“I thought I noticed you ogling the girl,” said Markham. “But since her hair was bobbed and she had her hat on, how could you analyse the bumps?—if that’s the phrase you phrenologists use.”
“Forget not Goldsmith’s preacher,” Vance admonished. “Truth from his lips prevailed, and those who came to scoff remained et cetera. . . . To begin with, I’m no phrenologist. But I believe in epochal, racial, and heredit’ry variations in skulls. In that respect I’m merely an old-fashioned Darwinian. Every child knows that the skull of the Piltdown man differs from that of the Cromagnard; and even a lawyer could distinguish an Aryan head from a Ural-Altaic head, or a Maylaic from a Negrillo. And, if one is versed at all in the Mendelian theory, heredit’ry cranial similarities can be detected. . . . But all this erudition is beyond you, I fear. Suffice it to say that, despite the young woman’s hat and hair, I could see the contour of her head and the bone structure in her face; and I even caught a glimpse of her ear.”
“And thereby deduced that we’d hear from her again,” added Markham scornfully.
“Indirectly—yes,” admitted Vance. Then, after a pause: “I say, in view of Miss Hoffman’s revelation, do not Colonel Ostrander’s comments of yesterday begin to take on a phosph’rescent aspect?”
“Look here!” said Markham impatiently. “Cut out these circumlocutions, and get to the point.”
Vance turned slowly from the window, and regarded him pensively.
“Markham—I put the question academically—doesn’t Pfyfe’s forged check, with its accompanying confession and its shortly-due note, constitute a rather strong motive for doing away with Benson?”
Markham sat up suddenly.
“You think Pfyfe guilty—is that it?”
“Well, here’s the touchin’ situation: Pfyfe obviously signed Benson’s name to a check, told him about it, and got the surprise of his life when his dear old pal asked him for a ninety-day note to cover the amount, and also for a written confession to hold over him to insure payment. . . . Now consider the subs’quent facts:—First, Pfyfe called on Benson a week ago and had a quarrel in which the check was mentioned,—Damon was prob’bly pleading with Pythias to extend the note, and was vulgarly informed that there was ‘nothing doing’. Secondly, Benson was shot two days later, less than a week before the note fell due. Thirdly, Pfyfe was at Benson’s house the hour of the shooting, and not only lied to you about his whereabouts, but bribed a garage owner to keep silent about his car. Fourthly, his explanation, when caught, of his unrewarded search for Haig and Haig was, to say the least, a bit thick. And don’t forget that the original tale of his lonely quest for nature’s solitudes in the Catskills—with his mysterious stop-over in New York to confer a farewell benediction upon some anonymous person—was not all that one could have hoped for in the line of plausibility. Fifthly, he is an impulsive gambler, given to taking chances; and his experiences in South Africa would certainly have familiarized him with fire-arms. Sixthly, he was rather eager to involve Leacock, and did a bit of caddish tale-bearing to that end, even informing you that he saw the Captain on the spot at the fatal moment. Seventhly—but why bore you? Have I not supplied you with all the factors you hold so dear,—what are they now?—motive, time, place, opportunity, conduct? All that’s wanting is the criminal agent. But then, the Captain’s gun is at the bottom of the East River; so you’re not very much better off in his case, what?”