“And now, it remains only to find ’em. . . . The murderer took ’em away with him; they couldn’t have left the house any other way. Therefore, they’re in this apartment. If the Major had taken them to the office, someone might have seen them; and if he had placed them in a safe deposit-box, the clerk at the bank might have remembered the episode. Moreover, the same psychology that applies to the gun, applies to the jewels. The Major has acted throughout on the assumption of his innocence; and, as a matter of fact, the trinkets were safer here than elsewhere. There’d be time enough to dispose of them when the affair blew over. . . . Come with me a moment, Markham. It’s painful, I know; and your heart’s too weak for an anæsthetic.”
Markham followed him down the passageway in a kind of daze. I felt a great sympathy for the man, for now there was no question that he knew Vance was serious in his demonstration of the Major’s guilt. Indeed, I have always felt that Markham suspected the true purpose of Vance’s request to investigate the Major’s alibi, and that his opposition was due as much to his fear of the results as to his impatience with the other’s irritating methods. Not that he would have balked ultimately at the truth, despite his long friendship for Major Benson; but he was struggling—as I see it now—with the inevitability of circumstances, hoping against hope that he had read Vance incorrectly, and that, by vigorously contesting each step of the way, he might alter the very shape of destiny itself.
Vance led the way to the living-room, and stood for five minutes inspecting the various pieces of furniture, while Markham remained in the doorway watching him through narrowed lids, his hands crowded deep into his pockets.
“We could, of course, have an expert searcher rake the apartment over inch by inch,” observed Vance. “But I don’t think it necess’ry. The Major’s a bold, cunning soul: witness his wide square forehead, the dominating stare of his globular eyes, the perpendicular spine, and the indrawn abdomen. He’s forthright in all his mental operations. Like Poe’s Minister D⸺, he would recognize the futility of painstakingly secreting the jewels in some obscure corner. And anyhow, he had no object in secreting them. He merely wished to hide ’em where there’d be no chance of their being seen. This naturally suggests a lock and key, what? There was no such cache in the bed-room—which is why I came here.”
He walked to a squat rose-wood desk in the corner, and tried all its drawers; but they were unlocked. He next tested the table drawer; but that, too, was unlocked. A small Spanish cabinet by the window proved equally disappointing.
“Markham, I simply must find a locked drawer,” he said.
He inspected the room again, and was about to return to the bed-room when his eye fell on a Circassian-walnut humidor half hidden by a pile of magazines on the under-shelf of the center-table. He stopped abruptly, and going quickly to the box, endeavored to lift the top. It was locked.
“Let’s see,” he mused: “what does the Major smoke? Romeo y Julieta Perfeccionados, I believe—but they’re not sufficiently valuable to keep under lock and key.”
He picked up a strong bronze paper-knife lying on the table, and forced its point into the crevice of the humidor just above the lock.
“You can’t do that!” cried Markham; and there was as much pain as reprimand in his voice.