The Bishop Murder Case quotes

“It’s quite mad, Van,” he remarked, his eyes in space. “

A mediæval tragedy in modern New York!

We don’t wear buskins and leathern doublets, and yet—By Jove!” He suddenly sat upright. “No—no! It’s absurd. I’m letting the insanity of Markham’s news affect me. . . .”

“Oh, quite!” Vance gave Markham a sardonic smile. “Sit down a moment and tell me the tale coherently.

The corpse won’t run away.

And it’s best to get our facts in some kind of order before we view the remains.—Who are the parties of the first part, for instance?

“I haven’t the groggiest. Only, as long as we’re going insane we may as well go the whole way.

A mere shred of sanity is of no value.

”

“My dear fellow!

The proverbial long arm of coincidence doesn’t extend to infinity.

There are, after all, laws of probability, based on quite definite mathematical formulas. It would make me sad to think that such men as Laplace6 and Czuber and von Kries had lived in vain.—The present situation, however, is even more complicated than you suspect.

“

A child’s game is sometimes the most serious business in life.

” His words held a curious, far-away tone. “I don’t like this thing—I don’t at all like it. There’s too much of the child in it—the child born old and with a diseased mind. It’s like some hideous perversion.”

On the second floor a series of casement windows, paned with rectangular leaded glass, extended across the entire width of the house. (These, I learned later, were the windows of the library.)

There was something restful and distinctly old-fashioned about the place: it appeared like anything but the scene of a gruesome murder.

Two police cars were parked near the entrance when we drove up, and a dozen or so curious onlookers had gathered in the street. A patrolman lounged against one of the fluted columns of the porch, gazing at the crowd before him with bored disdain.

“Still, my dear child,” put in Professor Dillard, “the man was killed; so there must have been something in his life that you didn’t know or suspect.

We’re constantly finding new stars that the old-time astronomers didn’t believe existed.

”

“We’re expending too much zeal in irrelevant channels, Markham,” he said. “We’ll never get anywhere by ballyragging servants and questioning members of the household. There’s a psychological wall to be battered down before we can begin storming the enemy’s trenches.

Everybody in this ménage has some pet privacy that he’s afraid will leak out.

Each person so far has told us either less or more than he knows. Disheartenin’, but true. Nothing that we’ve learned dovetails with anything else;

Everybody in this ménage has some pet privacy that he’s afraid will leak out. Each person so far has told us either less or more than he knows. Disheartenin’, but true.

Nothing that we’ve learned dovetails with anything else; and when chronological events don’t fit together, you may rest assured that the serrated points of contact have been deliberately distorted.

I haven’t found one clean joinder in all the tales that have been poured into our ears.”

“One moment, please. I’m here to offer my exalted services in the noble cause of justice—mundane justice, I would have you understand.

Philosophically, of course, there’s no such thing as justice.

If there really were justice we’d all be in for a shingling in the cosmic wood-shed.” He sat down facing Markham and chuckled cynically. “The fact is, the sad and precipitate departure of Mr. Robin appeals to my scientific nature.

“One moment, please. I’m here to offer my exalted services in the noble cause of justice—mundane justice, I would have you understand. Philosophically, of course, there’s no such thing as justice.

If there really were justice we’d all be in for a shingling in the cosmic wood-shed.

” He sat down facing Markham and chuckled cynically. “The fact is, the sad and precipitate departure of Mr. Robin appeals to my scientific nature. It makes a nice, orderly problem. It has a decidedly mathematical flavor—no undistributed terms, you understand;

Arnesson chuckled. “

My dear Pardee! Why clothe your natural curiosity in the habiliments of rhetoric?

”

“

She may watch you practising for the very reason that it does torture her—a kind of self-immolation, y’ know.

Those situations are very distressing.” Vance spoke almost with tenderness—which, to one who did not know his real nature, would have sounded strange. “Perhaps,” he added, as we emerged into the archery range through the basement door, “it would be best if we saw Mrs.

“You really should learn control, Adolph. You take life with such abominable seriousness. You’ve worked in interstellar spatial magnitudes long enough to have some sense of proportion.

Why attach so much importance to this pin-point of life on earth?

”

“

You’re far too forthright for this wicked world, Sergeant. If only things happened with such naïve dispatch, life would be very simple—and depressin’.

But such was not the modus operandi of the Robin’s murder. First, no archer could shoot at a moving human target and strike just between the ribs over the vital spot of the heart. Secondly, there’s that fracture of Robin’s skull.

“And why not?

Isn’t life itself diabolical?

”

I had gray hair when you were a lad struggling with your logs and antilogs; and when one gets old one learns the true proportions in the universe. The ratios all change. The estimates we once placed on things lose their meaning.

That’s why the old are more forgiving: they know that no man-made values are of any importance.

”

It’s at once subtle—oh, no end subtle—and unfamiliar. But at least we know that it emanates from somewhere in the environs of this old house; and we must search in every psychological nook and cranny.

Somewhere about us lies the invisible dragon.

So don’t be shocked at the questions I shall put to Pyne. We must look in the most unlikely places. . . .”

“Used to. But no more.

A beautiful game, though—if it wasn’t for the players.

Queer crabs, chess players.”

The point of his new joke is even obscurer than his Cock-Robin comedy. He’ll see to it that no one misses it.

Even a grim humorist who uses corpses for his cap-and-bells must have his audience.

Therein lies the one weakness of his abominable crimes. It’s about our only hope, Markham.”

“Undoubtedly. She has no emotional or mental life outside of him. But whether her temporary collapse was due to a real or imaginary fear, one cannot say.

She has lived too long on the borderland between reality and fantasy.

”

“Too bad Robin and Sprigg were killed.” His tone was heavy and colorless. “

But children are the only persons that matter.

. . . You’ll probably find the murderer. If you don’t, maybe I’ll help you. But don’t let your imaginations run away with you. Keep to facts . . . facts. . . .”

“It’s the only thing in this whole nightmare that doesn’t qualify as a piece of insane humor. It was a deadly serious excursion.

The devil himself is never so solemn as when covering his tracks.

Our particular devil’s hand had been forced, and he made a bold play. ’Pon my soul, I almost prefer his jovial mood to the one that prompted him to break in here last night. However, we now have something definite to go on.”

“You’ll probably find two or three people without any alibi at all. And if last night’s visit here was planned, a convincing alibi may have been prepared. We’re not dealing with a simpleton, Sergeant.

We’re playing a game to the death with a subtle and resourceful murderer, who can think as quickly as we can, and who has had long training in the subtleties of logic. . . .

”

“

The terrible thing about this affair is that, until we know the truth, we face danger at every turn.

” Vance’s voice was heavy with discouragement. “We can’t risk exposing any one. . . .”

But there’s no connection between gout and port—the notion is sheer superstition. Sound port is the most wholesome of wines. Gout is unknown in Oporto. A little physical stimulation of the right kind would be good for Drukker. . . . Poor fellow.

His mind is like a furnace that’s burning his body up.

A brilliant man, Markham. If he had sufficient bodily energy to keep pace with his brain, he’d be one of the world’s great physicists.”

“A hate of gossip parlance also crown’d Tennyson’s Isabel thro’ all her placid life,” Vance returned puckishly. “But—my word, Markham!—our life is not like Isabel’s. Speakin’ seriously, there was method in my gossip.

I prattled—and I learned.

”

Indeed, Maroczy, Doctor Lasker and Vidmar are all well-known mathematicians. . . . And the astronomer, who actually views the universe, may get an even more intense impression of the unimportance of this earth than the speculative physicist.

Imagination runs riot through a telescope.

The mere theory of existing life on distant planets tends to reduce earthly life to second’ry consideration.

“Oh, I say, Sergeant,” Vance drawled; “let’s not think. Much too wearin’.

An open mind—arid like a desert—is indicated.

”

“

Sigurd’s always protecting himself against his emotions. He’s ashamed of his feelings.

Don’t take his careless attitude too seriously.”

“No—nothing.” The answer came quickly and with a show of spirit. “I have merely been wondering—testing every possibility. I dared not be too sanguine without some assurance.

Pure logic is all very well for principles that do not touch us personally. But where one’s own safety is concerned the imperfect human mind demands visual evidence.

”

“Yes, there are some secrets so hideous that it is well for the world not to know them.

A higher justice may often be achieved without the law taking its toll.

”

“

No one can know what goes on in the human heart in that last dark hour.

”