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Title:      The Casino Murder Case (1934)
Author:     S. S. Van Dine
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A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook

Title:      The Casino Murder Case (1934)
Author:     S. S. Van Dine



A PHILO VANCE MYSTERY





Quam saepe forte temere eveniunt, quae non audeas optare!--Terence.




TO AUGUSTA MacMANNUS

("Our Mac")




CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I.  An Anonymous Letter

II.  The Casino

III.  The First Tragedy

IV.  The Dead Girl's Room

V.  Poison!

VI.  A Cry in the Night

VII.  More Poison

VIII.  The Medicine Cabinet

IX.  A Painful Interview

X.  The Post-Mortem Report

XI.  Fear of Water

XII.  Vance Takes a Journey

XIII.  An Amazing Discovery

XIV.  The White Label

XV.  The Two-o'Clock Appointment

XVI.  The Final Tragedy




CHARACTERS OF THE BOOK

Philo Vance

John F.-X. Markham--District Attorney of New York County.

Ernest Heath--Sergeant of the Homicide Bureau.

Mrs. Anthony Llewellyn--A prominent social worker.

Richard Kinkaid--Her brother, and owner of the Casino.

Amelia Llewellyn--Her daughter; an art student.

Lynn Llewellyn--Her son, a night-club habitué and gambler.

Virginia Llewellyn--Lynn Llewellyn's wife: formerly Virginia Vale,
a musical-comedy star.

Morgan Bloodgood--Former instructor in mathematics, and Kinkaid's
chief croupier.

Doctor Allan Kane--A young doctor; friend of the Llewellyns.

Doctor Rogers--A physician.

Doctor Adolph Hildebrandt--Official Toxicologist.

Smith--The Llewellyn butler.

Hennessey--Detective of the Homicide Bureau.

Snitkin--Detective of the Homicide Bureau.

Sullivan--Detective of the Homicide Bureau.

Burke--Detective of the Homicide Bureau.

Doctor Emanuel Doremus--Medical Examiner.

Currie--Vance's valet.




THE CASINO MURDER CASE



CHAPTER I

AN ANONYMOUS LETTER


(Saturday, October 15; 10 a. m.)

It was in the cold bleak autumn following the spectacular Dragon
murder case that Philo Vance was confronted with what was probably
the subtlest and most diabolical criminal problem of his career.
Unlike his other cases, this mystery was one of poisoning.  But it
was not an ordinary poisoning case: it involved far too clever a
technique, and was thought out to far too many decimal points, to
be ranked with even such famous crimes as the Cordelia Botkin,
Molineux, Maybrick, Buchanan, Bowers and Carlyle Harris cases.

The designation given to it by the newspapers--namely, the Casino
murder case--was technically a misnomer, although Kinkaid's famous
gambling Casino in West 73rd Street played a large part in it.  In
fact, the first sinister episode in this notorious crime actually
occurred beside the high-stake roulette table in the "Gold Room" of
the Casino; and the final episode of the tragedy was enacted in
Kinkaid's walnut-paneled Jacobean office, just off the main
gambling salon.

Incidentally, I may say that that last terrible scene will haunt me
to my dying day and send cold shivers racing up and down my spine
whenever I let my mind dwell on its terrifying details.  I have
been through many shocking and unnerving situations with Vance
during the course of his criminal investigations, but never have I
experienced one that affected me as did that terrific and fatal
dénouement that came so suddenly, so unexpectedly, in the gaudy
environment of that famous gambling rendezvous.

And Markham, too, I know, underwent some chilling metamorphosis in
those few agonizing moments when the murderer stood before us and
cackled in triumph.  To this day, the mere mention of the incident
makes Markham irritable and nervous--a fact which, considering his
usual calm, indicates clearly how deep and lasting an impression
the tragic affair made upon him.

The Casino murder case, barring that one fatal terminating event,
was not so spectacular in its details as many other criminal cases
which Vance had probed and solved.  From a purely objective point
of view it might even have been considered commonplace; for in its
superficial mechanism it had many parallels in well-known cases of
criminological history.  But what distinguished this case from its
many antetypes was the subtle inner processes by which the murderer
sought to divert suspicion and to create new and more devilish
situations wherein the real motive of the crime was to be found.
It was not merely one wheel within another wheel: it was an
elaborate and complicated piece of psychological machinery, the
mechanism of which led on and on, almost indefinitely, to the most
amazing--and erroneous--conclusions.

Indeed, the first move of the murderer was perhaps the most artful
act of the entire profound scheme.  It was a letter addressed to
Vance thirty-six hours before the mechanism of the plot was put in
direct operation.  But, curiously enough, it was this supreme
subtlety that, in the end, led to the recognition of the culprit.
Perhaps this act of letter-writing was too subtle: perhaps it
defeated its own purpose by calling mute attention to the mental
processes of the murderer, and thereby gave Vance an intellectual
clue which fortunately diverted his efforts from the more insistent
and more obvious lines of ratiocination.  In any event, it achieved
its superficial object; for Vance was actually a spectator of the
first thrust, so to speak, of the villain's rapier.

And, as an eye witness to the first episode of this famous poison
murder mystery, Vance became directly involved in the case; so
that, in this instance, he carried the problem to John F.-X.
Markham, who was then the District Attorney of New York County and
Vance's closest friend; whereas, in all his other criminal
investigations, it was Markham who had been primarily responsible
for Vance's participation.

The letter of which I speak arrived in the morning mail on
Saturday, October 15.  It consisted of two typewritten pages, and
the envelop was postmarked Closter, New Jersey.  The official post-
office stamp showed the mailing time as noon of the preceding day.
Vance had worked late Friday night, tabulating and comparing the
æsthetic designs on Sumerian pottery in an attempt to establish the
cultural influences of this ancient civilization,* and did not
arise till ten o'clock on Saturday.  I was living in Vance's
apartment in East 38th Street at the time; and though my position
was that of legal adviser and monetary steward I had, during the
past three years, gradually taken over a kind of general
secretaryship in his employ.  "Employ" is perhaps not the correct
word, for Vance and I had been close friends since our Harvard
days; and it was this relationship that had induced me to sever my
connection with my father's law firm of Van Dine, Davis and Van
Dine and to devote myself to the more congenial task of looking
after Vance's affairs.


* The records of the Joint Expedition to Mesopotamia, undertaken by
the University of Pennsylvania and the British Museum, under the
directorship of Doctor C. Leonard Woolley, had recently appeared.


On that raw, almost wintry, morning in October I had, as usual,
opened and segregated his mail, taking care of such items as came
under my own jurisdiction, and was engaged in making out his entry
blanks for the autumn field trials,* when Vance entered the library
and, with a nod of greeting, sat down in his favorite Queen-Anne
chair before the open fire.


* Vance owned some exceptionally fine pointers and setters which
had made many notable wins for him in the various trials in the
East.  They had been trained by one of the country's leading
experts, and returned to Vance perfectly broken to field work.
Vance took great pleasure in handling the dogs himself.


That morning he was wearing a rare old mandarin robe and Chinese
sandals, and I was somewhat astonished at his costume, for he
rarely came to breakfast (which invariably consisted of a cup of
Turkish coffee and one of his beloved Régie cigarettes) in such
elaborate dress.

"I say, Van," he remarked, when he had pushed the table-button for
Currie, his aged English butler and majordomo; "don't look so
naïvely amazed.  I felt depressed when I awoke.  I couldn't trace
the designs on some of the jolly old stelæ and cylinder seals
they've dug up at Ur, and in consequence had a restless night.
Therefore, I bedecked myself in this Chinese attire in an effort to
counteract my feelin's, and in the hope, I may add, that I would,
through a process of psychic osmosis, acquire a bit of that
Oriental calm that is so highly spoken of by the Sinologists."

At this moment Currie brought in the coffee.  Vance, after lighting
a Régie and taking a few sips of the thick black liquid, looked
toward me lazily and drawled:  "Any cheerin' mail?"

So interested had I been in the strange anonymous letter which had
just arrived--although I had as yet no idea of its tragic
significance--that I handed it to him without a word.  He glanced
at it with slightly raised eyebrows, let his gaze rest for a moment
on the enigmatic signature, and then, placing his coffee cup on the
table, read it through slowly.  I watched him closely during the
process, and noted a curiously veiled expression in his eyes, which
deepened and became unusually serious as he came to the end.

The letter is still in Vance's files, and I am quoting it here
verbatim, for in it Vance found one of his most valuable clues--a
clue which, though it did not actually lead to the murderer at the
beginning, at least shunted Vance from the obvious line of research
intended by the plotter.  As I have just said, the letter was
typewritten; but the work was inexpertly done--that is, there was
evidence of the writer's unfamiliarity with the mechanism of a
typewriter.  The letter read:


DEAR MR. VANCE:  I am appealing to you for help in my distress.
And I am also appealing to you in the name of humanity and justice.
I know you by reputation--and you are the one man in New York who
may be able to prevent a terrible catastrophe--or at least to see
that punishment is meted out to the perpetrator of an impending
crime.  Horrible black clouds are hovering over a certain household
in New York--they have been gathering for years--and I KNOW that
the storm is about to break.  There is danger and tragedy in the
air.  PLEASE do not fail me at this time, although I admit I am a
stranger to you.

I do not know exactly what is going to happen.  If I did I could go
to the police.  But any official interference now would put the
plotter on guard and merely postpone the tragedy.  I wish I could
tell you more--but I do not know any more.  The thing is all
frightfully vague--it is like an atmosphere rather than a specific
situation.  BUT IT IS GOING TO HAPPEN--SOMETHING is going to happen--
and whatever does happen will be deceptive and untrue.  So please
don't let appearances deceive you.  Look--LOOK--BENEATH the thing
for the truth.  All those involved are abnormal and tricky.  DON'T
UNDERESTIMATE THEM.

Here is all I can tell you--

You have met young Lynn Llewellyn--that much I know--and you
probably know of his marriage three years ago to the beautiful
musical-comedy star, Virginia Vale.  She gave up her career and she
and Lynn have been living with his family.  But the marriage was a
terrible mistake, and for three years a tragedy has been brewing.
And now things have come to a climax.  I HAVE SEEN THE TERRIBLE
FORMS TAKING SHAPE.  And there are others besides the Llewellyns in
the picture.

There is danger--AWFUL DANGER--for some one--I don't know just who.
AND THE TIME IS TOMORROW NIGHT, Saturday.

Lynn Llewellyn MUST BE WATCHED.  And watched carefully.

There is to be a dinner at the Llewellyn home tomorrow night--and
every principal in this impending tragedy will be present--Richard
Kinkaid, Morgan Bloodgood, young Lynn and his unhappy wife, and
Lynn's sister Amelia, and his mother.  The occasion is the mother's
birthday.

Although I know that there will be a rumpus of some kind at that
dinner, I realize that you can do nothing about it.  It will not
matter anyway.  The dinner will be only the beginning of things.
But something momentous will happen LATER.  I KNOW it will happen.
THE TIME HAS NOW COME.

After dinner Lynn Llewellyn will go to Kinkaid's Casino to play.
He goes every Saturday night.  I know that you yourself often visit
the Casino.  And what I beg of you to do is to go there tomorrow
night.  You MUST go.  And you must watch Lynn Llewellyn--every
minute of the time.  Also watch Kinkaid and Bloodgood.

You may wonder why I do not take some action in the matter myself;
but I assure you my position and the circumstances make it utterly
impossible.

I wish I could be more definite.  But I do not know any more to
tell you.  YOU must find out.


The signature, also typewritten, was "One Deeply Concerned."

When Vance had perused the letter a second time he settled deep in
his chair and stretched his legs out lazily.

"An amazin' document, Van," he drawled, after several meditative
puffs on his cigarette.  "And quite insincere, don't y' know.  A
literary touch here and there--a bit of melodrama--a few samples of
gaudy rhetoric--and, occasionally, a deep concern. . . .  Quite,
oh, quite: the signature, though vague, is genuine.  Yes . . . yes--
that's quite obvious.  It's more heavily typed than the rest of
the letter--more pressure on the keys. . . .  Passion at work.  And
not a pleasant passion: a bit of vindictiveness, as it were,
coupled with anxiety. . . ."  His voice trailed off.  "Anxiety!" he
continued, as if to himself.  "That's exactly what exudes from
between the lines.  But anxiety about what? about whom? . . .  The
gambling Lynn?  It might be, of course.  And yet . . ."  Again his
voice trailed off, and once more he inspected the letter, adjusting
his monocle carefully and scrutinizing both sides of the paper.
"The ordin'ry commercial bond," he observed.  "Available at any
stationer's. . . .  And a plain envelop with a pointed flap.  My
anxious and garrulous correspondent was most careful to avoid the
possibility of being traced through his stationer. . . .  Very
sad. . . .  But I do wish the epistler had gone to business school
at some time.  The typing is atrocious: bad spacings, wrong keys
struck, no sense of margin or indentation--all indicative of too
little familiarity with the endless silly gadgets of the
typewriter."

He lighted another cigarette and finished his coffee.  Then he
settled back in his chair and read the letter for the third time.
I had seldom seen him so interested.  At length he said:

"Why all the domestic details of the Llewellyns, Van?  Any one who
reads the newspapers knows of the situation in the Llewellyn home.
The pretty blond actress marrying into the Social Register over the
protests of mama and then ending up under mama's roof: Lynn
Llewellyn a young gadabout and the darling of the night-clubs:
serious little sister turning from the frivolities of the social
whirl to study art:--who in this fair bailiwick could have failed
to hear of these things?  And mama herself is a noisy philanthropist
and a committee member of every social and economic organization
she can find.  And certainly Kinkaid, the old lady's brother,
is not an inconnu.  There are few characters in the city more
notorious than he--much to old Mrs. Llewellyn's chagrin and
humiliation.  The wealth of the family alone would make its doings
common gossip."  Vance made a wry face.  "And yet my correspondent
reminds me of these various matters.  Why?  Why the letter at all?
Why am I chosen as the recipient?  Why the flowery language?  Why
the abominable typing?  Why this paper and the secrecy?  Why
everything? . . .  I wonder . . . I wonder. . . ."

He rose and paced up and down.  I was surprised at his
perturbation: it was altogether unlike him.  The letter had not
impressed me very much, aside from its unusualness; and my first
inclination was to regard it as the act of a crank or of some one
who had a grudge against the Llewellyns and was taking this
circuitous means of causing them annoyance.  But Vance evidently
had sensed something in the letter that had completely escaped me.

Suddenly he ceased his contemplative to-and-fro, and walked to the
telephone.  A few moments later he was speaking with District
Attorney Markham, urging him to stop in at the apartment that
afternoon.

"It's really quite important," he said, with but a trace of the
usual jocular manner he assumed when speaking to Markham.  "I have
a fascinatin' document to show you. . . .  Toddle up--there's a
good fellow."

For some time after he had replaced the receiver Vance sat in
silence.  Finally he rose and turned to the section of his library
devoted to psychoanalysis and abnormal psychology.  He ran through
the indices of several books by Freud, Jung, Stekel and Ferenczi;
and, marking several pages, he sat down again to peruse the
volumes.  After an hour or so he replaced the books on the shelves,
and spent another thirty minutes consulting various reference
books, such as "Who's Who," the New York "Social Register" and "The
American Biographical Dictionary."  Finally he shrugged his
shoulders slightly, yawned mildly and settled himself at his desk,
on which were spread numerous reproductions of the art works
unearthed in Doctor Woolley's seven years' excavations at Ur.

Saturday being a half-day at the District Attorney's office,
Markham arrived shortly after two o'clock.  Vance meanwhile had
dressed and had his luncheon, and he received Markham in the
library.

"A sear and yellow day," he complained, leading Markham to a chair
before the fireplace.  "Not good for man to be alone.  Depression
rides me like a hag.  I missed the field trial on Long Island
today.  Preferred to stay in and hover over the glowin' embers.
Maybe I'm getting old and full of dreams. . . .  Distressin'. . . .
But I'm awfully grateful and all that for your comin'.  How about a
pony of 1811 Napoléon to counteract your autumnal sorrows?"

"I've no sorrows today, autumnal or otherwise," Markham returned,
studying Vance closely.  "And when you babble most you're thinking
hardest--the unmistakable symptom."  (He still scrutinized Vance.)
"I'll take the cognac, however.  But why the air of mystery over
the phone?"

"My dear Markham--oh, my dear Markham!  Really, now, was it an air
of mystery?  The melancholy days--"

"Come, come, Vance."  Markham was beginning to grow restless.
"Where's that interesting paper you wished me to see?"

"Ah, yes--quite."  Vance reached into his pocket, and, taking out
the anonymous letter he had received that morning, handed it to
Markham.  "It really should not have come on a depressin' day like
this."

Markham read the letter through casually and then tossed it on the
table with a slight gesture of irritation.

"Well, what of it?" he asked, attempting, without success, to hide
his annoyance.  "I sincerely hope you're not taking this
seriously."

"Neither seriously nor frivolously," Vance sighed; "but with an
open mind, old dear.  The epistle has possibilities, don't y'
know."

"For Heaven's sake, Vance!" Markham protested.  "We get letters
like that every day.  Scores of them.  If we paid any attention to
them we'd have time for nothing else.  The letter-writing habit of
professional trouble-makers--But I don't have to go into that with
you: you're too good a psychologist."

Vance nodded with unwonted seriousness.

"Yes, yes--of course.  The epistol'ry complex.  A combination of
futile egomania, cowardice and Sadism--I'm familiar with the
formula.  But, really, y' know, I'm not convinced that this
particular letter falls in that categ'ry."

Markham glanced up.

"You really think it's an honest expression of concern based on
inside knowledge?"

"Oh, no.  On the contr'ry."  Vance regarded his cigarette
meditatively.  "It goes deeper than that.  If it were a sincere
letter it would be less verbose and more to the point.  Its very
verbosity and its stilted phraseology indicate an ulterior motive:
there's too much thought behind it. . . .  And there are sinister
implications in it--an atmosphere of abnormal reasoning--a genuine
note of cruel tragedy, as if a fiend of some kind were plotting and
chuckling at the same time. . . .  I don't like it, Markham--I
don't at all like it."

Markham regarded Vance with considerable surprise.  He started to
say something, but, instead, picked up the letter and read it
again, more carefully this time.  When he had finished he shook his
head slowly.

"No, Vance," he protested mildly.  "The saddest days of the year
have affected your imagination.  This letter is merely the outburst
of some hysterical woman similarly affected."

"There ARE a few somewhat feminine touches in it--eh, what?"  Vance
spoke languidly.  "I noticed that.  But the general tone of the
letter is not one that points to hallucinations."

Markham waved his hand in a deprecatory gesture and drew on his
cigar a while in silence.  At length he asked:

"You know the Llewellyns personally?"

"I've met Lynn Llewellyn once;--just a curs'ry introduction--and
I've seen him at the Casino a number of times.  The usual wild type
of pampered darling whose mater holds the purse strings.  And, of
course, I know Kinkaid.  Every one knows Richard Kinkaid but the
police and the District Attorney's office."  Vance shot Markham a
waggish look.  "But you're quite right in ignoring his existence
and refusing to close his gilded den of sin.  It's really run
pretty straight, and only people who can afford it go there.  My
word!  Imagine the naïveté of a mind that thinks gambling can be
stopped by laws and raids! . . .  The Casino is a delightful place,
Markham--quite correct and all that sort of thing.  You'd enjoy it
immensely."  Vance sighed dolefully.  "If only you weren't the
D. A.!  Sad . . . sad. . . ."

Markham shifted uneasily in his chair, and gave Vance a withering
look followed by an indulgent smile.

"I may go there some time--after the next election perhaps," he
returned.  "Do you know any of the others mentioned in the letter?"

"Only Morgan Bloodgood," Vance told him.  "He's Kinkaid's chief
croupier--his right hand, so to speak.  I know him only
professionally, however, though I've heard he's a friend of the
Llewellyns and knew Lynn's wife when she was in musical comedy.
He's a college man, a genius at figures: he majored in mathematics
at Princeton, Kinkaid told me once.  Held an instructorship for a
year or two, and then threw in his lot with Kinkaid.  Probably
needed excitement--anything's preferable to the quantum theory. . . .
The other prospective dramatis personæ are unknown to me.  I
never even saw Virginia Vale--I was abroad during her brief triumph
on the stage.  And old Mrs. Llewellyn's path has never crossed
mine.  Nor have I ever met the art-aspiring daughter, Amelia."

"What of the relations between Kinkaid and old Mrs. Llewellyn?  Do
they get along as brother and sister should?"

Vance looked up at Markham languidly.

"I'd thought of that angle, too."  He mused for a moment.  "Of
course, the old lady is ashamed of her wayward brother--it's quite
annoyin' for a fanatical social worker to harbor a brother who's a
professional gambler; and while they're outwardly civil to each
other, I imagine there's internal friction, especially as the Park-
Avenue house belongs to them jointly and they both live under its
protectin' roof.  But I don't think the old girl would carry her
animosity so far as to do any plotting against Kinkaid. . . .
No, no.  We can't find an explanation for the letter along that
line. . . ."

At this moment Currie entered the library.

"Pardon me, sir," he said to Vance in a troubled tone; "but there's
a person on the telephone who wishes me to ask you if you intend to
be at the Casino tonight--"

"Is it a man or a woman?" Vance interrupted.

"I--really, sir--" Currie stammered, "I couldn't say.  The voice
was very faint and indistinct--disguised, you might say.  But the
person asked me to tell you that he--or she, sir--would not say
another word, but would wait on the wire for your answer."

Vance did not speak for several moments.

"I've rather been expecting something of the sort," he murmured
finally.  Then he turned to Currie.  "Tell my ambiguously sexed
caller that I will be there at ten o'clock."

Markham took his cigar slowly from his mouth and looked at Vance
with troubled concern.

"You actually intend to go to the Casino because of that letter?"

Vance nodded seriously.

"Oh, yes--quite."



CHAPTER II

THE CASINO


(Saturday, October 15; 10:30 p. m.)

Richard Kinkaid's famous old gambling establishment, the Casino, in
West 73rd Street, near West End Avenue, had, in its heyday, many
claims to the glories of the long-defunct Canfield's.  It
flourished but a short time, yet its memory is still fresh in many
minds, and its fame has spread to all parts of the country.  It
forms a glowing and indispensable link in the chain of resorts that
runs through the spectacular history of the night life of New York.
A towering apartment house, with terraces and penthouses, now rises
where the Casino once stood.

To the uninitiated passer-by the Casino was just another of those
large and impressive gray-stone mansions which were once the pride
of the upper West Side.  The house had been built in the 'Nineties
and was the residence of Richard's father, Amos Kinkaid (known as
"Old Amos"), one of the city's shrewdest and wealthiest real-estate
operators.  This particular property was the one parcel that had
been willed outright to Richard Kinkaid in Old Amos's will: all the
other property had been bequeathed jointly to his two children,
Kinkaid and Mrs. Anthony Llewellyn.  Mrs. Llewellyn, at the time of
the inheritance, was already a widow with two children, Lynn and
Amelia, both in their early teens.

Richard Kinkaid had lived alone in the gray-stone house for several
years after Old Amos's death.  He had then locked its doors,
boarded up its windows, and indulged his desire for travel and
adventure in the remote places of the earth.  He had always had an
irresistible instinct for gambling--perhaps a heritage from his
father--and in the course of his travels he had visited most of the
famous gambling resorts of Europe.  As you may recall, the accounts
of his spectacular gains and losses often reached the front pages
of this country's press.  When his losses had far exceeded his
gains Kinkaid returned to America, a poorer but no doubt a wiser
man.

Counting on political influence and powerful personal connections,
he then decided to make an endeavor to recoup his losses by opening
a fashionable gambling house of his own, patterned along the lines
of some of America's famous houses of the old days.

"The trouble with me," Kinkaid had told one of his chief under-
cover supporters, "is that I've always gambled on the wrong side of
the table."

He had the big house in 73rd Street remodelled and redecorated,
furnished it with the most lavish appointments, and entered upon
his notorious enterprise "on the right side of the table."  These
embellishments of the house, so rumor had it, all but exhausted the
remainder of his patrimony.  He named the new establishment
Kinkaid's Casino, in cynical memory perhaps of Monte Carlo.  But so
well known did the place become among the social elect and the
wealthy, that the prefix "Kinkaid's" soon became superfluous: there
was only one "Casino" in America.

The Casino, like so many of the extra-legal establishments of its
kind, and like the various fashionable night-clubs that sprang up
during the prohibition era, was run as a private club.  Membership
was requisite, and all applicants were prudently investigated and
weighed.  The initiation fee was sufficiently high to discourage
all undesirable elements; and the roster of those who were accorded
the privileges of the "club" read almost like a compilation of the
names of the socially and professionally prominent.

For his chief croupier and supervisor of the games, Kinkaid had
chosen Morgan Bloodgood, a cultured young mathematician whom he had
met at his sister's home.  Bloodgood had been at college with Lynn
Llewellyn, though the latter was his senior by three years; and,
incidentally, it was Bloodgood who brought about the meeting of
Virginia Vale and young Llewellyn.  Bloodgood, while in college and
during the time he had taught mathematics, had, as a hobby, busied
himself with the laws of probability.  He applied his findings
especially to the relation of these laws to numerical gambling, and
had figured out elaborately the percentages in all the well-known
games of chance.  His estimates of permutations, possibilities of
repetitions and changes of sequence as bearing on card games are
today officially used in computing chances in drawings; and he was
at one time associated with the District Attorney's office in
exposing the overwhelming chances in favor of the owners in
connection with a city-wide campaign against slot-machines of all
types.

Kinkaid was once asked why he had chosen young Bloodgood in
preference to an old-time, experienced croupier; and he answered:

"I am like Balzac's old Gobseck, who gave all his personal legal
business to the budding solicitor, Derville, on the theory that a
man under thirty can be relied upon, but that after that age no man
may be wholly trusted."

The assistant croupiers and dealers at the Casino were likewise
chosen from the ranks of well-bred, non-professional young men of
good appearance and education; and they were carefully trained in
the intricacies of their duties.*


* It is interesting to note that this same method of selecting and
training dealers has been followed at Agua Caliente.


Cynical though Kinkaid's philosophy may have been, the practical
application of it met with success.  His gambling from the "right
side of the table" prospered.  He was content with the usual house
percentage, and the shrewdest of gamblers and experts were never
able to bring against him an accusation of "fixing" any of his
games.*  In all disputes between a player and the croupier, the
player was paid without question.  Many small fortunes were lost
and won at the Casino during its comparatively brief existence; and
the play was always large, especially on Friday and Saturday
nights.


* Kinkaid even employed the European roulette wheels with only the
single "0".


When Vance and I arrived at the Casino on that fatal Saturday night
of October 15, there was as yet only a scattering of guests
present.  It was too early for the full quota of habitués who, as a
rule, came after the theatre.

As we walked up the wide stone steps from the paved outer court and
entered the narrow vestibule of plate glass and black ironwork, we
were greeted with a nod from a Chinese porter who stood at the left
of the entrance.  By some secret signal our identity was
communicated to those in charge on the inside; and almost
simultaneously with our arrival in the vestibule the great bronze
door (which Old Amos had brought over from Italy) was swung open.
In the spacious reception hall, fully thirty feet square, hung with
rich brocades and old paintings, and furnished in luxurious Italian
Renaissance style, our hats and coats were taken from us by two
uniformed attendants, both of them extremely tall and powerful
men.*


* I imagine Kinkaid got his idea for these enormous attendants from
the impressive giants in the entrance-hall of the Savoy dining-room
in London.


At the rear of the hall was a divided marble stairway which led, on
either side of a small glistening fountain, to the gaming rooms
above.

On the second floor Kinkaid had combined the former drawing-room
and the reception-room into one large salon which he had christened
the Gold Room.  It ran the entire width of the house and was
perhaps sixty feet long.  The west wall was broken by an alcove
which was furnished as a small lounge.  The salon was decorated in
modified Roman style, with an occasional suggestion of Byzantine
ornamentation.  The walls were covered with gold leaf, and the flat
marble pilasters, which broke them into large rectangular panels,
were of a subdued ivory tone that blended with the gold of the
walls and the buff-colored ceiling.  The draperies at the long
windows were of yellow silk brocaded with gold; and the deep-piled
carpet was a neutralized ochre in color.

There were three roulette tables set down the centre of the room,
two black-jack, or vingt-et-un, tables at the middle of the east
and west walls, four chuck-a-luck tables, or bird cages, in the
four corners, and an elaborate dice table at the far end, between
the windows.  At the rear of the Gold Room, to the west, was a
private card room, with a row of small individual tables where any
form of solitaire could be played, and a dealer to look on and to
pay or collect, according to the luck and skill of the player.
Adjoining this room, to the east, was a crystal bar with a wide
archway leading into the main salon.  Here only the finest liquors
and wines were served.  These two rooms had evidently been the main
dining-room and the breakfast room of the old Kinkaid mansion.  A
cashier's cage had been constructed in what had once been a linen
closet, to the left of the bar.

Richard Kinkaid's private office had been constructed by shutting
off the front end of the upper hallway.  It had one door leading
into the bar and another into the Gold Room.  This office was about
ten feet square and was paneled in walnut--a sombre yet beautifully
appointed room, with a single frosted-glass window opening on the
front court.

(I mention the office here because it played so important a part in
the final terrible climax of the tragedy that was soon to begin
before our eyes.)

When, that Saturday night, we had reached the narrow hall on the
second floor, that led, through a wide draped entrance, into the
main salon, Vance glanced casually into the two playing rooms and
then turned into the bar.

"I think, Van, we'll have ample time for a sip of champagne," he
said, with a curious restraint in his voice.  "Our young friend is
sitting in the lounge, quite by himself, apparently absorbed in
computations.  Lynn is a system player; and all manner of
prelimin'ries are necess'ry before he can begin.  If anything
untoward is going to befall him tonight, he is either blissfully
unaware of it or serenely indifferent.  However, there's no one in
the room now who could reasonably be interested in his existence--
or his non-existence, for that matter--so we might as well bide a
wee in here."

He ordered a bottle of 1904 Krug, and settled back, with outward
placidity, in the sprawling chair beside the little table on which
the wine was served.  But, despite his apparently languid manner, I
knew that some unusual tension had taken hold of him: this was
obvious to me from the slow, deliberate way in which he took his
cigarette from his mouth and broke the ashes in the exact centre of
the tray.

We had scarcely finished our champagne when Morgan Bloodgood,
emerging from a rear door, passed through the bar toward the main
salon.  He was a tall, slight man with a high, somewhat bulging
forehead, a thin straight aquiline nose, heavy, almost flabby,
lips, a pointed chin, and prominent Darwinian ears with abnormally
large tragi and receding lobes.  His eyes were hard and smouldering
and of a peculiar gray-green cast; and they were so deeply sunken
as to appear in almost perpetual shadow.  His hair was thin and
sand-colored; and his complexion was sallow to the point of
bloodlessness.  Yet he was not an unattractive man.  There was
coolness and calm in the ensemble of his features--an immobility
that gave the impression of latent power and profound trains of
thought.  Though I knew he was barely thirty, he could easily have
passed for a man of forty or more.

When he caught sight of Vance he paused and nodded with reserved
pleasantry.

"Going to try your luck tonight, Mr. Vance?" he asked in a deep
mild voice.

"By all means," Vance returned, smiling only with his lips.  Then
he added:  "I have a new system, don't y' know."

"That's bully for the house," grinned Bloodgood.  "Based on Laplace
or von Kries?"  (I thought I detected a suggestion of sarcasm in
his voice.)

"Oh, my dear fellow!" Vance replied.  "Really, now!  I rarely go in
for abstruse mathematics: I leave that branch of research to
experts.  I prefer Napoleon's simple maxim:  'Je m'engage et puis
je vois.'"

"That's as good--or as bad--as any other system," Bloodgood
retorted.  "They all amount to the same thing in the end."  And
with a stiff bow he passed on into the Gold Room.

Through the divided portières we saw him take his place at the
wheel of the centre roulette table.

Vance put down his glass and, carefully lighting another Régie,
rose leisurely.

"I opine the time to mingle has come," he murmured, as he moved
toward the archway leading into the Gold Room.

As we entered the salon the door of Kinkaid's office opened, and
Kinkaid appeared.  On seeing Vance he smiled professionally, and
greeted him in a tone of stereotyped geniality:

"Good evening, sir.  You're quite a stranger here."

"Charmed not to have been entirely forgotten, don't y' know," Vance
returned dulcetly.  "Especially," he added, in a steady, flat
voice, "as one of my objects in comin' tonight was to see you."

Kinkaid stiffened almost imperceptibly.

"Well, you see me, don't you?" he asked, with a cold smile and a
simulated air of good-nature.

"Oh, quite."  Vance, too, became facetiously cordial.  "But I
should infinitely prefer seein' you in the restful Jacobean
surroundings of your private office."

Kinkaid looked at Vance with narrowed searching eyes.  Vance
returned the gaze steadily, without permitting the smile to fade
from his lips.

Without a word Kinkaid turned and reopened the office door,
stepping aside to let Vance and me precede him.  He followed us,
and closed the door behind him.  Then he stood stiffly and, with
steady eyes on Vance, waited.

Vance lifted his cigarette to his lips, took a deep inhalation, and
blew a ribbon of smoke toward the ceiling.

"I say, might we sit down?" he asked casually.

"By all means--if you're tired."  Kinkaid spoke in a metallic
voice, his face an expressionless mask.

"Thanks awfully."  Vance ignored the other's attitude, and settling
himself in one of the low leather-covered chairs near the door,
crossed his knees in lazy comfort.

Despite Kinkaid's unfriendly manner, I felt that the man was not at
bottom antagonistic to his guest, but that, as a hardened gambler,
he was assuming a defensive bearing in the face of some possible
menace the nature of which was unknown to him.  He knew, as every
one else in the city knew, that Vance was closely, even though
unofficially, associated with the District Attorney; and it
occurred to me that Kinkaid probably thought Vance had come to him
as proxy on some unpleasant official mission.  His reaction to such
a suspicion would naturally have been this belligerently guarded
attitude.

Richard Kinkaid, his superficial appearance as the conventional
gambler notwithstanding, was a cultured and intelligent man.  He
had been an honor student at college, and held two academic
degrees.  He spoke several languages fluently and, in his younger
days, had been an archæologist of considerable note.  He had
written two books on his travels in the Orient, both of which may
be found today in every public library.

He was a large man, nearly six feet tall; and despite his tendency
to corpulency, it was obvious that he was powerfully built.  His
iron-gray hair, cut in a short pompadour, looked very light in
contrast with his ruddy complexion.  His face was oval, but his
coarse features gave him an aspect of ruggedness.  His brow was low
and broad; his nose short, flat and irregular; and his mouth was
pinched and hard--a long, straight, immobile slit.  His eyes,
however, were the outstanding feature of his face.  They were
small, and the lids sloped downward at the outer corners, like
those of a man with Bright's disease, so that the pupils seemed
always to be above the centres of the visible orbs, giving to his
expression a sardonic, almost sinister, cast.  There were
shrewdness, perseverance, subtlety, cruelty and aloofness in his
eyes.

As he stood before us that night, one hand resting on the
beautifully carved flat-top desk at the window, the other stuffed
deep into the side pocket of his dinner jacket, he kept his gaze
fixed on Vance, without displaying either annoyance or concern: his
was the perfect "poker face."

"What I wished to see you about, Mr. Kinkaid," Vance remarked at
length, "is a letter I received this morning.  It occurred to me it
might interest you, inasmuch as your name was not too fondly
mentioned in it.  In fact, it intimately concerns the various
members of your family."

Kinkaid continued to gaze at Vance without change of expression.
Nor did he speak or make the slightest move.

Vance contemplated the end of his cigarette for a moment.  Then he
said:

"I think it might be best if you perused this letter yourself."

He reached into his pocket and handed the two typewritten pages to
Kinkaid, who took them indifferently and opened them.

I watched him closely as he read.  No new expression appeared in
his eyes, and his lips did not move; but the color of his face
deepened perceptibly, and, when he had reached the end, the muscles
in his cheeks were working spasmodically.  His fat neck bulged over
his collar, and ugly splotches of red spread over it.

The hand in which he held the letter dropped jerkily to his side,
as if the muscles of his arm were tense; and he slowly lifted his
gaze until it met Vance's eyes.

"Well, what about it?" he asked through his teeth.

Vance moved his hand in a slight negative gesture of rejection.

"I'm not placin' any bets just now," he said quietly.  "I'm takin'
them."

"And suppose I'm not betting?" retorted Kinkaid.

"Oh, that's quite all right."  Vance smiled icily.  "Every one's
prerogative, don't y' know."

Kinkaid hesitated a moment; then he grunted deep in his throat and
sat down in the chair before the desk, placing the letter before
him.  After a minute or so of silence he thumped the letter with
his knuckles and shrugged.

"I'd say it was the work of some crank."  His tone was at once
light and contemptuous.

"No, no.  Really, now, Mr. Kinkaid," Vance protested blandly.
"That won't do--it won't at all do.  You've chosen the wrong
number, as it were.  You lose that chip.  Why not make another
selection?"

"What the hell!" exploded Kinkaid.  He swung round in the swivel
chair and glared at Vance with cold, penetrating menace.  "I'm no
damned detective," he went on, his lips scarcely moving.  "What has
the letter to do with me, anyway?"

Vance did not reply.  Instead he met Kinkaid's vindictive gaze with
cool, steady calm--a calm at once impersonal and devastating.  I
have never envied any one the task of out-staring Vance.  There was
a subtle psychological power in his gaze, when he wished to exert
it, that could not be resisted by the strongest natures that sought
to oppose him through the projection of that inner character which
is conveyed by the direct stare.

Kinkaid, with all his forcefulness of mind, had met his match.  He
knew that Vance's gaze would neither drop nor shift; and in that
silent communication that takes place between two strong
adversaries when they look deep into each other's eyes--that
strange wordless duel of personalities--Kinkaid capitulated.

"Very well," he said, with a good-natured smile.  "I'll place
another wager--if that'll help you any."  He glanced over the
letter again.  "There's a hell of a lot of truth here.  Whoever
wrote this knows something about the family situation."

"You use a typewriter yourself--eh, what?" asked Vance.

Kinkaid started and then forced a laugh.

"Just about as rotten as that," he returned, waving his hand toward
the letter.

Vance nodded sympathetically.

"I'm no good at it myself," he remarked lightly, "Beastly
invention, the typewriter. . . .  But I say, do you think any one
intends to harm young Llewellyn?"

"I don't know, but I hope so," Kinkaid snapped, with an ugly grin.
"He needs killing."

"Why not do it yourself then?"  Vance's tone was matter-of-fact.

Kinkaid chuckled unpleasantly.

"I've often thought of it.  But he's hardly worth the risk."

"Still," mused Vance, "you seem more or less tolerant of your
nephew in public."

"Family prejudice, I suppose," Kinkaid said.  "The curse of
nepotism.  My sister dotes on him."

"He spends considerable time here at the Casino."  The remark was
half question, half statement.

Kinkaid nodded.

"Trying to annex some of the Kinkaid money which his mother won't
supply him too freely.  And I humor him.  Why not?  He plays a
system."  Kinkaid snorted.  "I wish they'd all play a system.  It's
the hit-or-miss babies that cut down the profits."

Vance turned the conversation back to the letter.

"Do you believe," he asked, "that there's a tragedy hanging over
your family?"

"Isn't there one hanging over every family?" Kinkaid returned.
"But if anything's going to happen to Lynn I hope it doesn't happen
in the Casino."

"At any rate," persisted Vance, "the letter insists that I come
here tonight and watch the johnnie."

Kinkaid waved his hand.

"I'd discount that."

"But you just admitted that there is a lot of truth in the letter."

Kinkaid sat motionless for a while, his eyes, like two small
shining disks, fixed on the wall.  At length he leaned forward and
looked squarely at Vance.

"I'll be frank with you, Mr. Vance," he said earnestly.  "I've a
hell of a good idea who wrote that letter.  Simply a case of mania
and cold feet. . . .  Forget it."

"My word!" murmured Vance.  "That's dashed interestin'."  He
crushed out his cigarette and, rising, picked up the letter,
refolded it, and put it back into his pocket.  "Sorry to have
troubled you and all that. . . .  I think, however, I'll loiter a
bit."

Kinkaid neither rose nor said a word as we went out into the Gold
Room.



CHAPTER III

THE FIRST TRAGEDY


(Saturday, October 15; 11:15 p. m.)


The place had already begun to fill.  There were at least a hundred
"members" playing at the various tables and standing chatting in
small groups.  There was a gala, colorful atmosphere in the great
room, coupled with a tinge of excitement and tension.  The Japanese
orderlies, in native costume, were darting about noiselessly on
their various errands; and on either side of the arched entrance
stood two uniformed attendants.  No movement, however innocent, of
any person escaped the ever-watchful eyes of these sentinels.  It
was a fashionable gathering; and I had no difficulty in identifying
many prominent persons from social and financial circles.

Lynn Llewellyn was still sitting in a corner of the lounge, busily
engaged with pencil and note-book and apparently oblivious to all
the activity going on about him.

Vance strolled down the length of the room, greeting a few
acquaintances on his way.  He paused at the chuck-a-luck table near
the east front window and bought a stack of chips.  These he
wagered on the "one," doubling each time up to five, and then
beginning again.  It was incredible how many "ones" showed up on
the dice in the cage; and after fifteen minutes Vance had won
nearly a thousand dollars.  He seemed restless, though, and took
his winnings indifferently.

Turning again to the centre of the room he walked to the roulette
table operated by Bloodgood.  He looked on for several turns of the
wheel from behind a chair, and then sat down to join the play.  He
was facing the lounge alcove, and as he took his place at the table
he glanced casually in that direction and let his eyes rest for a
moment on Llewellyn, who was still deep in thought.

The selections for the next turn of the wheel had been made,--there
were only five or six players engaged at the time,--and Bloodgood
stood with the ball poised against his middle finger in the trough
of the bowl, ready to project it on its indeterminate convolutions.
But for some reason he did not flip it at once.

"Faites votre jeu, monsieur," he called in a facetious sing-song,
looking directly at Vance.

Vance turned his head quickly and met the slightly cynical smile on
Bloodgood's heavy lips.

"Thanks awfully for the personal signal," he said, with exaggerated
graciousness; and, leaning far up the table toward the wheel, he
placed a hundred-dollar bill on the green area marked "0" at the
head of the three columns of figures.  "My system tells me to play
the 'house number' tonight."

The faint smile on Bloodgood's lips faded, and his eyebrows went up
a trifle.  Then he spun the wheel dexterously.

It was a long play, for the ball had been given a terrific impetus
and it danced back and forth for some time between the grooved
wheel and the sides of the bowl.  At length it seemed to settle in
one of the numbered compartments, though the wheel was still
spinning too rapidly to permit the reading of the numerals; but it
leaped out again, made one or two gyrations, and finally came to
rest in the green slot--the "house number."

A hum went up round the table as the rake gathered in all the other
stakes; but though I watched Bloodgood's face closely, I could not
detect the slightest change of expression:--he was the perfect
unemotional croupier.

"Your system seems to be working," he remarked to Vance, as he
moved out a stack of thirty-five yellow chips.  "Vous vous engagez,
et puis vous voyez. . . .  Mais, qu'est-ce que vous espérez voir,
monsieur?"

"I haven't the groggiest notion," returned Vance, gathering up his
bill and the chips.  "I'm not hopin'--I'm driftin'."

"In any event, you're lucky tonight," smiled Bloodgood.

"I wonder. . . ."  Vance slid his winnings into his pocket and
turned from the table.

He walked slowly toward the card room, paused at the entrance, and
then moved on to the vingt-et-un game which was in progress at a
high semi-circular table only a few yards from the lounge alcove.
There were two vacant chairs facing the hallway; but Vance waited.
The dealer sat on a small raised platform, and when the player at
his right relinquished his seat Vance took the vacant chair.  I
noted that from this position he had an unobstructed view of
Llewellyn.

He placed a yellow chip on the paneled section of the table in
front of him, and a closed card was dealt to him.  He glanced at
it: standing behind him, I saw that it was the ace of clubs.  The
next card dealt him was another ace.

"Fancy that, Van," he remarked to me over his shoulder.  "The
'ones' are followin' me around tonight."

He turned up his first ace and laid the other beside it, placing
another yellow chip on it.  He was the last to be served by the
dealer on the "draw"; and to my astonishment he drew two face cards--
a knave and a queen.  This combination of an ace and a face card
constitutes a "natural"--the highest hand in black-jack--and Vance
had drawn two of them on the one deal.  The dealer's cards totalled
nineteen.

Vance was about to wager a second hand when Llewellyn rose with
determination from his seat in the corner of the lounge and
approached Bloodgood's roulette table, with note-book in hand.
Instead of continuing the play, Vance again took up his winnings,
slid from his high chair, and sauntered back to the centre of the
room, taking his place behind the row of chairs on the side of the
roulette table opposite to that at which Llewellyn had seated
himself.

Lynn Llewellyn was of medium height and slender, with a suggestion
of quick wiry strength.  His eyes were a flat, dull blue, and
though they moved quickly, they showed no animation.  His mouth,
however, was emotional and mobile.  His thin, somewhat haggard face
gave one the impression of weakness coupled with cunning; yet
withal it was a capable face--a face which a certain type of woman
would consider handsome.

When he had taken his seat he looked about him swiftly, nodded to
Bloodgood and to others present, but apparently did not see Vance,
although Vance stood directly across the table.  He watched the
play for several minutes, making a notation of the winning numbers
in the leather-bound booklet he had placed before him on the table.
After five or six plays, he began to frown, and, turning in his
chair, summoned one of the Japanese boys who was passing.

"Scotch," he ordered; "with plain water on the side."

While the drink was being fetched he continued his notations.  At
length, when three numbers in the same column had come in
succession, he began eagerly to play.  When the boy brought the
Scotch he waved it brusquely away, and concentrated on the game.

For the first half-hour that we stood watching him I tried to trace
some mathematical sequence in his choice of numbers, but, meeting
with no success, I gave it up.  I later learned that Llewellyn was
playing a curious and, according to Vance, a wholly inconsistent
and contradictory variation of the Labouchère--or, as it is
popularly called, Labby--system which, for many years, was
thoroughly tested at Monte Carlo.

But, however inadequate the system may have been scientifically,
Llewellyn was profiting by it.  Indeed, had he followed up his
advantages, after the unreasoned custom of the amateur player, he
would, as it happened, have progressed more rapidly.  But each time
he caught a number (en plein) or a half-number (à cheval) or a
quarter-number (en carré) he withdrew his winnings in proportion to
their duplication, multiplying only when luck went against him.
After almost every play he glanced quickly at the carefully ruled
tables and columns of figures in his book; and it was obvious that,
despite all temptation to do otherwise, he was abiding rigidly by
the set formula he had decided to follow.

Shortly after midnight, when one of his suites of doubling had
reached its peak, the right number came.  The result was a large
winning, and when he had drawn down the six piles of yellow chips,
he took a deep tremulous breath and leaned back in his chair.  I
calculated roughly that he was approximately ten thousand dollars
ahead at this point.  News of his luck soon spread to the other
players in the room, and there was a general gathering of the
curious around Bloodgood's table.

I glanced about me and noted the various expressions of the
spectators: some were cynical, some envious, some merely
interested.  Bloodgood himself showed no indication, either by a
look or an intonation of voice, that anything unusual was taking
place.  He was the faultless automaton, discharging his duties with
detached mechanical precision.

When Llewellyn relaxed in his seat after this coup he glanced up,
and, catching sight of Vance, bowed abstractedly.  He was still
busy with his calculations and computations, noting each turn of
the wheel, and recording the winning number in his book.  His face
had become flushed, and his lips moved nervously as he jotted down
the figures.  His hands trembled perceptibly, and every few moments
he took a long deep inhalation, as if trying to calm his nerves.
Once or twice I noticed that he threw his left shoulder forward and
bent his head to the left, like a man with angina pectoris trying
to relieve the pain over his heart.

After the sixth play had passed, Llewellyn leaned over and
continued his careful system of selecting and pyramiding.  This
time I noticed that he introduced some new variations into his
method.  He did what is known as "covering" his bets, by setting
the even-money black and red fields against the color of the number
he chose, and by opposing the première, milieu, or dernière
douzaine against the particular group of twelve in which he had
made his en plein numerical choice, as well as by utilizing both
the odd and even fields (pair and impair), and the high and low
field (passe and manque), in the same manner.

"That byplay," Vance whispered in my ear, "is not on the books.
He's losing his nerve, and is toying with both the d'Alembert and
the Montant Belge systems.  But it really doesn't matter in the
least.  If he's lucky he'll win anyway; if he's not, he'll lose.
Systems are for optimists and dreamers.  The immutable fact remains
that the house pays thirty-five to one against thirty-six
possibilities and an added house number.  That's destiny--no one
can conquer it."

But Llewellyn's luck at roulette was evidently running in his favor
that night, for it was but a short time before he won again on a
pyramided number.  When he drew the chips to him his hands shook so
that he upset one of the stacks and had difficulty in reassembling
it.  Again he sank back in his chair and let the next plays pass.
His color had deepened; his eyes took on an unnatural glitter; and
the muscles of his face began to twitch.  He gazed about him
blankly and missed one of the numbers that had shown on the wheel,
so that he had to ask Bloodgood for it in order to keep the entries
in his book complete.

A tension had taken hold of the spectators.  A strange lull
replaced the general conversation.  Every one seemed intent on the
outcome of this age-old conflict between a man and the unfathomed
laws of probability.  Llewellyn sat there with a fortune in chips
piled up in front of him.  A few more thousand dollars and the bank
would be "broken"; for Kinkaid had set a nightly capital of forty
thousand dollars for this table.

During the electrified silence that had suddenly settled over the
room, broken only by the whirr of the spinning ball, the clink of
chips and the droning voice of Bloodgood, Kinkaid emerged from his
office and approached the table.  He halted beside Vance, and
indifferently watched the play for a while.

"This is evidently Lynn's night," he remarked casually.

"Yes, yes--quite."  Vance did not take his eyes from the nervous
trembling figure of Llewellyn.

At this moment Llewellyn again caught an en plein, but he had only
a single chip on the number.  However, it marked the end of some
mathematical cycle, according to his confused system; and,
withdrawing his chips, he leaned back once more.  He was breathing
heavily, as if he could not get sufficient air into his lungs; and
again he thrust his left shoulder forward.

A Japanese boy was passing, and Llewellyn hailed him.

"Scotch," he ordered again, and, with apparent effort, jotted down
the winning number in his book.

"Has he been drinking much tonight?" Kinkaid asked Vance.

"He ordered one drink some time ago but didn't take it," Vance told
him.  "This will be his first, as far as I know."

A few minutes later the boy set down beside Llewellyn a small
silver tray holding a glass of whisky, an empty glass and a small
bottle of charged water.  Bloodgood had just spun the wheel, and he
glanced at the tray.

"Mori!" he called to the boy.  "Mr. Llewellyn takes plain water."

The Japanese turned back, set the whisky on the table before
Llewellyn, and, taking up the tray with the charged water, moved
away.  As he came round the end of the table, Kinkaid beckoned to
him.

"You can get the plain water from my carafe in the office," he
suggested.

The boy nodded and hastened on his errand.

"Lynn needs a drink in a hurry," Kinkaid remarked to Vance.  "No
use holding him up, with that crowd in the bar. . . .  The damned
fool!  He won't have a dollar when he goes home tonight."

As if to verify Kinkaid's prophecy, Llewellyn made a large wager
and lost.  As he consulted his book for the next number, the boy
came up again and placed a glass of clear water beside him.
Llewellyn emptied his whisky glass at one gulp and immediately
drank the water.  Shoving the two empty glasses to one side, he
made his next play.

Again he lost.  He doubled on the following spin; and lost again.
Then he redoubled, and once more he lost.  He was playing Black 20
and Red 5, and on the next turn he halved his former bet between
Red 21 and Black 4.  "Eleven" came.  He now quartered, playing 17,
18, 20 and 21 with one stack, and 4, 5, 7 and 8 with another.
"Eleven" repeated.

When Bloodgood had raked in the chips Llewellyn sat staring at the
green cloth without moving.  For fully five minutes he remained
thus, letting the plays pass without paying any attention.  Once or
twice he brushed his hand across his eyes and shook his head
violently, as if some confusion of mind were overpowering him.

Vance had moved forward a step and was watching him intently, and
Kinkaid, too, appeared deeply concerned about Llewellyn's behavior.
Bloodgood glanced at him from time to time, but without any
indication of more than a casual interest.

Llewellyn's face had now turned scarlet, and he pressed the palms
of his hands to his temples and breathed deeply, as a man will do
when his head throbs with pain and he experiences a sense of
suffocation.

Suddenly, as though he were making a great effort, he sprang to his
feet, upsetting his chair, and turned from the table.  His hands
had fallen to his sides.  He took three or four steps, staggered,
and then collapsed in a distorted heap on the floor.

A slight commotion followed, and several of the men on Llewellyn's
side of the table crowded about the prostrate figure.  But two of
the uniformed attendants at the entrance hurried forward, and,
elbowing their way through the spectators, lifted Llewellyn and
carried him toward Kinkaid's private office.  Kinkaid was already
at the door, holding it open for them when they reached it with the
motionless form.

Vance and I followed them into the office before Kinkaid had time
to close the door.

"What do you want here?" snapped Kinkaid.

"I'm stayin' a while," Vance returned in a cold, firm voice.  "Put
it down to youthful curiosity--if you must have a reason."

Kinkaid snorted and waved the two attendants out.

"Here, Van," requested Vance; "help me lift the chap into that
straight chair."

We raised Llewellyn into the chair, and Vance held the man's body
far forward so that his head hung between his knees.  I noticed
that Llewellyn's face had lost all its color and was now a deathly
white.  Vance felt for his pulse and then turned to Kinkaid, who
stood rigidly by the desk, a faint cynical sneer on his mouth.

"Any smelling salts?" Vance asked.

Kinkaid drew out one of the desk drawers and handed Vance a squat
green bottle which Vance took and held under Llewellyn's nose.

At this moment Bloodgood opened the office door, stepped inside,
and closed it quickly behind him.

"What's the trouble?" he asked Kinkaid.  There was a look of alarm
on his face.

"Get back to the table," Kinkaid ordered angrily.  "There's no
trouble. . . .  Can't a man faint?"

Bloodgood hesitated, shot a searching look at Vance, shrugged his
shoulders, and went out.

Vance again tried Llewellyn's pulse, forced the man's head back,
and, lifting one of the eyelids, inspected the eye.  Then he placed
Llewellyn on the floor and slipped a flat leather cushion, from one
of the chairs, under his head.

"He hasn't fainted, Kinkaid," Vance said, rising and facing the
other grimly.  "He's been poisoned. . . ."

"Rot!"  The word was a guttural ejaculation.

"Do you know a doctor in the neighborhood?"  Vance's tone was
significantly calm.

Kinkaid drew in his breath audibly.

"There's one next door.  But--"

"Get him!" commanded Vance.  "And be quick about it."

Kinkaid stood in rigid resentment for a brief moment; then he
turned to the telephone on the desk and dialed a number.  After a
pause he cleared his throat and spoke in a strained voice.

"Doctor Rogers? . . .  This is Kinkaid.  There's been an accident
here.  Come right away. . . .  Thanks."

He banged the receiver down and turned to Vance with a muttered
oath.

"A sweet mess!" he complained furiously.

He stepped to a small stand beside the desk, on which stood a
silver water-service, and, picking up the carafe, inverted it over
one of the crystal glasses.  The carafe was empty.

"Hell!" he grumbled.  He pressed a button in one of the walnut
panels of the east wall.  "I'm going to have a brandy.  How about
you?"  He gave Vance a sour look.

"Thanks awfully," murmured Vance.  The door leading into the bar
opened and an attendant appeared.

"Courvoisier," Kinkaid ordered.  "And fill that bottle," he added,
pointing to the water-service.

The man picked up the carafe and returned to the bar.  (He had
started slightly at the sight of Llewellyn's body on the floor, but
by no other sign had he indicated that there was anything amiss.
Kinkaid had chosen his personnel with shrewd discrimination.)  When
the cognac had been brought in and served, Kinkaid drank his in one
swallow.  Vance was still sipping his when one of the uniformed men
from the reception hall below rapped on the door and admitted the
doctor, a large rotund man with a benevolent, almost childlike,
face.

"There's your patient," Kinkaid rasped, jerking his thumb toward
Llewellyn.  "What's the verdict?"

Doctor Rogers knelt down beside the prone figure, mumbling as he
did so:  "Lucky you caught me. . . .  Had a confinement--just got
in. . . ."

He made a rapid examination: he looked at Llewellyn's pupils, took
his pulse, put the stethoscope to his heart, and felt his wrists
and the back of his neck.  As he worked he asked several questions
regarding what had preceded Llewellyn's present condition.  It was
Vance who answered all of the questions, describing Llewellyn's
nervousness at the roulette table, his high color, and his sudden
prostration.

"Looks like a case of poisoning," Doctor Rogers told Kinkaid,
opening his medicine case swiftly and preparing a hypodermic
injection.  "I can't say what it is yet.  He's in a stupor.  Small,
accelerated pulse; rapid, shallow respiration; dilated pupils . . .
all symptoms of acute toxæmia.  What you tell me of the flush, the
staggering and the collapse; and now the pallor--all point to some
sort of poison. . . .  I'm giving him a hypo of caffein.  It's all
I can do here. . . ."  He rose ponderously and threw the syringe
back into his bag.  "Must get him to a hospital immediately--he
needs heroic treatment.  I'll call an ambulance. . . ."  And he
waddled to the telephone.

Kinkaid stepped forward: he was again the cool, poker-faced
gambler.

"Get him to the nearest hospital--the best you know," he said, in a
businesslike voice.  "I'll take care of everything."

Doctor Rogers nodded.

"The Park End--it's in the neighborhood."  And he began dialing a
number clumsily.

Vance moved toward the door.

"I think I'll be staggerin' along," he drawled.  His face was grim,
and he gave Kinkaid a long significant look.  "Interestin' letter I
received--eh, what? . . .  Cheerio!"

A few minutes later we were out in 73rd Street.  It was a raw cold
night, and a chilling drizzle had begun to fall.

Vance's car was parked a hundred feet or so west of the entrance to
the Casino, and as we walked toward it, Detectives Snitkin and
Hennessey* stepped out of the doorway of a near-by house.


* Snitkin and Hennessey were two of the members of the Homicide
Bureau who had participated in several of Vance's famous criminal
cases.


"Everything all right, Mr. Vance?" Snitkin asked, in a low,
sepulchral voice.

"'Pon my word!" exclaimed Vance.  "What are you two gallant sleuths
doing here on a night like this?"

"Sergeant Heath* told us to come up here and hang around the
Casino, in case you might want us," Snitkin explained.  "The
Sergeant said you were expecting something to break around here."


* Sergeant Ernest Heath, of the Homicide Bureau, had been
officially in charge of all the cases which Vance had investigated.


"Really!  Did he, now?  Fancy that!"  Vance appeared puzzled.
"Stout fella, the Sergeant. . . .  However, everything is taken
care of.  I'm dashed grateful to you for coming, but there's no
earthly reason for you to hover about any longer.  I'm toddlin' off
to bed myself."

But instead of going home he drove to Markham's apartment in West
11th Street.

Markham, much to my surprise, was still up, and greeted us
cordially in his drawing-room.*  When we had settled ourselves
before the gas-logs Vance turned to him with a questioning air.


* The same room, it flashed through my mind, in which the momentous
and dramatic poker game was played in the "Canary" murder case.


"Snitkin and Hennessey were guarding me like good fellows tonight,"
he said.  "Do you, by any chance, ken the reason for such
solicitous devotion?"

Markham smiled, a bit shamefacedly.

"The truth is, Vance," he apologetically explained; "after I left
your apartment this afternoon I got to thinking there might be
something in that letter, after all; and I called up Sergeant Heath
and told him--as near as I could remember--everything that was in
it.  I also told him you had decided to go to the Casino tonight to
watch young Llewellyn.  I suppose he thought it might be just as
well to send a couple of the boys up there to be on hand in case
there WAS any truth in the letter."

"That explains it," nodded Vance.  "There was no need, however, for
the bodyguard.  But the letter proved amazingly prophetic."

"What's that!"  Markham swung round in his chair.

"Yes, yes.  Quite a prognosticatin' epistle."  Vance took a deep
draw on his cigarette.  "Lynn Llewellyn was poisoned before my
eyes."

Markham sprang to his feet and stared at Vance.

"Dead?"

"He wasn't when I left him.  But I didn't tarry."  Vance was
thoughtful.  "He was in bad shape though.  He's under the care of a
Doctor Rogers at the Park End Hospital. . . .  Deuced curious
situation.  I'm rather confused."  He, too, got up.  "Wait a bit."
He went into the den, and I heard him at the telephone.

In a few minutes he returned.

"I've just talked to the pudgy Æsculapius at the hospital," he
reported.  "Llewellyn's about the same--except that his respiration
has become slower and more shallow.  His pressure is down to
seventy over fifty, and he's having convulsive movements. . . .
Everything's being done that's possible--adrenalin, caffein,
digitalis, and gastric lavage by the nasal route.  No positive
diagnosis possible, of course.  Very mystifyin', Markham. . . ."

Just then the telephone rang and Markham answered it.  A minute
later he emerged from the den.  His face was pale, and there were
deep corrugations on his forehead.  He came back to the centre-
table, like a man in a daze.

"Good God, Vance!" he muttered.  "Something devilish IS going on.
That was Heath on the wire.  A call has just come through to
Headquarters.  Heath relayed it to me--because of that letter, I
imagine. . . ."

Markham paused, looking out into space; and Vance glanced up at him
curiously.

"And what, pray, was the burden of the Sergeant's song?"

Markham, as if with considerable effort, turned his eyes back to
Vance.

"Llewellyn's young wife is dead--poisoned!"



CHAPTER IV

THE DEAD GIRL'S ROOM


(Sunday, October 16; 1:30 a. m.)


Vance's eyebrows went up sharply.

"My word!  I didn't expect that."  He took his cigarette from his
mouth and looked at it with concern.  "And yet . . . there may be a
pattern.  I say, Markham, did the Sergeant happen to say what time
the lady died?"

"No."  Markham shook his head abstractedly.  "A doctor was summoned
first, it seems; and then the call was sent through to Headquarters.
We can assume that death occurred about half an hour ago--"

"Half an hour!"  Vance tapped the arm of his chair in thoughtful
tattoo.  "Just about the time Llewellyn collapsed. . . .
Simultaneity, what? . . .  Queer--deuced queer. . . .  No other
information?"

"No, nothing more.  Heath was just hopping a car with some of the
boys, headed for the Llewellyn house.  He'll probably phone again
when he gets there."

Vance threw his cigarette on the hearth and rose.

"We sha'n't be here, however," he said, with a curiously grim
intonation, turning toward Markham.  "We're going to Park Avenue to
find out for ourselves.  I don't like this thing, Markham--I don't
at all like it.  There's something fiendish and sinister--and
abnormal--going on.  I felt it when I first read that letter.  Some
terrible killer is abroad, and these two poisonings may be only the
beginning.  A poisoner is the worst of all criminals,--there's no
knowing how far he may go. . . .  Come."

I had rarely seen Vance so perturbed and insistent; and Markham,
feeling the force of his resolution and his fears, permitted
himself, without protest, to be driven in Vance's car to the old
Llewellyn mansion on Park Avenue.

The house, of brownstone, stood back a few yards from the Avenue.
A high black scroll-iron fence, with a wide iron gate, extended the
entire width of the lot, which was about fifty feet; and the
shallow areaway had not been paved, but was still set with an old
square box hedge, two trimmed cypress trees, and two small
rectangular flowerbeds, one on each side of the flagstone walk that
led to the massive oak front door.

When we arrived at the Llewellyn home, the police were already
there.  Two uniformed officers from the local precinct station
stood in the areaway.  On recognizing the District Attorney, they
saluted and came forward.

"Sergeant Heath and some of the boys of the Homicide Squad just
went in, Chief," one of them told Markham, thrusting his thumb
against the pushbutton of the door-bell.

The front door was immediately opened by a tall, thin, and very
pale man in a black-and-white checked dressing-gown.

"I'm the District Attorney," Markham told him, "and I want to see
Sergeant Heath.  He came a few minutes ago, I believe."

The man bowed with stiff, exaggerated dignity.

"Certainly, sir," he said, with an oily, slightly cockney accent.
"Won't you come in, sir. . . .  The police officers are upstairs--
in Mrs. Lynn Lewellyn's room at the south end of the hall.--I'm the
butler, sir, and I was told to remain here at the door."  (This
last remark was his apology for not showing us the way.)

We brushed past him and ascended the wide circular stairs, which
were brilliantly lighted.  As we reached the first landing,
Detective Sullivan, standing in the hall above, greeted Markham.

"Howdy, Chief.  The Sergeant'll be glad you've come.  It looks like
a dirty job."  And he led the way down the hall.

In the south wing of the house Sullivan threw open a door for us.
We entered a room which was large and almost square, with a high
ceiling, an old-fashioned carved mantelpiece, and heavy over-drapes
of a bygone era hanging from the great double-shuttered windows.
The furniture--all Empire--looked authentic and costly; and hanging
on the walls were many rare old prints which would have been an
asset to any art museum.

On the high canopied bed to our left lay the still figure of a
woman of about thirty.  The silk cover had been partly thrown back,
and both her arms were drawn up over her head.  Her hair was
brushed back flat, and over it was a hair-net, tied at the back of
her neck.

Her face, under a layer of recently applied cold-cream, was
cyanosed and blotchy, as if she had died in a convulsion; and her
eyes were wide open and staring.  It was an unlovely and blood-
chilling sight.

Sergeant Heath, two members of the Homicide Bureau--Detectives
Burke and Guilfoyle--and a Lieutenant Smalley, from the local
station, were in the room.  The Sergeant was seated at the large
marble-topped centre-table, his note-book before him.

Facing the table stood a tall vigorous woman of about sixty, with a
strong aquiline face.  She was dabbing her eyes with a small lace
handkerchief.  Though I had never seen her before, I recognized
her, from pictures that had appeared in the newspapers from time to
time, as Mrs. Anthony Llewellyn.

Near her stood a young woman who looked singularly like Lynn
Llewellyn, and I rightly assumed that she was Amelia Llewellyn,
Lynn's sister.  Her dark hair was parted in the middle and combed
straight back over her ears to a twisted knot low on the back of
her head.  Her face, like her mother's, was strong and aquiline,
with a marked hardness and an almost contemptuous expression.  She
glanced at us, when we entered, with a cold and indifferent, and
somewhat bored, look.  Both women were wearing silk tufted dressing-
gowns, cut on the lines of a Japanese kimono.

Before the mantel stood a slender, nervous man of about thirty-
five, in dinner clothes, smoking a cigarette in a long ivory
holder.  We soon learned that he was Doctor Allan Kane, a friend of
Miss Llewellyn's, who lived within a block of the Llewellyn home,
and who had been called in by Miss Llewellyn.  It was Doctor Kane
who had informed the police of young Mrs. Llewellyn's death.  Kane,
though he appeared to be agitated, had an air of professional
seriousness.  His face was flushed, and he kept shifting his weight
from one foot to the other; but his gaze was direct and appraising
as he looked at each of us in turn.

Sergeant Heath rose and greeted us as we came in.

"I was hoping you'd come, Mr. Markham," he said, with an air of
obvious relief.  "But I wasn't expecting Mr. Vance.  I thought he'd
be at the Casino."

"I was at the Casino, Sergeant," Vance told him in a serious low
tone.  "And thanks awfully for Snitkin and Hennessey.  But I didn't
need them. . . ."

"Lynn!"  The name, like an agonized wail, split the gloomy
atmosphere of the room.  It had come from the lips of Mrs.
Llewellyn; and she turned to Vance with a face distorted with
apprehension.  "Did you see my son there?  And is he all right?"

Vance regarded the woman for several moments, as if making up his
mind how to answer her question.  Then he said sympathetically but
with determined precision:

"I regret, madam, that your son, too, has been poisoned--"

"My son dead?"  The intensity of her words sent a chill through me.

Vance shook his head, his eyes fixed intently on the distracted
woman.

"Not at the last report.  He's under a doctor's care at the Park
End Hospital--"

"I must go to him!" she cried, starting from the room.

But Vance restrained her gently.

"No; not just now, please," he said in a firm kindly voice.  "You
could do no good.  And you are needed here at present.  I will get
a report from the hospital for you in a little while. . . .  I
regret having had to bring you this sad news, madam; but you would
have had to hear it sooner or later. . . .  Please sit down and
help us."

The woman drew herself up and squared her jaw with Spartan
fortitude.

"It can never be said that we Llewellyns ever shirked our duty,"
she announced, in a hard stern voice; and she sat down rigidly in a
chair at the foot of the bed.

Amelia Llewellyn had been watching her mother with cynical
indifference.

"That's all very noble," she commented, with a shrug.  "'We
Llewellyns'--the usual abracadabra.  'Firmitas et fortitudo,' the
family motto.  A gryphon rampant or sejant or couchant--I forget
which.  In any event, a gryphon is a chimerical creature.  Quite
characteristic of our family: capable of anything--and nothing."

"Perhaps the Llewellyn gryphon is segreant," Vance suggested,
looking straight at the girl.

She caught her breath, stared back at Vance for a few seconds, and
then replied cynically:  "It might be, at that.  The Llewellyns are
rather flighty."

Vance continued to regard her closely, and after a moment she
walked up to him with a twisted smile.

"So, darling little Lynn--the filial paragon--has also been
poisoned?" she said; and the smile faded from her mouth.  "Some one
is evidently determined to make a nice thorough job of it.  I
wouldn't be surprised if I were next. . . .  There's too much
rotten money in this family."

She shot a sneering look at her mother, who glared at her angrily;
and then, sitting down on the edge of the table, she lighted a
cigarette.

Markham was impatient and annoyed.

"Get on with your work, Sergeant," he ordered brusquely.  "Who
found this young woman?"  He waved his hand distastefully toward
the bed.

"I did."  Amelia Llewellyn became serious, and her breast rose and
fell with emotion.

"Ah!"  Vance sat down and studied the girl quizzically.  "Suppose
you tell us the circumstances, Miss Llewellyn."

"We all went to bed round eleven," she began.  "Uncle Dick and Mr.
Bloodgood had gone to the Casino right after dinner.  Lynn followed
about an hour later.  And Allan--Doctor Kane here--had some calls
to make, and left with Lynn. . . ."

"Just a moment," broke in Vance, holding up his hand.  "I
understood the dinner tonight was more or less a family affair.
Was Doctor Kane present?"

"Yes, he was here."  The girl nodded bitterly.  "I knew what
another of these anniversary affairs would be--bickerings,
recriminations, general squabbling.  And I was nervous.  So, at the
last minute, I asked Doctor Kane to come to dinner.  I thought his
presence might tone down the animosity.  Of course, Morgan
Bloodgood was here too, but he's really like one of the family: we
never hesitate to air our differences in his presence."

"And did Doctor Kane wield a restraining influence on the gathering
tonight?" asked Vance.

"I'm afraid not," she returned.  "There was too much pent-up
passion that had to have an outlet."

Vance hesitated and then went on with his questioning:

"So Lynn and your uncle and the others departed; and you and your
sister-in-law and your mother retired about eleven.  Then what
happened?"

"I was upset and fidgety and couldn't sleep.  I got up around
midnight and started to sketch.  I worked for an hour or so, and
had just decided to turn in when I heard Virginia cry out in a
hysterical voice.  My room is in this wing of the house; and the
two apartments are divided only by a short private passageway which
I use as a clothes closet."  She indicated, with a movement of her
head, a door at the rear of the room.

"You could hear your sister-in-law call out with the two doors and
the passageway between you?" Vance asked.

"Ordinarily, I couldn't have heard her," the girl explained; "but I
had just gone into the clothes closet to hang up my dressing-gown."

"And what did you do then?"

"I stepped to the door there to listen, and Virginia sounded as if
she were choking.  I tried the door and found it unlocked. . . ."

"Was it unusual for this door to be unlocked?" Vance interrupted.

"No.  In fact, it is seldom locked."

"Continue, please."

"Well," the girl went on, "Virginia was lying on the bed, as she is
now.  Her eyes were staring; her face was terribly red; and she was
in a horrible convulsion.  I ran out into the hall and called to
mother.  Mother came in and looked at her.  'Get a doctor, Amelia,'
she said; and I immediately phoned to Doctor Kane.  He lives only a
short distance from here, and he came right over.  Before I was
through phoning, Virginia seemed to collapse.  She became very
still--too still.  I--I knew that she had died. . . ."  The girl
shuddered involuntarily, and her voice trailed off.

"And now, Doctor Kane?"  Vance turned toward the man standing by
the mantel.

Kane came forward nervously: his hand trembled as he took his
cigarette holder from his lips.

"When I arrived, sir, a few minutes later," he began, with a
studied air of professional dignity, "Mrs. Llewellyn--Mrs. Lynn
Llewellyn, I mean, of course--was quite dead.  Her eyes were
staring; her pupils were so widely dilated that I could hardly see
the retina; and she was covered with a scarlatiniform rash.  She
seemed to have a post-mortem rise of temperature, and the position
of her arms and the distortion of her facial and neck muscles
indicated that she had had a convulsion and died of asphyxia.  It
looked like some poison in the belladonna group--hyoscin, atropin,
or scopolamin.  I did not move the body, and I warned both Mrs.
Llewellyn and her daughter not to touch her.  I immediately
telephoned to the police."

"Quite correct," murmured Vance.  "And then you waited for our
arrival?"

"Naturally."  Kane had regained much of his self-control, though
his face was still flushed and he breathed heavily.

"And nothing in the room has been touched?"

"Nothing.  I have been here all the time, and Miss Llewellyn and
her mother waited here with me."

Vance nodded slowly.

"By the by, doctor," he asked, "do you use a typewriter?"

Kane gave a slight start of surprise.

"Why--yes," he stammered.  "I used to type my papers at
medical school.  I'm not very good at it, though.  I--I don't
understand. . . .  But if my typing can be of any help in the
matter--"

"Merely an idle question," Vance returned casually, and then turned
to Heath.  "The Medical Examiner been notified?"

"Sure."  The Sergeant was sullen and chewed viciously on his black
cigar.  "The call went through to the office in the usual way,
but I phoned Doremus* at his home,--I didn't like the set-up
tonight. . . ."


* Doctor Emanuel Doremus, the Chief Medical Examiner of New York.


"And he was probably much annoyed," suggested Vance.

The Sergeant grunted.

"I'll say he was.  But I told him Mr. Markham might be here, and he
said he'd come himself.  He oughta be here pretty soon."

Vance rose and faced Kane.

"I think that will be all for the present, doctor.  But I must ask
you to remain until the Medical Examiner comes.  You may be able to
assist him. . . .  Would you mind waiting in the drawing-room
downstairs?"

"Certainly not."  He bowed stiffly and went toward the door.  "I'll
be glad to help in any way I can."

When he had gone Vance turned to the two women.

"I'm sorry to have to ask you to remain up," he said, "but I'm
afraid it's necess'ry.  Will you be so good as to wait in your
rooms."  His voice, though mild and gracious, held an undertone of
command.

Mrs. Llewellyn stood up and her eyes blazed.

"Why can't I go to my son?" she demanded.  "There's nothing more I
can do here.  I know nothing at all about this affair."

"You cannot help your son," Vance replied firmly; "and you may be
able to help us.  I'll be glad, however, to get the hospital's
report for you."

He went to the telephone on the night-stand; and a minute later he
was talking with Doctor Rogers.  When he had replaced the receiver
he turned to Mrs. Llewellyn encouragingly.

"Your son has come out of his coma, madam," he reported.  "And he
is breathing more normally; his pulse is stronger; and he seems to
be out of danger.  You will be notified immediately if there should
be any change for the worse."

Mrs. Llewellyn, holding her handkerchief close to her face, went
out sobbing.

Amelia Llewellyn did not go at once.  She waited till the door had
closed behind her mother, and then looked at Vance questioningly.

"Why," she asked in a dead, metallic voice, "did you ask Doctor
Kane if he used a typewriter?"

Vance took out the letter that had brought him into the affair, and
handed it to her without a word.  He watched her closely with half-
closed eyes as she read it.  A troubled frown settled over her
face, but she showed no surprise.  When she had come to the end she
slowly and deliberately refolded the letter and handed it back to
Vance.

"Thanks," she said, and turning, started toward the door to the
passageway leading to her quarters.

"One moment, Miss Llewellyn."  Vance's summoning voice halted her
just as she placed her hand on the knob; and she faced the room
again.  "Do you, too, use a typewriter?"

The girl nodded lethargically.

"Oh, yes.  I do all of my correspondence on a small typewriter I
have. . . .  However," she added, with a faint, weary smile, "I'm
much more adept than the person who typed that letter."

"And are the other members of the household given to using the
typewriter, too?" asked Vance.

"Yes--we're all quite modern."  The girl spoke indifferently.
"Even mother types her own lectures.  And Uncle Dick, having been
an author at one time, developed a rapid, but sloppy, two-fingered
system."

"And your sister-in-law: did she use one?"

The girl's eyes turned toward the bed, and she winced.

"Yes.  Virginia played around with the machine when Lynn was out
gambling. . . .  Lynn himself is quite proficient as a typist.  He
once attended a commercial school--probably thought he might be
called on some time to handle the Llewellyn estate.  But mother
wasn't thinking along those lines; so he turned to night-clubs
instead."  (There was a curious detachment in her manner which I
could not fathom at the time.)

"That leaves only Mr. Bloodgood--" Vance began; but the girl
quickly interrupted him.

"He types, also."  Her eyes darkened somewhat, and I felt that her
attitude toward Bloodgood was not altogether a friendly one.  "He
typed most of his reports of that slot-machine affair he was
connected with on our typewriter downstairs."

Vance raised his eyebrows slightly in mild interest.

"There is a typewriter downstairs?"

Again the girl nodded, and shrugged as if the matter was of no
interest to her.

"There always has been one there--in the little library off the
drawing-room."

"Do you think," asked Vance, "that the letter I showed you was
typed on that machine?"

"It might have been."  The girl sighed.  "It's the same kind of
type and the same color ribbon. . . .  But there are so many like
it."

"And perhaps," Vance pursued, "you could suggest who is the author
of the communication."

Amelia Llewellyn's face clouded, and the hard look returned to her
eyes.

"I could make several suggestions," she said in a dull angry tone.
"But I have no intention of doing anything of the kind."  And
opening the door with decisive swiftness, she went from the room.

"You learned a hell of a lot!" snorted Heath with ponderous
sarcasm.  "This house is just a bunch of stenographers."

Vance regarded the Sergeant indulgently.

"I learned a good deal, don't y' know."

Heath shifted the cigar between his teeth and made a grimace.

"Maybe yes and maybe no," he rumbled.  "The case is cock-eyed
anyway, if you ask me.--Llewellyn getting poisoned at the Casino,
and his wife having it handed to her here at the same time.  Looks
to me as if there was a gang at work."

"The same person could have accomplished both acts, Sergeant,"
Vance returned mildly.  "In fact, I feel sure it was the same
person.  Furthermore, I think it was that person who sent me the
letter. . . .  Just a minute."

He walked to the night-stand, and, moving the telephone aside,
picked up a small folded piece of paper.

"I saw this when I called the hospital," he explained.  "But I
purposely didn't look at it till the ladies should have left us."

He unfolded the paper and held it under the night-light on the
table.  From where I stood I could see that it was a single sheet
of pale-blue note-paper, and that there was typing on it.

"Oh, my aunt!" Vance murmured, as he read it.  "Amazin'! . . ."

At length he handed the paper to Markham, who held it so that Heath
and I, who were standing at his side, could see it.  It was an
inexpertly typed note, and ran:


Dear Lynn--I cannot make you happy, and God knows, no one in this
house has ever tried to make ME happy.  Uncle Dick is the only
person here who has ever been civil or considerate toward me.  I am
not wanted here and am utterly miserable.  I am going to poison
myself.

Good-by--and may your new roulette system bring you the fortune
that you seem to want more than you want anything else.


The signature, "Virginia," was also typewritten.

Markham folded the note and pursed his lips.  He looked at Vance
for a long time; then he remarked:

"That seems to simplify matters."

"Oh, my dear fellow!" Vance protested.  "That note merely
complicates the situation abominably."



CHAPTER V

POISON!


(Sunday, October 16; 2:15 a. m.)


At that moment Sullivan opened the door and admitted Doctor
Doremus, a slight jaunty person with a businesslike, peppery air.
He wore a tweed top-coat, and the brim of his pearl-gray felt hat
was turned down rakishly on one side.

He greeted us with dramatic consternation, and then cocked an eye
flippantly at Sergeant Heath.

"When you don't call me to see your corpses at meal time," he
complained with falsetto ill-nature, "you wait till I'm sound
asleep and then rout me out.  No system . . . no system.  It's a
conspiracy to rob me of food and rest.  I've aged twenty years
since I took this job three years ago."

"You look young and snappy enough," grinned Heath.  (He had long
since become accustomed to the Medical Examiner's grousing.)

"Well, it's through no kindly consideration on the part of you
babies in the Homicide Bureau, by Gad!" Doremus snapped.  "Where's
the body?"  His eyes shot round the room and came to rest on the
still figure of Virginia Llewellyn.  "A lady, eh?  What did she die
of?"

"YOU tell us."  Heath had suddenly become aggressive.

Doremus grunted; then, removing his hat and coat, he put them on a
chair and approached the bed.  For ten minutes he was examining the
dead girl, and, once again, I was impressed by his competency and
thoroughness.  For all his nonchalant mannerisms and cynical
attitude, he was a shrewd and efficient physician--one of the best
and most conscientious medical examiners New York has ever had.

While Doremus was busy with his gruesome task Vance made a brief
inspection of the room.  He went first to the night-table on which
stood a small silver water-service similar to the one in Kinkaid's
office at the Casino.  He picked up the two glasses and looked at
them: they both seemed to be dry.  He then took the stopper from
the carafe, and inverted the bottle over one of the glasses.  It
was empty.  Vance frowned as he set it back on the tray.  After
inspecting the interior of the little drawer in the table, he
walked toward the bathroom door, which was half open, at the rear
of the room.

As he passed Markham he commented in a low voice:

"The general service tonight has been abominable.  Kinkaid's water
carafe was empty; and so is the Lynn Llewellyns'.  Queer, don't y'
know. . . .  Incidentally, the drawer in that table by the bed
contains only a handkerchief, a pack of cards--for solitaire, no
doubt,--a pencil and pad, a stick of lip pomade, and a pair of
reading glasses. . . .  Nothing lethal, as it were."

I followed Vance into the bathroom, for I knew that he had
something definite in mind when he began his tour of inspection:--
this fact was clearly indicated by his casual and lazy manner,
which he invariably assumed in moments of highest tension.

The bathroom was quite a large one, thoroughly modernized, and had
two small windows facing on the south court.  The room was neatly
arranged and everything was in order.  Vance, after switching on
the light, glanced about him searchingly.  There was a small
atomizer and a tube of bath tablets on one of the window sills.

Vance pressed the bulb of the atomizer and sniffed at the spray.

"Derline's Fleur-de-lis, Van," he remarked.  "Ideal for blondes."
He read the label on the tube of bath tablets.  "Also Derline's
Fleur-de-lis.  Quite consistent and correct.  Alas, too many women
make the fatal error of contrasting their bath perfume with their
personal scent. . . ."

He opened the door of the medicine cabinet and looked inside.  It
contained only the usual items: cleansing creams and skin food, a
bottle of hand lotion, toilet water, talcum and bath powders, a
deodorant, a tube of tooth paste, dental floss, a thermometer, and
the conventional array of medicinal preparations--iodin, aspirin,
sodium bicarbonate, camphor, Dobell's solution, yellow throat
mixture, glycerin, argyrol, aromatic spirits of ammonia, benzoin,
milk of magnesia, bromide tablets, a standard eye-wash with its cup-
shaped stopper, medicated alcohol, and so forth.

Vance spent considerable time scrutinizing each item.  At length he
took down a small brown bottle with a printed label, and, carefully
adjusting his monocle, read the fine type of the formula.  Then he
slipped the bottle into his pocket, closed the cabinet door, and
turned back into the bedroom.

Doctor Doremus was just putting the sheet back over the still form
on the bed.  He turned toward Heath with simulated truculence.

"Well, what about it?" he demanded irritably, spreading his hands
in a gesture of inquiry.  "She's dead--if that's what you want to
know.  And I have to be dragged out of the blankets at two in the
morning to tell you that!"

Heath took his cigar slowly from between his teeth and glowered at
the Medical Examiner.

"All right, doc," he said.  "She's dead, says you.  But how long
has she been that way, and what killed her?"

"I knew that was coming," sighed Doremus, and then became
professionally serious.  "Well, Sergeant, she's been dead about two
hours; and she was poisoned. . . .  Now, I suppose you'll want me
to tell you where she got the poison."  And he leered at Heath.

Vance stepped between the two men.

"A doctor who was called in," he said gravely to Doremus,
"suggested that she might have died from one of the poisons in the
belladonna group."

"Any third-year medical student would know that," Doremus returned.
"Sure, it's belladonna poisoning. . . .  Was this saw-bones here in
time to catch her post-mortem rise in temperature?"

Vance nodded.

"He was here within ten minutes of her death."

"Well, there you are."  Doremus put on his coat and carefully
adjusted his hat on the side of his head.  "All the indications:
staring eyes, widely dilated pupils, pin-point rash, a jump in
temperature, signs of convulsions and asphyxia. . . .  Simple."

"Yes, yes--quite."  Vance drew forth the bottle he had taken from
the bathroom cabinet, and handed it to the Medical Examiner.
"Could these tablets have been the cause of death?" he asked.

Doremus looked closely at the label and the printed formula.

"Regulation rhinitis tablets--household-remedy stuff."  He held the
bottle under the table light and squinted at it.  "Powdered
camphor," he read aloud; "fluid extract of belladonna root, a
quarter minim; and quinin sulphate. . . .  Certainly this could
have done it--if enough of 'em were taken."

"The bottle's empty; and it contained a hundred tablets
originally," Vance pointed out.

Doctor Doremus, still scrutinizing the label, nodded his head.

"A hundred times one-quarter of a minim would be twenty-five
minims. . . .  Enough belladonna to knock anybody cold."  He handed
the bottle back to Vance.  "That's the answer.  Why get me up in
the middle of the night when you had all the dope?"

"Really, doctor," returned Vance quietly, "we're merely probin'
around.  I just found this empty bottle, d' ye see, and thought I'd
advance it as a possibility."

"Looks all right to me."  Doremus went to the door.  "Only a post
mortem'll answer your questions definitely."

Markham spoke up brusquely.

"That's just what we want, doctor.  When is the soonest we can have
the autopsy report?"

"Oh, Lord!"  Doremus set his teeth.  "And to-morrow's Sunday.  This
modern speed will kill me yet. . . .  How would eleven o'clock
tomorrow morning do?"

"That would be eminently satisfactory," Markham told him.

Doctor Doremus took a small pad from his pocket, and, writing
something on it, tore off the top sheet and handed it to the
Sergeant.

"Here's your order for the removal of the body."

The Sergeant pocketed the slip of paper.

"The body'll be at the morgue before you are," he mumbled.

"That's bully."  Doremus gave Heath a vicious leer and opened the
door.  "And now I'm going back to sleep.  You can have a massacre
tonight if you want to, but you won't see me again till nine a. m."
He waved his hand in a farewell gesture which included us all, and
went swiftly out.

When the Medical Examiner had slammed the door behind him, Markham
turned to Vance gravely.

"Where'd you find that bottle, Vance?"

"In yon lavatorium.  It was the only thing I saw there that seemed
to have any possibilities."

"Taken in connection with that suicide note you found," observed
Markham, "it would seem to furnish a simple explanation of this
terrible affair."

Vance regarded Markham thoughtfully for several moments; then,
after a long inhalation on his cigarette, he walked the length of
the room and back, his head bowed in contemplation.

"I'm not so sure, Markham," he murmured, almost as if to himself.
"I'll grant you that it's a specious solution of the death of this
girl on the bed.  But what of that poor johnnie in the hospital?
It wasn't belladonna that hit him; and there certainly wasn't any
suicidal urge in HIS mind.  He was playing to win tonight; and his
silly system was apparently working out.  Yet, in the midst of it
he fades out. . . .  No, no.  The empty bottle of rhinitis tablets
is too simple.  And this affair is not simple at all.  It's filled
with shadows and false scents: it has hidden subtleties and
convolutions. . . ."

"After all, you found the bottle--" began Markham.  But Vance
interrupted him.

"That may have been arranged for us.  It fits too snugly into the
pattern.  We'll know more--or less--tomorrow morning when Doremus
has turned in his report."

Markham was annoyed.

"Why try to concoct mysteries?"

"My dear Markham!" Vance reproached him, and stood for several
minutes apparently absorbed in one of the eighteenth-century prints
hanging over the mantel.

Heath, in the meantime, had been telephoning to the Department of
Public Welfare for a wagon to take the body away.  When he had
completed the call he spoke to Lieutenant Smalley of the local
precinct station, who had watched the proceedings silently from a
corner of the room.

"There's nothing more, Lieutenant.  Mr. Markham's here, and there's
only routine stuff till Doc Doremus makes the autopsy.  But you
might leave a couple of your men on the job outside."

"Anything you want, Sergeant."  Lieutenant Smalley shook hands all
round, and went out with an air of obvious relief.

"I think we can go, too," Markham said.  "You're in charge, of
course, Sergeant--I'll arrange it with the Inspector the first
thing in the morning."

"I say, Markham," Vance put in, "let's not dash precipitately away.
I could bear to know a few facts, and as long as we're here
tonight. . . ."

"What, for instance, do you want to know?"  Markham was impatient.

Vance turned away from the print, and gazed sadly at the dead girl.

"I'd like a few more words with Doctor Kane before we drift out
into the chillin' mist."

Markham made a wry face, but finally nodded in reluctant assent.

"He's downstairs."  And he led the way out into the hall.

Doctor Kane was pacing nervously up and down when we entered the
drawing-room.

"What's the report?" he asked before Vance had time to speak.

"The Medical Examiner merely corroborated your own diagnosis,
doctor," Vance told him.  "The post mortem will be performed the
first thing in the morning. . . .  By the by, doctor, are you the
Llewellyns' family physician?"

"I can hardly say that," the other answered.  "I doubt if they have
any one attend them regularly.  They don't require much medical
supervision; they're a very healthy family.  I do prescribe
occasionally, though, for minor ailments--but as a friend rather
than professionally."

"And have you done any prescribing for any of them lately?" asked
Vance.

Kane took a moment to think.

"Nothing of any consequence," he answered at length.  "I suggested
a tonic of iron--Blaud's Mass--and strychnin for Miss Llewellyn a
few days ago--"

"Has Lynn Llewellyn any constitutional ailment," interrupted Vance,
"that would cause him to collapse under keen excitement?"

"No-o.  He has a hypertrophied heart, with the attendant increased
blood-pressure--the result of athletics in college--"

"Angina?"

Kane shook his head.

"Nothing as serious as that--though his condition may develop into
that some day."

"Ever prescribe for him?"

"A year or so ago I gave him a prescription for some nitroglycerin
tablets--a two-hundredth of a grain.  But that's all."

"Nitroglycerin--eh, what?"  A flash of interest animated Vance's
smouldering eyes.  "That's most revealin'. . . .  And his wife:
were you ever called upon in her behalf?"

"Oh, once or twice," Kane answered, with a careless wave of his
cigarette holder.  "She had rather weak eyes, and I recommended an
ordinary eye solution. . . .  It's been my experience," he added in
a pompous tone, "that very light blondes with pale blue eyes--lack
of pigmentation, you understand--have weaker eyes than brunettes--"

"Let's not indulge in ophthalmological theory," Vance cut in, with
an ingratiating smile.  "It's getting beastly late. . . .  What
else have you prescribed for young Mrs. Llewellyn?"

"That's really about all."  Kane, for all his attempt at poise, was
becoming nervous.  "I recommended a certain salve for a mild
erythema on one of her hands several months ago; and last week,
when she had an annoying cold in the head, I suggested regulation
rhinitis tablets.  I don't recall anything else--"

"Rhinitis tablets?"  Vance's penetrating gaze was on the man.  "How
many did you tell her to take?"

"Oh, the usual dose," Kane returned, with an effort at carelessness,
"one or two tablets every two hours."

"Most rhinitis tablets contain belladonna, y' know," remarked Vance
in a hard, even tone.

"Why, yes--of course. . . ."  Kane's eyes suddenly opened wide,
and he stared at Vance with frightened intensity.  "But--but,
really. . . ."  He stammered, and broke off.

"We found an empty hundred-tablet bottle in her medicine cabinet,"
Vance informed him, without shifting his gaze.  "And, according to
your own diagnosis, Mrs. Llewellyn died of belladonna poisoning."

Kane's jaw dropped, and his face went pale.

"My God!" he muttered.  "She--she couldn't have done that."  The
man was trembling noticeably.  "She would know better--and I was
most explicit. . . ."

"No one can blame you in the circumstances, doctor," Vance said
consolingly.  "Tell me, was Mrs. Llewellyn an intelligent and
conscientious patient?"

"Yes--very."  Kane moistened his lips with his tongue, and made a
valiant effort to control himself.  "She was always most careful to
follow my instructions implicitly.  I remember now that she phoned
me, the other day, asking if she could take an extra tablet before
the two-hour interval had elapsed."

"And the eye lotion?" asked Vance with marked casualness.

"I'm sure she followed my advice," Kane answered earnestly.
"Though, of course, that was an absolutely harmless solution--"

"And what was your advice regarding it?"

"I told her she should bathe her eyes with it every night before
retiring."

"What were the ingredients in the unguent you recommended for her
hand?"

Kane looked surprised.

"I'm sure I don't know," he returned unsteadily.  "The usual simple
emollients, I suppose.  It was a proprietary preparation, on sale
at any drug store,--probably contained zinc oxide or lanolin.
There couldn't possibly have been anything harmful in it."

Vance walked to the front window and looked out.  He was both
puzzled and disturbed.

"Was that the extent of your medical services to Lynn Llewellyn and
his wife?" he asked, returning slowly to the centre of the room.

"Yes!"  Though Kane's voice quavered, there was in it, nevertheless,
a note of undeniable emphasis.

Vance let his eyes rest on the young doctor for a brief period.

"I think that will be all," he said.  "There's nothing more you can
do here tonight."

Kane drew a deep breath of relief and went to the door.

"Good night, gentlemen," he said, with a questioning look at Vance.
"Please call on me if I can be of any help."  He opened the door
and then hesitated.  "I'd be most grateful if you'd let me know the
result of the autopsy."

Vance bowed abstractedly.

"We'll be glad to, doctor.  And our apologies for having kept you
up so late."

Kane did not move for a moment, and I thought he was going to say
something; but he suddenly went out, and in a moment we could hear
the butler helping him with his coat.

Vance stood at the table for several moments, gazing straight
before him and letting his fingers move over the inlaid design of
the wood.  Then, without shifting his eyes, he sat down and very
slowly and deliberately drew out his cigarette-case.

Markham had been standing near the door during this interview,
watching both Vance and the doctor intently.  He now walked across
the room to the marble mantel and leaned against it.

"Vance," he commented gravely, "I'm beginning to see what's in your
mind."

Vance looked up and sighed deeply.

"Really, Markham?"  He shook his head with a discouraged air.
"You're far more penetratin' than I am.  I'd give my ting-yao vase
to know what is in my mind.  It's all very confusin'.  Everything
fits--it's a perfect mosaic.  And that's what frightens me."

He shook himself gently, as if to throw off some unpleasant
intrusion of thought, and, going to the door, summoned the butler.

"Please tell Miss Llewellyn," he said, when the man appeared, "--I
think she is in her own apartment--that we should appreciate her
coming to the drawing-room."

When the man had turned down the hall toward the stairs, Vance
moved to the mantel and stood beside Markham.

"There are a few other little things I want to know before we make
our adieux," he explained.  He was troubled and restless: I had
rarely seen him in such a mood.  "No case I have ever helped you
with, Markham, has made me feel so strongly the presence of a
subtle and devastating personality.  Not once has it manifested
itself in all the tragic events of this evening; but I know it's
there, grinning at us and defying us to penetrate to the bottom of
this devilish scheme.  And all the ingredients in the plot are,
apparently, commonplace and obvious,--but I've a feelin' they're
sign-posts pointing AWAY from the truth."  He smoked a moment in
silence; then he said:  "The fiendish part of it is, it's not even
intended that we should follow the sign-posts. . . ."

There was the sound of soft footsteps descending the stairs; and a
moment later Amelia Llewellyn stood at the drawing-room door.



CHAPTER VI

A CRY IN THE NIGHT


(Sunday, October 16; 3 a. m.)


She had changed her tufted robe for a pair of black satin lounging
pyjamas; and I saw evidences of the recent application of rouge,
lip-stick and powder.  She was smoking a cigarette in an embossed
ebony holder; and as she stood before us, framed in the ivory of
the door casement, she made a striking figure which somehow
reminded me of one of Zuloaga's spectacular poster-paintings.

"I received your verbal subpoena from the jittery yet elegant
Crichton--our butler's name is really Smith--and here I am."  She
spoke with an air of facetious worldliness.  "Well, where do we
stand now?"

"We much prefer not to stand, Miss Llewellyn," Vance answered,
moving a chair forward with a commanding soberness.

"Delighted."  She settled herself in the chair and crossed her
knees.  "I'm frightfully tired, what with all this unusual
excitement."

Vance sat down facing her.

"Has it occurred to you, Miss Llewellyn," he asked, "that your
brother's wife may have committed suicide?"

"Good Heavens, no!"  The girl leaned forward in questioning
amazement: she had suddenly dropped her cynical manner.

"You know of no reason, then, why she should have taken her life?"
Vance pursued quietly.

"She had no more reason than any one else has."  Amelia Llewellyn
gazed thoughtfully past Vance.  "We could all find some good excuse
for suicide.  But Virginia had nothing to worry about.  She was
well provided for, and she was living more comfortably, materially,
than she ever had been before."  (This remark was made with a
decided tinge of bitterness.)  "She knew Lynn pretty well before
she married him, and she must have calculated every advantage and
disadvantage beforehand.  Considering the fact that we did not
particularly like her, we treated her quite decently--especially
mother.  But then, Lynn has always been mother's darling, and she'd
treat a boa-constrictor with kindness and consideration if Lynn
brought it into the house."

"Still," suggested Vance, "even in such circumstances, people do
occasionally commit suicide, y' know."

"That's quite true."  The girl shrugged.  "But Virginia was too
cowardly to take her own life, no matter how unhappy she may have
been."  (A note of animosity informed her voice.)  "Besides, she
was always self-centred and vain--"

"Vain about what, for instance?" Vance interrupted.

"About everything."  She filliped the ashes of her cigarette to the
floor.  "She was particularly vain about her personal appearance.
She was at all times on the stage and in make-up, so to speak."

"Does it not seem possible to you"--Vance was peculiarly persistent--
"that if she had been miserable enough--?"

"No!"  The girl anticipated the rest of his question with an
emphatic denial.  "If Virginia had been too miserable to stand the
life here, she wouldn't have done away with herself.  She would
have run off with some other man.  Or perhaps gone back to the
stage--which is just an indirect way of doing the same thing."

"You're not very charitable," murmured Vance.

"Charitable?"  She laughed unpleasantly.  "Perhaps not.  But, at
any rate, I'm not altogether stupid, either."

"Suppose," remarked Vance mildly, "that I should tell you that we
found a suicide note?"

The girl's eyes opened wide, and she gazed at Vance in
consternation.

"I don't believe it!" she said vehemently.

"And yet, Miss Llewellyn, it's quite true," Vance told her with
quiet gravity.

For several moments no one spoke.  Amelia Llewellyn's eyes drifted
from Vance out into space; her lips tightened; and a shrewd, hard
expression appeared on her face.  Vance watched her closely,
without seeming to do so.  At length she moved in her chair and
said with artificial simplicity:

"One never can tell, can one?  I guess I'm not a very good
psychologist.  I can't imagine Virginia killing herself.  It's most
theatrical, however.  Did Lynn attempt self-annihilation, too?--a
suicide pact, or something of the sort?"

"If he did," returned Vance casually, "he evidently failed--
according to the latest report."

"That would be quite in keeping with his character," the girl
remarked in a dead tone.  "Lynn is not the soul of efficiency.  He
always just misses the mark.  Too much maternal supervision,
perhaps."

Vance was annoyed by her attitude.

"We'll let that phase of the matter drop for the moment," he said
with a new sharpness.  "We're interested just now in facts.  Can
you tell us anything of your uncle's--that is, Mr. Kinkaid's--
attitude toward your sister-in-law?  The note we found mentioned
that he had been particularly kind to her."

"That's true."  The girl assumed a less supercilious air.  "Uncle
Dick always seemed to have a soft spot in his heart for Virginia.
Maybe he felt that, as Lynn's wife, she was to be pitied.  Or maybe
he considered her an adventurer like himself.  In any event, there
seemed to be a bond of some kind between them.  Sometimes I've
thought that Uncle Dick has let Lynn win at the Casino occasionally
so that Virginia would have more spending money."

"That's most interestin'."  Vance lighted a fresh cigarette and
went on.  "And that brings me to another question.  I do hope you
won't mind.  It's a bit personal, don't y' know; but the answer may
help us no end. . . ."

"Don't apologize," the girl put in.  "I'm not in the least
secretive.  Ask me anything you care to."

"That's very sportin' of you," murmured Vance.  "The fact is, we
should like to know the exact financial status of the members of
your family."

"Is that all?"  She looked genuinely surprised, perhaps even
disappointed.  "The answer is quite simple.  When my grandfather,
Amos Kinkaid, died, he left the bulk of his fortune to my mother.
He had great faith in her business ability; but he didn't think so
much of Uncle Dick and willed him only a small portion of the
estate.  We children--Lynn and I--were too young to receive any
individual consideration; and anyway, he probably counted on mother
to look out for our welfare.  The result is that Uncle Dick has had
to look after himself more or less, and that mother is the
custodian of Old Amos's money.  Lynn and I are both wholly
dependent on her generosity; but she gives us a fair enough
allowance. . . .  And that's about all there is to it."

"But how," asked Vance, "will the estate be distributed in the
event of your mother's death?"

"That only mother can tell you," replied the girl.  "But I imagine
it will be divided between Lynn and myself--with the greater part,
of course, going to Lynn."

"What of your uncle?"

"Oh, mother regards him with too much disapproval.  I doubt
seriously that she has considered him in her will at all."

"But in the event that your mother outlives both you and your
brother, where would the money go then?"

"To Uncle Dick, I guess--if he were alive.  Mother has a pronounced
clannish instinct.  She'd much prefer Uncle Dick to inherit the
fortune to having it fall into the hands of an outsider."

"But suppose either you or your brother should die before your
mother, do you think the remaining child would inherit everything?"

Amelia Llewellyn nodded.

"That is my opinion," she answered, with quiet frankness.  "But no
one can tell what plans or ideas mother has.  And, naturally, it's
not a subject that's ever discussed between us."

"Oh, quite--quite."  Vance smoked for a moment and then raised
himself a little in his chair.  "There's one other question I'd
like to ask you.  You've been very generous, don't y' know.  The
situation is quite serious at the moment, and there's no tellin'
what facts or suggestions may prove of assistance to us. . . ."

"I think I understand."  The girl spoke with an apparent softness
and appreciation of which I had heretofore thought her incapable.
"Please don't hesitate to ask me anything that may be of help to
you.  I'm terribly upset--really.  I didn't care for Virginia, but--
after all--a death like hers is--well, something you wouldn't wish
for your worst enemy."

Vance took his eyes from the girl and contemplated the tip of his
cigarette.  I tried to probe his mental reaction at the moment, but
his face showed nothing of what was going through his mind.

"My question concerns Mrs. Lynn Llewellyn," he said.  "It's simply
this: if she had survived both you and your brother, what effect
would that have had on your mother's will?"

Amelia Llewellyn pondered the question.

"I really couldn't say," she replied at length.  "I've never
thought of the situation in that light.  But I'm inclined to
believe mother would have made Virginia her chief beneficiary.  She
would probably have clutched at anything to keep Uncle Dick from
getting the estate.  And furthermore her almost pathological
devotion to Lynn would affect her decision.  After all, Virginia
was Lynn's wife; and Lynn and everything pertaining to him has
always come first with mother."  She looked up appealingly.  "I
wish I could help you more than I have."

Vance rose.

"You have helped us no end--really.  We're all gropin' about in the
dark just now.  And we sha'n't keep you up any longer. . . .  But
we'd like to speak to your mother.  Would you mind asking her to
come here to the drawing-room?"

"Oh, no."  The girl rose wearily and went toward the door.  "She'll
be delighted, I'm sure.  Her one ambition in life is to have a hand
in every one's affairs and to be the centre of every disturbance."
She went slowly from the room, and we could hear her ascending the
stairs.

"A strange creature," Vance commented, as if he were thinking out
loud.  "A combination of extremes . . . cold as steel, yet highly
emotional.  Constant cerebral antagonism goin' on . . . can't make
up her mind.  She's livin' on a psychic borderline--heart and mind
at odds. . . .  Curiously symbolic of this entire case.  No
compasses and no way of takin' our bearin's."  He looked up
wistfully.  "Don't you feel that, Markham?  There are a dozen roads
to take--and they all may lead us astray.  But there's a hidden
alley somewhere, and that's the route we have to take. . . ."

He walked toward the rear of the drawing-room.

"In the meantime," he said, in a lighter tone, "I'll indulge my
zeal for thoroughness."

Behind heavy velour drapes in the middle of the rear wall were
massive sliding doors; and Vance drew one of them aside.  He felt
along the wall in the room beyond, and in a few seconds there was a
flood of light revealing a small library.  We could see Vance stand
for a moment looking about him; and then he went to the low kidney-
shaped desk and sat down.  On the desk stood a typewriter, and
after inserting a piece of paper in it, he began typing.  In a few
moments he withdrew the paper from the machine, looked at it
closely, and, folding it, put it in his inside breast pocket.

On his way back to the drawing-room he paused before a set of book-
shelves and let his eye run over the neat array of volumes it held.
He was still inspecting the books when Mrs. Llewellyn came in with
an air of imperious regality.  Vance must have heard her enter, for
he turned immediately, and rejoined us in the drawing-room.

He bowed, and, indicating one of the large silk-covered chairs by
the centre-table, asked her to sit down.

"What did you gentlemen wish to see me about?" Mrs. Llewellyn
asked, without making any move to seat herself.

"I notice, madam," Vance returned, ignoring both her manner and her
question, "that you have a most interestin' collection of medical
books in the little room beyond."  He moved his hand in a
designating gesture toward the sliding doors.

Mrs. Llewellyn hesitated and then said:

"I shouldn't be in the least surprised.  My late husband, though
not a doctor, was greatly interested in medical research.  He wrote
occasionally for some of the scientific journals."

"There are," continued Vance, without any change of intonation,
"several standard works on toxicology among the more general
treatises."

The woman thrust out her chin aggressively, and, with the
suggestion of a shrug, sat down with rigid dignity on the edge of a
straight chair near the door.

"It's quite likely," she replied.  "Do you consider them as having
any bearing on the tragedy that has happened tonight?"  There was
an undercurrent of contempt in the question.

Vance did not pursue the subject.  Instead, he asked her:

"Do you know of any reason why your daughter-in-law should have
taken her own life?"

Not a muscle of the woman's face moved for several moments; but her
eyes suddenly darkened, as if in thought.  Presently she raised her
head.

"Suicide?"  There was a repressed animation in her voice.  "I
hadn't thought of her death in that light, but now that you make
the suggestion, I can see that such an explanation would not be
illogical."  She nodded slowly.  "Virginia was most unhappy here.
She did not fit into her new environment, and several times she
said to me that she wished she were dead.  But I attached no
importance to the remark,--it's a much abused figure of speech.
However, I did everything I could to make the poor child happy."

"A tryin' situation," murmured Vance sympathetically.  "By the by,
madam, would you mind telling us--wholly in confidence, I assure
you--what the general terms of your will might be?"

The woman glared at Vance in angry consternation.

"I WOULD mind--most emphatically!  Indeed, I resent the question.
My will is a matter that concerns no one but myself.  It could have
no bearing whatever on the present hideous predicament."

"I'm not entirely convinced of that," returned Vance mildly.
"There is one line of reasoning, for example, that might lead us to
speculate on the possibility that one of the potential beneficiaries
would gain by the--shall we say, absence?--of certain other heirs."

The woman sprang to her feet and stood in tense rigidity, her eyes
glowering at Vance with vindictive animosity.

"Are you intimating, sir,"--her voice was cold and venemous--"that
my brother--?"

"My dear Mrs. Llewellyn!" Vance remonstrated sharply.  "I had no
one in mind.  But you do not seem to appreciate the significance of
the fact that two members of your household have been poisoned
tonight, and that it is our duty to ascertain every possible factor
that may, even remotely, have some bearing on the case."

"But you yourself," protested the woman in a mollified voice,
reseating herself, "advanced the possibility of Virginia's having
committed suicide."

"Hardly that, madam," Vance corrected her.  "I merely asked you
whether you considered such a theory plausible. . . .  On the other
hand, do you think it likely that your son attempted to take his
own life?"

"No--certainly not!" she replied dogmatically.  Then a distracted
look came into her eyes.  "And yet . . . I don't know--I can't
tell.  He has always been very emotional--very temperamental.
The least little thing would upset him.  He brooded, and
exaggerated. . . ."

"Personally," said Vance, "I cannot believe that your son attempted
to end his life.  I was watching him at the time he was stricken.
He was winning heavily, and was intent on every turn of the wheel."

The woman seemed to have lost interest in everything but her son's
welfare.

"Do you think he's all right?" she asked pleadingly.  "You should
have let me go to him.  Couldn't you inquire again how he is?"

Vance rose immediately and went toward the door.

"I'll be glad to, madam."

A few moments later we heard him talking over the telephone in the
hall.  Then he returned to the drawing-room.

"Mr. Llewellyn," he reported, "is apparently out of danger.  Doctor
Rogers has left the hospital; but the house physician on night duty
tells me your son is resting quietly, and that his pulse is
practically normal now.  He believes Mr. Llewellyn will be able to
return home tomorrow morning."

"Thank God!"  The woman breathed a sigh of relief.  "I shall be
able to sleep now. . . .  Was there anything more you wished to ask
me?"

Vance inclined his head.

"The question will doubtless seem irrelevant to you; but the answer
may clarify a certain phase of this unfortunate situation."  He
look