The «Canary» Murder Case / Смерть Канарейки. Книга для чтения на английском языке

”

“You don’t say—really!” Vance appeared dumb-founded. “I must look into this. … And, by the bye, when this Beau Brummel of the silk shirt paused by the front door, did he take his cigarette from a long flat silver case carried in his lower waistcoat pocket?”

The youth looked at Vance in admiring astonishment.

“How did you know?” he exclaimed.

“Simple deduction,” Vance explained, resuming his recumbent posture. “Large metal cigarette-cases carried in the waistcoat pocket somehow go with silk shirts for evening wear.

”

Markham, clearly annoyed at the interruption, cut in sharply with a demand for the operator to proceed with his description.

“He wore his hair smoothed down,” Spively continued, “and you could see it was kind of long; but it was cut in the latest style. And he had a small waxed moustache; and there was a big carnation in the lapel of his coat, and he had on chamois gloves. …”

“My word!” murmured Vance. “A gigolo!”

Markham, with the incubus of the night clubs riding him heavily, frowned and took a deep breath.

Vance’s observation evidently had launched him on an unpleasant train of thought.

“Was this man short or tall?” he asked next.

“He wasn’t so tall—about my height,” Spively explained. “And he was sort of thin.”

There was an easily recognizable undercurrent of admiration in his tone, and I felt that this youthful telephone operator had seen in Miss Odell’s caller a certain physical and sartorial ideal. This palpable admiration, coupled with the somewhat outrе[34 - outrе (фр.

) – зд. экстравагантный] clothes affected by the youth, permitted us to read between the lines of his remarks a fairly accurate description of the man who had unsuccessfully rung the dead girl’s bell at half past nine the night before.

When Spively had been dismissed, Markham rose and strode about the room, his head enveloped in a cloud of cigar smoke, while Heath sat stolidly watching him, his brows knit.

Vance stood up and stretched himself.

“The absorbin’ problem, it would seem, remains in statu quo[35 - in statu quo (лат.) —в прежнем положении],” he remarked airily. “How, oh how, did the fair Margaret’s executioner get in?”

“You know, Mr. Markham,” rumbled Heath sententiously, “I’ve been thinking that the fellow may have come here earlier in the afternoon—say, before that side door was locked. Odell herself may have let him in and hidden him when the other man came to take her to dinner.