“That’s not the explanation. The old gentleman has fears. And he knows something which he will not tell us.”
“I can’t say that I got that impression.”
“Oh, Markham—my dear Markham! Weren’t you listening closely to his halting, reluctant tale? It was as if he were trying to convey some suggestion to us without actually putting it into words. We were supposed to guess. Yes! That was why he insisted that you visit him when Arnesson was safely away at an Ibsen revival——”
Vance ceased speaking abruptly and stood stock-still. A startled look came in his eyes.
“Oh, my aunt! Oh, my precious aunt! So that was why he asked me about Ibsen! . . . My word! How unutterably dull I’ve been!” He stared at Markham, and the muscles of his jaw tightened. “The truth at last!” he said with impressive softness. “And it is neither you nor the police nor I who has solved this case: it is a Norwegian dramatist who has been dead for twenty years. In Ibsen is the key to the mystery.”
Markham regarded him as though he had suddenly gone out of his mind; but before he could speak Vance hailed a taxicab.
“I’ll show you what I mean when we reach home,” he said, as we rode east through Central Park. “It’s unbelievable, but it’s true. And I should have guessed it long ago; but the connotation of the signature on those notes was too clouded with other possible meanings. . . .”
“If it were midsummer instead of spring,” commented Markham wrathfully, “I’d suggest that the heat had affected you.”
“I knew from the first there were three possible guilty persons,” continued Vance. “Each was psychologically capable of the murders, provided the impact of his emotions had upset his mental equilibrium. So there was nothing to do but to wait for some indication that would focus suspicion. Drukker was one of my three suspects, but he was murdered; and that left two. Then Pardee to all appearances committed suicide, and I’ll admit that his death made reasonable the assumption that he had been the guilty one. But there was an eroding doubt in my mind. His death was not conclusive; and that house of cards troubled me. We were stalemated. So again I waited, and watched my third possibility. Now I know that Pardee was innocent, and that he did not shoot himself. He was murdered—just as were Robin and Sprigg and Drukker. His death was another grim joke—he was a victim thrown to the police in the spirit of diabolical jest. And the murderer has been chuckling at our gullibility ever since.”
“By what reasoning do you arrive at so fantastic a conclusion?”