Fortunately, too, the first case to draw Vance into its ramifications was that of Alvin Benson’s murder. Not only did it prove one of the most famous of New York’s causes célèbres[6], but it gave Vance an excellent opportunity of displaying his rare talents of deductive reasoning, and, by its nature and magnitude, aroused his interest in a branch of activity which heretofore had been alien to his temperamental promptings and habitual predilections.

The case intruded upon Vance’s life suddenly and unexpectedly, although he himself had, by a casual request made to the District Attorney over a month before, been the involuntary agent of this destruction of his normal routine. The thing, in fact, burst upon us before we had quite finished our breakfast on that mid-June morning, and put an end temporarily to all business connected with the purchase of the Cézanne paintings. When, later in the day, I visited the Kessler Galleries, two of the water-colors that Vance had particularly desired had been sold; and I am convinced that, despite his success in the unravelling of the Benson murder mystery and his saving of at least one innocent person from arrest, he has never to this day felt entirely compensated for the loss of those two little sketches on which he had set his heart.

As I was ushered into the living-room that morning by Currie, a rare old English servant who acted as Vance’s butler, valet, major-domo and, on occasions, specialty cook, Vance was sitting in a large armchair, attired in a surah silk dressing-gown and grey suede slippers, with Vollard’s book on Cézanne open across his knees.

“Forgive my not rising, Van,” he greeted me casually. “I have the whole weight of the modern evolution in art resting on my legs. Furthermore, this plebeian early rising fatigues me, y’ know.”

He riffled the pages of the volume, pausing here and there at a reproduction.

“This chap Vollard,” he remarked at length, “has been rather liberal with our art-fearing country. He has sent a really goodish collection of his Cézannes here. I viewed ’em yesterday with the proper reverence and, I might add, unconcern, for Kessler was watching me; and I’ve marked the ones I want you to buy for me as soon as the Gallery opens this morning.”

He handed me a small catalogue he had been using as a book-mark.

“A beastly assignment, I know,” he added, with an indolent smile. “These delicate little smudges with all their blank paper will prob’bly be meaningless to your legal mind—they’re so unlike a neatly-typed brief, don’t y’ know. And you’ll no doubt think some of ’em are hung upside-down,—one of ’em is, in fact, and even Kessler doesn’t know it. But don’t fret, Van old dear. They’re very beautiful and valuable little knickknacks, and rather inexpensive when one considers what they’ll be bringing in a few years. Really an excellent investment for some money-loving soul, y’ know—inf’nitely better than that Lawyer’s Equity Stock over which you grew so eloquent at the time of my dear Aunt Agatha’s death.”[7]

Vance’s one passion (if a purely intellectual enthusiasm may be called a passion) was art—not art in its narrow, personal aspects, but in its broader, more universal significance. And art was not only his dominating interest, but his chief diversion. He was something of an authority on Japanese and Chinese prints; he knew tapestries and ceramics; and once I heard him give an impromptu causerie[8] to a few guests on Tanagra figurines, which, had it been transcribed, would have made a most delightful and instructive monograph.