Markham smiled.
“Touché! . . . Don’t think I’m so ungrateful as to belittle the work you did in that case. But this time, I fear, you’ve permitted your theories to lead you hopelessly astray. The present case is what the police call an open-and-shut affair.”
“Particularly shut,” amended Vance dryly. “And both you and the police are in the distressin’ situation of waiting inactively for your suspected victim to give the game away.”
“I’ll admit the situation is not all one could desire.” Markham spoke morosely. “But even so, I can’t see that there’s any opportunity in this affair for your recondite psychological methods. The thing’s too obvious—that’s the trouble. What we need now is evidence, not theories. If it wasn’t for the spacious and romantic imaginings of the newspaper men, public interest in the case would already have died out.”
“Markham,” said Vance quietly, but with unwonted seriousness, “if that’s what you really believe, then you may as well drop the case now; for you’re foredoomed to failure. You think it’s an obvious crime. But let me tell you, it’s a subtle crime, if ever there was one. And it’s as clever as it is subtle. No common criminal committed it—believe me. It was done by a man of very superior intellect and astoundin’ ingenuity.”
Vance’s assured, matter-of-fact tone had a curiously convincing quality; and Markham, restraining his impulse to scoff, assumed an air of indulgent irony.
“Tell me,” he said, “by what cryptic mental process you arrived at so fantastic a conclusion.”
“With pleasure.” Vance took a few puffs on his cigarette, and lazily watched the smoke curl upward.[14]
“Y’ know, Markham,” he began, in his emotionless drawl, “every genuine work of art has a quality which the critics call élan—namely, enthusiasm and spontaneity. A copy, or imitation, lacks that distinguishing characteristic; it’s too perfect, too carefully done, too exact. Even enlightened scions of the law, I fancy, are aware that there is bad drawing in Botticelli and disproportions in Rubens, what? In an original, d’ ye see, such flaws don’t matter. But an imitator never puts ’em in: he doesn’t dare—he’s too intent on getting all the details correct. The imitator works with a self-consciousness and a meticulous care which the artist, in the throes of creative labor, never exhibits. And here’s the point: there’s no way of imitating that enthusiasm and spontaneity—that élan—which an original painting possesses. However closely a copy may resemble an original, there’s a vast psychological difference between them. The copy breathes an air of insincerity, of ultra-perfection, of conscious effort. . . . You follow me, eh?”
“Most instructive, my dear Ruskin.”