At length he relinquished his scrutiny, and drew up his chair to the table with a spirited air.
“And now, Mr. Markham,” he said crisply, “we’d better outline our activities so as not to duplicate our efforts. The sooner I get my men started, the better.”
Markham assented readily.
“The investigation is entirely up to you, Sergeant. I’m here to help wherever I’m needed.”
“That’s very kind of you, sir,” Heath returned. “But it looks to me as though there’d be enough work for all parties. … Suppose I get to work on running down the owner of the handbag, and send some men out scouting among Benson’s nightlife cronies—I can pick up some names from the housekeeper, and they’ll be a good starting point. And I’ll get after that Cadillac, too. … Then we ought to look into his lady friends—I guess he had enough of ’em.”
“I may get something out of the Major along that line,” supplied Markham. “He’ll tell me anything I want to know. And I can also look into Benson’s business associates through the same channel.”
“I was going to suggest that you could do that better than I could,” Heath rejoined. “We ought to run into something pretty quick that’ll give us a line to go on. And I’ve got an idea that when we locate the lady he took to dinner last night and brought back here, we’ll know a lot more than we do now.”
“Or a lot less,” murmured Vance.
Heath looked up quickly, and grunted with an air of massive petulance.
“Let me tell you something, Mr. Vance,” he said, “—since I understand you want to learn something about these affairs: when anything goes seriously wrong in this world, it’s pretty safe to look for a woman in the case.”
“Ah, yes,” smiled Vance. “Cherchez la femme—an aged notion. Even the Romans labored under the superstition—they expressed it with Dux femina facti.”
“However they expressed it,” retorted Heath, “they had the right idea. And don’t let ’em tell you different.”
Again Markham diplomatically intervened.
“That point will be settled very soon, I hope. … And now, Sergeant, if you’ve nothing else to suggest, I’ll be getting along. I told Major Benson I’d see him at lunch time; and I may have some news for you by tonight.”
“Right,” assented Heath. “I’m going to stick around here a while and see if there’s anything I overlooked. I’ll arrange for a guard outside and also for a man inside to keep an eye on the Platz woman. Then I’ll see the reporters and let them in on the disappearing Cadillac and Mr. Vance’s mysterious revolver in the secret drawer. I guess that ought to hold ’em. If I find out anything, I’ll phone you.”
When he had shaken hands with the District Attorney, he turned to Vance.
“Goodbye, sir,” he said pleasantly, much to my surprise, and to Markham’s too, I imagine. “I hope you learned something this morning.”
“You’d be pos’tively dumbfounded, Sergeant, at all I did learn,” Vance answered carelessly.
Again I noted the look of shrewd scrutiny in Heath’s eyes; but in a second it was gone.
“Well, I’m glad of that,” was his perfunctory reply.
Markham, Vance and I went out, and the patrolman on duty hailed a taxicab for us.
“So that’s the way our lofty gendarmerie approaches the mysterious wherefores of criminal enterprise—eh?” mused Vance, as we started on our way across town. “Markham, old dear, how do those robust lads ever succeed in running down a culprit?”
“You have witnessed only the barest preliminaries,” Markham explained. “There are certain things that must be done as a matter of routine—ex abundantia cautelae, as we lawyers say.”
“But, my word!—such technique!” sighed Vance. “Ah, well, quantum est in rebus inane! as we laymen say.”
“You don’t think much of Heath’s capacity, I know,”—Markham’s voice was patient—“but he’s a clever man, and one that it’s very easy to underestimate.”
“I dare say,” murmured Vance. “Anyway, I’m deuced grateful to you, and all that, for letting me behold the solemn proceedings. I’ve been vastly amused, even if not uplifted. Your official Aesculapius rather appealed to me, y’ know—such a brisk, unemotional chap, and utterly unimpressed with the corpse. He really should have taken up crime in a serious way, instead of studying medicine.”
Markham lapsed into gloomy silence, and sat looking out of the window in troubled meditation until we reached Vance’s house.
“I don’t like the looks of things,” he remarked, as we drew up to the curb. “I have a curious feeling about this case.”
Vance regarded him a moment from the corner of his eye.
“See here, Markham,” he said with unwonted seriousness; “haven’t you any idea who shot Benson?”
Markham forced a faint smile.
“I wish I had. Crimes of wilful murder are not so easily solved. And this case strikes me as a particularly complex one.”
“Fancy, now!” said Vance, as he stepped out of the machine. “And I thought it extr’ordin’rily simple.”
V
Gathering Information
(Saturday, June 15; forenoon.)
You will remember the sensation caused by Alvin Benson’s murder. It was one of those crimes that appeal irresistibly to the popular imagination. Mystery is the basis of all romance, and about the Benson case there hung an impenetrable aura of mystery. It was many days before any definite light was shed on the circumstances surrounding the shooting; but numerous ignes fatui arose to beguile the public’s imagination, and wild speculations were heard on all sides.
Alvin Benson, while not a romantic figure in any respect, had been well-known; and his personality had been a colorful and spectacular one. He had been a member of New York’s wealthy bohemian social set—an avid sportsman, a rash gambler, and professional man-about-town; and his life, led on the borderland of the demimonde, had contained many highlights. His exploits in the night clubs and cabarets had long supplied the subject-matter for exaggerated stories and comments in the various local papers and magazines which batten on Broadway’s scandalmongers.
Benson and his brother, Anthony, had, at the time
