sir, I haven’t a gun.… I lost it in France.”
“Perhaps you didn’t lose it, Captain. Perhaps you lent it to someone.”
“I didn’t sir!” the words burst from his lips.
“Think a minute, Captain.… Didn’t you lend it to someone?”
“No—I did not!”
“You paid a visit—yesterday—to Riverside Drive.… Perhaps you took it there with you.”
Vance had been listening closely. “Oh, deuced clever!” he now murmured in my ear.
Captain Leacock moved uneasily. His face, even with its deep coat of tan, seemed to pale, and he sought to avoid the implacable gaze of his questioner by concentrating his attention upon some object on the table. When he spoke his voice, heretofore truculent, was colored by anxiety.
“I didn’t have it with me.… And I didn’t lend it to anyone.”
Markham sat leaning forward over the desk, his chin on his hand, like a minatory graven image. “It may be you lent it to someone prior to that morning.”
“Prior to…?” Leacock looked up quickly and paused, as if analyzing the other’s remark.
Markham took advantage of his perplexity.
“Have you lent your gun to anyone since you returned from France?”
“No, I’ve never lent it—” he began, but suddenly halted and flushed. Then he added hastily, “How could I lend it? I just told you, sir—”
“Never mind that!” Markham cut in. “So you had a gun, did you, Captain?… Have you still got it?”
Leacock opened his lips to speak but closed them again tightly.
Markham relaxed and leaned back in his chair.
“You were aware, of course, that Benson had been annoying Miss St. Clair with his attentions?”
At the mention of the girl’s name the captain’s body became rigid; his face turned a dull red, and he glared menacingly at the district attorney. At the end of a slow, deep inhalation he spoke through clenched teeth.
“Suppose we leave Miss St. Clair out of this.” He looked as though he might spring at Markham.
“Unfortunately, we can’t.” Markham’s words were sympathetic but firm. “Too many facts connect her with the case. Her handbag, for instance, was found in Benson’s living room the morning after the murder.”
“That’s a lie, sir!”
Markham ignored the insult.
“Miss St. Clair herself admits the circumstance.” He held up his hand, as the other was about to answer. “Don’t misinterpret my mentioning the fact. I am not accusing Miss St. Clair of having anything to do with the affair. I’m merely endeavoring to get some light on your own connection with it.”
The captain studied Markham with an expression that clearly indicated he doubted these assurances. Finally he set his mouth and announced with determination:
“I haven’t anything more to say on the subject, sir.”
“You knew, didn’t you,” continued Markham, “that Miss St. Clair dined with Benson at the Marseilles on the night he was shot?”
“What of it?” retorted Leacock sullenly.
“And you knew, didn’t you, that they left the restaurant at midnight, and that Miss St. Clair did not reach home until after one?”
A strange look came into the man’s eyes. The ligaments of his neck tightened, and he took a deep, resolute breath. But he neither glanced at the district attorney nor spoke.
“You know, of course,” pursued Markham’s monotonous voice, “that Benson was shot at half past twelve?” He waited, and for a whole minute there was silence in the room.
“You have nothing more to say, Captain?” he asked at length; “no further explanations to give me?”
Leacock did not answer. He sat gazing imperturbably ahead of him; and it was evident he had sealed his lips for the time being.
Markham rose.
“In that case, let us consider the interview at an end.”
The moment Captain Leacock had gone, Markham rang for one of his clerks.
“Tell Ben to have that man followed. Find out where he goes and what he does. I want a report at the Stuyvesant Club tonight.”
When we were alone, Vance gave Markham a look of half-bantering admiration.
“Ingenious, not to say artful.… But, y’ know, your questions about the lady were shocking bad form.”
“No doubt,” Markham agreed. “But it looks now as if we were on the right track. Leacock didn’t create an impression of unassailable innocence.”
“Didn’t he?” asked Vance. “Just what were the signs of his assailable guilt?”
“You saw him turn white when I questioned him about the weapon. His nerves were on edge—he was genuinely frightened.”
Vance sighed. “What a perfect ready-made set of notions you have, Markham! Don’t you know that an innocent man, when he comes under suspicion, is apt to be more nervous than a guilty one, who, to begin with, had enough nerve to commit the crime and, secondly, realizes that any show of nervousness is regarded as guilt by you lawyer chaps? ‘My strength is as the strength of ten because my heart is pure’ is a mere Sunday school pleasantry. Touch almost any innocent man on the shoulder and say ‘You’re arrested,’ and his pupils will dilate, he’ll break out in a cold sweat, the blood will rush from his face, and he’ll have tremors and dyspnea. If he’s a hystérique, or a cardiac neurotic, he’ll probably collapse completely. It’s the guilty person who, when thus accosted, lifts his eyebrows in bored surprise and says, ‘You don’t mean it, really—here have a cigar.’”
“The hardened criminal may act as you say,” Markham conceded; “but an honest man who’s innocent doesn’t go to pieces, even when accused.”
Vance shook his head hopelessly. “My dear fellow, Crile and Voronoff might have lived in vain for all of you. Manifestations of fear are the result of glandular secretions—nothing more. All they prove is that the person’s thyroid is undeveloped or that his adrenals are subnormal. A man accused of a crime, or shown the bloody weapon with which it was committed, will either smile serenely, or scream, or have hysterics, or faint, or appear disint’rested according to his hormones and irrespective of his guilt. Your theory, d’ ye see, would be quite all right if everyone had the same amount of the various internal secretions. But they haven’t.… Really, y’ know, you shouldn’t send a man to the electric chair simply because he’s deficient in endocrines. It isn’t cricket.”
Before Markham could reply, Swacker appeared at the door and said Heath had arrived.
The
