S. S. Van Dine.
New York.
Characters of the Book
Philo Vance John F.-X. Markham District Attorney of New York County. Alvin H. Benson Well-known Wall Street broker and man-about-town, who was mysteriously murdered in his home. Major Anthony Benson Brother of the murdered man. Mrs. Anna Platz Housekeeper for Alvin Benson. Muriel St. Clair A young singer. Captain Philip Leacock Miss St. Clair’s fiancé. Leander Pfyfe Intimate friend of Alvin Benson’s. Mrs. Paula Banning A friend of Leander Pfyfe’s. Elsie Hoffman Secretary of the firm of Benson and Benson. Colonel Bigsby Ostrander A retired army officer. William H. Moriarty An alderman, Borough of the Bronx. Jack Prisco Elevator-boy at the Chatham Arms. George G. Stitt Of the firm of Stitt and McCoy, Public Accountants. Maurice Dinwiddie Assistant District Attorney. Chief Inspector O’Brien Of the Police Department of New York City. William M. Moran Commanding Officer of the Detective Bureau. Ernest Heath Sergeant of the Homicide Bureau. Burke Detective of the Homicide Bureau. Snitkin Detective of the Homicide Bureau. Emery Detective of the Homicide Bureau. Ben Hanlon Commanding Officer of Detectives assigned to District Attorney’s office. Phelps Detective assigned to District Attorney’s office. Tracy Detective assigned to District Attorney’s office. Springer Detective assigned to District Attorney’s office. Higginbotham Detective assigned to District Attorney’s office. Captain Carl Hagedorn Fire-arms expert. Dr. Doremus Medical Examiner. Francis Swacker Secretary to the District Attorney. Currie Vance’s valet.
CHAPTER I.
Philo Vance at Home
(Friday, June 14; 8.30 a.m.)
It happened that, on the morning of the momentous June the fourteenth when the discovery of the murdered body of Alvin H. Benson created a sensation which, to this day, has not entirely died away, I had breakfasted with Philo Vance in his apartment. It was not unusual for me to share Vance’s luncheons and dinners, but to have breakfast with him was something of an occasion. He was a late riser, and it was his habit to remain incommunicado until his midday meal.
The reason for this early meeting was a matter of business—or, rather, of æsthetics. On the afternoon of the previous day Vance had attended a preview of Vollard’s collection of Cézanne water-colors at the Kessler Galleries, and having seen several pictures he particularly wanted, he had invited me to an early breakfast to give me instructions regarding their purchase.
A word concerning my relationship with Vance is necessary to clarify my rôle of narrator in this chronicle. The legal tradition is deeply imbedded in my family, and when my preparatory-school days were over, I was sent, almost as a matter of course, to Harvard to study law. It was there I met Vance, a reserved, cynical and caustic freshman who was the bane of his professors and the fear of his fellow-classmen. Why he should have chosen me, of all the students at the University, for his extra-scholastic association, I have never been able to understand fully. My own liking for Vance was simply explained: he fascinated and interested me, and supplied me with a novel kind of intellectual diversion. In his liking for me, however, no such basis of appeal was present. I was (and am now) a commonplace fellow, possessed of a conservative and rather conventional mind. But, at least, my mentality was not rigid, and the ponderosity of the legal procedure did not impress me greatly—which is why, no doubt, I had little taste for my inherited profession—; and it is possible that these traits found certain affinities in Vance’s unconscious mind. There is, to be sure, the less consoling explanation that I appealed to Vance as a kind of foil, or anchorage, and that he sensed in my nature a complementary antithesis to his own. But whatever the explanation, we were much together; and, as the years went by, that association ripened into an inseparable friendship.
Upon graduation I entered my father’s law firm—Van Dine and Davis—and after five years of dull apprenticeship I was taken into the firm as the junior partner. At present I am the second Van Dine of Van Dine, Davis and Van Dine, with offices at 120 Broadway. At about the time my name first appeared on the letter-heads of the firm, Vance returned from Europe, where he had been living during my legal novitiate, and, an aunt of his having died and made him her principal beneficiary, I was called upon to discharge the technical obligations involved in putting him in possession of his inherited property.