CHAPTER XIV.
Vance Outlines a Theory
(Wednesday, September 12; evening)
Vance and I did not return to the District Attorney’s office after lunch, for Markham had a busy afternoon before him, and nothing further was likely to transpire in connection with the Odell case until Sergeant Heath had completed his investigations of Cleaver and Doctor Lindquist. Vance had seats for Giordano’s “Madame Sans-Gêne,” and two o’clock found us at the Metropolitan. Though the performance was excellent, Vance was too distrait to enjoy it; and it was significant that, after the opera, he directed the chauffeur to the Stuyvesant Club. I knew he had a tea appointment, and that he had planned to motor to Longue Vue for dinner; and the fact that he should have dismissed these social engagements from his mind in order to be with Markham showed how intensely the problem of the murder had absorbed his interest.
It was after six o’clock when Markham came in, looking harassed and tired. No mention of the case was made during dinner, with the exception of Markham’s casual remark that Heath had turned in his reports on Cleaver and Doctor Lindquist and Mannix. (It seemed that, immediately after lunch, he had telephoned to the Sergeant to add Mannix’s name to the two others as a subject for inquiry.) It was not until we had retired to our favorite corner of the lounge-room that the topic of the murder was brought up for discussion.
And that discussion, brief and one-sided, was the beginning of an entirely new line of investigation—a line which, in the end, led to the guilty person.
Markham sank wearily into his chair. He had begun to show the strain of the last two days of fruitless worry. His eyes were a trifle heavy, and there was a grim tenacity in the lines of his mouth. Slowly and deliberately he lighted a cigar, and took several deep inhalations.
“Damn the newspapers!” he grumbled. “Why can’t they let the District Attorney’s office handle its business in its own way? . . . Have you seen the afternoon papers? They’re all clamoring for the murderer. You’d think I had him up my sleeve.”
“You forget, my dear chap,” grinned Vance, “that we are living under the benign and upliftin’ reign of Democritus, which confers upon every ignoramus the privilege of promiscuously criticising his betters.”
Markham snorted.
“I don’t complain about criticism: it’s the lurid imagination of these bright young reporters that galls me. They’re trying to turn this sordid crime into a spectacular Borgia melodrama, with passion running rampant, and mysterious influences at work, and all the pomp and trappings of a mediæval romance. . . . You’d think even a schoolboy could see that it was only an ordinary robbery and murder of the kind that’s taking place regularly throughout the country.”