“Yes,” sighed Markham. “It seems to clarify everything but the one all-important point—the identity of the murderer.”
“Exactly,” said Vance. “Let’s go to lunch.”
Heath, morose and confused, departed for Police Headquarters; and Markham, Vance, and I rode to Delmonico’s, where we chose the main dining-room in preference to the grill.
“The case now would seem to centre in Cleaver and Mannix,” said Markham, when we had finished our luncheon. “If your theory that the same man killed both Skeel and the Canary is correct, then Lindquist is out of it, for he certainly was in the Episcopal Hospital Saturday night.”
“Quite,” agreed Vance. “The doctor is unquestionably eliminated. … Yes; Cleaver and Mannix—they’re the allurin’ twins. Don’t see any way to go beyond them.” He frowned and sipped his coffee. “My original quartet is dwindling, and I don’t like it. It narrows the thing down too much—there’s no scope for the mind, as it were, in only two choices. What if we should succeed in eliminating Cleaver and Mannix? Where would we be—eh, what? Nowhere—simply nowhere. And yet, one of the quartet is guilty; let’s cling to that consolin’ fact. It can’t be Spotswoode and it can’t be Lindquist. Cleaver and Mannix remain: two from four leaves two. Simple arithmetic, what? The only trouble is, this case isn’t simple. Lord, no!—I say, how would the equation work out if we used algebra, or spherical trigonometry, or differential calculus? Let’s cast it in the fourth dimension—or the fifth, or the sixth. …” He held his temples in both hands. “Oh, promise, Markham—promise me that you’ll hire a kind, gentle keeper for me.”
“I know how you feel. I’ve been in the same mental state for a week.”
“It’s the quartet idea that’s driving me mad,” moaned Vance. “It wrings me to have my tetrad lopped off in such brutal fashion. I’d set my young trustin’ heart on that quartet, and now it’s only a pair. My sense of order and proportion has been outraged. … I want my quartet.”
“I’m afraid you’ll have to be satisfied with two of them,” Markham returned wearily. “One of them can’t qualify, and one is in bed. You might send some flowers to the hospital, if it would cheer you any.”
“One is in bed—one is in bed,” repeated Vance. “Well, well—to be sure! And one from four leaves three. More arithmetic. Three! … On the other hand, there is no such thing as a straight line. All lines are curved; they transcribe circles in space. They look straight, but they’re not. Appearances, y’ know—so deceptive! … Let’s enter the silence, and substitute mentation for sight.”
He gazed up out of the great windows into Fifth Avenue. For several moments he sat smoking thoughtfully. When he spoke again, it was in an even, deliberate voice.
“Markham, would it be difficult for you to invite Mannix and Cleaver and Spotswoode to spend an evening—this evening, let us say—in your apartment?”
Markham set down his cup with a clatter, and regarded Vance narrowly.
“What new harlequinade is this?”
“Fie on you! Answer my question.”
“Well—of course—I might arrange it,” replied Markham hesitantly. “They’re all more or less under my jurisdiction at present.”
“So that such an invitation would be rather in line with the situation—eh, what? And they wouldn’t be likely to refuse you, old dear—would they?”
“No; I hardly think so. …”
“And if, when they had assembled in your quarters, you should propose a few hands of poker, they’d probably accept, without thinking the suggestion strange?”
“Probably,” said Markham, nonplussed at Vance’s amazing request. “Cleaver and Spotswoode both play, I know; and Mannix doubtless knows the game. But why poker? Are you serious, or has your threatened dementia already overtaken you?”
“Oh, I’m deuced serious.” Vance’s tone left no doubt as to the fact. “The game of poker, d’ ye see, is the crux of the matter. I knew Cleaver was an old hand at the game; and Spotswoode, of course, played with Judge Redfern last Monday night. So that gave me a basis for my plan. Mannix, we’ll assume, also plays.”
He leaned forward, speaking earnestly.
“Nine-tenths of poker, Markham, is psychology; and if one understands the game, one can learn more of a man’s inner nature at a poker table in an hour than during a year’s casual association with him. You rallied me once when I said I could lead you to the perpetrator of any crime by examining the factors of the crime itself. But naturally I must know the man to whom I am to lead you; otherwise I cannot relate the psychological indications of the crime to the culprit’s nature. In the present case, I know the kind of man who committed the crime; but I am not sufficiently acquainted with the suspects to point out the guilty one. However, after our game of poker, I hope to be able to tell you who planned and carried out the Canary’s murder.”16
Markham gazed at him in blank astonishment. He knew that Vance played poker with amazing skill, and that he possessed an uncanny knowledge of the psychological elements involved in the game; but he was unprepared for the latter’s statement that he might be able to solve the Odell murder by means of it. Yet Vance had spoken with such undoubted earnestness that Markham was impressed. I knew what was passing in his mind almost as well as if he had voiced his thoughts. He was recalling the way in which Vance had, in a former murder case, put his finger unerringly on the guilty man by a similar process of psychological deduction. And he was also telling himself that, however incomprehensible and seemingly extravagant Vance’s requests were, there was always a fundamentally sound reason behind them.
“Damn it!” he muttered at last.
