“Hell! I’m going home before you start a bedtime story,” he growled.
The ironical aftermath of this remark was that Vance did tell a “bedtime story” that night; but he told it to me in the seclusion of his own library; and the gist of it was this:
“Heath is committed, body and soul, to a belief in Skeel’s guilt; and Markham is as effectively strangled with legal red tape as the poor Canary was strangled with powerful hands. Eheu, Van! There’s nothing left for me but to set forth to-morrow a cappella, like Gaboriau’s Monsieur Lecoq, and see what can be done in the noble cause of justice. I shall ignore both Heath and Markham, and become as a pelican of the wilderness, an owl of the desert, a sparrow alone upon the housetop. . . . Really, y’ know, I’m no avenger of society, but I do detest an unsolved problem.”
CHAPTER XVI.
Significant Disclosures
(Thursday, September 13; forenoon)
Greatly to Currie’s astonishment Vance gave instructions to be called at nine o’clock the following morning; and at ten o’clock we were sitting on his little roof-garden having breakfast in the mellow mid-September sunshine.
“Van,” he said to me, when Currie had brought us our second cup of coffee, “however secretive a woman may be, there’s always some one to whom she unburdens her soul. A confidant is an essential to the feminine temperament. It may be a mother, or a lover, or a priest, or a doctor, or, more generally, a girl chum. In the Canary’s case we haven’t a mother or a priest. Her lover—the elegant Skeel—was a potential enemy; and we’re pretty safe in ruling out her doctor—she was too shrewd to confide in such a creature as Lindquist. The girl chum, then, remains. And to-day we seek her.” He lit a cigarette and rose. “But, first, we must visit Mr. Benjamin Browne of Seventh Avenue.”
Benjamin Browne was a well-known photographer of stage celebrities, with galleries in the heart of the city’s theatrical district; and as we entered the reception-room of his luxurious studio later that morning my curiosity as to the object of our visit was at the breaking-point. Vance went straight to the desk, behind which sat a young woman with flaming red hair and mascaro-shaded eyes, and bowed in his most dignified manner. Then, taking a small unmounted photograph from his pocket, he laid it before her.
“I am producing a musical comedy, mademoiselle,” he said, “and I wish to communicate with the young lady who left this picture of herself with me. Unfortunately I’ve misplaced her card; but as her photograph bore the imprint of Browne’s, I thought you might be good enough to look in your files and tell me who she is and where I may find her.”
He slipped a five-dollar bill under the edge of the blotter, and waited with an air of innocent expectancy.