S. S. Van Dine

“ Any man capable of so ingenious and clever a piece of deception is obviously a person of education and imagination; and he most certainly would not have run the stupendous risk of killing a woman unless he had feared some overwhelming disaster—unless, indeed, her continuing to live would have caused him greater mental anguish, and would have put him in greater jeopardy, even than the crime itself. Between two colossal dangers, he chose the murder as the lesser.”
Markham did not speak at once: he seemed lost in reflection. ”

“ If society were omniscient, Markham, it would have a right to sit in judgment. But society is ignorant and venomous, devoid of any trace of insight or understanding. It exalts knavery, and worships stupidity. It crucifies the intelligent, and puts the diseased in dungeons. And, withal, it arrogates to itself the right and ability to analyze the subtle sources of what it calls ‘crime,’ and to condemn to death all persons whose inborn and irresistible impulses it does not like. ”

“ Presently Vance turned and contemplated the District Attorney with a faintly sardonic smile.
“I say, Markham,” he drawled; “it has always been a source of amazement to me how easily you investigators of crime are misled by what you call clues. You find a footprint, or a parked automobile, or a monogrammed handkerchief, and then dash off on a wild chase with your eternal Ecce signum! ’Pon my word, it’s as if you chaps were all under the spell of shillin’ shockers. Won’t you ever learn that crimes can’t be solved by deductions based merely on material clues and circumst’ntial evidence?” ”

“ Even if we knew indubitably who the murderer was, we’d be helpless. . . . I tell you, Markham, we’re facing a shrewd brain—one that figures out every move, and calculates all the possibilities. Our only hope is to create our own evidence by finding a weakness in the murderer’s combination.”
“The first thing in the morning,” declared Markham grimly, “I’m going to put Heath to work on Pardee’s alibi that night. There’ll be twenty men checking it up by noon, questioning every spectator at that chess game, and making a door-to-door canvass between the Manhattan Chess Club and the Drukker house. ”

“ At length Markham spoke.
“Why this sweeping deprecation of circumstantial evidence? I admit that at times it may be misleading; but it often forms powerful presumptive proof of guilt. Indeed, Vance, one of our greatest legal authorities has demonstrated that it is the most powerful actual evidence in existence. Direct evidence, in the very nature of crime, is almost always unavailable. If the courts had to depend on it, the great majority of criminals would still be at large.” ”

“ There she ran across those books on criminology. They appealed to her, not only as a vicious outlet for her smouldering, repressed hatred, but because they struck a responsive chord in her tainted nature. Eventually she came upon Gross’s great manual, and thus found the entire technic of crime laid out before her, with diagrams and examples—not a handbook for examining magistrates, but a guide for a potential murderer! Slowly the idea of her gory orgy took shape. At first perhaps she only imagined, as a means of self-gratification, the application of this technic of murder to those she hated. ”

“ Vance and I were now left alone in the room with Heath and the District Attorney, and, as if by common impulse, we all settled ourselves in chairs, Vance taking one near the dining-room door directly facing the chair in which Benson had been murdered.
I had been keenly interested in Vance’s manner and actions from the moment of his arrival at the house. When he had first entered the room he had adjusted his monocle carefully—an act which, despite his air of passivity, I recognized as an indication of interest. ”

“ Eddington suggests the conclusion that there are no natural laws—namely, that nature is not amenable to the law of sufficient reason. Alas, poor Schopenhauer!34 And Bertrand Russell sums up the inevitable results of modern physics by suggesting that matter is to be interpreted merely as a group of occurrences, and that matter itself need not be existent! . . . Do you see what it all leads to? If the world is non-causative and non-existent, what is a mere human life?—or the life of a nation?—or, for that matter, existence itself? . . .”
Vance looked up, and Markham nodded dubiously. ”

“ In the detective’s hand was a small parcel wrapped in newspaper, which he laid on the District Attorney’s desk with an air of triumph.
“The Canary’s jewellery,” he announced. “I’ve checked it up from the list the maid gave me, and it’s all there.”
Heath sprang forward, but Markham was already untying the package with nervous fingers. When the paper had been opened, there lay before us a small heap of dazzling trinkets—several rings of exquisite workmanship, three magnificent bracelets, a sparkling sunburst, and a delicately wrought lorgnette. ”

“ Vance asked.
“Along with a few thousand other enigmas—yes,” was the petulant reply. “But the more I try to reason it out, the more of a mystery the whole thing becomes.”
“Loosely put, my dear Markham,” criticized Vance. “There are no mysteries originating in human beings, y’ know; there are only problems. And any problem originating in one human being can be solved by another human being. It merely requires a knowledge of the human mind, and the application of that knowledge to human acts. ”

“ She sat down before Markham’s desk, and for a while frowned up at the sunlight, as if debating how to begin.
“It’s about Rex, Mr. Markham,” she said finally. “I really don’t know whether I should have come here or not—it may be very disloyal of me. . . .” She gave him a look of appealing indecision. “Oh, tell me: if a person knows something—something bad and dangerous—about some one very close and very dear, should that person tell, when it might make terrible trouble?”
“That all depends,” Markham answered gravely. ”

“ You’re a Cock Robin, and that archer’s a sparrow; and you remember what happened to your namesake when a Mr. Sparrow wielded the bow and arrow’—or something like that. No one paid much attention to it at the time. But now! . . .” Her voice trailed off into an awed murmur.
“Come, Belle; don’t be morbid.” Professor Dillard spoke consolingly, but not without impatience. “It was merely one of Sigurd’s ill-timed witticisms. You know he’s continually sneering and jesting at realities: it’s about the only outlet he has from his constant application to abstractions.” ”