“An extr’ordin’rily brilliant suggestion,” said Vance.
When we arrived Markham announced over the house-telephone that he had come on a vitally important mission; and we were received by Miss St. Clair without a moment’s delay. She was apprehensive, I imagine, concerning the whereabouts of Captain Leacock.
As she sat before us in her little drawing-room overlooking the Hudson, her face was quite pale, and her hands, though tightly clasped, trembled a little. She had lost much of her cold reserve, and there were unmistakable signs of sleepless worry about her eyes.
Vance went directly to the point. His tone was almost flippant in its lightness: it at once relieved the tension of the atmosphere, and gave an air bordering on inconsequentiality to our visit.
“Captain Leacock has, I regret to inform you, very foolishly confessed to the murder of Mr. Benson. But we are not entirely satisfied with his bona fides. We are, alas! awash between Scylla and Charybdis. We can not decide whether the Captain is a deep-dyed villain or a chevalier sans peur et sans reproche. His story of how he accomplished the dark deed is a bit sketchy: he is vague on certain essential details; and—what’s most confusin’—he turned the lights off in Benson’s hideous living-room by a switch which pos’tively doesn’t exist. Cons’quently, the suspicion has crept into my mind that he has concocted this tale of derring-do in order to shield someone whom he really believes guilty.”
He indicated Markham with a slight movement of the head.
“The District Attorney here does not wholly agree with me. But then, d’ ye see, the legal mind is incredibly rigid and unreceptive once it has been invaded by a notion. You will remember that, because you were with Mr. Alvin Benson on his last evening on earth, and for other reasons equally irrelevant and trivial, Mr. Markham actu’lly concluded that you had had something to do with the gentleman’s death.”
He gave Markham a smile of waggish reproach, and went on:
“Since you, Miss St. Clair, are the only person whom Captain Leacock would shield so heroically, and since I, at least, am convinced of your own innocence, will you not clear up for us a few of those points where your orbit crossed that of Mr. Benson? . . . Such information cannot do the Captain or yourself any harm, and it very possibly will help to banish from Mr. Markham’s mind his lingering doubts as to the Captain’s innocence.”
Vance’s manner had an assuaging effect upon the woman; but I could see that Markham was boiling inwardly at Vance’s animadversions on him, though he refrained from any interruption.