The Scarab Murder Case Read online

  THE SCARAB MURDER CASE

  S. S. Van Dine

  FELONY & MAYHEM PRESS • NEW YORK

  Dedicated with appreciation to Ambrose Lansing, Ludlow Bull and Henry A. Carey of the Egyptian Department of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

  La véritê n’a point cet air impétueux.

  —Boileau

  Contents

  Cover

  Title

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE Murder!

  CHAPTER TWO The Vengeance of Sakhmet

  CHAPTER THREE Scarabæus Sacer

  CHAPTER FOUR Tracks in the Blood

  CHAPTER FIVE Meryt-Amen

  CHAPTER SIX A Four-Hour Errand

  CHAPTER SEVEN The Finger-Prints

  CHAPTER EIGHT In the Study

  CHAPTER NINE Vance Makes an Experiment

  CHAPTER TEN The Yellow Pencil

  CHAPTER ELEVEN The Coffee Percolator

  CHAPTER TWELVE The Tin of Opium

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN An Attempted Escape

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN A Hieroglyphic Letter

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN Vance Makes a Discovery

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN A Call After Midnight

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN The Golden Dagger

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN A Light in the Museum

  CHAPTER NINETEEN A Broken Appointment

  CHAPTER TWENTY The Granite Sarcophagus

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE The Murderer

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO The Judgment of Anûbis

  Series Page

  Copyright

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  Guide

  Cover

  Title

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Contents

  Start of Content

  Series Page

  Copyright

  CHAPTER ONE

  Murder!

  (Friday, July 13; 11 a.m.)

  PHILO VANCE WAS drawn into the Scarab murder case by sheer coincidence, although there is little doubt that John F.-X. Markham—New York’s District Attorney—would sooner or later have enlisted his services. But it is problematic if even Vance, with his fine analytic mind and his remarkable flair for the subtleties of human psychology, could have solved t
hat bizarre and astounding murder if he had not been the first observer on the scene; for, in the end, he was able to put his finger on the guilty person only because of the topsy-turvy clews that had met his eye during his initial inspection.

  Those clews—highly misleading from the materialistic point of view—eventually gave him the key to the murderer’s mentality and thus enabled him to elucidate one of the most complicated and incredible criminal problems in modern police history.

  The brutal and fantastic murder of that old philanthropist and art patron, Benjamin H. Kyle, became known as the Scarab murder case almost immediately, as a result of the fact that it had taken place in a famous Egyptologist’s private museum and had centred about a rare blue scarabæus that had been found beside the mutilated body of the victim.

  This ancient and valuable seal, inscribed with the names of one of the early Pharaohs (whose mummy had, by the way, not been found at the time), constituted the basis on which Vance reared his astonishing structure of evidence. The scarab, from the police point of view, was merely an incidental piece of evidence that pointed somewhat obviously toward its owner; but this easy and specious explanation did not appeal to Vance.

  “Murderers,” he remarked to Sergeant Ernest Heath, “do not ordinarily insert their visitin’ cards in the shirt bosoms of their victims. And while the discovery of the lapis-lazuli beetle is most interestin’ from both the psychological and evidential standpoints, we must not be too optimistic and jump to conclusions. The most important question in this pseudo-mystical murder is why—and how—the murderer left that archæological specimen beside the defunct body. Once we find the reason for that amazin’ action, we’ll hit upon the secret of the crime itself.”

  The doughty Sergeant had sniffed at Vance’s suggestion and had ridiculed his scepticism; but before another day had passed he generously admitted that Vance had been right, and that the murder had not been so simple as it had appeared at first view.

  As I have said, a coincidence brought Vance into the case before the police were notified. An acquaintance of his had discovered the slain body of old Mr. Kyle, and had immediately come to him with the gruesome news.

  It happened on the morning of Friday, July 13th. Vance had just finished a late breakfast in the roof-garden of his apartment in East Thirty-eighth Street, and had returned to the library to continue his translation of the Menander fragments found in the Egyptian papyri during the early years of the present century, when Currie—his valet and major-domo—shuffled into the room and announced with an air of discreet apology:

  “Mr. Donald Scarlett has just arrived, sir, in a state of distressing excitement, and asks that you hasten to receive him.”

  Vance looked up from his work with an expression of boredom.

  “Scarlett, eh? Very annoyin’… And why should he call on me when excited? I infinitely prefer calm people… Did you offer him a brandy-and-soda—or some triple bromides?”

  “I took the liberty of placing a service of Courvoisier brandy before him,” explained Currie. “I recall that Mr. Scarlett has a weakness for Napoleon’s cognac.”

  “Ah, yes—so he has… Quite right, Currie.” Vance leisurely lit one of his Régie cigarettes and puffed a moment in silence. “Suppose you show him in when you deem his nerves sufficiently calm.”

  Currie bowed and departed.

  “Interestin’ johnny, Scarlett,” Vance commented to me. (I had been with Vance all morning arranging and filing his notes.) “You remember him, Van—eh, what?”

  I had met Scarlett twice, but I must admit I had not thought of him for a month or more. The impression of him, however, came back to me now with considerable vividness. He had been, I knew, a college mate of Vance’s at Oxford, and Vance had run across him during his sojourn in Egypt two years before.

  Scarlett was a student of Egyptology and archæology, having specialized in these subjects at Oxford under Professor F. Ll. Griffith. Later he had taken up chemistry and photography in order that he might join some Egyptological expedition in a technical capacity. He was a well-to-do Englishman, an amateur and dilettante, and had made of Egyptology a sort of fad.

  When Vance had gone to Alexandria Scarlett had been working in the Museum laboratory at Cairo. The two had met again and renewed their old acquaintance. Recently Scarlett had come to America as a member of the staff of Doctor Mindrum W.C. Bliss, the famous Egyptologist, who maintained a private museum of Egyptian antiquities in an old house in East Twentieth Street, facing Gramercy Park. He had called on Vance several times since his arrival in this country, and it was at Vance’s apartment that I had met him. He had, however, never called without an invitation, and I was at a loss to understand his unexpected appearance this morning, for he possessed all of the well-bred Englishman’s punctiliousness about social matters.

  Vance, too, was somewhat puzzled, despite his attitude of lackadaisical indifference.

  “Scarlett’s a clever lad,” he drawled musingly. “And most proper. Why should he call on me at this indecent hour? And why should he be excited? I hope nothing untoward has befallen his erudite employer… Bliss is an astonishin’ man, Van—one of the world’s great Egyptologists.” *

  I recalled that during the winter which Vance had spent in Egypt he had become greatly interested in the work of Doctor Bliss, who was then endeavoring to locate the tomb of Pharaoh Intef V who ruled over Upper Egypt at Thebes during the Hyksos domination. In fact, Vance had accompanied Bliss on an exploration in the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings. At that time he had just become attracted by the Menander fragments, and he had been in the midst of a uniform translation of them when the Bishop murder case interrupted his labors.

  Vance had also been interested in the variations of chronology of the Old and the Middle Kingdoms of Egypt—not from the historical standpoint but from the standpoint of the evolution of Egyptian art. His researches led him to side with the Bliss-Weigall, or short, chronology* (based on the Turin Papyrus), as opposed to the long chronology of Hall and Petrie, who set back the Twelfth Dynasty and all preceding history one full Sothic cycle, or 1,460 years. After inspecting the art works of the pre-Hyksos and the post-Hyksos eras, Vance was inclined to postulate an interval of not more than 300 years between the Twelfth and Eighteenth Dynasties, in accordance with the shorter chronology. In comparing certain statues made during the reign of Amen-em-hêt III with others made during the reign of Thut-mosè I—thus bridging the Hyksos invasion, with its barbaric Asiatic influence and its annihilation of indigenous Egyptian culture—he arrived at the conclusion that the maintenance of the principles of Twelfth-Dynasty æsthetic attainment could not have been possible with a wider lacuna than 300 years. In brief, he concluded that, had the interregnum been longer, the evidences of decadence in Eighteenth-Dynasty art would have been even more pronounced.

  These researches of Vance’s ran through my head that sultry July morning as we waited for Currie to usher in the visitor. The announcement of Scarlett’s call had brought back memories of many wearying weeks of typing and tabulating Vance’s notes on the subject. Perhaps I had a feeling—what we loosely call a premonition—that Scarlett’s surprising visit was in some way connected with Vance’s æsthetico-Egyptological researches. Perhaps I was even then arranging in my mind, unconsciously, the facts of that winter two years before, so that I might cope more understandingly with the object of Scarlett’s present call.

  But surely I could have had not the slightest idea or suspicion of what was actually about to befall us. It was far too appalling and too bizarre for the casual imagination. It lifted us out of the ordinary routine of daily experience and dashed us into a frowsty, miasmic atmosphere of things at once incredible and horrifying—things fraught with the seemingly supernatural black magic of a Witches’ Sabbat. Only, in this instance it was the mystic and fantastic lore of ancient Egypt—with its confused mythology and its grotesque pantheon of beast-headed gods—that furnished the background.

  Scarlett almost dash
ed through the portières of the library when Currie had pulled back the sliding door for him to enter. Either the Courvoisier had added to his excitement or else Currie had woefully underrated the man’s nervous state.

  “Kyle has been murdered!” the newcomer blurted, leaning against the library table and staring at Vance with gaping eyes.

  “Really, now! That’s very distressin’.” Vance held out his cigarette-case. “Do have one of my Régies … And you’ll find that chair beside you most comfortable. A Charles chair: I picked it up in London… Beastly mess, people getting murdered, what? But it really can’t be helped, don’t y’know. The human race is so deuced blood-thirsty.”

  His indifference had a salutary effect on Scarlett, who sank limply into the chair and began lighting his cigarette with trembling hands.

  Vance waited a moment and then asked:

  “By the by, how do you know Kyle has been murdered?” Scarlett gave a start.

  “I saw him lying there—his head bashed in. A frightful sight. No doubt about it.” (I could not help feeling that the man had suddenly assumed a defensive attitude.)

  Vance lay back in his chair languidly and pyramided his long tapering hands.

  “Bashed in with what? And lying where? And how did you happen to discover the corpse?… Buck up, Scarlett, and make an effort at coherence.”

  Scarlett frowned and took several deep inhalations on his cigarette. He was a man of about forty, tall and slender, with a head more Alpine than Nordic—a Dinaric type. His forehead bulged slightly, and his chin was round and recessive. He had the look of a scholar, though not that of a sedentary bookworm, for there was strength and ruggedness in his body; and his face was deeply tanned like that of a man who has lived for years in the sun and wind. There was a trace of fanaticism in his intense eyes—an expression that was somehow enhanced by an almost completely bald head. Yet he gave me the impression of honesty and straightforwardness—in this, at least, his British institutionalism was strongly manifest.

  “Right you are, Vance,” he said after a brief pause, with a more or less successful effort at calmness. “As you know, I came to New York with Doctor Bliss in May as a member of his staff; and I’ve been doing all the technical work for him. I have my diggings round the corner from the museum, in Irving Place. This morning I had a batch of photographs to classify, and reached the museum shortly before half past ten…”

  “Your usual hour?” Vance put the question negligently.

  “Oh, no. I was a bit latish this morning. We’d been working last night on a financial report of the last expedition.”

  “And then?”

  “Funny thing,” continued Scarlett. “The front door was slightly ajar—I generally have to ring. But I saw no reason to disturb Brush—”

  “Brush?”