He buttoned his ulster about him and walked to the door.
“Ah, well, there’s nothing for me to do while you Jasons are launched on your quaint quest. I think I’ll retire and resume my translation of Delacroix’s ‘Journal.’”
But Vance was not destined then to finish this task he had had in mind so long. Three days later the front pages of the country’s press carried glaring head-lines telling of a second grim and unaccountable tragedy at the old Greene mansion, which altered the entire character of the case and immediately lifted it into the realm of the foremost causes célèbres of modern times. After this second blow had fallen all ideas of a casual burglar were banished. There could no longer be any doubt that a hidden death-dealing horror stalked through the dim corridors of that fated house.
CHAPTER VIII.
The Second Tragedy
(Friday, November 12; 8 a. m.)
The day after we had taken leave of Markham at his office the rigor of the weather suddenly relaxed. The sun came out, and the thermometer rose nearly thirty degrees. Toward night of the second day, however, a fine, damp snow began to fall, spreading a thin white blanket over the city; but around eleven the skies were again clear.
I mention these facts because they had a curious bearing on the second crime at the Greene mansion. Footprints again appeared on the front walk; and, as a result of the clinging softness of the snow, the police also found tracks in the lower hall and on the marble stairs.
Vance had spent Wednesday and Thursday in his library reading desultorily and checking Vollard’s catalogue of Cézanne’s water-colors. The three-volume edition of the “Journal de Eugène Delacroix”[10] lay on his writing-table; but I noticed that he did not so much as open it. He was restless and distracted, and his long silences at dinner (which we ate together in the living-room before the great log fire) told me only too clearly that something was perturbing him. Moreover, he had sent notes cancelling several social engagements, and had given orders to Currie, his valet and domestic factotum, that he was “out” to callers.
As he sat sipping his cognac at the end of dinner on Thursday night, his eyes idly tracing the forms in the Renoir Beigneuse above the mantel, he gave voice to his thoughts.
“ ’Pon my word, Van, I can’t shake the atmosphere of that damnable house. Markham is probably right in refusing to take the matter seriously—one can’t very well chivy a bereaved family simply because I’m oversensitive. And yet”—he shook himself slightly—“it’s most annoyin’. Maybe I’m becoming weak and emotional. What if I should suddenly go in for Whistlers and Böcklins! Could you endure it? Miserere nostri! . . . No, it won’t come to that. But—dash it all!—that Greene murder is haunting my slumbers like a lamia. And the business isn’t over yet. There’s a horrible incompleteness about what’s already occurred. . . .”