The Benson Murder Case / Дело Бенсона. Книга для чтения на английском языке - стр. 24
“I may get something out of the Major along that line,” supplied Markham. “He’ll tell me anything I want to know. And I can also look into Benson’s business associates through the same channel.”
“I was going to suggest that you could do that better than I could,” Heath rejoined. “We ought to run into something pretty quick that’ll give us a line to go on. And I’ve got an idea that when we locate the lady he took to dinner last night and brought back here, we’ll know a lot more than we do now.”
“Or a lot less,” murmured Vance.
Heath looked up quickly, and grunted with an air of massive petulance.
“Let me tell you something, Mr. Vance,” he said, “—since I understand you want to learn something about these affairs: when anything goes seriously wrong in this world, it’s pretty safe to look for a woman in the case.”
“Ah, yes,” smiled Vance. “Cherchez la femme[34]—an aged notion. Even the Romans labored under the superstition,—they expressed it with Dux femina facti[35].”
“However they expressed it,” retorted Heath, “they had the right idea. And don’t let ’em tell you different.”
Again Markham diplomatically intervened.
“That point will be settled very soon, I hope. … And now, Sergeant, if you’ve nothing else to suggest, I’ll be getting along. I told Major Benson I’d see him at lunch time; and I may have some news for you by to-night.”
“Right,” assented Heath. “I’m going to stick around here a while and see if there’s anything I overlooked. I’ll arrange for a guard outside and also for a man inside to keep an eye on the Platz woman. Then I’ll see the reporters and let them in on the disappearing Cadillac and Mr. Vance’s mysterious revolver in the secret drawer. I guess that ought to hold ’em. If I find out anything, I’ll ’phone you.”
When he had shaken hands with the District Attorney, he turned to Vance.
“Good-bye, sir,” he said pleasantly, much to my surprise, and to Markham’s too, I imagine. “I hope you learned something this morning.”
“You’d be pos’tively dumfounded, Sergeant, at all I did learn,” Vance answered carelessly.
Again I noted the look of shrewd scrutiny in Heath’s eyes; but in a second it was gone.
“Well, I’m glad of that,” was his perfunctory reply.
Markham, Vance and I went out, and the patrolman on duty hailed a taxicab for us.
“So that’s the way our lofty gendarmerie[36] approaches the mysterious wherefores of criminal enterprise—eh?” mused Vance, as we started on our way across town. “Markham, old dear, how do those robust lads ever succeed in running down a culprit?”
“You have witnessed only the barest preliminaries,” Markham explained. “There are certain things that must be done as a matter of routine—ex abundantia cautelae[37], as we lawyers say.”
“But, my word!—such technique!” sighed Vance. “Ah, well, quantum est in rebus inane![38] as we laymen say.”
“You don’t think much of Heath’s capacity, I know,”—Markham’s voice was patient—“but he’s a clever man, and one that it’s very easy to underestimate.”
“I dare say,” murmured Vance. “Anyway, I’m deuced grateful to you, and all that, for letting me behold the solemn proceedings. I’ve been vastly amused, even if not uplifted. Your official Aesculapius rather appealed to me, y’ know—such a brisk, unemotional chap, and utterly unimpressed with the corpse. He really should have taken up crime in a serious way, instead of studying medicine.”