Imagine Joe Scintilla a college boy!—Johns Hopkins U., no less. I was just a bit too young for the initial draft registration of May 1917, and by the time I did register a few months later I was already neck deep in books. I browsed into everything—English, history, philosophy, science—specializing in nothing. But when I finished, I had no desire to be a cog in someone else’s machine: I had to strike out on my own.
But why a detective? Who can say at this point? Maybe I saw an ad in the back of a pulp magazine—Black Mask, probably. But even here there were some obstacles: the Pinkertons were out of the question—I detested their readiness to be strikebreaking thugs in the hands of capitalists; and both the Baltimore and the New York offices of the Continental Detective Agency had no openings at the time.
Maybe a detective is someone who needs to know a little bit about everything, but not a lot about anything. Sure, there are some technical matters—the new science of finger-printing, the art of wearing or placing a wire—but anyone can master these. The science of detection is the science of humanity: you have to be part psychologist, part researcher, part snoop. The Black Mask boys emphasize the gunplay, but that’s a myth: in my twelve years on the job I haven’t fired my gun more than twice in any given year.
I also quickly learned that the private detective’s best weapon is his victim, his prey. My pal Henry Mencken told us often enough at meetings of the Saturday Night Club that no one ever came to grief by underestimating the stupidity of the average human being, and that rule has worked pretty well for me.
In the dozen years I’d been at this game I had had my share of tedium—couldn’t remember how many spouses had wanted me to track down husbands or wives engaged in shenanigans of all kinds, but mostly of the sexual sort—but it always satisfied me when my quarry committed that fatal act of stupidity that sunk them. It was all pretty easy. It isn’t that I’m so bright myself: I don’t know everything, but I know where to find out what I didn’t know. That’s important.
There was one instance where a wife had actually blown her husband’s brains out after I had told her of the mistress he had stashed in a studio apartment in Chelsea. What was that to me? I had done my job, been paid for my services, and that was the end of it. Did the guy have it coming? Maybe yes, maybe no. The woman herself would have plenty of time to reflect on her own folly behind bars. It sure is fortunate for most people that stupidity isn’t a capital offense.
But if most of the cases I’d worked on were mundane, the matter that Arthur Vance had brought me was quite otherwise.
“I know it sounds crazy,” he was saying, “but this whole business is crazy! That’s my wife! It is!”—shaking the newspaper clipping in front of my face as if that would convince me.
It was obvious I was in the presence of a man not quite in control of his emotions, perhaps of his sanity. I wasn’t afraid of this thin, wiry fop, but I didn’t want to go through the bother of using physical force on him. Better to calm him down.
“Okay, Mr. Vance, it’s your wife. It does look like her.... Now how do you explain how she can marry someone after she’s dead?”
Vance suddenly got up from the chair and began pacing around the small office, his angular body moving jerkily, like a mechanism not properly oiled. “I don’t know, but it’s that...that Removal Company! I knew there was something strange with that operation....” Then, almost to himself: “What could he have done to her…?”
“Do you want to tell me the story?”
“All right.” He sat down heavily. “It’s a long story. A real long story.” When there was no change in my bland expression: “You needn’t worry about a fee. I’ll pay you well.”
Without warning he reached into the inside pocket of his suit jacket and slapped down a neatly tied wad of bills on my desk.
My first thought was that Vance was lucky to have been able to withdraw so large a wad of cash from a bank: FDR had declared a week-long national bank holiday beginning to-morrow, to prevent skittish depositors from taking out all their money and stuffing it in their mattresses. This thick stack of bills in front of me had clearly never been soiled by human hands.
“Ten thousand dollars,” he said. “And that’s just for starters. You may need more.”
I looked down at the money, then looked up at him. My expression was—I hope—still bland.
“Mr. Vance, you haven’t told me what it is you want me to do. Or are you paying me just to sit and listen?”
He took that as a little joke, and cracked a smile from one side of his mouth. He almost looked human at that point. “Well, believe it or not, listening is a big part of it. I’ve never told this to anybody, and just getting it off my chest will be something.”
I reached in my drawer and handed him something I should have offered long before—a smoke.
To my surprise, he waved his hand impatiently. “No, I don’t smoke.” Neither did I. Another point in his favor. Filthy habit, smoking. I put the cigarettes back in the drawer.
“Okay, here’s how it is,” he began. He took a deep breath, as if about to plunge into some deep water for a long time, then said:
“Katharine and I were married in 1930—January 17. It was kind of an arranged marriage, you might say, although we really did love each other...or so I thought. Our families had known each other for years—we both live in San Marino, California—and I’d been friends with her since she was a teenager. You know,” he said with a kind of rueful smirk, “it’s funny about the wealthy. Everybody thinks you can do whatever you like, but you can’t. I couldn’t think of marrying outside of my social circle—it would have been unimaginable. And as for Katharine—well, she was in an even more difficult bind.
“You see, her father, Franklin Hawley, had been ruined in the stock market crash, and actually killed himself not long after. He was so ashamed—he knew that he would no longer be able to support his family in their accustomed style. Of course, they couldn’t collect any life insurance. They were really in a bad way, although they tried to put the best face on it. Had to let go all their servants except their butler....”
“Must have been tough,” I couldn’t help interjecting.
Vance flushed beet-red. “I know what you’re thinking: Idle rich! Only one butler left to run the estate! Well, it wasn’t like that—it wasn’t—”
“Okay, okay,” I said. “I’m sorry. Please go on.”
Vance glared at me a bit, but then softened. One more sweep of the hand through the hair.
“Frankly, Katharine’s mother had to secure an advantageous marriage for her—it was the only thing to do. I guess she saw me as a good choice. And you know, we really were very fond of each other—did a lot of things together, always had a good time.... It made sense. So we started seeing a lot of each other, just to make sure we were really compatible—and we were. We really were.”
Vance began to choke up a bit. Taking out a silk handkerchief, he mopped his brow, then rubbed his eyes a little.
“It started off fine. She came to live with us, of course—my parents and me—and we made sure that her mother had enough to live comfortably. Everything seemed to be working. We led a quiet life—neither of us liked parties very much—and we were talking about starting a family in a year or two.
“But Katharine had always been a bit glum—ever since I knew her as a kid. God knows why that was; maybe you’ll find out a bit more from this”—he tapped the notebook he had placed on my desk—“but I guess no one will really ever know.”
“Probably not,” I said, just to say something. Vance had paused, not sure how to proceed.
“Well, I tried everything to make her happy. We traveled, I gave her whatever she wanted, I even offered to have her mother come and live with us.