“I’m not an aesthetician,” Markham reminded him, a trifle testily. “I’m merely a practical lawyer, and when it comes to determining the authorship of a crime, I prefer tangible evidence to metaphysical hypotheses.”
“Your pref’rence, my dear fellow,” Vance returned blandly, “will inev’tably involve you in all manner of embarrassing errors.”
He slowly lit another cigarette, and blew a wreath of smoke toward the ceiling.
“Consider, for example, your conclusions in the present murder case,” he went on, in his emotionless drawl. “You are laboring under the grave misconception that you know the person who prob’bly killed the unspeakable Benson. You admitted as much to the Major; and you told him you had nearly enough evidence to ask for an indictment. No doubt, you do possess a number of what the learned Solons of today regard as convincing clues. But the truth is, don’t y’ know, you haven’t your eye on the guilty person at all. You’re about to bedevil some poor girl who had nothing whatever to do with the crime.”
Markham swung about sharply.
“So!” he retorted. “I’m about to bedevil an innocent person, eh? Since my assistants and I are the only ones who happen to know what evidence we hold against her, perhaps you will explain by what occult process you acquired your knowledge of this person’s innocence.”
“It’s quite simple, y’ know,” Vance replied, with a quizzical twitch of the lips. “You haven’t your eye on the murderer for the reason that the person who committed this particular crime was sufficiently shrewd and perspicacious to see to it that no evidence which you or the police were likely to find, would even remotely indicate his guilt.”
He had spoken with the easy assurance of one who enunciates an obvious fact—a fact which permits of no argument.
Markham gave a disdainful laugh.
“No lawbreaker,” he asserted oracularly, “is shrewd enough to see all contingencies. Even the most trivial event has so many intimately related and serrated points of contact with other events which precede and follow, that it is a known fact that every criminal—however long and carefully he may plan—leaves some loose end to his preparations, which in the end betrays him.”
“A known fact?” Vance repeated. “No, my dear fellow—merely a conventional superstition, based on the childish idea of an implacable, avenging Nemesis. I can see how this esoteric notion of the inev’tability of divine punishment would appeal to the popular imagination, like fortune-telling and Ouija boards, don’t y’ know; but—my word!—it desolates me to think that you, old chap, would give credence to such mystical moonshine.”
“Don’t let it spoil your entire day,” said Markham acridly.
“Regard the unsolved, or successful, crimes that are taking place every day,” Vance continued, disregarding the other’s irony, “—crimes which completely baffle the best detectives in the business, what? The fact is, the only crimes that are ever solved are those planned by stupid people. That’s why, whenever a man of even mod’rate sagacity decides to commit a crime, he accomplishes it with but little diff’culty, and fortified with the pos’tive assurance of his immunity to discovery.”
“Undetected crimes,” scornfully submitted Markham, “result, in the main, from official bad luck—not from superior criminal cleverness.”
“Bad luck”—Vance’s voice was almost dulcet—“is merely a defensive and self-consoling synonym for inefficiency. A man with ingenuity and brains is not harassed by bad luck. … No, Markham old dear; unsolved crimes are simply crimes which have been intelligently planned and executed. And, d’ ye see, it happens that the Benson murder falls into that categ’ry. Therefore, when, after a few hours’ investigation, you say you’re pretty sure who committed it, you must pardon me if I take issue with you.”
He paused and took a few meditative puffs on his cigarette.
“The factitious and casuistic methods of deduction you chaps pursue are apt to lead almost anywhere. In proof of which assertion I point triumphantly to the unfortunate young lady whose liberty you are now plotting to take away.”
Markham, who had been hiding his resentment behind a smile of tolerant contempt, now turned on Vance and fairly glowered.
“It so happens—and I’m speaking ex cathedra—” he proclaimed defiantly, “that I come pretty near having the goods on your ‘unfortunate young lady.’ ”
Vance was unmoved.
“And yet, y’ know,” he observed drily, “no woman could possibly have done it.”
I could see that Markham was furious. When he spoke he almost spluttered.
“A woman couldn’t have done it, eh—no matter what the evidence?”
“Quite so,” Vance rejoined placidly: “not if she herself swore to it and produced a tome of what you scions of the law term, rather pompously, incontrovertible evidence.”
“Ah!” There was no mistaking the sarcasm of Markham’s tone. “I am to understand then that you even regard confessions as valueless?”
“Yes, my dear Justinian,” the other responded, with an air of complacency; “I would have you understand precisely that. Indeed, they are worse than valueless—they’re downright misleading. The fact that occasionally they may prove to be correct—like woman’s prepost’rously overrated intuition—renders them just so much more unreliable.”
Markham grunted disdainfully.
“Why should any person confess something to his detriment unless he felt that the truth had been found out, or was likely to be found out?”
“ ’Pon my word, Markham, you astound me! Permit me to murmur, privatissime et gratis, into your innocent ear that there are many other presumable motives for confessing. A confession may be the result of fear, or duress, or expediency, or mother-love, or chivalry, or what the psychoanalysts call the inferiority complex, or delusions, or a mistaken sense of duty, or a
