“Say!” she burst out, in a rasping voice. “What do youse mean by bustin’ in like this on a respectable lady?” And she launched forth upon a stream of profane epithets.
Heath, who was nearest her, placed his large hand over her face, and gave her a gentle but firm shove backward.
“You keep outa this, Cleopatra!” he advised her, and began to ascend the stairs.
The second-floor hallway was dimly lighted by a small flickering gas jet, and at the rear we could distinguish the outlines of a single door set in the middle of the wall.
“That’ll be Mr. Skeel’s abode,” observed Heath.
He walked up to it and, dropping one hand in his right coat pocket, turned the knob. But the door was locked. He then knocked violently upon it and, placing his ear to the jamb, listened. Snitkin stood directly behind him, his hand also in his pocket. The rest of us remained a little in the rear.
Heath had knocked a second time when Vance’s voice spoke up from the semidarkness. “I say, Sergeant, you’re wasting time with all that formality.”
“I guess you’re right,” came the answer after a moment of what seemed unbearable silence.
Heath bent down and looked at the lock. Then he took some instrument from his pocket and inserted it into the keyhole.
“You’re right,” he repeated. “The key’s gone.”
He stepped back and, balancing on his toes like a sprinter, sent his shoulders crashing against the panel directly over the knob. But the lock held.
“Come on, Snitkin,” he ordered.
The two detectives hurled themselves against the door. At the third onslaught there was a splintering of wood and a tearing of the lock’s bolt through the molding. The door swung drunkenly inward.
The room was in almost complete darkness. We all hesitated on the threshold, while Snitkin crossed warily to one of the windows and sent the shade clattering up. The yellow-gray light filtered in, and the objects of the room at once took definable form. A large, old-fashioned bed projected from the wall on the right.
“Look!” cried Snitkin, pointing; and something in his voice sent a shiver over me.
We pressed forward. On the foot of the bed, at the side toward the door, sprawled the crumpled body of Skeel. Like the Canary, he had been strangled. His head hung back over the footboard, his face a hideous distortion. His arms were outstretched, and one leg trailed over the edge of the mattress, resting on the floor.
“Thuggee,” murmured Vance. “Lindquist mentioned it. Curious!”
Heath stood staring fixedly at the body, his shoulders hunched. His normal ruddiness of complexion was gone, and he seemed like a man hypnotized.
“Mother o’ God!” he breathed, awestricken. And, with an involuntary motion, he crossed himself.
Markham was shaken also. He set his jaw rigidly.
“You’re right, Vance.” His voice was strained and unnatural. “Something sinister and terrible has been going on here.… There’s a fiend loose in this town—a werewolf.”
“I wouldn’t say that, old man.” Vance regarded the murdered Skeel critically. “No, I wouldn’t say that. Not a werewolf. Just a desperate human being. A man of extremes, perhaps, but quite rational, and logical—oh, how deuced logical!”
CHAPTER 24
AN ARREST
(Sunday, P.M., Monday, A.M.; September 16-17)
The investigation into Skeel’s death was pushed with great vigor by the authorities. Doctor Doremus, the medical examiner, arrived promptly and declared that the crime had taken place between ten o’clock and midnight. Immediately Vance insisted that all the men who were known to have been intimately acquainted with the Odell girl—Mannix, Lindquist, Cleaver, and Spotswoode—be interviewed at once and made to explain where they were during these two hours. Markham agreed without hesitation and gave the order to Heath, who at once put four of his men on the task.
Mallory, the detective who had shadowed Skeel the previous night, was questioned regarding possible visitors; but inasmuch as the house where Skeel lived accommodated over twenty roomers, who were constantly coming and going at all hours, no information could be gained through that channel. All that Mallory could say definitely was that Skeel had returned home at about ten o’clock, and had not come out again. The landlady, sobered and subdued by the tragedy, repudiated all knowledge of the affair. She explained that she had been “ill” in her room from dinnertime until we had disturbed her recuperation the next morning. The front door, it seemed, was never locked, since her tenants objected to such an unnecessary inconvenience. The tenants themselves were questioned, but without result; they were not of a class likely to give information to the police, even had they possessed any.
The fingerprint experts made a careful examination of the room but failed to find any marks except Skeel’s own. A thorough search through the murdered man’s effects occupied several hours; but nothing was discovered that gave any hint of the murderer’s identity. A .38 Colt automatic, fully loaded, was found under one of the pillows on the bed; and eleven hundred dollars, in bills of large denomination, was taken from a hollow brass curtain rod. Also, under a loose board in the hall, the missing steel chisel, with the fissure in the blade, was found. But these items were of no value in solving the mystery of Skeel’s death; and at four o’clock in the afternoon the room was closed with an emergency padlock and put under guard.
Markham and Vance and I had remained several hours after our discovery of the body. Markham had taken immediate charge of the case and had conducted the interrogation of the tenants. Vance had watched the routine activities of the police with unwonted intentness, and had even taken part in the search. He had seemed particularly interested in Skeel’s evening clothes, and had examined them garment by garment. Heath had looked at him from time to time, but there had been neither contempt nor amusement in the sergeant’s glances.
At half past two Markham departed, after informing Heath that he would be at the Stuyvesant Club during the remainder of the day; and Vance and I went with him. We had a belated luncheon in the empty grill.
“This Skeel episode rather knocks the foundation from under everything,” Markham said dispiritedly, as our coffee was served.
“Oh, no—not that,” Vance answered. “Rather, let us say that it has added a new column to the edifice of my giddy theory.”
“Your theory—yes. It’s about all that’s left to go on.” Markham sighed. “It has certainly received substantiation this morning.… Remarkable how you called the turn when Skeel failed to show up.”
Again Vance contradicted him.
“You overestimate my little flutter in forensics, Markham dear. You see, I assumed that the lady’s strangler knew of Skeel’s offer to you. That offer was probably a threat of some kind on Skeel’s part; otherwise he wouldn’t have set the appointment a day ahead. He no doubt hoped the victim of his threat would become amenable in the meantime. And that money hidden in the curtain rod leads me to think he was blackmailing the Canary’s murderer and had been refused a further donation just before he phoned you yesterday. That would account, too, for his having kept his guilty knowledge to himself all this time.”
“You may be right. But now we’re worse off than ever, for we haven’t even Skeel to guide us.”
“At least we’ve forced our elusive culprit to commit a second crime to cover up his first, don’t y’ know. And when we have learned what the Canary’s various amorists were doing last night between ten and twelve, we may have something suggestive on which to work. By the bye, when may we expect this thrillin’ information?”
“It depends upon what luck Heath’s men have. Tonight sometime, if everything goes well.”