He glanced at his watch and, rising, went indoors, leaving me to speculate vaguely on the cause of his unwonted perturbation. A treatise on archery, a German dictionary, a collection of children’s verses, and Vance’s incomprehensible utterances regarding insanity and fantasy—what possible connection could these things have? I attempted to find a least common denominator, but without the slightest success. And it was no wonder I failed. Even the truth, when it came out weeks later bolstered up by an array of incontestable evidence, seemed too incredible and too wicked for acceptance by the normal mind of man.
Vance shortly broke in on my futile speculations. He was dressed for the street, and seemed impatient at Markham’s delay in arriving.
“Y’ know, I wanted something to interest me—a nice fascinatin’ crime, for instance,” he remarked; “but—my word!—I wasn’t exactly longin’ for a nightmare. If I didn’t know Markham so well I’d suspect him of spoofing.”
When Markham stepped into the roof garden a few minutes later it was only too plain that he had been in deadly earnest. His expression was sombre and troubled, and his usual cordial greeting he reduced to the merest curt formality. Markham and Vance had been intimate friends for fifteen years. Though of antipodal natures—the one sternly aggressive, brusque, forthright, and almost ponderously serious; the other whimsical, cynical, debonair, and aloof from the transient concerns of life—they found in each other that attraction of complementaries which so often forms the basis of an inseparable and enduring companionship.
During Markham’s year and four months as District Attorney of New York he had often called Vance into conference on matters of grave importance, and in every instance Vance had justified the confidence placed in his judgments. Indeed, to Vance almost entirely belongs the credit for solving the large number of major crimes which occurred during Markham’s four years’ incumbency. His knowledge of human nature, his wide reading and cultural attainments, his shrewd sense of logic, and his flair for the hidden truth beneath misleading exteriors, all fitted him for the task of criminal investigator—a task which he fulfilled unofficially in connection with the cases which came under Markham’s jurisdiction.
Vance’s first case, it will be remembered, had to do with the murder of Alvin Benson;[4] and had it not been for his participation in that affair I doubt if the truth concerning it would ever have come to light. Then followed the notorious strangling of Margaret Odell[5]—a murder mystery in which the ordinary methods of police detection would inevitably have failed. And last year the astounding Greene murders (to which I have already referred) would undoubtedly have succeeded had not Vance been able to frustrate their final intent.
It was not surprising, therefore, that Markham should have turned to Vance at the very beginning of the Bishop murder case. More and more, I had noticed, he had come to rely on the other’s help in his criminal investigations; and in the present instance it was particularly fortunate that he appealed to Vance, for only through an intimate knowledge of the abnormal psychological manifestations of the human mind, such as Vance possessed, could that black, insensate plot have been contravened and the perpetrator unearthed.
“This whole thing may be a mare’s-nest,” said Markham, without conviction. “But I thought you might want to come along. . . .”
“Oh, quite!” Vance gave Markham a sardonic smile. “Sit down a moment and tell me the tale coherently. The corpse won’t run away. And it’s best to get our facts in some kind of order before we view the remains.—Who are the parties of the first part, for instance? And why the projection of the District Attorney’s office into a murder case within an hour of the deceased’s passing? All that you’ve told me so far resolves itself into the utterest nonsense.”
Markham sat down gloomily on the edge of a chair and inspected the end of his cigar.