put them carefully into his breast pocket. At the door he turned with a bantering grin.
“You coming along with us, Mr. Vance—to guide our erring footsteps, as they say?”
“Nothing could keep me away,” declared Vance.
6. It was Sergeant Ernest Heath, of the Homicide Bureau, who had been in charge of both the Benson and the Canary cases; and, although he had been openly antagonistic to Vance during the first of these investigations, a curious good-fellowship had later grown up between them. Vance admired the Sergeant’s dogged and straightforward qualities; and Heath had developed a keen respect—with certain reservations, however—for Vance’s abilities.
7. Vance, after reading proof of this sentence, requested me to make mention here of that beautiful volume, “Terra Cotta of the Italian Renaissance,” recently published by the National Terra Cotta Society, New York.
8. Doctor Emanuel Doremus, the Chief Medical Examiner.
CHAPTER III
AT THE GREENE MANSION
(Tuesday, November 9; 2.30 p. m.)
The Greene mansion—as it was commonly referred to by New Yorkers—was a relic of the city’s ancien régime. It had stood for three generations at the eastern extremity of 53d Street, two of its oriel windows actually overhanging the murky waters of the East River. The lot upon which the house was built extended through the entire block—a distance of two hundred feet—and had an equal frontage on the cross-streets. The character of the neighborhood had changed radically since the early days; but the spirit of commercial advancement had left the domicile of the Greenes untouched. It was an oasis of idealism and calm in the midst of moiling commercial enterprise; and one of the stipulations in old Tobias Greene’s last will and testament had been that the mansion should stand intact for at least a quarter of a century after his death, as a monument to him and his ancestors. One of his last acts on earth was to erect a high stone wall about the entire property, with a great double iron gateway opening on 53d Street and a postern-gate for tradesmen giving on 52d Street.
THE GREENE MANSION, NEW YORK, AS IT APPEARED AT THE TIME OF THE NOTORIOUS GREENE MURDER CASE.
The mansion itself was two and a half stories high, surmounted by gabled spires and chimney clusters. It was what architects call, with a certain intonation of contempt, a “château flamboyant”; but no derogatory appellation could detract from the quiet dignity and the air of feudal traditionalism that emanated from its great rectangular blocks of gray limestone. The house was sixteenth-century Gothic in style, with more than a suspicion of the new Italian ornament in its parts; and the pinnacles and shelves suggested the Byzantine. But, for all its diversity of detail, it was not flowery, and would have held no deep attraction for the Freemason architects of the Middle Ages. It was not “bookish” in effect; it exuded the very essence of the old.
In the front yard were maples and clipped evergreens, interspersed with hydrangea and lilac-bushes; and at the rear was a row of weeping willows overhanging the river. Along the herring-bone-bond brick walks were high quickset hedges of hawthorn; and the inner sides of the encircling wall were covered with compact espaliers. To the west of the house an asphalt driveway led to a double garage at the rear—an addition built by the newer generation of Greenes. But here too were boxwood hedgerows which cloaked the driveway’s modernity.
As we entered the grounds that gray November afternoon an atmosphere of foreboding bleakness seemed to have settled over the estate. The trees and shrubs were all bare, except the evergreens, which were laden with patches of snow. The trellises stood stripped along the walls, like clinging black skeletons; and, save for the front walk, which had been hastily and imperfectly swept, the grounds were piled high with irregular snow-drifts. The gray of the mansion’s masonry was almost the color of the brooding overcast sky; and I felt a premonitory chill of eeriness pass over me as we mounted the shallow steps that led to the high front door, with its pointed pediment above the deeply arched entrance.
Sproot, the butler—a little old man with white hair and a heavily seamed capriform face—admitted us with silent, funereal dignity (he had evidently been apprised of our coming); and we were ushered at once into the great gloomy drawing-room whose heavily curtained windows overlooked the river. A few moments later Chester Greene came in and greeted Markham fulsomely. Heath and Vance and me he included in a single supercilious nod.
“Awfully good of you to come, Markham,” he said, with nervous eagerness, seating himself on the edge of a chair and taking out his cigarette-holder. “I suppose you’ll want to hold an inquisition first. Whom’ll I summon as a starter?”
“We can let that go for the moment,” said Markham. “First, I’d like to know something concerning the servants. Tell me what you can about them.”
Greene moved restlessly in his chair, and seemed to have difficulty lighting his cigarette.
“There’s only four. Big house and all that, but we don’t need much help. Julia always acted as housekeeper, and Ada looked after the Mater.—To begin with, there’s old Sproot. He’s been butler, seneschal, and majordomo for us for thirty years. Regular family retainer—kind you read about in English novels—devoted, loyal, humble, dictatorial, and snooping. And a damned nuisance, I may add. Then there are two maids—one to look after the rooms and the other for general service, though the women monopolize her, mostly for useless fiddle-faddle. Hemming, the older maid, has been with us ten years. Still wears corsets and fit-easy shoes. Deep-water Baptist, I believe—excruciatingly devout. Barton, the other maid, is young and flighty: thinks she’s irresistible, knows a little table-d’hôte French, and is the kind that’s constantly expecting the males of the family to kiss her behind the door. Sibella picked her out—she’s just the kind Sibella would pick out. Been adorning our house and shirking the hard work for about two years. The cook’s a stodgy German woman, a typical Hausfrau—voluminous bosoms and number-ten feet. Puts in all her spare time writing to distant nieces and nephews in the upper reaches of the Rhine basin somewhere; and boasts that the most fastidious person could eat off her kitchen floor, it’s that clean; though I’ve never tried it. The old man engaged her a year before he died; gave orders she was to remain as long as she liked.—There you have the personnel of the backstairs. Of course, there is a gardener who loafs about the lawn in summer. He hibernates in a speak-easy up Harlem way.”
“No chauffeur?”
“A nuisance we dispense with. Julia hated motor-cars, and Rex is afraid to travel in them—squeamish lad, Rex. I drive my own racer, and Sibella’s a regular Barney Oldfield. Ada drives, too, when the Mater isn’t using her and Sibella’s car is idle.—So endeth.”
Markham had been making notes as Greene rambled along with his information. At length he put out the cigar he had been smoking.
“Now, if you don’t mind, I want to look over the house.”
Greene rose with alacrity and led the way into the main lower hall—a vaulted, oak-panelled entrance containing two large carved Flemish tables of the Sambin school, against opposite walls, and several Anglo-Dutch crown-back chairs. A
