Markham hesitated. The Sergeant’s matter-of-fact assumption that a common burglar was the culprit disconcerted him.
“Chester Greene was here,” he explained presently; “and he seems convinced that the shooting was not the work of a thief. He asked me, as a special favor, to look into the matter.”
Heath gave a derisive grunt.
“Who but a burglar in a panic would shoot down two women?”
“Quite so, Sergeant.” It was Vance who answered. “Still, the lights were turned on in both rooms, though the women had gone to bed an hour before; and there was an interval of several minutes between the two shots.”
“I know all that.” Heath spoke impatiently. “But if an amachoor did the job, we can’t tell exactly what did happen up-stairs there last night. When a bird loses his head——”
“Ah! There’s the rub. When a thief loses his head, d’ye see, he isn’t apt to go from room to room turning on the lights, even assuming he knows where and how to turn them on. And he certainly isn’t going to dally around for several minutes in a black hall between such fantastic operations, especially after he has shot some one and alarmed the house, what? It doesn’t look like panic to me; it looks strangely like design. Moreover, why should this precious amateur of yours be cavorting about the boudoirs up-stairs when the loot was in the dining-room below?”
“We’ll learn all about that when we’ve got our man,” countered Heath doggedly.
“The point is, Sergeant,” put in Markham, “I’ve given Mr. Greene my promise to look into the matter, and I wanted to get what details I could from you. You understand, of course,” he added mollifyingly, “that I shall not interfere with your activities in any way. Whatever the outcome of the case, your department will receive entire credit.”
“Oh, that’s all right, sir.” Experience had taught Heath that he had nothing to fear in the way of lost kudos when working with Markham. “But I don’t think, in spite of Mr. Vance’s ideas, that you’ll find much in the Greene case to warrant attention.”
“Perhaps not,” Markham admitted. “However, I’ve committed myself, and I think I’ll run out this afternoon and look over the situation, if you’ll give me the lie of the land.”
“There isn’t much to tell.” Heath chewed on his cigar cogitatingly. “A Doctor Von Blon—the Greene family physician—phoned Headquarters about midnight. I’d just got in from an up-town stick-up call, and I hopped out to the house with a couple of the boys from the Bureau. I found the two women, like you know, one dead and the other unconscious—both shot. I phoned Doc Doremus,8 and then looked the place over. Mr. Feathergill came along and lent a hand; but we didn’t find much of anything. The fellow that did the job musta got in by the front door some way, for there was a set of footprints in the snow coming and going, besides Doctor Von Blon’s. But the snow was too flaky to get any good impressions. It stopped snowing along about eleven o’clock last night; and there’s no doubt that the prints belonged to the burglar, for no one else, except the doctor, had come or gone after the storm.”
“An amateur housebreaker with a front-door key to the Greene mansion,” murmured Vance. “Extr’ordin’ry!”
“I’m not saying he had a key, sir,” protested Heath. “I’m simply telling you what we found. The door mighta been unlatched by mistake; or some one mighta opened it for him.”
“Go on with the story, Sergeant,” urged Markham, giving Vance a reproving look.
“Well, after Doc Doremus got there and made an examination of the older woman’s body and inspected the younger one’s wound, I questioned all the family and the servants—a butler, two maids, and a cook. Chester Greene and the butler were the only ones who had heard the first shot, which was fired about half past eleven. But the second shot roused old Mrs. Greene—her room adjoins the younger daughter’s. The rest of the household had slept through all the excitement; but this Chester fellow had woke ’em all up by the time I got there. I talked to all of ’em, but nobody knew anything. After a coupla hours I left a man inside and another outside, and came away. Then I set the usual machinery going; and this morning Captain Dubois went over the place the best he could for finger-prints. Doc Doremus has got the body for an autopsy, and we’ll get a report to-night. But there’ll be nothing helpful from that quarter. She was fired on from in front at close range—almost a contact shot. And the other woman—the young one—was all powder-marked, and her nightgown was burnt. She was shot from behind.—That’s about all the dope.”
“Have you been able to get any sort of a statement from the younger one?”
“Not yet. She was unconscious last night, and this morning she was too weak to talk. But the doctor—Von Blon—said we could probably question her this afternoon. We may get something out of her, in case she got a look at the bird before he shot her.”
“That suggests something to me, Sergeant.” Vance had been listening passively to the recital, but now he drew in his legs, and lifted himself a little. “Did any member of the Greene household possess a gun?”
Heath gave him a sharp look.
“This Chester Greene said he had an old .32 revolver he used to keep in a desk drawer in his bedroom.”
“Oh, did he, now? And did you see the gun?”
“I asked him for it, but he couldn’t find it. Said he hadn’t seen it for years, but that probably it was around somewheres. Promised to dig it up for me to-day.”
“Don’t hang any fond hopes on his finding it, Sergeant.” Vance looked at Markham musingly. “I begin to comprehend the basis of Chester’s psychic perturbation. I fear he’s a crass materialist after all. . . . Sad, sad.”
“You think he missed the gun, and took fright?”
“Well—something like that . . . perhaps. One can’t tell. It’s deuced confusin’.” He turned an indolent eye on the Sergeant. “By the by, what sort of gun did your burglar use?”
Heath gave a gruff, uneasy laugh.
“You score there, Mr. Vance. I’ve got both bullets—thirty-twos, fired from a revolver, not an automatic. But you’re not trying to intimate——”
“Tut, tut, Sergeant. Like Goethe, I’m merely seeking for more illumination, if one may translate Licht——”
Markham interrupted this garrulous evasion.
“I’m going to the Greene house after lunch, Sergeant. Can you come along?”
“Sure I can, sir. I was going out anyway.”
“Good.” Markham brought forth a box of cigars. “Meet me here at two. . . . And take a couple of these Perfectos before you go.”
Heath selected the cigars, and put them carefully into his breast pocket. At the door he turned with a bantering grin.
“You coming along with us, Mr. Vance—to guide our erring footsteps, as they say?”
“Nothing could keep me away,” declared Vance.
6. It was Sergeant Ernest Heath, of the Homicide Bureau, who had been in charge of both the Benson and the Canary cases; and, although he had been openly antagonistic to Vance during the first of these investigations, a curious good-fellowship had later grown up between them. Vance admired the Sergeant’s dogged and straightforward qualities; and Heath had developed a keen respect—with certain reservations, however—for Vance’s abilities.