Vance considered the invitation.
“Since you deprived me of my breakfast,” he decided, “I’ll permit you to buy me some eggs Bénédictine.”
A few minutes later we entered the almost empty grill of the Stuyvesant Club, and took a table near one of the windows looking southward over the treetops of Madison Square.
Shortly after we had given our order a uniformed attendant entered and, bowing deferentially at the District Attorney’s elbow, held out an unaddressed communication sealed in one of the club’s envelopes. Markham read it with an expression of growing curiosity, and as he studied the signature a look of mild surprise came into his eyes. At length he looked up and nodded to the waiting attendant. Then, excusing himself, he left us abruptly. It was fully twenty minutes before he returned.
“Funny thing,” he said. “That note was from the man who took the Odell woman to dinner and the theatre last night. . . . A small world,” he mused. “He’s staying here at the club—he’s a non-resident member and makes it his headquarters when he’s in town.”
“You know him?” Vance put the question disinterestedly.
“I’ve met him several times—chap named Spotswoode.” Markham seemed perplexed. “He’s a man of family, lives in a country house on Long Island, and is regarded generally as a highly respectable member of society—one of the last persons I’d suspect of being mixed up with the Odell girl. But, according to his own confession, he played around a good deal with her during his visits to New York—‘sowing a few belated wild oats,’ as he expressed it—and last night took her to Francelle’s for dinner and to the Winter Garden afterwards.”
“Not my idea of an intellectual, or even edifyin’, evening,” commented Vance. “And he selected a deuced unlucky day for it. . . . I say, imagine opening the morning paper and learning that your petite dame of the preceding evening had been strangled! Disconcertin’, what?”
“He’s certainly disconcerted,” said Markham. “The early afternoon papers were out about an hour ago, and he’d been phoning my office every ten minutes, when I suddenly walked in here. He’s afraid his connection with the girl will leak out and disgrace him.”
“And won’t it?”