The Casino Murder Case Page 5

  “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!”

  Footnotes

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

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

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

  CHAPTER FOUR

  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 push-button 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...”

  “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.”