2:01 a. m.—An Empty Sheath
It was just after two o’clock when Lieutenant Valcour stepped to the
pavement and paid his fare to the driver. The cab snorted away and
left silence hanging heavy on the street. The bachelor apartment house
where Hollander lived had an English basement entrance. He found
Hollander’s name among a row of five others and pressed the proper
button. After he had pressed it four times, a voice answered him
through the earpiece of the announcer.
“Who and what is it?” said the voice.
It was the Southern voice.
“This is Lieutenant Valcour of the police department talking.”
“Oh. Mr. Hollander has already left, Lieutenant.”
“Thank you, I know that. I want to come upstairs.”
“Fourth floor, Lieutenant—automatic lift.”
“Thank you.”
The release mechanism on the door was already clicking. Lieutenant
Valcour entered a smart little lobby and then an electric lift. He
pressed the button for the fourth floor.
“Sorry to bother you like this,” he said, as he stepped out into a
private foyer, and stared curiously at the young man facing him.
“No trouble at all, Lieutenant.”
“That’s very kind of you, Mr.——”
“Smith, Lieutenant—Jerry Smith.”
“Since when?” asked Lieutenant Valcour gently, as he started to follow
Mr. Smith into an adjoining room.
“Why, what do you mean, Lieutenant?”
The man stopped, and his soft dark eyes stared earnestly at Lieutenant
Valcour from a ruddy, slightly dissipated-looking young face.
Lieutenant Valcour removed his hat and placed it on a settee. “Nothing
much, Mr. Smith,” he said. “Certainly nothing beyond the fact that I
saw you one morning last month in the line-up down at headquarters. In
connection with some night-club business, I believe. The charge fell
through, I also believe, because the woman involved preferred the loss
of her emerald necklace to the loss of prestige she certainly would
have suffered during the publicity of a trial had she pressed the
case. That’s all I mean, Mr. Smith.”
“I don’t suppose, sir, I could convince you of my innocence?”
“No, I don’t suppose you could.”
“It was my misfortune that the case never did come to trial,
Lieutenant. I could have cleared myself then.”
“Nonsense. You could have brought counter charges—sued for damage for
false arrest.”
Mr. Smith looked inexpressibly shocked. “We of the South, sir, do not
bring charges against a lady.”
“Well, the ethical distinction between swiping a woman’s necklace and
bringing charges against her is a shade too delicate for my Northern
nerves to grasp.” Lieutenant Valcour crossed casually to a chair
placed before a secretary and sat down. “Sit down, Mr. Smith,” he
said, “and tell me something about your friend Thomas.”
“The straightest, squarest gentleman who ever lived, sir. Why . . .”
Mr. Smith plunged into a panegyric that would have brought a blush
even to the toughened cheek of a Caligula.
Lieutenant Valcour permitted him to plunge. While the flood poured
into his ears, his eyes were inconspicuously busied with such papers
as were on view in the secretary.
Tom, darling [he read on the folded half of a sheet of notepaper]:
Let’s tea on Thursday at the Ritz. 4:30, as Herbert . . .
Lieutenant Valcour did not consider it essential to reach out and turn
the page. His fingers absently busied themselves with the leather
sheath for, presumably, a metal paper cutter or, perhaps, a stiletto.
“Yes, he is an honourable and an upright gentleman, sir, and if you
think there is anything wrong with him in the Endicott business”—Mr.
Smith temporarily moved north of the Mason and Dixon Line—“you’re all
wet.”
Mr. Smith was through.
“For how long has he known Endicott, Mr. Smith?”
“As I’ve been telling you, Lieutenant, ever since that night he saved
Endicott’s life.”
Lieutenant Valcour became almost embarrassing in the sudden focussing
of his attention. “Would it bother you very much, Mr. Smith, to tell
me of that occurrence again?”
“Why, it’s just as I’ve been _saying_, Lieutenant, in the war—the
war.”
“Oh, of course. Endicott and Hollander were in the same outfit, and
Hollander saved Endicott’s life.”
“You can prove it, sir, if you wish. Just call up the Bronx armoury
and ask for the adjutant—in the morning, of course, as he wouldn’t be
there now. He’ll make it official.”
“Oh, I believe it all right, Mr. Smith. It’s a very reasonable
explanation of why Endicott should be so intimate with one of your
friends.”
“I swear you have me wrong, Lieutenant. I had no more to do with that
gilt-knuckles job than—” Mr. Smith sought desperately for a convincing
simile—“than a babe unborn.”
“It isn’t any of my business anyway, Mr. Smith, even if you had,” said
Lieutenant Valcour soothingly. He tapped the leather sheath he was
holding against his fingers. “I suppose Hollander was even quite
prominent at the wedding, when Endicott was married?”
“Prominent? He was the best man.”
“Really. Well, well. Mrs. Endicott is indeed a very beautiful woman,
and from all that she has told me, a much misunderstood one.”
Mr. Smith poised himself delicately upon the fence and remained
watchful.
“It must have been rather a problem for Hollander,” Lieutenant Valcour
went on reflectively, “when she told him this afternoon during their
tea at the Ritz that she was faced with one of two things.”
“What do you mean, Lieutenant?”
“Didn’t he tell you?”
“Tell me what, Lieutenant?”
“That Mrs. Endicott told him she couldn’t stand it any longer: that
she either was going to kill her husband or else commit suicide.”
Mr. Smith smothered a sharp intaking of breath.
“Oh, you know how women talk, Lieutenant. It’s just talk.”
“Then he wasn’t impressed, really?”
“Why, of course not. No more so than you or I would have been.”
“He got back here from the Ritz at six?”
“About.”
“And stayed here until I ’phoned him?”
Mr. Smith looked a little baffled. “Well, not exactly, Lieutenant.”
“Just how exactly, Mr. Smith?”
“Why, you see, he left for dinner right after he came in.”
“Just after six?”
“Near six-thirty.”
“And what time did he get back from dinner?”
“I wasn’t here, Lieutenant. I had a date and didn’t get back here
myself until around midnight.”
Lieutenant Valcour became very, very casual.
“Did Hollander plan to marry Mrs. Endicott after she’d got the
divorce?” he said.
“Golly, no. There wasn’t going to be any divorce. It was platonic—and
damned if I don’t believe it.”
“It’s quite possible.”
“I have never seen her—but to hear Tom rave!”
“She is very beautiful.”
“Lieutenant,” Mr. Smith’s exceedingly attractive dark eyes stared
solemnly into Lieutenant Valcour’s veiled ones, “he thinks she’s a
saint. I mean it.”
“Dark and strange,” muttered Lieutenant Valcour. “Dark and strange.”
“What’s dark and strange, Lieutenant?”
“The rather terrible things that sometimes happen, Mr. Smith, under
the patronage of love.”
“I’ll be damned if you talk like a cop,” said Mr. Smith, suddenly very
suspicious.
“Then I’m afraid you are damned, Mr. Smith. What,” Lieutenant Valcour
asked suddenly, “was kept in this?”
Mr. Smith, momentarily distracted from his suspicions by the abrupt
switch, stared at the leather sheath Lieutenant Valcour was holding
out at him.
“Some sort of a sticker that Tom picked up on the other side,” he
said. “Damascus steel, he calls it. Uses it for a paper knife.”
“I wonder why it isn’t in its sheath,” said Lieutenant Valcour mildly.
“Search me.”
Lieutenant Valcour poked around among the papers.
“It isn’t here in this secretary, either.”
“Well, I don’t know where it is, Lieutenant. It was there this
afternoon.”
“I don’t know where it is either, Mr. Smith, but I’m going to find
out.”
“Go ahead.”
“Where was it you saw it this afternoon? On this secretary?”
“Yes.”
Lieutenant Valcour’s search of the secretary was swift and thorough.
The pigeonholes, the drawers yielded no stiletto of Damascus steel.
Hidden in one of the drawers was a copy of the _Oxford Book of English
Verse_. That interested him momentarily. He gave it sufficient
attention to note that the most used portion included the Sonnets of
Shakespeare. But there was no time now—no time.
“I’m going through the rooms here,” he said, “and look for that
stiletto.”
“You’ll be exceeding your authority if you do, Lieutenant.”
“Have you any objections?” Lieutenant Valcour asked quietly.
Mr. Smith grew almost fervent in his protestations that he had none.
Why should he? He had nothing to conceal, nor had Hollander. Of
course, there were a bottle or two of gin and a quart of Scotch, but
he didn’t imagine the lieutenant would be interested in anything along
that line. No, the lieutenant assured him, he wouldn’t be. Liquor was
not in his province. Then it would be all right to go ahead and
search? Lieutenant Valcour wanted to know. Oh, quite.
In spite of his verbal acquiescence Mr. Smith followed Lieutenant
Valcour through the two other rooms of the apartment with a gradually
growing air of truculence. He stood near and a little behind him when,
after the search yielded nothing, Lieutenant Valcour went to a
telephone and dialled the Endicotts’ number.
Lieutenant Valcour did not get the connection, because Mr. Smith drew
a pliable leather-bound slug of lead from his pocket and struck
Lieutenant Valcour with it on the head.