The Twenty-Six Clues/Chapter 1

HE one thing you psychometric enthusiasts overlook in claiming perfection for your method of solving crime is the human equation. Your machines for recording the emotions of the suspect cannot lie, it is true, but neither can they tell the truth. Granted that they are perfect in themselves, they are operated by the most faulty machine created since the beginning of time—the human being. You, Mr. Terhune, are unquestionably the greatest living master of scientific criminal investigation, but do the purely mechanical implements of your trade invariably probe to the very soul of the crime?"

Five men of oddly assorted types were seated about a round table drawn up closely before the fireplace at one end of the spacious dining-room with coffee and liqueurs before them. The speaker, evidently the host, was small and elderly, with bushy gray hair and a pointed Vandyke beard which waggled excitedly when he talked yet lent an air of distinction to his dapper evening garb. His eyes beamed in eager, ingenuous interest through their heavy tortoise-rimmed glasses, but the lean, ascetic individual across the table whom he had addressed smiled austerely and lifted supercilious brows as he replied:

"My dear Mr. Norwood, we do not rely only on what you designate the mechanical implements of our trade; we are fully aware of a prepared to cope with such subjective phenomena as hysteria, defective mentality, falsehood, suggestion and self-deception. That is where the human equation proves of value. The mechanical implement is supplemented by the trained, analytical mind."

Mr. Calvin Norwood nodded.

"But that brings us again to the faulty human machine," he remarked slyly. "Is the investigator himself proof against at least two forms of the subjective phenomena you mention: suggestion and self-deception? A preconceived theory"

"We do not deal in theories." Wade Terhune interrupted with a trace of asperity. "We work on a basis of proof, not opinion; proof obtained by tapping all the resources of modern science. Toxicology, bacteriology, chemistry, mineralogy, physics, chirography, microscopy, all aid us in the solution of crime. The expert criminalist must be a profound and almost universal student before he can hope to succeed."

"And what is your method, Mr. McCarty?" The host turned to a stocky, broad-shouldered man at his left. "You achieved success in more than one intricate case while you were connected with the police force of the city to say nothing of your work last year in the Rowntree-Collins affair. The investigation of crime has been my hobby for more than twenty years and I follow the records of the department faithfully. What is your modus operandi?"

"My what, sir?" inquired ex-Roundsman Timothy McCarty carefully. "You might not think it, but I would have lit on the truth a good deal earlier in that Rowntree case if I'd known what the Coroner was getting at when he sprung that 'corpus delicti' thing on us at the inquest"

Calvin Norwood took the hint.

"I mean, what is your procedure in starting an investigation?" he hastened to explain. "How do you go about it?"

McCarty stroked the immaculate chin beneath his stubby, sandy mustache reflectively.

"I don't know, sir," he responded in all sincerity. "I've no science like Mr. Terhune, only the wits I was born with. I just take the facts that's as plain as the nose on your face and fit them together. You see, Mr. Norwood, I had my training in the old days when it meant promotion if you got the guilty party, or a quick transfer to some backwoods precinct if you didn't. When anything stumped me I'd talk it over with my old friend here, Denny Riordan, and many a pointer I've got from him, though it's little he knew it himself, half the time!"

The long-limbed, lantern-jawed gentleman beside him stirred resentfully and his host smiled.

"I know of Mr. Riordan's co-operation with you," he said. "When I read the narrative which gave the inside facts of the Rowntree case I was anxious to meet you and talk it over with you; that is why I persuaded Mr. Terhune to bring you both here to dine with me to-night. Mr. Riordan, how do you analyze a case?"

"I don't!" protested Dennis Riordan hurriedly. "I'm a city fireman, not a detective, Mr. Norwood. However, being Mac's pal I'm let in for most that he's got on his mind. Before his uncle died and left him a landed proprietor so that he quit the force, there wasn't much came up in the department that we didn't discuss and scrap over and settle to suit ourselves. When he was on a case I'd just trail along with him to see what would happen."

"Interesting, Victor, eh!" Norwood turned to the fifth man, who had made no move to join in the conversation.

He was slim and dark, with a delicate, sensitive face which bore the scars of a skillfully healed wound. Obviously in his twenties, he held himself with an erect military air, the bit of ribbon in the lapel of his dinner jacket and cross with two palms below it which he was destined never to behold attesting to the gallantry that had cost him his sight.

He bowed slightly and smiled as his soft, blind, brown eyes tinned instinctively in the direction from which he had been addressed.

"Most interesting, Monsieur Norwood," he responded. "A d'Artagnan of the gendarmerie, is it not so? I have much desire to learn more of the little machines of Monsieur Terhune, however. To me it is quite incomprehensible, this recording of the emotions automatically; it would appear a miracle."

Terhune unbent and his quick smile lost all trace of patronage.

"It will be a privilege, my dear Captain Marchal, to give you a practical demonstration," he announced. "I will arrange to have you present at the next scientific experiment upon which I may be engaged, that you may note the effectiveness of my method. I can promise you that you will be astounded at the reactions displayed. But our host has made a collection of souvenirs which interests me profoundly. Are we to be favored this evening by a sort of private view, Mr. Norwood?"

"I should scarcely call them 'souvenirs'!" retorted his host with a shade of injured dignity. "In my crime museum I have assembled relics which have formed important data on many strange cases, solved and unsolved, as well as objects that have played significant parts in moments when history was made. I have been a mere dabbler, a dilettante in criminal investigation but occasionally a real find has come my way which at the time when inquiry was rife would have been of inestimable value to the authorities but which they themselves failed to unearth. For instance, within the last few days a worn black wallet has come into my possession which contains the only tangible clue to a mystery which aroused and baffled the city ten years ago. I tell you this in confidence, gentlemen, for I mean to work upon its evidence myself before turning it over to the police; they have resented my suggestions in the past and refused my offers of co-operation on more than one occasion. I feel perfectly justified in withholding this from them for the present in view of the length of time that has elapsed since their investigation of the case was dropped."

"What mystery was that, sir?" asked McCarty, his embarrassment at the unaccustomed grandeur of his surroundings wholly forgotten in his interest. "I don't call to mind any case that wasn't finished about that time, and I was on the force then."

"The Hoyos case, Mr. McCarty."

"Think of that, now!" Dennis, too, broke through the bonds of self-consciousness which had held his abashed tongue in leash. "You remember it, Mac! That Dago who was lost off his yacht in the Hudson? 'Twas when you were laid up after Nick the Wop knifed you! You said yourself it was no suicide at the time, though the Chief let it go at that."

"I recall it," McCarty responded. "And so you've fresh evidence, sir? I'd like nothing better than a peep at your museum."

"Come then," Calvin Norwood rose. "I'll show you some interesting things."

"If you will excuse me." The young Frenchman spoke hesitatingly in a lowered tone. "I—there are some letters which I can finish typing, Monsieur Norwood, and you will perhaps not require my presence"

"Oh, let the letters go, Victor." The older man interrupted with kindly solicitude. "You have not been like yourself this evening, and we can't have you moping off all alone too much, my boy. Besides, I may need you to check me up on some of my data. You can have no idea, gentlemen, what a valuable assistant Captain Marchal has already proved himself. My museum is as sacred to me as a gallery of Old Masters would be to an art connoisseur, and my young friend here has developed a positive flair for the work."

Victor Marchal flushed darkly at the praise.

"I find it most interesting, this study of crime in the abstract," he repeated. "It was to me a pleasure to catalogue the contents of this unique museum."

Nevertheless, he hung back with evident reluctance when the others prepared to follow their host and McCarty watching his sensitive face noted the shade of repugnance which passed across it and did not marvel. To a young man fresh from the carnage of war and all but prostrated beneath the shock of the irreparable blow which it had dealt to him, a more cheerful atmosphere could well be imagined than the morbid horrors of a crime museum, but after his first momentary hesitation he resigned himself in suave compliance to his patron's suggestion.

The Norwood residence was an imposing if somewhat old-fashioned structure of brownstone situated near the Park in the most aristocratic section of the city, its center hall flanked by drawing-room and music-room on one side, library and dining-room on the other while at the rear a square, flat-roofed single-storied wing had been added which occupied almost half of the ample back-yard space, with a narrow strip of garden on either side.

It was toward this wing that the elated host marshaled his guests, chattering volubly the while with the naïve delight of an enthusiast sure of a congenial audience.

"You will see, gentlemen, the actual operating table upon which the mad surgeon Valparese committed so many murders before his mania was discovered. Upon it, beneath the blanket which covered Madero's body immediately after his assassination, lies the skeleton of the once beautiful Duchess of Piatra, the instigator and herself the victim of the famous Bucharest poisonings a generation ago."

Dennis Riordan clutched the arm of his friend McCarty with a muttered exclamation, but the latter shook him off in scorn and pressed forward lest a word of Norwood's discourse be lost to his avid ears.

"I have relics to show you of less celebrated but quite as interesting crimes." The sprightly, little, elderly gentleman continued with ghoulish relish. "For instance, the pocketknife which after five years convicted that Yonkers factory superintendent, Arnold, of the murder of his employer; also the knotted rope which proved that Ogilvy, the eccentric Scotch millionaire, was hanged and did not commit suicide, and the bottle of supposed headache cure—but you shall see for yourselves!"

They had reached the end of the corridor and Norwood with a flourish threw open the door leading to the wing and pressing an electric-light switch stepped aside that the others might precede him. They beheld a square, spacious, high-ceilinged room with a huge fireplace in the center of the left wall, tall windows at the farther end and long shelves and rows of cases filled with an incongruous and bewildering miscellany of objects familiar and bizarre.

In the center of the room directly beneath the great dome of light stood a long table upon which was suggestively outlined a figure beneath the gayly colored, sinisterly stained Mexican blanket, and on all sides ordinary firearms were mingled with strange knives and weapons, bits of fabric, fragments of furniture, medieval parchments, modern documents and hermetically sealed glass jars containing relics of a more gruesome nature which combined to form the oddest conglomeration that had ever met their marveling gaze.

With an exclamation of keen, professional interest Wade Terhune advanced and McCarty followed gazing about him in awed wonderment. Dennis Riordan hung doggedly at his heels and the secretary, Marchal, brought up the rear with Norwood's guiding hand upon his arm.

"Ah! This, I take it, is your collection of footprint molds, of which you told me the other day." Terhune had paused at the first flat, glass-topped case. "Your theory regarding them was inconclusive but highly ingenious, I remember. I congratulate you, Mr. Norwood; you have indeed a most complete aggregation of specimens"

"That is only the beginning." His gratified host drew him to a second case and McCarty turned aside to a shelf upon which a certain glass jar had caught his eye.

Discovering that it contained a neatly severed human ear he was hurriedly replacing it, when a smothered exclamation from Dennis Riordan summoned him.

The lanky fireman, awkward enough in his civilian clothes, had been drawn as by a magnet to the bright-hued blanket covering the skeleton upon the table and as his friend approached he muttered darkly:

"Mac, would you believe it? 'Twas this very rag they covered Madero with, after the murdering devils had riddled him with bullets! By the powers, I'm not a believer in ghosts but this is not the room I'd choose to spend a night in by myself! I don't wonder that blind young Frenchman would rather juggle his typewriter than take a chance of running up against one of these relics unbeknownst!"

"Whist, he'll hear you!" McCarty cautioned. "He's standing over by the fireplace. Come on and look at something more cheerful; there's a pickled ear over yonder"

"I want none of it!" Dennis announced with a shudder. "I've heard of grown men running like mad after butterflies and spending their last nickel for canceled stamps and such, but it's a strange and unholy taste that would lead to a collection of this sort! Still, I would like one peep at the bones of the Duchess Who's-this, under the blanket. From the bulk of it, Madero himself might be lying beneath it"

"I've no doubt Mr. Norwood will show it to you, after. Come on, now, and listen to him!" McCarty urged. "What's that he's taking out of the case?"

"—Singular indeed!" Wade Terhune's comment carried distinctly to their ears in grudging admiration. "Poisoned court-plaster! I confess I never should have thought of so simple a method of introducing deadly toxin directly into the blood."

"It found an innocent victim." Calvin Norwood closed the glass lid. "You may recall the inexplicable death of the little Thorndike heiress, after a slight fall which merely grazed her knee? The matter was hushed up for family reasons and this bit of plaster came into my possession in a confidential manner, but I have a very definite idea as to the murderer's identity and for whom he really intended its use. However, I want to show you the Hoyos wallet, of which I spoke before we came in here. It contains some letters which throw an entirely new light Ah, Mr. Riordan! You are interested in the Madero blanket?"

He had turned to cross the room and encountered Dennis, who still lingered as if fascinated at the head of the long table.

"In what's under it, sir," Dennis responded. "The bones of this Duchess you told us about. Did she have any hair left now, I wonder?"

He spoke with elaborate carelessness, but McCarty who had turned also from his place at Norwood's elbow, eyed him sharply and then took a quick step toward him.

"Hair?" repeated the amateur criminologist with an indulgent smile. "In life the Duchess of Piatra had very beautiful red hair and a few strands of it cling still to the skull. Would you care to see it?"

"Red hair, you say, sir? And it couldn't change after?" There was a note of suppressed excitement in Dennis' voice now which drew even Wade Terhune's attention, and the young Frenchman, too, awoke from his reverie and approached. Dennis' rugged face had paled slightly and his gray eyes glinted. "Mr. Norwood, I would like nothing better than to see what is here!"

Still smiling, their host advanced to the side of the table.

"The Duchess of Piatra," he began in his most didactic manner, "was accredited the most beautiful woman in the Balkans twenty years ago. During the last of the petty wars before the great world-struggle her tomb was rifled and I managed, after much diplomatic bartering, to obtain the skeleton. The nature of the poison which killed her has never been discovered, but it had a curious effect upon the bones, as you may see"

Norwood lifted a corner of the blanket and with one jerk swept it to the floor. The next instant he had leaped back, his face gray and eyes fairly protruding from their sockets while a sound like a sharp, convulsive gasp emanated from the tense group about him.

Stretched upon the table lay no skeleton but the rounded life-like form of a young woman in all the opulent curves of budding maturity. One arm was crumpled beneath her, the other lay carelessly across the breast of her dark silk gown and her masses of disheveled, jet-black hair rippled over the edge of the table. It would seem almost that she slept until her face was seen and then the distorted swollen features, the staring eyes and blackened, protruding tongue revealed the hideous truth no less surely than the blue scarf which had been knotted so ruthlessly about her slender throat as to seem almost embedded in the flesh.

"My God! What is this!" Norwood croaked at last.

Terhune stood as if petrified, but Dennis rocked upon his heels.

"Holy Mother!" he ejaculated. "Is it the Duchess herself come to life a corpse again, or is it?"

"It's murder!" McCarty announced in an awestruck tone, as he touched the face of the dead woman. "The woman's been strangled within the hour! Who is she?"

"Murder?" Victor Marchal elbowed him aside and groping wildly for the table, bent above it. He had scarcely touched it, however, when he straightened and cowered back.

"That perfume!" His cry rang through the room. "That scent of the Rose d'Amour! It is she! Madame Jarvis!"

"Evelyn? God, can it be?" Calvin Norwood gasped in a raucous whisper as his shuddering gaze swept the still form before him. "It—it is! Who can have done this fearful thing!"

"Murder, is it?" Dennis' voice expressed a certain revived confidence now that he was assured the materialization before them, tragic as it was, had not been induced by some dread supernatural agency. He turned to McCarty in swift challenge: "Now, you Irish son-of-a-gun, solve that!