The Benson Murder Case Read Online Free

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?”
    â€œDo? 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.
    â€œI’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.”
    â€œI trust you won’t also wear your green carnation,” grumbled Markham.
    â€œTut! Tut!” Vance chid 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 recognised the true eagerness of the man for a new experience and one that promised such dramatic possibilities for his alert and observing mind.
    â€œYou 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 favourite 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 favour, to take charge. I’ve known the Major for twenty years, and I couldn’t very well refuse. So I took a hurriedbreakfast and started for Benson’s house. He lives on West Forty-eighth Street; and as I passed your corner I remembered your request, and dropped in to see if you cared to go along.”
    â€œMost 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 defunot 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?”
    â€œCertainly 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 dealing 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 symbolised for Markham the care-free, exotio, gipsy 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