CHAPTER II

AT THE SCENE OF THE CRIME

(_Friday, June 14; 9 a.m._)

John F.-X. Markham, as you remember, had been elected District Attorney
of New York County on the Independent Reform Ticket during one of the
city’s periodical reactions against Tammany Hall. He served his four
years, and would probably have been elected to a second term had not the
ticket been hopelessly split by the political juggling of his opponents.
He was an indefatigable worker, and projected the District Attorney’s
office into all manner of criminal and civil investigations. Being
utterly incorruptible, he not only aroused the fervid admiration of his
constituents, but produced an almost unprecedented sense of security in
those who had opposed him on partisan lines.

He had been in office only a few months when one of the newspapers
referred to him as the Watch Dog; and the sobriquet clung to him until
the end of his administration. Indeed, his record as a successful
prosecutor during the four years of his incumbency was such a remarkable
one that even to-day it is not infrequently referred to in legal and
political discussions.

Markham was a tall, strongly-built man in the middle forties, with a
clean-shaven, somewhat youthful face which belied his uniformly grey
hair. He was not handsome according to conventional standards, but he
had an unmistakable air of distinction, and was possessed of an amount
of social culture rarely found in our latter-day political
office-holders. Withal he was a man of brusque and vindictive
temperament; but his brusqueness was an incrustation on a solid
foundation of good-breeding, not—as is usually the case—the roughness
of substructure showing through an inadequately superimposed crust of
gentility.

When his nature was relieved of the stress of duty and care, he was the
most gracious of men. But early in my acquaintance with him I had seen
his attitude of cordiality suddenly displaced by one of grim authority.
It was as if a new personality—hard, indomitable, symbolic of eternal
justice—had in that moment been born in Markham’s body. I was to
witness this transformation many times before our association ended. In
fact, this very morning, as he sat opposite to me in Vance’s
living-room, there was more than a hint of it in the aggressive
sternness of his expression; and I knew that he was deeply troubled over
Alvin Benson’s murder.

He swallowed his coffee rapidly, and was setting down the cup, when
Vance, who had been watching him with quizzical amusement, remarked:

“I say; why this sad preoccupation over the passing of one Benson? You
weren’t, by any chance, the murderer, what?”

Markham ignored Vance’s levity.

“I’m on my way to Benson’s. Do you care to come along? You asked for the
experience, and I dropped in to keep my promise.”

I then recalled that several weeks before at the Stuyvesant Club, when
the subject of the prevalent homicides in New York was being discussed,
Vance had expressed a desire to accompany the District Attorney on one
of his investigations; and that Markham had promised to take him on his
next important case. Vance’s interest in the psychology of human
behavior had prompted the desire, and his friendship with Markham, which
had been of long standing, had made the request possible.

“You remember everything, don’t you?” Vance replied lazily. “An
admirable gift, even if an uncomfortable one.” He glanced at the clock
on the mantel: it lacked a few minutes of nine. “But what an indecent
hour! Suppose someone should see me.”

Markham moved forward impatiently in his chair.

“Well, if you think the gratification of your curiosity would compensate
you for the disgrace of being seen in public at nine o’clock in the
morning, you’ll have to hurry. I certainly won’t take you in
dressing-gown and bed-room slippers. And I most certainly won’t wait
over five minutes for you to get dressed.”

“Why the haste, old dear?” Vance asked, yawning. “The chap’s dead, don’t
y’ know; he can’t possibly run away.”

“Come, get a move on, you orchid,” the other urged. “This affair is no
joke. It’s damned serious; and from the looks of it, it’s going to cause
an ungodly scandal.—What are you going to do?”

“Do? I shall humbly follow the great avenger of the common people,”
returned Vance, rising and making an obsequious bow.

He rang for Currie, and ordered his clothes brought to him.

“I’m attending a levee which Mr. Markham is holding over a corpse, and I
want something rather spiffy. Is it warm enough for a silk suit? . . .
And a lavender tie, by all means.”

“I trust you won’t also wear your green carnation,” grumbled Markham.

“Tut! Tut!” Vance chided him. “You’ve been reading Mr. Hichens. Such
heresy in a district attorney! Anyway, you know full well I never wear
_boutonnières_. The decoration has fallen into disrepute. The only
remaining devotees of the practice are roués and saxophone
players. . . . But tell me about the departed Benson.”

Vance was now dressing, with Currie’s assistance, at a rate of speed I
had rarely seen him display in such matters. Beneath his bantering pose
I recognized the true eagerness of the man for a new experience and one
that promised such dramatic possibilities for his alert and observing
mind.

“You knew Alvin Benson casually, I believe,” the District Attorney said.
“Well, early this morning his housekeeper ’phoned the local precinct
station that she had found him shot through the head, fully dressed and
sitting in his favorite chair in his living-room. The message, of
course, was put through at once to the Telegraph Bureau at Headquarters,
and my assistant on duty notified me immediately. I was tempted to let
the case follow the regular police routine. But half an hour later Major
Benson, Alvin’s brother, ’phoned me and asked me, as a special favor, to
take charge. I’ve known the Major for twenty years, and I couldn’t very
well refuse. So I took a hurried breakfast and started for Benson’s
house. He lived in West Forty-eighth Street; and as I passed your corner
I remembered your request, and dropped by to see if you cared to go
along.”

“Most consid’rate,” murmured Vance, adjusting his four-in-hand before a
small polychrome mirror by the door. Then he turned to me. “Come, Van.
We’ll all gaze upon the defunct Benson. I’m sure some of Markham’s
sleuths will unearth the fact that I detested the bounder and accuse me
of the crime; and I’ll feel safer, don’t y’ know, with legal talent at
hand. . . . No objections—eh, what, Markham?”

“Certainly not,” the other agreed readily, although I felt that he would
rather not have had me along. But I was too deeply interested in the
affair to offer any ceremonious objections, and I followed Vance and
Markham downstairs.

As we settled back in the waiting taxicab and started up Madison Avenue,
I marvelled a little, as I had often done before, at the strange
friendship of these two dissimilar men beside me—Markham forthright,
conventional, a trifle austere, and over-serious in his dealings with
life; and Vance casual, mercurial, debonair, and whimsically cynical in
the face of the grimmest realities. And yet this temperamental diversity
seemed, in some wise, the very cornerstone of their friendship: it was
as if each saw in the other some unattainable field of experience and
sensation that had been denied himself. Markham represented to Vance the
solid and immutable realism of life, whereas Vance symbolized for
Markham the care-free, exotic, gypsy spirit of intellectual adventure.
Their intimacy, in fact, was even greater than showed on the surface;
and despite Markham’s exaggerated deprecations of the other’s attitudes
and opinions, I believe he respected Vance’s intelligence more
profoundly than that of any other man he knew.

As we rode up town that morning Markham appeared preoccupied and gloomy.
No word had been spoken since we left the apartment; but as we turned
west into Forty-eighth Street Vance asked:

“What is the social etiquette of these early-morning murder functions,
aside from removing one’s hat in the presence of the body?”

“You keep your hat on,” growled Markham.

“My word! Like a synagogue, what? Most int’restin’! Perhaps one takes
off one’s shoes so as not to confuse the footprints.”

“No,” Markham told him. “The guests remain fully clothed—in which the
function differs from the ordinary evening affairs of your smart set.”

“My _dear_ Markham!”—Vance’s tone was one of melancholy reproof—“The
horrified moralist in your nature is at work again. That remark of yours
was pos’tively Epworth Leaguish.”

Markham was too abstracted to follow up Vance’s badinage.

“There are one or two things,” he said soberly, “that I think I’d better
warn you about. From the looks of it, this case is going to cause
considerable noise, and there’ll be a lot of jealousy and battling for
honors. I won’t be fallen upon and caressed affectionately by the police
for coming in at this stage of the game; so be careful not to rub their
bristles the wrong way. My assistant, who’s there now, tells me he
thinks the Inspector has put Heath in charge. Heath’s a sergeant in the
Homicide Bureau, and is undoubtedly convinced at the present moment that
I’m taking hold in order to get the publicity.”

“Aren’t you his technical superior?” asked Vance.

“Of course; and that makes the situation just so much more
delicate. . . . I wish to God the Major hadn’t called me up.”

“_Eheu!_” sighed Vance. “The world is full of Heaths. Beastly
nuisances.”

“Don’t misunderstand me,” Markham hastened to assure him. “Heath is a
good man—in fact, as good a man as we’ve got. The mere fact that he was
assigned to the case shows how seriously the affair is regarded at
Headquarters. There’ll be no unpleasantness about my taking charge, you
understand; but I want the atmosphere to be as halcyon as possible.
Heath’ll resent my bringing along you two chaps as spectators, anyway;
so I beg of you, Vance, emulate the modest violet.”

“I prefer the blushing rose, if you don’t mind,” Vance protested.
“However, I’ll instantly give the hypersensitive Heath one of my
choicest _Régie_ cigarettes with the rose-petal tips.”

“If you do,” smiled Markham, “he’ll probably arrest you as a suspicious
character.”

We had drawn up abruptly in front of an old brownstone residence on the
upper side of Forty-eighth Street, near Sixth Avenue. It was a house of
the better class, built on a twenty-five-foot lot in a day when
permanency and beauty were still matters of consideration among the
city’s architects. The design was conventional, to accord with the other
houses in the block, but a touch of luxury and individuality was to be
seen in its decorative copings and in the stone carvings about the
entrance and above the windows.

There was a shallow paved areaway between the street line and the front
elevation of the house; but this was enclosed in a high iron railing,
and the only entrance was by way of the front door, which was about six
feet above the street level at the top of a flight of ten broad stone
stairs. Between the entrance and the right-hand wall were two spacious
windows covered with heavy iron _grilles_.

A considerable crowd of morbid onlookers had gathered in front of the
house; and on the steps lounged several alert-looking young men whom I
took to be newspaper reporters. The door of our taxicab was opened by a
uniformed patrolman who saluted Markham with exaggerated respect and
ostentatiously cleared a passage for us through the gaping throng of
idlers. Another uniformed patrolman stood in the little vestibule, and
on recognizing Markham, held the outer door open for us and saluted with
great dignity.

“_Ave, Cæsar, te salutamus_,” whispered Vance, grinning.

“Be quiet,” Markham grumbled. “I’ve got troubles enough without your
garbled quotations.”

As we passed through the massive carved-oak front door into the main
hallway, we were met by Assistant District Attorney Dinwiddie, a
serious, swarthy young man with a prematurely lined face, whose
appearance gave one the impression that most of the woes of humanity
were resting upon his shoulders.

“Good morning, Chief,” he greeted Markham, with eager relief. “I’m
damned glad you’ve got here. This case’ll rip things wide open.
Cut-and-dried murder, and not a lead.”

Markham nodded gloomily, and looked past him into the living-room.

“Who’s here?” he asked.

“The whole works, from the Chief Inspector down,” Dinwiddie told him,
with a hopeless shrug, as if the fact boded ill for all concerned.

At that moment a tall, massive, middle-aged man with a pink complexion
and a closely-cropped white moustache, appeared in the doorway of the
living-room. On seeing Markham he came forward stiffly with outstretched
hand. I recognized him at once as Chief Inspector O’Brien, who was in
command of the entire Police Department. Dignified greetings were
exchanged between him and Markham, and then Vance and I were introduced
to him. Inspector O’Brien gave us each a curt, silent nod, and turned
back to the living-room, with Markham, Dinwiddie, Vance and myself
following.

The room, which was entered by a wide double door about ten feet down
the hall, was a spacious one, almost square, and with high ceilings. Two
windows gave on the street; and on the extreme right of the north wall,
opposite to the front of the house, was another window opening on a
paved court. To the left of this window were the sliding doors leading
into the dining-room at the rear.

The room presented an appearance of garish opulence. About the walls
hung several elaborately framed paintings of race-horses and a number of
mounted hunting trophies. A highly-colored oriental rug covered nearly
the entire floor. In the middle of the east wall, facing the door, was
an ornate fireplace and carved marble mantel. Placed diagonally in the
corner on the right stood a walnut upright piano with copper trimmings.
Then there was a mahogany bookcase with glass doors and figured
curtains, a sprawling tapestried davenport, a squat Venetian tabouret
with inlaid mother of pearl, a teak-wood stand containing a large brass
samovar, and a buhl-topped center table nearly six feet long. At the
side of the table nearest the hallway, with its back to the front
windows, stood a large wicker lounge chair with a high, fan-shaped back.

In this chair reposed the body of Alvin Benson.

Though I had served two years at the front in the World War and had seen
death in many terrible guises, I could not repress a strong sense of
revulsion at the sight of this murdered man. In France death had seemed
an inevitable part of my daily routine, but here all the organisms of
environment were opposed to the idea of fatal violence. The bright June
sunshine was pouring into the room, and through the open windows came
the continuous din of the city’s noises, which, for all their cacophony,
are associated with peace and security and the orderly social processes
of life.

[Illustration: WEST 48TH. STREET]

Benson’s body was reclining in the chair in an attitude so natural that
one almost expected him to turn to us and ask why we were intruding upon
his privacy. His head was resting against the chair’s back. His right
leg was crossed over his left in a position of comfortable relaxation.
His right arm was resting easily on the center-table, and his left arm
lay along the chair’s arm. But that which most strikingly gave his
attitude its appearance of naturalness, was a small book which he held
in his right hand with his thumb still marking the place where he had
evidently been reading.[5]

He had been shot through the forehead from in front; and the small
circular bullet mark was now almost black as a result of the coagulation
of the blood. A large dark spot on the rug at the rear of the chair
indicated the extent of the hemorrhage caused by the grinding passage of
the bullet through his brain. Had it not been for these grisly
indications one might have thought that he had merely paused momentarily
in his reading to lean back and rest.

He was attired in an old smoking-jacket and red felt bed-room slippers,
but still wore his dress trousers and evening shirt, though he was
collarless, and the neck band of the shirt had been unbuttoned as if for
comfort. He was not an attractive man physically, being almost
completely bald and more than a little stout. His face was flabby, and
the puffiness of his neck was doubly conspicuous without its confining
collar. With a slight shudder of distaste I ended my brief contemplation
of him, and turned to the other occupants of the room.

Two burly fellows with large hands and feet, their black felt hats
pushed far back on their heads, were minutely inspecting the iron
grill-work over the front windows. They seemed to be giving particular
attention to the points where the bars were cemented into the masonry;
and one of them had just taken hold of a _grille_ with both hands and
was shaking it, simian-wise, as if to test its strength. Another man, of
medium height and dapper appearance, with a small blond moustache, was
bending over in front of the grate looking intently, so it seemed, at
the dusty gas-logs. On the far side of the table a thickset man in blue
serge and a derby hat, stood with arms a-kimbo scrutinizing the silent
figure in the chair. His eyes, hard and pale blue, were narrowed, and
his square prognathous jaw was rigidly set. He was gazing with rapt
intensity at Benson’s body, as though he hoped, by the sheer power of
concentration, to probe the secret of the murder.

Another man, of unusual mien, was standing before the rear window, with
a jeweller’s magnifying glass in his eye, inspecting a small object held
in the palm of his hand. From pictures I had seen of him I knew he was
Captain Carl Hagedorn, the most famous fire-arms expert in America. He
was a large, cumbersome, broad-shouldered man of about fifty; and his
black shiny clothes were several sizes too large for him. His coat
hitched up behind, and in front hung half way down to his knees; and his
trousers were baggy and lay over his ankles in grotesquely comic folds.
His head was round and abnormally large, and his ears seemed sunken into
his skull. His mouth was entirely hidden by a scraggly, grey-shot
moustache, all the hairs of which grew downwards, forming a kind of
lambrequin to his lips. Captain Hagedorn had been connected with the New
York Police Department for thirty years, and though his appearance and
manner were ridiculed at Headquarters, he was profoundly respected. His
word on any point pertaining to fire-arms and gunshot wounds was
accepted as final by Headquarters men.

In the rear of the room, near the dining-room door, stood two other men
talking earnestly together. One was Inspector William M. Moran,
Commanding Officer of the Detective Bureau; the other, Sergeant Ernest
Heath of the Homicide Bureau, of whom Markham had already spoken to us.

As we entered the room in the wake of Chief Inspector O’Brien everyone
ceased his occupation for a moment and looked at the District Attorney
in a spirit of uneasy, but respectful, recognition. Only Captain
Hagedorn, after a cursory squint at Markham, returned to the inspection
of the tiny object in his hand, with an abstracted unconcern which
brought a faint smile to Vance’s lips.

Inspector Moran and Sergeant Heath came forward with stolid dignity; and
after the ceremony of hand-shaking (which I later observed to be a kind
of religious rite among the police and the members of the District
Attorney’s staff), Markham introduced Vance and me, and briefly
explained our presence. The Inspector bowed pleasantly to indicate his
acceptance of the intrusion, but I noticed that Heath ignored Markham’s
explanation, and proceeded to treat us as if we were non-existent.

Inspector Moran was a man of different quality from the others in the
room. He was about sixty, with white hair and a brown moustache, and was
immaculately dressed. He looked more like a successful Wall Street
broker of the better class than a police official.[6]

“I’ve assigned Sergeant Heath to the case, Mr. Markham,” he explained in
a low, well-modulated voice. “It looks as though we were in for a bit of
trouble before it’s finished. Even the Chief Inspector thought it
warranted his lending the moral support of his presence to the
preliminary rounds. He has been here since eight o’clock.”

Inspector O’Brien had left us immediately upon entering the room, and
now stood between the front windows, watching the proceedings with a
grave, indecipherable face.

“Well, I think I’ll be going,” Moran added. “They had me out of bed at
seven-thirty, and I haven’t had any breakfast yet. I won’t be needed
anyway now that you’re here. . . . Good-morning.” And again he shook
hands.

When he had gone Markham turned to the Assistant District Attorney.

“Look after these two gentlemen, will you, Dinwiddie? They’re babes in
the wood, and want to see how these affairs work. Explain things to them
while I have a little confab with Sergeant Heath.”

Dinwiddie accepted the assignment eagerly. I think he was glad of the
opportunity to have someone to talk to by way of venting his pent-up
excitement.

As the three of us turned rather instinctively toward the body of the
murdered man—he was, after all, the hub of this tragic drama—I heard
Heath say in a sullen voice:

“I suppose you’ll take charge now, Mr. Markham.”

Dinwiddie and Vance were talking together, and I watched Markham with
interest after what he had told us of the rivalry between the Police
Department and the District Attorney’s office.

Markham looked at Heath with a slow gracious smile, and shook his head.

“No, Sergeant,” he replied. “I’m here to work with you, and I want that
relationship understood from the outset. In fact, I wouldn’t be here now
if Major Benson hadn’t ’phoned me and asked me to lend a hand. And I
particularly want my name kept out of it. It’s pretty generally
known—and if it isn’t, it will be—that the Major is an old friend of
mine; so, it will be better all round if my connection with the case is
kept quiet.”

Heath murmured something I did not catch, but I could see that he had,
in large measure, been placated. He, in common with all other men who
were acquainted with Markham, knew his word was good; and he personally
liked the District Attorney.

“If there’s any credit coming from this affair,” Markham went on, “the
Police Department is to get it; therefore I think it best for you to see
the reporters. . . . And, by the way,” he added good-naturedly, “if
there’s any blame coming, you fellows will have to bear that, too.”

“Fair enough,” assented Heath.

“And now, Sergeant, let’s get to work,” said Markham.

—–

[5] The book was O. Henry’s _Strictly Business_, and the place at which
it was being held open was, curiously enough, the story entitled “A
Municipal Report.”

[6] Inspector Moran (as I learned later) had once been the president of
a large up-State bank that had failed during the panic of 1907, and
during the Gaynor Administration had been seriously considered for the
post of Police Commissioner.