The Benson Murder Case / Дело Бенсона. Книга для чтения на английском языке - стр. 28
“No,” Vance returned, with a sad wag of the head; “no man has so little vanity that he would delib’rately reveal himself to the world as a creature with no per’ceptible powers of human reasoning—as he does in all these morning journals—for the mere sake of bringing one murderer to justice. That would be martyrdom gone mad.”
“Markham, at any rate, may know or suspect something that hasn’t been revealed,” I said.
Vance pondered a moment.
“That’s not impossible,” he admitted. “He has kept himself modestly in the background in all this journalistic palaver. Suppose we look into the matter more thoroughly—eh, what?”
Going to the telephone he called the District Attorney’s office, and I heard him make an appointment with Markham for lunch at the Stuyvesant Club.
“What about that Nadelmann statuette at Stieglitz’s,” I asked, remembering the reason for my presence at Vance’s that morning.
“I ain’t[42] in the mood for Greek simplifications to-day,” he answered, turning again to his newspapers.
To say that I was surprised at his attitude is to express it mildly. In all my association with him I had never known him to forgo his enthusiasm for art in favor of any other divertisement; and heretofore anything pertaining to the law and its operations had failed to interest him. I realized, therefore, that something of an unusual nature was at work in his brain, and I refrained from further comment.
Markham was a little late for the appointment at the Club, and Vance and I were already at our favorite corner table when he arrived.
“Well, my good Lycurgus,” Vance greeted him, “aside from the fact that several new and significant clues have been unearthed and that the public may expect important developments in the very near future, and all that sort of tosh, how are things really going?”
Markham smiled.
“I see you have been reading the newspapers. What do you think of the accounts?”
“Typical, no doubt,” replied Vance. “They carefully and painstakingly omit nothing but the essentials.”
“Indeed?” Markham’s tone was jocular. “And what, may I ask, do you regard as the essentials of the case?”
“In my foolish amateur way,” said Vance, “I looked upon dear Alvin’s toupee as a rather conspicuous essential, don’t y’ know.”
“Benson, at any rate, regarded it in that light, I imagine. … Anything else?”
“Well, there was the collar and the tie on the chiffonier.”
“And,” added Markham chaffingly, “don’t overlook the false teeth in the tumbler.”
“You’re pos’tively coruscatin’!” Vance exclaimed. “Yes, they, too, were an essential of the situation. And I’ll warrant the incomp’rable Heath didn’t even notice them. But the other Aristotles present were equally sketchy in their observations.”
“You weren’t particularly impressed by the investigation yesterday, I take it,” said Markham.
“On the contrary,” Vance assured him. “I was impressed to the point of stupefaction. The whole proceedings constituted a masterpiece of absurdity. Everything relevant was sublimely ignored. There were at least a dozen points de départ[43], all leading in the same direction, but not one of them apparently was even noticed by any of the officiating pourparleurs[44]. Everybody was too busy at such silly occupations as looking for cigarette-ends and inspecting the ironwork at the windows.—Those