The Benson Murder Case/Chapter 13
(Monday, June 17; 12.30 p.m.)
When, at half past twelve, Markham, Vance and I entered the Grill of the Bankers' Club in the Equitable Building, Colonel Ostrander was already at the bar engaged with one of Charlie's prohibition clam-broth-and-Worcestershire-sauce cocktails. Vance had telephoned him immediately upon our leaving the District Attorney's office, requesting him to meet us at the Club; and the Colonel had seemed eager to comply.
"Here is New York's gayest dog," said Vance, introducing him to Markham (I had met him before); "a sybarite and a hedonist. He sleeps till noon, and makes no appointments before tiffin-time. I had to knock him up and threaten him with your official ire to get him down town at this early hour."
"Only too pleased to be of any service," the Colonel assured Markham grandiloquently. "Shocking affair! Gad! I couldn't credit it when I read it in the papers. Fact is, though—I don't mind sayin' it—I've one or two ideas on the subject. Came very near calling you up myself, sir."
When we had taken our seats at the table Vance began interrogating him without preliminaries.
"You know all the people in Benson's set, Colonel. Tell us something about Captain Leacock. What sort of chap is he?"
"Ha! So you have your eye on the gallant Captain?"
Colonel Ostrander pulled importantly at his white moustache. He was a large pink-faced man with bushy eyelashes and small blue eyes; and his manner and bearing were those of a pompous light-opera general.
"Not a bad idea. Might possibly have done it. Hot-headed fellow. He's badly smitten with a Miss St. Clair—fine girl, Muriel. And Benson was smitten, too. If I'd been twenty years younger myself"
"You're too fascinatin' to the ladies, as it is, Colonel," interrupted Vance. "But tell us about the Captain."
"Ah, yes—the Captain. Comes from Georgia originally. Served in the war—some kind of decoration. He didn't care for Benson—disliked him, in fact. Quick-tempered, single-track-minded sort of person. Jealous, too. You know the type—a product of that tribal etiquette below the Mason and Dixon line. Puts women on a pedestal—not that they shouldn't be put there, God bless 'em! But he'd go to jail for a lady's honor. A shielder of womanhood. Sentimental cuss, full of chivalry; just the kind to blow out a rival's brains:—no questions asked—pop—and it's all over. Dangerous chap to monkey with. Benson was a confounded idiot to bother with the girl when he knew she was engaged to Leacock. Playin' with fire. I don't mind sayin' I was tempted to warn him. But it was none of my affair—I had no business interferin'. Bad taste."
"Just how well did Captain Leacock know Benson?" asked Vance. "By that I mean: how intimate were they?"
"Not intimate at all," the Colonel replied.
He made a ponderous gesture of negation, and added:
"I should say not! Formal, in fact. They met each other here and there a good deal, though. Knowing 'em both pretty well, I've often had 'em to little affairs at my humble diggin's."
"You wouldn't say Captain Leacock was a good gambler—level-headed and all that?"
"Gambler—huh!" The Colonel's manner was heavily contemptuous. "Poorest I ever saw. Played poker worse than a woman. Too excitable—couldn't keep his feelin's to himself. Altogether too rash."
Then, after a momentary pause:
"By George! I see what you're aimin' at. . . . And you're dead right. It's rash young puppies just like him that go about shootin' people they don't like."
"The Captain, I take it, is quite different in that regard from your friend, Leander Pfyfe," remarked Vance.
The Colonel appeared to consider.
"Yes and no," he decided. "Pfyfe's a cool gambler—that I'll grant you. He once ran a private gambling place of his own down on Long Island—roulette, monte, baccarat, that sort of thing. And he popped tigers and wild boars in Africa for a while. But Pfyfe's got his sentimental side, and he'd plunge on a pair of deuces with all the betting odds against him. Not a good scientific gambler. Flighty in his impulses, if you understand me. I don't mind admittin', though, that he could shoot a man and forget all about it in five minutes. But he'd need a lot of provocation. . . . He may have had it—you can't tell."
"Pfyfe and Benson were rather intimate, weren't they?"
"Very—very. Always saw 'em together when Pfyfe was in New York. Known each other years. Boon companions, as they called 'em in the old days. Actually lived together before Pfyfe got married. An exacting woman, Pfyfe's wife; makes him toe the mark. But loads of money."
"Speaking of the ladies," said Vance: "what was the situation between Benson and Miss St. Clair?"
"Who can tell?" asked the Colonel sententiously. "Muriel didn't cotton to Benson—that's sure. And yet . . . women are strange creatures"
"Oh, no end strange," agreed Vance, a trifle wearily. "But really, y' know, I wasn't prying into the lady's personal relations with Benson. I thought you might know her mental attitude concerning him."
"Ah—I see. Would she, in short, have been likely to take desperate measures against him? . . . Egad! That's an idea!"
The Colonel pondered the point.
"Muriel, now, is a girl of strong character. Works hard at her art. She's a singer, and—I don't mind tellin' you—a mighty fine one. She's deep, too—deuced deep. And capable. Not afraid of taking a chance. Independent. I myself wouldn't want to be in her path if she had it in for me. Might stick at nothing."
He nodded his head sagely.
"Women are funny that way. Always surprisin' you. No sense of values. The most peaceful of 'em will shoot a man in cold blood without warnin'"
He suddenly sat up, and his little blue eyes glistened like china.
"By Gad!" He fairly blurted the ejaculation. "Muriel had dinner alone with Benson the night he was shot—the very night. Saw 'em together myself at the Marseilles."
"You don't say, really!" muttered Vance incuriously. "But I suppose we all must eat. . . . By the bye; how well did you yourself know Benson?"
The Colonel looked startled, but Vance's innocuous expression seemed to reassure him.
"I? My dear fellow! I've known Alvin Benson fifteen years. At least fifteen—maybe longer. Showed him the sights in this old town before the lid was put on. A live town it was then. Wide open. Anything you wanted. Gad—what times we had! Those were the days of the old Haymarket. Never thought of toddlin' home till breakfast"
Vance again interrupted his irrelevancies.
"How intimate are your relations with Major Benson?"
"The Major? . . . That's another matter. He and I belong to different schools. Dissimilar tastes. We never hit it off. Rarely see each other."
He seemed to think that some explanation was necessary, for before Vance could speak again, he added:
"The Major, you know, was never one of the boys, as we say. Disapproved of gaiety. Didn't mix with our little set. Considered me and Alvin too frivolous. Serious-minded chap."
Vance ate in silence for a while, then asked in an off-hand way:
"Did you do much speculating through Benson and Benson?"
For the first time the Colonel appeared hesitant about answering. He ostentatiously wiped his mouth with his napkin.
"Oh—dabbled a bit," he at length admitted airily. "Not very lucky, though. . . . We all flirted now and then with the Goddess of Chance in Benson's office."
Throughout the lunch Vance kept plying him with questions along these lines; but at the end of an hour he seemed to be no nearer anything definite than when he began. Colonel Ostrander was voluble, but his fluency was vague and disorganized. He talked mainly in parentheses, and insisted on elaborating his answers with rambling opinions, until it was almost impossible to extract what little information his words contained.
Vance, however, did not appear discouraged. He dwelt on Captain Leacock's character, and seemed particularly interested in his personal relationship with Benson. Pfyfe's gambling proclivities also occupied his attention, and he let the Colonel ramble on tiresomely about the man's gambling house on Long Island and his hunting experiences in South Africa. He asked numerous questions about Benson's other friends, but paid scant attention to the answers.
The whole interview impressed me as pointless, and I could not help wondering what Vance hoped to learn. Markham, I was convinced, was equally at sea. He pretended polite interest, and nodded appreciatively during the Colonel's incredibly drawn-out periods; but his eyes wandered occasionally, and several times I saw him give Vance a look of reproachful inquiry. There was no doubt, however, that Colonel Ostrander knew his people.
When we were back in the District Attorney's office, having taken leave of our garrulous guest at the subway entrance, Vance threw himself into one of the easy chairs with an air of satisfaction.
"Most entertainin', what? As an elim'nator of suspects the Colonel has his good points."
"Eliminator!" retorted Markham. "It's a good thing he's not connected with the police: he'd have half the community jailed for shooting Benson."
"He is a bit blood-thirsty," Vance admitted. "He's determined to get somebody jailed for the crime."
"According to that old warrior, Benson's coterie was a camorra of gunmen—not forgetting the women. I couldn't help getting the impression, as he talked, that Benson was miraculously lucky not to have been riddled with bullets long ago."
"It's obvious," commented Vance, "that you overlooked the illuminatin' flashes in the Colonel's thunder."
"Were there any?" Markham asked. "At any rate, I can't say that they exactly blinded me by their brilliance."
"And you received no solace from his words?"
"Only those in which he bade me a fond farewell. The parting didn't exactly break my heart. . . . What the old boy said about Leacock, however, might be called a confirmatory opinion. It verified—if verification had been necessary—the case against the Captain."
Vance smiled cynically.
"Oh, to be sure. And what he said about Miss St. Clair would have verified the case against her, too—last Saturday.—Also, what he said about Pfyfe would have verified the case against that Beau Sabreur, if you had happened to suspect him—eh, what?"
Vance had scarcely finished speaking when Swacker came in to say that Emery from the Homicide Bureau had been sent over by Heath, and wished, if possible, to see the District Attorney.
When the man entered I recognized him at once as the detective who had found the cigarette butts in Benson's grate.
With a quick glance at Vance and me, he went directly to Markham.
"We've found the grey Cadillac, sir; and Sergeant Heath thought you might want to know about it right away. It's in a small, one-man garage on Seventy-fourth Street near Amsterdam Avenue, and has been there three days. One of the men from the Sixty-eighth Street station located it and 'phoned in to Headquarters; and I hopped up town at once. It's the right car—fishing-tackle and all, except for the rods; so I guess the ones found in Central Park belonged to the car after all: fell out probably. . . . It seems a fellow drove the car into the garage about noon last Friday, and gave the garage-man twenty dollars to keep his mouth shut. The man's a wop, and says he don't read the papers. Anyway, he came across pronto when I put the screws on."
The detective drew out a small note-book.
"I looked up the car's number. . . . It's listed in the name of Leander Pfyfe, 24 Elm Boulevard, Port Washington, Long Island."
Markham received this piece of unexpected information with a perplexed frown. He dismissed Emery almost curtly, and sat tapping thoughtfully on his desk.
Vance watched him with an amused smile.
"It's really not a madhouse, y' know," he observed comfortingly. "I say, don't the Colonel's words bring you any cheer, now that you know Leander was hovering about the neighborhood at the time Benson was translated into the Beyond?"
"Damn your old Colonel!" snapped Markham. "What interests me at present is fitting this new development into the situation."
"It fits beautifully," Vance told him. "It rounds out the mosaic, so to speak. . . . Are you actu'lly disconcerted by learning that Pfyfe was the owner of the mysterious car?"
"Not having your gift of clairvoyance, I am, I confess, disturbed by the fact."
Markham lit a cigar—an indication of worry.
"You, of course," he added, with sarcasm, "knew before Emery came here that it was Pfyfe's car."
"I didn't know," Vance corrected him; "but I had a strong suspicion. Pfyfe overdid his distress when he told us of his breakdown in the Catskills. And Heath's question about his itiner'ry annoyed him frightfully. His hauteur was too melodramatic."
"Your ex post facto wisdom is most useful!"
Markham smoked a while in silence.
"I think I'll find out about this matter."
He rang for Swacker.
"Call up the Ansonia," he ordered angrily; "locate Leander Pfyfe, and say I want to see him at the Stuyvesant Club at six o'clock. And tell him he's to be there."
"It occurs to me," said Markham, when Swacker had gone, "that this car episode may prove helpful, after all. Pfyfe was evidently in New York that night, and for some reason he didn't want it known. Why, I wonder? He tipped us off about Leacock's threat against Benson, and hinted strongly that we'd better get on the fellow's track. Of course, he may have been sore at Leacock for winning Miss St. Clair away from his friend, and taken this means of wreaking a little revenge on him. On the other hand, if Pfyfe was at Benson's house the night of the murder, he may have some real information. And now that we've found out about the car, I think he'll tell us what he knows."
"He'll tell you something anyway," said Vance. "He's the type of congenital liar that'll tell anybody anything as long as it doesn't involve himself unpleasantly."
"You and the Cumæan Sibyl, I presume, could inform me in advance what he's going to tell me."
"I couldn't say as to the Cumæan Sibyl, don't y' know," Vance returned lightly; "but speaking for myself, I rather fancy he'll tell you that he saw the impetuous Captain at Benson's house that night."
Markham laughed.
"I hope he does. You'll want to be on hand to hear him, I suppose."
"I couldn't bear to miss it."
Vance was already at the door, preparatory to going, when he turned again to Markham.
"I've another slight favor to ask. Get a dossier on Pfyfe—there's a good fellow. Send one of your innumerable Dogberrys to Port Washington and have the gentleman's conduct and social habits looked into. Tell your emiss'ry to concentrate on the woman question. . . . I promise you, you sha'n't regret it."
Markham, I could see, was decidedly puzzled by this request, and half inclined to refuse it. But after deliberating a few moments, he smiled, and pressed a button on his desk.
"Anything to humor you," he said. "I'll send a man down at once."