded estates along the water. We passed through a private roadway
lined with hedges, turned inland again to Sycamore Avenue, and came
out on the Riverdale Road. We drove through Yonkers, up North Broadway
into Hastings, and then skirted the Longue Vue Hill. Beyond Dobbs
Ferry we entered the Hudson Road, and at Ardsley again turned west
beside the Country Club golf-links, and came out on the river level.
Beyond the Ardsley Station a narrow dirt road ran up the hill along
the water; and, instead of following the main highway to the east, we
continued up this little-used road, emerging on a kind of plateau of
wild pasture-land.
A mile or so farther on—about midway between Ardsley and Tarrytown—a
small dun hill, like a boulder, loomed directly in our path. When we
came to the foot of it, the road swung sharply to the west along a
curved promontory. The turn was narrow and dangerous, with the steep
upward slope of the hill on one side and the precipitous, rocky
descent into the river on the other. A flimsy wooden fence had been
built along the edge of the drop, though what possible protection it
could be to a reckless or even careless driver I could not see.
As we came to the outermost arc of the little detour Von Blon brought
the car to a stop, the front wheels pointing directly toward the
precipice. A magnificent vista stretched before us. We could look up
and down the Hudson for miles. And there was a sense of isolation
about the spot, for the hill behind us completely shut off the country
inland.
We sat for several moments taking in the unusual view. Then Sibella
spoke. Her voice was whimsical, but a curious note of defiance
informed it.
“What a perfectly ripping spot for a murder!” she exclaimed, leaning
over and looking down the steep slope of the bluff. “Why run the risk
of shooting people when all you have to do is to take them for a ride
to this snug little shelf, jump from the car, and let them
topple—machine and all—over the precipice? Just another unfortunate
auto accident—and no one the wiser! . . . Really, I think I’ll take up
crime in a serious way.”
I felt a shudder pass over Ada’s body, and I noticed that her face
paled. Sibella’s comments struck me as particularly heartless and
unthinking in view of the terrible experience through which her sister
had so recently passed. The cruelty of her words evidently struck the
doctor also, for he turned toward her with a look of consternation.
Vance glanced quickly at Ada, and then attempted to banish the
embarrassment of the tense silence by remarking lightly:
“We refuse to take alarm, however, Miss Greene; for no one, d’ ye see,
could seriously consider a criminal career on a day as perfect as
this. Taine’s theory of climatic influences is most comfortin’ in
moments like this.”
Von Blon said nothing, but his reproachful eyes did not leave
Sibella’s face.
“Oh, let us go back!” cried Ada pitifully, nestling closer under the
lap-robe, as if the air had suddenly become chill.
Without a word Von Blon reversed the machine; and a moment later we
were on our way back to the city.