CHAPTER I

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 that 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.”[1]

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[2] (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 dashed 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?”

“The Bliss butler. . . . So I merely pushed the door open and entered
the hallway. The steel entrance door to the museum, which is on the
right of the hallway, is rarely locked, and I opened it. Just as I
started to descend the stairs into the museum I saw some one lying in
the opposite corner of the room. At first I thought it might be one of
the mummy cases we’d unpacked yesterday—the light wasn’t very good—and
then, as my eyes got adjusted, I realized it was Kyle. He was crumpled
up, with his arms extended over his head. . . . Even then I thought he
had only fallen in a faint; and I started down the steps toward him.”

He paused and passed his handkerchief—which he drew from his
cuff—across his shining head.

“By Jove, Vance!—it was a hideous sight. He’d been hit over the head
with one of the new statues we placed in the museum yesterday, and his
skull had been crushed in like an egg-shell. The statue still lay across
his head.”

“Did you touch anything?”

“Good heavens, no!” Scarlett spoke with the emphasis of horror. “I was
too ill—the thing was ghastly. And it didn’t take half an eye to see
that the poor beggar was dead.”

Vance studied the man closely.

“I say, what was the first thing you did?”

“I called out for Doctor Bliss—he has his study at the top of the
little spiral stairs at the rear of the museum. . . .”

“And got no answer?”

“No—no answer. . . . Then—I admit—I got frightened. Didn’t like the
idea of being found alone with a murdered man, and toddled back toward
the front door. Had a notion I’d sneak out and not say I’d been
there. . . .”

“Ah!” Vance leaned forward and carefully selected another cigarette.
“And then, when you were again in the street, you fell to worryin’.”

“That’s it precisely! It didn’t seem cricket to leave the poor devil
there—and still I didn’t want to become involved. . . . I was now
walking up Fourth Avenue threshing the thing out with myself and bumping
against people without seeing ’em. And I happened to think of you. I
knew you were acquainted with Doctor Bliss and the outfit, and could
give me good advice. And another thing, I felt a little strange in a new
country—I wasn’t just sure how to go about reporting the matter. . . .
So I hurried along to your flat here.” He stopped abruptly and watched
Vance eagerly. “What’s the procedure?”

Vance stretched his long legs before him and lazily contemplated the end
of his cigarette.

“I’ll take over the procedure,” he replied at length. “It’s not so
dashed complicated, and it varies according to circumstances. One may
call the police station, or stick one’s head out of the window and
scream, or confide in a traffic officer, or simply ignore the corpse and
wait for some one else to stumble on it. It amounts to the same thing in
the end—the murderer is almost sure to get safely away. . . . However,
in the present case I’ll vary the system a bit by telephoning to the
Criminal Courts Building.”

He turned to the mother-of-pearl French telephone on the Venetian
tabouret at his side, and asked for a number. A few moments later he was
speaking to the District Attorney.

“Greetings, Markham old dear. Beastly weather, what?” His voice was too
indolent to be entirely convincing. “By the by, Benjamin H. Kyle has
passed to his Maker by foul means. He’s at present lying on the floor of
the Bliss Museum with a badly fractured skull. . . . Oh, yes—quite
dead, I understand. Are you interested, by any chance? Thought I’d be
unfriendly and notify you. . . . Sad—sad. . . . I’m about to make a few
observations _in situ criminis_. . . . Tut, tut! This is no time for
reproaches. Don’t be so deuced serious. . . . Really, I think you’d
better come along. . . . Right-o! I’ll await you here.”

He replaced the receiver on the bracket and again settled back in his
chair.

“The District Attorney will be along anon,” he announced, “and we’ll
probably have time for a few observations before the police arrive.”

His eyes shifted dreamily to Scarlett.

“Yes . . . as you say . . . I’m acquainted with the Bliss outfit.
Fascinatin’ possibilities in the affair: it may prove most
entertainin’. . . .” (I knew by his expression that his mind was
contemplating—not without a certain degree of anticipatory interest—a
new criminal problem.) “So, the front door was ajar, eh? And when you
called out no one answered?”

Scarlett nodded but made no audible reply. He was obviously puzzled by
Vance’s casual reception of his appalling recital.

“Where were the servants? Couldn’t they have heard you call?”

“Not likely. They’re in the other side of the house—down-stairs. The
only person who could have heard me was Doctor Bliss—provided he’d been
in his study.”

“You could have rung the front door-bell, or summoned some one from the
main hall,” Vance suggested.

Scarlett shifted in his chair uneasily.

“Quite true,” he admitted. “But—dash it all, old man!—I was in a
funk. . . .”

“Yes, yes—of course. Most natural. _Prima-facie_ evidence and all that.
Very suspicious, eh what? Still, you had no reason for wanting the old
codger out of the way, had you?”

“Oh, my God, no!” Scarlett went pale. “He footed the bills. Without his
support the Bliss excavations and the museum itself would go by the
board.”

Vance nodded.

“Bliss told me of the situation when I was in Egypt. . . . Didn’t Kyle
own the property in which the museum is situated?”

“Yes—both houses. You see, there are two of ’em. Bliss and his family
and young Salveter—Kyle’s nephew—live in one, and the museum occupies
the other. Two doors have been cut through, and the museum-house
entrance has been bricked up. So it’s practically one establishment.”

“And where did Kyle live?”

“In the brownstone house next to the museum. He owned a block of six or
seven adjoining houses along the street.”

Vance rose and walked meditatively to the window.

“Do you know how Kyle became interested in Egyptology? It was rather out
of his line. His weakness was for hospitals and those unspeakable
English portraits of the Gainsborough school. He was one of the bidders
for the _Blue Boy_. Luckily for him, he didn’t get it.”

“It was young Salveter who wangled his uncle into financing Bliss. The
lad was a pupil of Bliss’s when the latter was instructor of Egyptology
at Harvard. When he was graduated he was at a loose end, and old Kyle
financed the expedition to give the lad something to do. Very fond of
his nephew, was old Kyle.”

“And Salveter’s been with Bliss ever since?”

“Very much so. To the extent of living in the same house with him.
Hasn’t left his side since their first visit to Egypt three years ago.
Bliss made him Assistant Curator of the Museum. He deserved the post,
too. A bright boy—lives and eats Egyptology.”

Vance returned to the table and rang for Currie.

“The situation has possibilities,” he remarked, in his habitual
drawl. . . . “By the by, what other members of the Bliss ménage are
there?”

“There’s Mrs. Bliss—you met her in Cairo—a strange girl, half
Egyptian, much younger than Bliss. And then there’s Hani, an Egyptian,
whom Bliss brought back with him—or, rather, whom _Mrs._ Bliss brought
back with _her_. Hani was an old dependent of Meryt’s father. . . .”

“Meryt?”

Scarlett blinked and looked ill at ease.

“I meant Mrs. Bliss,” he explained. “Her given name is Meryt-Amen. In
Egypt, you see, it’s customary to think of a lady by her native name.”

“Oh, quite.” A slight smile flickered at the corner of Vance’s mouth.
“And what position does this Hani occupy in the household?”

Scarlett pursed his lips.

“A somewhat anomalous one, if you ask me. Fellahîn stock—a Coptic
Christian of sorts. He accompanied old Abercrombie—Meryt’s father—on
his various tours of exploration. When Abercrombie died, he acted as a
kind of foster-father to Meryt. He was attached to the Bliss expedition
this spring in some minor capacity as a representative of the Egyptian
Government. He’s a sort of high-class handy-man about the museum. Knows
a lot of Egyptology, too.”

“Does he hold any official post with the Egyptian Government now?”

“That I don’t know . . . though I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s doing a
bit of patriotic spying. You never can tell about these chaps.”

“And do these persons complete the household?”

“There are two American servants—Brush, the butler, and Dingle, the
cook.”

Currie entered the room at this moment.

“Oh, I say, Currie,” Vance addressed him; “an eminent gentleman has just
been murdered in the neighborhood, and I am going to view the body. Lay
out a dark gray suit and my Bangkok. A sombre tie, of course. . . . And,
Currie—the Amontillado first.”

“Yes, sir.”

Currie received the news as if murders were everyday events in his life,
and went out.

“Do you know any reason, Scarlett,” Vance asked, “why Kyle should have
been put out of the way?”

The other hesitated almost imperceptibly.

“Can’t imagine,” he said, knitting his brows. “He was a kindly, generous
old fellow—pompous and rather vain, but eminently likable. I’m not
acquainted with his private life, though. He may have had
enemies. . . .”

“Still,” suggested Vance, “it’s not exactly likely that an enemy would
have followed him to the museum and wreaked vengeance on him in a
strange place, when any one might have walked in.”

Scarlett sat up abruptly.

“But you’re not implying that any one in the house——”

“My dear fellow!”

Currie entered the room at this moment with the sherry, and Vance poured
out three glasses. When we had drunk the wine he excused himself to
dress. Scarlett paced up and down restlessly during the quarter of an
hour Vance was absent. He had discarded his cigarette and lighted an old
briar pipe which had a most atrocious smell.

Almost at the moment when Vance returned to the library an automobile
horn sounded raucously outside. Markham was below waiting for us.

As we walked toward the door Vance asked Scarlett:

“Was it custom’ry for Kyle to be in the museum at this hour of the
morning?”

“No, most unusual. But Doctor Bliss had made an appointment with him for
this morning, to discuss the expenditures of the last expedition and the
possibilities of continuing the excavations next season.”

“You knew of this appointment?” Vance asked indifferently.

“Oh, yes. Doctor Bliss called him by phone last night during the
conference, when we were assembling the report.”

“Well, well.” Vance passed out into the hall. “So there were others who
also knew that Kyle would be at the museum this morning.”

Scarlett halted and looked startled.

“Really, you’re not intimating——” he began.

“Who heard the appointment made?” Vance was already descending the
stairs.

Scarlett followed him with puzzled, downcast eyes.

“Well, let me see. . . . There was Salveter, and Hani, and . . .”

“Pray, don’t hesitate.”

“And Mrs. Bliss.”

“Every one in the household, then, but Brush and Dingle?”

“Yes. . . . But see here, Vance; the appointment was for eleven o’clock;
and the poor old duffer was done in before half past ten.”

“That’s most inveiglin’,” Vance murmured.

—–

[1] Doctor Mindrum W. C. Bliss, M.A., A.O.S.S., F.S.A., F.R.S., Hon.
Mem. R.A.S., was the author of “The Stele of Intefoe at Koptos”; a
“History of Egypt during the Hyksos Invasion”; “The Seventeenth
Dynasty”; and a monograph on the Amen-hotpe III Colossi.

[2] According to the Bliss-Weigall chronology the period between the
death of Sebk-nefru-Rê and the overthrow of the Shepherd Kings at
Memphis was from 1898 to 1577 B. C.—to wit: 321 years—as against the
1800 years claimed by the upholders of the longer chronology. This short
chronology is even shorter according to Breasted and the German school.
Breasted and Meyer dated the same period as from 1788 to 1580. These 208
years, by the way, Vance considered too short for the observable
cultural changes.