The case referred to here was that of Mrs. Elinor Quiggly, a wealthy widow living at the Adlon Hotel in West 96th Street. She was found on the morning of September 5 suffocated by a gag which had been placed on her by robbers who had evidently followed her home from the Club Turque—a small but luxurious all-night café at 89 West 48th Street. The killing of the two detectives, McQuade and Cannison, was, the police believe, due to the fact that they were in possession of incriminating evidence against the perpetrators of the crime. Jewellery amounting to over $50,000 was stolen from the Quiggly apartment. ↩︎
The Stuyvesant was a large club, somewhat in the nature of a glorified hotel; and its extensive membership was drawn largely from the political, legal, and financial ranks. ↩︎
The case to which Vance referred, I ascertained later, was Shatterham v. Shatterham, 417 Mich., 79—a testamentary case. ↩︎
Heath had become acquainted with Vance during the investigation of the Benson murder case two months previously. ↩︎
It is an interesting fact that for the nineteen years he had been connected with the New York Police Department, he had been referred to, by his superiors and subordinates alike, as “the Professor.” ↩︎
His full name was William Elmer Jessup, and he had been attached to the 308th Infantry of the 77th Division of the Overseas Forces. ↩︎
“Ben” was Colonel Benjamin Hanlon, the commanding officer of the Detective Division attached to the District Attorney’s office. ↩︎
Vance was here referring to the famous Molineux case, which, in 1898, sounded the death-knell of the old Knickerbocker Athletic Club at Madison Avenue and 45th Street. But it was commercialism that ended the Stuyvesant’s career. This club, which stood on the north side of Madison Square, was razed a few years later to make room for a skyscraper. ↩︎
Abe Rubin was at that time the most resourceful and unscrupulous criminal lawyer in New York. Since his disbarment two years ago, little has been heard from him. ↩︎
I sent a proof of the following paragraphs to Vance, and he edited and corrected them; so that, as they now stand, they represent his theories in practically his own words. ↩︎
The treatise referred to by Vance was Handbuch für Untersuchungsrichter als System der Kriminalistik. ↩︎
Recently I ran across an article by Doctor George A. Dorsey, professor of anthropology at the University of Chicago, and author of “Why We Behave Like Human Beings,” which bore intimate testimony to the scientific accuracy of Vance’s theory. In it Doctor Dorsey said: “Poker is a cross-section of life. The way a man behaves in a poker game is the way he behaves in life. … His success or failure lies in the way his physical organism responds to the stimuli supplied by the game. … I have studied humanity all my life from the anthropologic and psychological viewpoint. And I have yet to find a better laboratory exercise than to observe the manners of men as they see my raise and come back at me. … The psychologist’s verbalized, visceral, and manual behaviors are functioning at their highest in a poker game. … I can truthfully say that I learned about men from poker.” ↩︎
Colophon
The Canary Murder Case
was published in 1927 by
S. S. Van Dine.
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