The.... “KENNEL MURDER CASE”

Hawera Star, Volume LIV, 23 August 1935, Page 10

The.... “KENNEL MURDER CASE”

Synopsis of preceding - chapters: Philo Vance, expert in solving crimes, finds himself confronted -with an apparently hopeless tangle in the case of Archer Coe, collector of Chinese ceramics. Coe lives with his brother, Brisbane Coe, his niece and ward, Miss Hilda Lake, a Chinese cook and a butler. Coe is found dead in his bedroom. The door is bolted on the inside, and the windows tightly fastened. He is in a dressing gown, but wears street shoes. There is a revolver in his hand and a bullet wound in his temple, but it is determined that a stab in the back, which has v bled internally, is the cause of his death. Brisbane Coe is found in a downstairs closet, stabbed to death. A Scotch terrier, badly wounded, in found in- the house, though neither of the Coes liked dogs. Brisbane Coe was supposed to have started for Chicago on the night of the murder. In his pockets Vance finds some strands of waxed thread, a bent ,pin and a darning needle. Raymond Wrede, a neighbour, is questioned. So is Signor Grassi, representative of ah Italian museum, who has been Archer Coe’s house guest. Miss Lake is unaffected by her . guardian’s death. She is engaged: to Wrede, in opposition, to Archer Coe’s wishes. Vance finds fragments of a Chinese vase with blood on them; also thero are traces of blood in another vase. The poker is found, with which both Archer Coe and the Seottie were struck. On learning that Brisbane Coe was a Student -of criminology, Vance examines' his libraiy. He finds two books, recently read,, relating to crimes involving the belting of doors from, the outside. CHAPTER XXII. The three of us left Vance alone, in Brisbane Coe’s room, and as I closed the door I saw Vance stretch himself out on the davenport with the two books.

An hour later he came to the head of the stairs and called down to us. We joined him in Archer’s bedroom. He had both books with him, and I noticed that there were pages marked in each.

“I think I’ve found a solution to one phase of our problem,” he announced seriously, when we were seated. “But it may take a bit of working out.” He opened the novel. “Wallace has a clever idea here—l found the passage without too long a search. The tale, as I gather at a hasty reading, relates of a dead man found locked in a vault with the key to the door on the table before him. The vault door whs locked from the outside, of course. ... Here’s the explanat’ry pas-

sage: “No other word he spoke, but took

something from his pocket; it was a reel of stout cotton. Then from his waistcoat he produced a new pin, and with great care l and' solemnity tied the thread to the end of the pin, Tab watching, him intently. And all the time be 1 wasr working, Rex Lander was humming a little- tune, as though he were engaged in the most innocent occupation. Presently- he stuck the point of the. pin in the-centre of the table, and pulled at it by the thread he had-fastened. Apparently he was satisfied. He unwound a further. length of cotton, and when he 'had. sufficient

he threaded the - thp key upon it, carrying it well outside the door, The end he brought back into the vault, and then pushed it, out again from the inside' through one of the airholes. Then he closed the door carefully. He had left plenty of slack for. his purpose and Tab heard the click of the lock as it was fastened, and his heart sank. He watched the door fascinated, and saw that Lander Was pulling the slack of the cotton through the air-hole. Presently the key came, in sight under

the door. Higher and higher came the sagging line of cotton and the key rose until it Avas at the table’s level, slid down the 'taut cotton, and came to rest on the table. Tighter drew the strain of the thread, and presently the pin came out, passed through the hole in the key, : leaving it in the exact centre of 'the table. Tab watched the bright pin as it was pulled across the floor and through the ventilator.” “That’s the way Wallace worked his locked door,” said- Vance.

“But,” objected Markham. “There was an open ventilator in the door, and space beneath the door. Those conditions are not true here.”

“Yes—of course,” Vance returned. “But don’t overlook the fact that there was a string and a bent pin. At least they are common integers in the two problems. . . . Now, let’s see if we can combine those integers with certain common integers of the Konrad case.” Vance opened the other book. “Konrad,” Vance explained, “was a truckdriver in Berlin nearly fifty years ago. His wife and five children were found dead in their cellar room; and the door —a ponderous affair without even a keyhole or space around the moulding was securely bolted on the inside. The case was at once pronounced one of murder and suicide on the part of the mother; and Konrad would have been free to marry his inamorata (whom he had in the offing) had it not been for an examining magistrate of the criminal court, named Hollmann. Hollmann, for no tangible reason, did not believe in the suicide theory, and set to work to figure out how Konrad could have bolted the door from without. Here’s the revela.t’ry passage; f

By S. S. VAN DINE

“Hollmanu, urged on by his conviction that Prau Ivonrad had not murdered her children and committed suicide, determined, as a last resort, to give the entire door, both inside and ■outside, a microscopic examination. But there was not the slightest aperture anywhere, and the door fitted so tightly around the frame-?that a piece of paper could not have been passed through any crevice. Hollmann examined the door minutely with a powerful lens. It required hours of labour, but in the end : he was rewarded. Just above the bolt he found on the inside, close to the edge of the door, a very small hole whieh was barely discernible. Opening the door he inspected the outside surface directly opposite to the hole on the inside. But there was no corresponding hole - visible. Hollmann did find on the outside of the door, however, a small spot on which the paint seemed fresher than that on the Test of the door. The spot was solid, but this did not deter Hollmann’s investiga-

ition. He borrowed a hatpin from one of the tenants in the buildings, and heating it, ran it through the hole on I the inside. With but little pressure the heated hatpin penetrated the door, coming out on the outside exactly in the centre of the newly painted spot. Moreover, when Hollmann withdrew the hatpin a piece of tough horsehair adhered to the pin; and on the pin was also discernible a slight film of wax. . . It was obvious then how Konrad had bolted the door from without. He had ‘first bored a tiny hole’through the door above the bolt, looped a piece of horsehair over the bolt’s knob, and slipped the two ends through the hole. He had then pulled the bolt-knob upward until the horsehair loop Avas disengaged, withdrawing the horsehair through the hole. A piece of the horsehair had, however, caught in the hole and re luained there. Konrad had then filled up the hole with w T ax and painted it on the outside, thereby eliminating practically every trace of his criminal device. He was later cpnvicted of the murder of his family, sentenced to death, and hanged.’ . . .” “The cases in those two books are easy enough to understand, but neither of ’em will work here,” said Heath. “Maybe the two together will Avork,” suggested Vance. “Kook at the wall just to the right of the jamb and opposite to the bolt. Do you see anything!” Heath looked closely, using his pocket magnifying glass and his flashlight.

“I don’t see much,” he grumbled. “Right in the crack of the jamb and wall there’s what might be a pinhole.” “That’s it, sergeant!” Vance rose and went to the door; and Markham and I followed him. “I think I’ll try the experiment I have in mind.” We all watched him with fascinated

interest. First he reached in his pocket and drew forth the two pieces of string and bent pins and the darning-needle he had found in the pocket of Brisbane Coe’s overcoat. By means of his packet knife he straightened one of tlje pins and inserted it in the hole Heath had found in- the wall at the edge of the jamb, giving it several taps with the handle of his knife to drive it in rather securely. He then threaded the other

end of the string in the darning-needle and passed it through the keyhole into the hall, removing the needle and letting the string fall to the hair floor. After this operation, he bent the other pin securely round the upright knob of 'the bolt, passed the string over the pin

he had driven into the wall, and, threading this, second' string into the -darning-needle, passed it also through the keyhole to the hall. He then opened the door about eighteen inches, drawing the two stringsi partly' back through the keyhole in a loop to permit the door to swing inward without disturbing his mechanism.

“ Let me see if the device works,” lie said, with an undercurrent of suppressed excitement. “You stay in the room while I go outside an’d manipulate the strings.” He bent down and passed under the two strings into the hall. Then he closed the door gently, while we remained inside, our eyes riveted to the two strings and the two pins. Presently we saw the string which

was attached to the bolt-knob go taulp, as Vance drew it slowly through the keyhole. Passing over the pin in the wall, which acted as a pulley, the string described a sharp angle, with the pin

in the wall as the apex. Slowly Vance drew the string from outside, and the bolt, getting a straight pull around the pin, began to move into its socket on the jamb. The door was bolted!

The next thing we saw was the tightening of the other string—the one attached to the head of the pin in the Avail. There came several jerks on the ■string—the pin in the wall resisted several times and bent toward .the source of the pull. Finally, it was disengaged from the wall; and it was then drawn upward from its depending position, disappearing through the keyhole. The other string, still hooked about the bolt-knob, Avas then drawn taut through the keyhole, describing a straight line from the bolt-knob to the keyhole which Avas almost directly below it. Another slight pull by Vance on the string, and the knob fell down-

ward into its groove. Another pull, and the bent pin was disengaged from the knob and pulled through the keyhole into the hall. Markham, Heath, and I had been bolted in the room from the hall as neatly as if we ourselves had shot the bolt and locked it. The sergeant, after a moment’s stupefaction, threw back the bolt and opened the door.

“It worked?” asked Vance, coming into the room. “It worked,” mumbled Heath laconically. (To be continued daily.)