Heath put the card back in the folder and glanced over the typewritten paper that had accompanied it.
“He’s our man, and no mistake, Mr. Markham. Listen to this: ‘Tony (Dude) Skeel. Two years Elmira Reformatory, 1902 to 1904. One year in the Baltimore County jail for petit larceny, 1906. Three years in San Quentin for assault and robbery, 1908 to 1911. Arrested Chicago for housebreaking, 1912; case dismissed. Arrested and tried for burglary in Albany, 1913; no conviction. Served two years and eight months in Sing-Sing for housebreaking and burglary, 1914 to 1916.’” He folded the paper and put it, with the card, into his breast pocket. “Sweet little record.”
“That dope what you wanted?” asked the imperturbable Bellamy.
“I’ll say!” Heath was almost jovial.
Bellamy lingered expectantly with one eye on the district attorney; and Markham, as if suddenly remembering something, took out a box of cigars and held it out.
“Much obliged, sir,” said Bellamy, helping himself to two Mi Favoritas; and putting them into his waistcoat pocket with great care, he went out.
“I’ll use your phone now, if you don’t mind, Mr. Markham,” said Heath.
He called the Homicide Bureau.
“Look up Tony Skeel—Dude Skeel—pronto, and bring him in as soon as you find him,” were his orders to Snitkin. “Get his address from the files and take Burke and Emery with you. If he’s hopped it, send out a general alarm and have him picked up—some of the boys’ll have a line on him. Lock him up without booking him, see?… And, listen. Search his room for burglar tools: he probably won’t have any laying around, but I specially want a one-and-three-eighths-inch chisel with a nick in the blade.… I’ll be at headquarters in half an hour.”
He hung up the receiver and rubbed his hands together.
“Now we’re sailing,” he rejoiced.
Vance had gone to the window and stood staring down on the “Bridge of Sighs,” his hands thrust deep into his pockets. Slowly he turned, and fixed Heath with a contemplative eye.
“It simply won’t do, don’t y’ know,” he asserted. “Your friend, the Dude may have ripped open that bally box, but his head isn’t the right shape for the rest of last evening’s performance.”
Heath was contemptuous. “Not being a phrenologist, I’m going by the shape of his fingerprints.”
“A woeful error in the technic of criminal approach, sergente mio,” replied Vance dulcetly. “The question of culpability in this case isn’t so simple as you imagine. It’s deuced complicated. And this glass of fashion and mold of form whose portrait you’re carryin’ next to your heart has merely added to its intricacy.”
CHAPTER 10
A FORCED INTERVIEW
(Tuesday, September 11; 8 P.M.)
Markham dined at the Stuyvesant Club, as was his custom, and at his invitation Vance and I remained with him. He no doubt figured that our presence at the dinner table would act as a bulwark against the intrusion of casual acquaintances; for he was in no mood for the pleasantries of the curious. Rain had begun to fall late in the afternoon, and when dinner was over, it had turned into a steady downpour which threatened to last well into the night. Dinner over, the three of us sought a secluded corner of the lounge room, and settled ourselves for a protracted smoke.
We had been there less than a quarter of an hour when a slightly rotund man, with a heavy, florid face and thin gray hair, strolled up to us with a stealthy, self-assured gait, and wished Markham a jovial good evening. Though I had not met the newcomer I knew him to be Charles Cleaver.
“Got your note at the desk saying you wanted to see me.” He spoke with a voice curiously gentle for a man of his size; but, for all its gentleness, there was in it a timbre of calculation and coldness.
Markham rose and, after shaking hands, introduced him to Vance and me—though, it seemed, Vance had known him slightly for some time. He took the chair Markham indicated, and, producing a Corona Corona, he carefully cut the end with a gold clipper attached to his heavy watch chain, rolled the cigar between his lips to dampen it and lighted it in closely cupped hands.
“I’m sorry to trouble you, Mr. Cleaver,” began Markham, “but, as you probably have read, a young woman by the name of Margaret Odell was murdered last night in her apartment in 71st Street.…”
He paused. He seemed to be considering just how he could best broach a subject so obviously delicate; and perhaps he hoped that Cleaver would volunteer the fact of his acquaintance with the girl. But not a muscle of the man’s face moved; and, after a moment, Markham continued.
“In making inquiries into the young woman’s life I learned that you, among others, were fairly well acquainted with her.”
Again he paused. Cleaver lifted his eyebrows almost imperceptibly but said nothing.
“The fact is,” went on Markham, a trifle annoyed by the other’s deliberately circumspect attitude, “my report states that you were seen with her on many occasions during a period of nearly two years. Indeed, the only inference to be drawn from what I’ve learned is that you were more than casually interested in Miss Odell.”
“Yes?” The query was as noncommittal as it was gentle.
“Yes,” repeated Markham. “And I may add, Mr. Cleaver, that this is not the time for pretenses or suppressions. I am talking to you tonight, in large measure ex officio, because it occurred to me that you could give me some assistance in clearing the matter up. I think it only fair to say that a certain man is now under grave suspicion, and we hope to arrest him very soon. But, in any event, we will need help, and that is why I requested this little chat with you at the club.”
“And how can I assist you?” Cleaver’s face remained blank; only his lips moved as he put the question.
“Knowing this young woman as well as you did,” explained Markham patiently, “you are no doubt in possession of some information—certain facts or confidences, let us say—which would throw light on her brutal, and apparently unexpected, murder.”
Cleaver was silent for some time. His eyes had shifted to the wall before him, but otherwise his features remained set.
“I’m afraid I can’t accommodate you,” he said at length.
“Your attitude is not quite what might be expected in one whose conscience is entirely clear,” returned Markham, with a show of resentment.
The man turned a mildly inquisitive gaze upon the district attorney.
“What has my knowing the girl to do with her being murdered? She didn’t confide in me who her murderer was to be. She didn’t even tell me that she knew anyone who intended to strangle her. If she’d known, she most likely could have avoided being murdered.”
Vance was sitting close to me, a little removed from the others, and, leaning over, murmured in my ear sotto voce: “Markham’s up against another lawyer—poor dear!… A crumplin’ situation.”
But however inauspiciously this interlocutory skirmish may have begun, it soon developed into a grim combat which ended in Cleaver’s complete surrender. Markham, despite his suavity and graciousness, was an unrelenting and resourceful antagonist; and it was not long before he had forced from Cleaver some highly significant information.
In response to the man’s ironically evasive rejoinder, he turned quickly and leaned forward.
“You’re not on the witness stand in your own defense, Mr. Cleaver,” he said sharply, “however much you appear to regard yourself as eligible for that position.”
Cleaver glared back fixedly without replying;