Markham and Heath were beset by reporters, but a veil of secrecy was sedulously maintained. No intimation was given that there was any reason to believe that the solution lay close to the Dillard household; and no mention was made of the missing .32 revolver. Sperling’s status was sympathetically dealt with by the press. The general attitude now was that the young man had been the unfortunate victim of circumstances; and all criticism of Markham’s procrastination in prosecuting him was instantly dropped.
On the day that Sprigg was shot Markham called a conference at the Stuyvesant Club. Both Inspector Moran of the Detective Bureau and Chief Inspector O’Brien[18] attended. The two murders were gone over in detail, and Vance outlined his reasons for believing that the answer to the problem would eventually be found either in the Dillard house or in some quarter directly connected with it.
“We are now in touch,” he ended, “with every person who could possibly have had sufficient knowledge of the conditions surrounding the two victims to perpetrate the crimes successfully; and our only course is to concentrate on these persons.”
Inspector Moran was inclined to agree. “Except,” he qualified, “that none of the dramatis personæ you have mentioned strikes me as a bloodthirsty maniac.”
“The murderer is not a maniac in the conventional sense,” returned Vance. “He’s probably normal on all other points. His brain, in fact, may be brilliant except for this one lesion—too brilliant, I should say. He has lost all sense of proportion through sheer exalted speculation.”
“But does even a perverted superman indulge in such hideous jests without a motive?” asked the Inspector.
“Ah, but there is a motive. Some tremendous impetus is back of the monstrous conception of these murders—an impetus which, in its operative results, takes the form of satanic humor.”
O’Brien took no part in this discussion. Though impressed by its vague implications, he became nettled by its impractical character.
“That sort of talk,” he rumbled ponderously, “is all right for newspaper editorials, but it ain’t workable.” He shook his fat black cigar at Markham. “What we gotta do is to run down every lead and get some kind of legal evidence.”
It was finally decided that the Bishop notes were to be turned over to an expert analyst, and an effort made to trace both the typewriter and the stationery. A systematic search was to be instituted for witnesses who might have seen some one in Riverside Park between seven and eight that morning. Sprigg’s habits and associations were to be the subject of a careful report; and a man was to be detailed to question the mail collector of the district in the hope that, when taking the letters from the various boxes, he had noticed the envelopes addressed to the papers and could say in which box they had actually been posted.