But it is unlikely that the reader knows the street at all. It is reserved exclusively for millionaires (always excepting the house with the wall), and millionaires avoid social intercourse with anyone below their financial level. And the reader, so far as I know, has something less than a million on hand at the moment.
Thus when the crime in the Calle de los Millones became the talk of the town, there were few men who had a clear idea of the locale or of the circumstances in which it was committed. You had to be content with the details which the afternoon papers brought out on the very day of the crime. And these were hardly detailed enough.
This is roughly what the papers said:
In the house with the wall (a wall five meters high, crowned with steel spikes another meter long, spaced ten centimeters apart) the man of the house had been found dead. His household consisted of his sister, his daughter Isabel, his nephew, a housekeeper, and his chauffeur Alfredo. The nephew and the chauffeur occasionally spent the night away from home; this had been one of those nights. The man of the house was found in his bed, his heart pierced by a knife. There were no signs of a struggle in the room. The knife belonged to the victim, who habitually placed it on his night-table before retiring. Besides the knife, the following articles were found in the room: A pair of cuff-links, belonging to the nephew; a pair of gloves and a garter, also belonging to the nephew; a belt and a necktie, belonging to the chauffeur; and a stick-pin which did not belong to the nephew, the chauffeur, nor the victim. Finally, the old man kept 10,000 pesos in jewels in his night-table; they were still there, proving that robbery had not been the motive of the crime.
That was all.
But among these facts were two items which aroused Máximo Roldán’s attention as soon as he had read the details. Two items which caused him to seize the telephone, call the victim’s home, ask for the Chief of the Security Commission, and say (at the risk of being taken for a madman):
“Hello?...The Chief of the Security Commission?... If you please, sir, do they have a dog in the house?... I said, is there in the dog in the house where the murder took place?... Yes, a dog... No, this is not a gag; I’m completely serious. Is there a dog in the house?... Hello?... Hello?”
The Chief had hung up. Máximo Roldán called back.
“Chief of the Commission?... Please listen, sir; if I am to discover the murderer, you must tell me if there is a dog in the house... No, you don’t know me... Indeed, you don’t... Please! It all depends on this. Because there must NOT be a dog, don’t you see?... I tell you no, you don’t know me... Yes, of course I can tell you who the murderer is — providing there is no dog... I’ll come over in person and tell you... Right away... Now: is there a dog?... No? Bravo! I’ll be right over to tell you the murderer’s name.”
And Máximo Roldán left at once for the scene of the crime.
In one of the rooms in the upper story of the murder house, the Chief of the Security Commission was listening to Máximo Roldán:
“Of course, Chief, you will have noticed the curious thing about your discovery: a garter has no logical reason for appearing as an incriminating clue on the scene of a crime. Generally speaking, incriminating clues are left as the result of a struggle, or forgetfulness, or of the nervous excitement of the moment. You might forget your gloves, your cuff-links might come loose or even your necktie; but there is no reason whatsoever that you should lose a garter. There’s only one explanation: it was left here intentionally. And if the garter is a deliberate plant, so probably are the other clues. You follow, Chief?”
“Yes. Go on.”
“But the garter is the only one of the clues that is definitely and conclusively masculine. The gloves, the cuff-links, the necktie, the stickpin — a woman might possibly wear any or all of these in certain ensembles; but she could never wear a man’s garter. These clues were planted here to distract suspicion from the real murderer; the others seemed insufficient proof of sex, so the murderer added the indisputably male garter to prove that the criminal must have been a man.”
“But there are only two men in the household; it would have to incriminate one of them.”
“I’m coming to that. Now we have the murderer trying to avert suspicion, planting various objects chosen at random, belonging to the nephew or the chauffeur or, like the stickpin, to neither of them, but always masculine objects — never feminine. At first glance these objects seem to incriminate their owners. But their mute accusation is so weak and confused that the police would never make an arrest on the strength of them. The murderer, then, was not trying to frame an individual. He was trying to frame a sex. A man in the same position would have scattered earrings and bobby pins. You understand?”
“Yes...”
“It leaps to the eye, then, that the murderer is a woman.”
“A woman?”
“A woman, Chief.”
“Hm.” The Chief of the Commission meditated for a moment. Then he said, “A woman who had ready access to the rooms of the nephew and the chauffeur.”
“Perhaps.”
“Or, of course, the housekeeper. She does the daily cleaning in their rooms.”
“Possibly.”
“ ‘Possibly’! Can’t you be sure?”
“If you’ll let me examine the room, by myself with no one to bother me, and let me question the three women who live in the house — then I’ll tell you which is the murderess.”
The Chief stared at Máximo Roldán, dubiously weighing the irregularity of his intervention against the convincing clarity of his logic. He began to pace meditatively around the room. At last he made his decision.
“You may do as you please.”
“Thanks, Chief. I’ll be right back.”
Máximo Roldán opened the door and left. “Senora!” he called to the housekeeper who was passing in the hall. “Where is the young lady? Quick I Take me to her. Matter of life and death!”
The housekeeper stood gaping at him. She whispered in a tremulous voice, “Come along. This way.” She traversed the length of the hall and stopped before the last door. “In here.”
“Thanks a lot. You may go now.” The old woman did not budge. “Don’t be afraid, señora. It’s for her best interests. I swear it.”
The housekeeper withdrew somewhat distrustfully. When she had vanished, Máximo Roldán knocked on the door and without waiting for an answer turned the knob and entered. Isabel stood in the center of the room, her eyes fixed on the opening door.
“What do you want?” she asked. Her voice shook a little.
Máximo Roldán took a card from his wallet, proffered it to the girl, and said, “Here is my address. If you trust me, go to my house and show this card. They’ll let you in. Lie low until I get there.”
The girl turned pale. She stared at Máximo Roldán, trying to penetrate to the depths of his character.
“Run along. Flee, I believe, is the proper word in this situation. Here’s a note for a hundred pesos. You have your choice: my card or the banknote. Either way you can make a safe getaway. But flee you must, and at once.”