“Perhaps,” murmured Vance.
CHAPTER XX.
The Nemesis
(Saturday, April 16; 1 p. m.)
It was past one o’clock, and Markham, Vance and I rode to the Stuyvesant Club. Heath remained at the Drukker house to carry on the routine work, to draw up his report, and to deal with the reporters who would be swarming there shortly.
Markham was booked for a conference with the Police Commissioner at three o’clock; and after lunch Vance and I walked to Stieglitz’s Intimate Gallery and spent an hour at an exhibition of Georgia O’Keeffe’s floral abstractions. Later we dropped in at Aeolian Hall and sat through Debussy’s G-minor quartette. There were some Cézanne water-colors at the Montross Galleries; but by the time we had pushed our way through the late-afternoon traffic of Fifth Avenue the light had begun to fail, and Vance ordered the chauffeur to the Stuyvesant Club, where we joined Markham for tea.
“I feel so youthful, so simple, so innocent,” Vance complained lugubriously. “So many things are happenin’, and they’re bein’ manipulated so ingeniously that I can’t grasp ’em. It’s very disconcertin’, very confusin’. I don’t like it—I don’t at all like it. Most wearin’.” He sighed drearily and sipped his tea.
“Your sorrows leave me cold,” retorted Markham. “You’ve probably spent the afternoon inspecting arquebuses and petronels at the Metropolitan Museum. If you’d had to go through what I’ve suffered——”
“Now, don’t be cross,” Vance rebuked him. “There’s far too much emotion in the world. Passion is not going to solve this case. Cerebration is our only hope. Let us be calm and thoughtful.” His mood became serious. “Markham, this comes very near being the perfect crime. Like one of Morphy’s great chess combinations, it has been calculated a score of moves ahead. There are no clews; and even if there were, they’d probably point in the wrong direction. And yet . . . and yet there’s something that’s trying to break through. I feel it: sheer intuition—that is to say, nerves. There’s an inarticulate voice that wants to speak, and can’t. A dozen times I’ve sensed the presence of some struggling force, like an invisible ghost trying to make contact without revealing its identity.”
Markham gave an exasperated sigh.
“Very helpful. Do you advise calling in a medium?”