The Greatest Works of S. S. Van Dine (Illustrated Edition). S.S. Van Dine

A SUSPECT

       CHAPTER XI. A MOTIVE AND A THREAT

       CHAPTER XII. THE OWNER OF A COLT-.45

       CHAPTER XIII. THE GREY CADILLAC

       CHAPTER XIV. LINKS IN THE CHAIN

       CHAPTER XV. “PFYFE—PERSONAL”

       CHAPTER XVI. ADMISSIONS AND SUPPRESSIONS

       CHAPTER XVII. THE FORGED CHECK

       CHAPTER XVIII. A CONFESSION

       CHAPTER XIX. VANCE CROSS-EXAMINES

       CHAPTER XX. A LADY EXPLAINS

       CHAPTER XXI. SARTORIAL REVELATIONS

       CHAPTER XXII. VANCE OUTLINES A THEORY

       CHAPTER XXIII. CHECKING AN ALIBI

       CHAPTER XXIV. THE ARREST

       CHAPTER XXV. VANCE EXPLAINS HIS METHODS

      CHARACTERS OF THE BOOK

      Philo Vance

      John F.-X. Markham

      District Attorney of New York County.

      Alvin H. Benson

      Well-known Wall Street broker and man-about-town, who was mysteriously murdered in his home.

      Major Anthony Benson

      Brother of the murdered man.

      Mrs. Anna Platz

      Housekeeper for Alvin Benson.

      Muriel St. Clair

      A young singer.

      Captain Philip Leacock

      Miss St. Clair’s fiancé.

      Leander Pfyfe

      Intimate friend of Alvin Benson’s.

      Mrs. Paula Banning

      A friend of Leander Pfyfe’s.

      Elsie Hoffman

      Secretary of the firm of Benson and Benson.

      Colonel Bigsby Ostrander

      A retired army officer.

      William H. Moriarty

      An alderman, Borough of the Bronx.

      Jack Prisco

      Elevator-boy at the Chatham Arms.

      George G. Stitt

      Of the firm of Stitt and McCoy, Public Accountants.

      Maurice Dinwiddie

      Assistant District Attorney.

      Chief Inspector O’Brien

      Of the Police Department of New York City.

      William M. Moran

      Commanding Officer of the Detective Bureau.

      Ernest Heath

      Sergeant of the Homicide Bureau.

      Burke

      Detective of the Homicide Bureau.

      Snitkin

      Detective of the Homicide Bureau.

      Emery

      Detective of the Homicide Bureau.

      Ben Hanlon

      Commanding Officer of Detectives assigned to District Attorney’s office.

      Phelps

      Detective assigned to District Attorney’s office.

      Tracy

      Detective assigned to District Attorney’s office.

      Springer

      Detective assigned to District Attorney’s office.

      Higginbotham

      Detective assigned to District Attorney’s office.

      Captain Carl Hagedorn

      Fire-arms expert.

      Dr. Doremus

      Medical Examiner.

      Francis Swacker

      Secretary to the District Attorney.

      Currie

      Vance’s valet.

      CHAPTER I

       PHILO VANCE AT HOME

       Table of Contents

      (Friday, June 14; 8.30 a.m.)

      It happened that, on the morning of the momentous June the fourteenth when the discovery of the murdered body of Alvin H. Benson created a sensation which, to this day, has not entirely died away, I had breakfasted with Philo Vance in his apartment. It was not unusual for me to share Vance’s luncheons and dinners, but to have breakfast with him was something of an occasion. He was a late riser, and it was his habit to remain incommunicado until his midday meal.

      The reason for this early meeting was a matter of business—or, rather, of æsthetics. On the afternoon of the previous day Vance had attended a preview of Vollard’s collection of Cézanne water-colors at the Kessler Galleries, and having seen several pictures he particularly wanted, he had invited me to an early breakfast to give me instructions regarding their purchase.

      A word concerning my relationship with Vance is necessary to clarify my rôle of narrator in this chronicle. The legal tradition is deeply imbedded in my family, and when my preparatory-school days were over, I was sent, almost as a matter of course, to Harvard to study law. It was there I met Vance, a reserved, cynical and caustic freshman who was the bane of his professors and the fear of his fellow-classmen. Why he should have chosen me, of all the students at the University, for his extra-scholastic association, I have never been able to understand fully. My own liking for Vance was simply explained: he fascinated and interested me, and supplied me with a novel kind of intellectual diversion. In his liking for me, however, no such basis of appeal was present. I was (and am now) a commonplace fellow, possessed of a conservative and rather conventional mind. But, at least, my mentality was not rigid, and the ponderosity of the legal procedure did not impress me greatly—which is why, no doubt, I had little taste for my inherited profession—; and it is possible that these traits found certain affinities in Vance’s unconscious mind. There is, to be sure, the less consoling explanation that I appealed to Vance as a kind of foil, or anchorage, and that he sensed in my nature a complementary antithesis to his own. But whatever the explanation, we were much together; and, as