angel, girt with golden wings!”
Markham was in no mood for chaffing. He turned to Heath, and spoke with forced cheeriness. “Call me up later this afternoon. I may get some new evidence out of the outfit we’ve just interviewed.… And,” he added, “be sure to put a man on guard here. I want this apartment kept just as it is until we see a little more light.”
“I’ll attend to that,” Heath assured him.
Markham and Vance and I went out and entered the car. A few minutes later we were winding rapidly across town through Central Park.
“Recall our recent conversazione about footprints in the snow?” asked Vance, as we emerged into Fifth Avenue and headed south.
Markham nodded abstractedly.
“As I remember,” mused Vance, “in the hypothetical case you presented there were not only footprints but a dozen or more witnesses—including a youthful prodigy—who saw a figure of some kind cross the hibernal landscape.… Grau, teurer Freund, ist alle Theorie! Here you are in a most beastly pother because of the disheartenin’ fact that there are neither footprints in the snow nor witnesses who saw a fleeing figure. In short, you are bereft of both direct and circumstantial evidence.… Sad, sad.”
He wagged his head dolefully.
“Y’ know, Markham, it appears to me that the testimony in this case constitutes conclusive legal proof that no one could have been with the deceased at the hour of her passing, and that, ergo, she is presumably alive. The strangled body of the lady is, I take it, simply an irrelevant circumstance from the standpoint of legal procedure. I know that you learned lawyers won’t admit a murder without a body; but how, in sweet Heaven’s name, do you get around a corpus delicti without a murder?”
“You’re talking nonsense,” Markham rebuked him, with a show of anger.
“Oh, quite,” agreed Vance. “And yet, it’s a distressin’ thing for a lawyer not to have footprints of some kind, isn’t it, old dear? It leaves one so up in the air.”
Suddenly Markham swung round. “You, of course, don’t need footprints, or any other kind of material clues,” he flung at Vance tauntingly. “You have powers of divination such as are denied ordinary mortals. If I remember correctly, you informed me, somewhat grandiloquently, that, knowing the nature and conditions of a crime, you could lead me infallibly to the culprit, whether he left footprints or not. You recall that boast?… Well, here’s a crime, and the perpetrator left no footprints coming or going. Be so kind as to end my suspense by confiding in me who killed the Odell girl.”
Vance’s serenity was not ruffled by Markham’s ill-humored challenge. He sat smoking lazily for several minutes; then he leaned over and flicked his cigarette ash out of the window.
“’Pon my word, Markham,” he rejoined evenly, “I’m half inclined to look into this silly murder. I think I’ll wait, though, and see whom the nonplussed Heath turns up with his inquiries.”
Markham grunted scoffingly and sank back on the cushions. “Your generosity wrings me,” he said.
CHAPTER 9
THE PACK IN FULL CRY
(Tuesday, September 11; afternoon)
On our way downtown that morning we were delayed for a considerable time in the traffic congestion just north of Madison Square, and Markham anxiously looked at his watch.
“It’s past noon,” he said. “I think I’ll stop at the club and have a bite of lunch.… I presume that eating at this early hour would be too plebeian for so exquisite a hothouse flower as you.”
Vance considered the invitation.
“Since you deprived me of my breakfast,” he decided, “I’ll permit you to buy me some eggs Bénédictine.”
A few minutes later we entered the almost empty grill of the Stuyvesant Club and took a table near one of the windows looking southward over the treetops of Madison Square.
Shortly after we had given our order a uniformed attendant entered and, bowing deferentially at the district attorney’s elbow, held out an unaddressed communication sealed in one of the club’s envelopes. Markham read it with an expression of growing curiosity, and as he studied the signature a look of mild surprise came into his eyes. At length he looked up and nodded to the waiting attendant. Then, excusing himself, he left us abruptly. It was fully twenty minutes before he returned.
“Funny thing,” he said. “That note was from the man who took the Odell woman to dinner and the theater last night.… A small world,” he mused. “He’s staying here at the club—he’s a nonresident member and makes it his headquarters when he’s in town.”
“You know him?” Vance put the question disinterestedly.
“I’ve met him several times—chap named Spotswoode.” Markham seemed perplexed. “He’s a man of family, lives in a country house on Long Island, and is regarded generally as a highly respectable member of society—one of the last persons I’d suspect of being mixed up with the Odell girl. But, according to his own confession, he played around a good deal with her during his visits to New York—‘sowing a few belated wild oats,’ as he expressed it—and last night took her to Francelle’s for dinner and to the Winter Garden afterwards.”
“Not my idea of an intellectual, or even edifyin’, evening,” commented Vance. “And he selected a deuced unlucky day for it I say, imagine opening the morning paper and learning that your petite dame of the preceding evening had been strangled! Disconcertin’, what?”
“He’s certainly disconcerted,” said Markham. “The early afternoon papers were out about an hour ago, and he’d been phoning my office every ten minutes, when I suddenly walked in here. He’s afraid his connection with the girl will leak out and disgrace him.”
“And won’t it?”
“I hardly see the necessity. No one knows who her escort was last evening; and since he obviously had nothing to do with the crime, what’s to be gained by dragging him into it? He told me the whole story, and offered to stay in the city as long as I wanted him to.”
“I infer, from the cloud of disappointment that enveloped you when you returned just now, that his story held nothing hopeful for you in the way of clues.”
“No,” Markham admitted. “The girl apparently never spoke to him of her intimate affairs; and he couldn’t give me a single helpful suggestion. His account of what happened last night agreed perfectly with Jessup’s. He called for the girl at seven, brought her home at about eleven, stayed with her half an hour or so, and then left her. When he heard her call for help, he was frightened, but on being assured by her there was nothing wrong, he concluded she had dozed off into a nightmare, and thought no more of it. He drove direct to the club here, arriving about ten minutes to twelve. Judge Redfern, who saw him descend from the taxi, insisted on his coming upstairs and playing poker with some men who were waiting in the judge’s rooms for him. They played until three o’clock this morning.”
“Your Long Island Don Juan has certainly not supplied you with any footprints in the snow.”
“Anyway, his coming forward at this time closes one line of inquiry over which we might have wasted considerable time.”
“If
