“When did you see her last, may I ask?” Markham interrupted impatiently.
The doctor made a pantomime of eloquent surprise.
“When did I see her last?… Let me see.” He could, apparently, recall the occasion only with considerable difficulty. “A fortnight ago, perhaps—though it may have been longer. I really can’t recall.… Shall I refer to my files?”
“That won’t be necessary,” said Markham. He paused and regarded the doctor with a look of disarming affability. “And was this last visit a paternal or merely a professional one?”
“Professional, of course.” Doctor Lindquist’s eyes were impassive and only mildly interested; but his face, I felt, was by no means the unedited reflection of his thoughts.
“Did the meeting take place here or at her apartment?”
“I believe I called on her at her home.”
“You called on her a great deal, Doctor—so I am informed—and at rather unconventional hours.… Is this entirely in accord with your practice of seeing patients only by appointment?”
Markham’s tone was pleasant; but from the nature of his question I knew that he was decidedly irritated by the man’s bland hypocrisy, and felt that he was deliberately withholding relevant information.
Before Doctor Lindquist could reply, however, the butler appeared at the door and silently indicated an extension telephone on a taboret beside the desk. With an unctuously murmured apology, the doctor turned and lifted the receiver.
Vance took advantage of this opportunity to scribble something on a piece of paper and pass it surreptitiously to Markham.
His call completed, Doctor Lindquist drew himself up haughtily and faced Markham with chilling scorn.
“Is it the function of the district attorney,” he asked distantly, “to harrass respectable physicians with insulting questions? I did not know that it was illegal—or even original, for that matter—for a doctor to visit his patients.”
“I am not discussing now”—Markham emphasized the adverb—“your infractions of the law; but since you suggest a possibility which, I assure you, was not in my mind, would you be good enough to tell me—merely as a matter of form—where you were last night between eleven and twelve?”
The question produced a startling effect. Doctor Lindquist became suddenly like a tautly drawn rope, and rising slowly and stiffly, he glared, with cold intense venom, at the district attorney. His velvety mask had fallen off; and I detected another emotion beneath his repressed anger: his expression cloaked a fear, and his wrath but partly veiled a passionate uncertainty.
“My whereabouts last night is no concern of yours.” He spoke with great effort, his breath coming and going noisily.
Markham waited, apparently unmoved, his eyes riveted on the trembling man before him. This calm scrutiny completely broke down the other’s self-control.
“What do you mean by forcing yourself in here with your contemptible insinuations?” he shouted. His face, now livid and mottled, was hideously contorted; his hands made spasmodic movements; and his whole body shook as with a tremor. “Get out of here—you and your two myrmidons! Get out, before I have you thrown out!”
Markham, himself enraged now, was about to reply, when Vance took him by the arm.
“The doctor is gently hinting that we go,” he said. And with amazing swiftness he spun Markham round and led him firmly out of the room.
When we were again in the taxicab on our way back to the club, Vance sniggered gaily. “A sweet specimen, that! Paranoia. Or, more likely, manic-depressive insanity—the folie circulaire type: recurring periods of maniacal excitement alternating with periods of the clearest sanity, don’t y’ know. Anyway, the doctor’s disorder belongs in the category of psychoses—associated with the maturation or waning of the sexual instinct. He’s just the right age, too. Neurotic degenerate—that’s what this oily Hippocrates is. In another minute he would have attacked you.… My word! It’s a good thing I came to the rescue. Such chaps are about as safe as rattlesnakes.”
He shook his head in a mock discouragement.
“Really, y’ know, Markham, old thing,” he added, “you should study the cranial indications of your fellow man more carefully—vultus est index animi. Did you, by any chance, note the gentleman’s wide rectangular forehead, his irregular eyebrows, and pale luminous eyes, and his outstanding ears with their thin upper rims, their pointed tragi and split lobes?… A clever devil, this Ambroise—but a moral imbecile. Beware of those pseudopyriform faces, Markham; leave their Apollonian Greek suggestiveness to misunderstood women.”
“I wonder what he really knows?” grumbled Markham irritably.
“Oh, he knows something—rest assured of that! And if only we knew it, too, we’d be considerably further along in the investigation. Furthermore, the information he is hiding is somewhat unpleasantly connected with himself. His euphoria is a bit shaken. He frightfully overdid the grand manner; his valedict’ry fulmination was the true expression of his feeling toward us.”
“Yes,” agreed Markham. “That question about last night acted like a petard. What prompted you to suggest my asking it?”
“A number of things—his gratuitous and obviously mendacious statement that he had just read of the murder; his wholly insincere homily on the sacredness of professional confidences; the cautious and Pecksniffian confession of his fatherly regard for the girl; his elaborate struggle to remember when he had last seen her—this particularly, I think, made me suspicious; and then, the psychopathic indicants of his physiognomy.”
“Well,” admitted Markham, “the question had its effect.… I feel that I shall see this fashionable M.D. again.”
“You will,” iterated Vance. “We took him unawares. But when he has had time to ponder the matter and concoct an appealin’ tale, he’ll become downright garrulous.… Anyhow, the evening is over, and you can meditate on buttercups till the morrow.”
But the evening was not quite over as far as the Odell case was concerned. We had been back in the lounge room of the club but a short time when a man walked by the corner in which we sat, and bowed with formal courtesy to Markham. Markham, to my surprise, rose and greeted him, at the same time indicating a chair.
“There’s something further I wanted to ask you, Mr. Spotswoode,” he said, “if you can spare a moment.”
At the mention of the name I regarded the man closely, for, I confess, I was not a little curious about the anonymous escort who had taken the girl to dinner and the theater the night before. Spotswoode was a typical New England aristocrat, inflexible, slow in his movements, reserved, and quietly but modishly dressed. His hair and moustache were slightly gray—which, no doubt, enhanced the pinkness of his complexion. He was just under six feet tall and well proportioned, but a trifle angular.
Markham introduced him to Vance and me, and briefly explained that we were working with him on the case and that he had thought it best to take us fully into his confidence.
Spotswoode gave him a dubious look but immediately bowed his acceptance of the decision.
“I’m in your hands, Mr. Markham,” he replied, in a well-bred but somewhat high-pitched voice, “and I concur, of course, with whatever you think advisable.” He turned to Vance with an apologetic smile. “I’m in a rather unpleasant position and naturally feel a little sensitive about it.”
“I’m something of an antinomian,” Vance pleasantly informed him. “At any rate, I’m not a moralist; so my attitude in the matter is quite academic.”
Spotswoode