Nevermore

by William Hjortsberg

  Bess giggled. “You’d look cute with this in your kisser,” she said.

  Houdini took the pacifier from her and tossed it on the Cracker Jack-littered desk. “I’m getting this stuff tested,” he said. “Maybe it’s poisoned.”

  “Oh, Harry. You’re so melodramatic.” Bess kissed him. “Just like one of your movie serials.”

  He held her close, wishing life guaranteed happy endings the way the flickers did.

  25

  TRICK OR TREAT

  ON OCTOBER 31, 1923, Damon Runyon’s column in the New York American ended with the following:

  TRICKS …

  All the spooks and goblins running around the streets tonight bring to mind a certain local ghoul who has been out of the action as of late. It is close to five months since we last hear a peep from the Poe Killer. Perhaps he has hung up his spurs. Little Hymie says the P.K. went on summer vacation and so must be a swell. Nick the Greek offers three to five he strikes again before the year is out.

  AND TREATS

  Or, it just might be the P.K. is taking a powder as a result of the diligent police work of such as Sgt. James Patrick Heegan of homicide. It is Sgt. Heegan who first puts the department wise to the fact that gorillas plus blonds equals Poe. This selfsame triple-striper also turns up the only eyewitness to have seen the mysterious murderer in action.

  A twenty-four-year veteran of the force, Sgt. Heegan represents the finest tradition of law enforcement. One of a legion over 25,000 strong. No surprise the Poe killer is on the lam.

  Of the four annual Grand Sabbaths celebrated in the Middle Ages, Candlemas, Walpurgisnacht, Lammas, and All Hallows’ Eve, when witches and horned warlocks danced and fornicated under a full moon, only one of the revels survived the Inquisitions of the Mother Church, evolving over time into an innocent children’s masquerade. Although Halloween wasn’t any sort of holiday back home, Sir Arthur and Lady Jean both enjoyed dressing up and were delighted to receive an invitation to a Grand Costume Ball downstairs in the Gold Room.

  Jean took charge of the costumes, after a brief conference confirmed commedia dell’arte as their theme. With the help of the front desk, she located a theatrical firm called Brooks and conducted the entire business over the telephone. When Conan Doyle saw the selection delivered to their suite, he patted his tummy, protesting he was only fit to appear as the portly Mountebank or the bombastic Capitano.

  “Nonsense,” Jean chided. “I’m going as Columbine, so you’ll have to be either Harlequin or Pierrot.”

  Sir Arthur fingered the gaudy fabric. His good-natured grumping masked extreme pleasure. “If I wear the particolor tights I’ll look like a circus ball. And Pierrot is so wistful. The unrequited lover. Might make me too dour.”

  Jean laughed. “I remember you as an unrequited lover,” she said, kissing his cheek. “You were never, ever dour.”

  “Never in public anyway.”

  In the end, he went as Pierrot, spared the discomfort of a mask with his face powdered white. The flowing white garments concealed more than mere girth; his service revolver hung at his side, the swivel mount in the butt clipped to a lanyard looped over his shoulder.

  Conan Doyle carried the Webley-Green with him everywhere since returning to New York. It stayed snug in his pocket when the knight made another trip to the Polo Grounds, three days after seeing Poe’s ghost in Fordham. He was once again the guest of Damon Runyon, only this time to witness a World Series game. Knowing nothing of baseball, Sir Arthur listened intently as the reporter provided a play-by-play description. Runyon called it a “subway series,” with the National League Giants pitted against the formidable Yankees of the American League. This was the second game of the contest, the Giants taking the opener by a single run in brand-new Yankee Stadium across the Harlem River in the Bronx.

  Sir Arthur sat with Runyon in the first row of the press box behind home plate, peering through protective chicken-wire mesh. The reporter hammered at his portable typewriter, a narrow plank serving the press as a work table, and commented on the action out of the corner of his mouth between staccato bursts of two-fingered typing. To the Englishman, there didn’t seem to be much action, as the game moved slowly as cricket, always more fun to play than watch. He appreciated the information nevertheless.

  In the fourth inning, with the count at two and one, the big Bambino, Babe Ruth, knocked one out of the park. In the fifth, Ruth homered again with a long line drive into the right field stands. Even the placid Runyon seemed excited. “That ties the record,” he shouted. “Only two other players have ever scored two home runs in a single World Series game.”

  When Ruth stepped to the plate in the top of the ninth, the crowd went wild with anticipation. “They’ll walk him,” came Runyon’s laconic comment. The sportswriter was wrong. At manager McGraw’s signal, the pitcher threw a low curve and the Sultan of Swat hammered the ball deep into center field. The entire crowd jumped, screaming, to its feet. It looked certain to be another home run. Sir Arthur found himself hoarse with cheering. Two strides from the backfield fence, Casey Stengel, the lithe Giant outfielder, leaped high into the air and did the impossible, snagging the ball at the top of his reach.

  “Tough luck,” muttered Damon Runyon. The knight detected a slight frown of disappointment on the reporter’s implacable poker-faced features.

  The Gold Room pulsed with boisterous confusion, overflowing in an exotic carnival cavalcade of costumed celebrants. Although an occasional devil or witch acknowledged the evening’s occult heritage, they were lost in a backlot polyglot of Napoleons, Arab sheiks, mikados, Buffalo Bills, Marie Antoinettes, Joans of Arc, matadors, knights in armor, Little Tramps, and Argentine gauchos.

  Paul Whiteman’s orchestra blared above the general hubbub. Just back from a triumph in London, the portly “King of Jazz” bobbed up and down on his toes, waving his baton with an air of self-importance wondrous to behold. His music, a bubbling confection of bouncy dance tunes only a white audience would ever call jazz, had charmed His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales, who gave the world the Windsor knot and plus fours. Anyone desiring to hear the real thing went uptown to Harlem and took a table at the newly opened Cotton Club, or at Barron’s Cabaret on 134th Street, where Duke Ellington and his Washingtonians played their “jungle music” nightly.

  Sir Arthur caught a glimpse of Whiteman’s fleshy, pear-shaped face; the tiny, absurd, upturned cartoon mustaches, like a misplaced pair of eyebrows perching above a smug mortician’s smile. Quite possibly the most ridiculous-looking human being on earth, thought the knight, twirling his lady across the dance floor in a fast fox-trot.

  As they danced, the Webley-Green thumped against his ribs. Sir Arthur wondered at his precaution in bringing it. Surely, they remained safe in a crowded hotel ballroom. The killer required solitude for his sinister work. Solitude and silence. Perhaps a pistol would prove an inadequate defense against this deadly phantom, a notion raising the specter of another, more troubling thought.

  Conan Doyle had not encountered the ghost of Poe since their chance afternoon meeting in the Bronx three weeks ago. He’d been back up to Fordham on several occasions, but no further sightings occurred. A curiously disturbing notion began taking shape in his imagination. He had once witnessed the spirit vomiting. This act contradicted everything spiritualism taught him to believe. Were ghosts capable of other, more disturbing deeds?

  It seemed a mad thought. Try as he might to dislodge it, the thing persisted in his mind like a pestilence. If the murders were in essence supernatural, every other mystery fell into place: the paucity of clues and witnesses, the inexplicable lack of motive, the very insane, random nature of the crimes.

  This notion of insanity troubled him. To most people, conversing with ghosts would be considered insane. And, as no one else had ever seen the Poe manifestation, wasn’t it his word against the world? Quite an accurate definition of madness: to insist, in the face of all reason, on the validity of private visions.

&n
bsp; The dance ended. Various friends and acquaintances recognized them and stopped to chat. Unable to shake his troubling thoughts, Sir Arthur excused himself, saying he needed some air. He left Jean conversing with Grover A. Whalen and his wife, costumed as Humpty-Dumpty and Little Bo Peep, and with Rodman Wanamaker, the department store heir, wrapped in a toga. The knight supposed he looked equally silly in his melancholy white clown’s suit.

  Stepping from the ballroom into a spacious corridor, Sir Arthur immediately noticed the figure costumed as the Red Death standing among a half-dozen other masqueraders. A small person, no more than five feet tall; made grand by the voluminous, hooded scarlet cloak; made hideous by an ingenious mask, shreds of realistic rubber flesh peeling away from the Grim Reaper’s gleaming ivory skull. Hollow, eyeless sockets stared straight at Conan Doyle.

  Against his better judgment, Sir Arthur approached. The grotesque, diminutive Red Death looked up at him and croaked: “Once upon a midnight dreary …”

  The knight thought the gravelly voice spurious, perhaps designed to disguise the more lilting speech of a woman. “While I pondered weak and weary,” he answered.

  A high cackling laugh emanated from the grinning, gap-toothed mouth. “Quoth the raven…?” inquired the Red Death.

  “Nevermore,” answered Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a tingle of excitement raising hackles on the back of his neck.

  “Are you an admirer of Poe?”

  The knight marveled at the uncanny realism of the death mask, remembering autopsies performed on putrid cadavers. “The master of all who love the mysterious,” he replied.

  “Would you say the mysterious murders done in his name were worthy of the master?”

  “I haven’t considered their aesthetic implications,” Sir Arthur snapped.

  “But you have given the matter some thought?” The Red Death turned in a half-circle around the knight, the crimson cloak flaring. “The newspapers intimate you have taken on the case. Sherlock on the trail.”

  Conan Doyle bristled. “You have the advantage over me, as I am unaware of your identity.”

  “Please … indulge my passion for anonymity.” The grotesque, hooded figure ceased pacing. “Did you know Hilda Esp worked here at the Plaza?”

  “Hilda Esp…?”

  “Mother of Ingrid. A laundress. Worked in the basement laundry. Does this interest you?”

  “Very much.” Sir Arthur studied the mannerisms of the costumed figure, at a loss in assigning any particular sex to the exaggerated gestures.

  “If you’ve had access to the police files, you’ll know one of the peculiar aspects of the Esp case is that almost no blood was found in the apartment. Hilda Esp had her throat cut, yet there was hardly any blood. Strange …”

  “Very strange.”

  “It is my contention Hilda Esp was killed elsewhere and her body transported from the murder site to the apartment.”

  “Have you evidence to substantiate this theory?”

  The Red Death swept the cloak across one shoulder. “I believe she was murdered in the basement of this hotel. I know the spot.”

  “How is it that you come by such knowledge?” Sir Arthur crossed his arms on his chest so he might feel the bulk of the revolver under his loose-fitting tunic.

  “I have done some investigating of my own.” The Red Death took a step down the corridor, beckoning the knight to follow. “Would you care to see what I have found?”

  Sir Arthur tried to temper the sudden thrill of the chase with cautious evaluation. He clearly enjoyed considerable advantage in size and weight. Moreover, he carried a concealed weapon. Conan Doyle felt confident of handling any situation that might arise. “I’d be delighted,” he said, excited at the possibility of being in the presence of the actual murderer. “Lead on.”

  A door marked EXIT at the end of the corridor opened onto uncarpeted service stairs. Conan Doyle followed the cloaked figure clanging down the steps. Reaching the bottom, the Red Death held open a scuffed metal door. As Sir Arthur stepped into an arched passageway, he was careful not to turn his back on the costumed stranger.

  “We’re in the subbasement.” The Red Death led the way down the dim corridor. Occasional hanging low-wattage bulbs provided minimal illumination. The shadowy bare brick walls echoed their muffled footfalls. “Not too many ever come down here.”

  They passed a low-ceilinged chamber heaped with bundles of dirty linen. Two colored women separated the towels from the sheets on a long bleached-plank table. “Sorting room,” commented the stranger like a demonic tour guide. “Laundry’s around the corner.”

  The two masqueraders continued to where a drab canvas dropcloth concealed a breach in the wall. It had the look of recent construction, the work unfinished, temporarily suspended; everything tidied up in a makeshift way. The Red Death stood upon a nail keg, taking two electric torches down from a shelf mounted under a row of cast-iron pipes. “We’ll need these from here on,” he said, handing one to Conan Doyle.

  Switching on his light, the stranger stepped behind the canvas curtain. Sir Arthur followed. He found himself in a dark, unfinished alcove. The air smelled of dampness and earth, like a fresh-dug grave. The knight saw the stranger’s light about twenty paces ahead. “This way,” called the Red Death.

  Sir Arthur took his time, flashing the light beam around to get his bearings. He spotted a wheelbarrow and a pile of bricks. The vaulted ceiling dripped with hanging strands of niter, like white moss. The knight stared up. A sudden jolt of apprehension: why had two torches been waiting so conveniently? A reassuring glance at the second light further along allowed him to exhale. He flicked his light in the stranger’s direction.

  With the unheard stealth of a pouncing cat, something lithe and strong landed on Sir Arthur’s back. The knight spun around in the darkness, swinging his torch like a club, as a tight-fitting leather sack pulled down over his head. Inside, it reeked of chloroform. His assailant leapt soundlessly off his back. The torch clattered on the concrete floor.

  Desperate, Sir Arthur reached up at whatever enclosed his head. It was a sort of eyeless mask, fastened from behind with buckles. The harsh chemical whirled through his brain. Clumsy fingers fumbled at the straps. Catherine wheels and kaleidoscopes spun before his bound eyes. The knight reached under his flouncy clown shirt for the hanging revolver as he plummeted forward into unconsciousness.

  Conan Doyle had no notion of where he was or how he got there when spasms of nausea brought him back from the lost, black depths. A candle flickered on the floor by his feet. He sat on a narrow concrete ledge, one hand chained to a water pipe running along the wall above his head. Only this kept him from falling on his face.

  Sir Arthur squinted into the pale corona of light, groggy from chloroform. Beside him on the ledge stood a squat amber wine bottle with the cork drawn. He heard a metallic clink. Looking up, the knight confronted a rising brick wall two arms’ lengths in front of him. It stood eight or nine courses high. The Red Death worked with a trowel, smoothing a layer of mortar before setting another brick in place.

  “Ah, Sir Arthur, so good to have you awake again.” The fake voice rasped behind the macabre mask. “I trust you had a peaceful rest.”

  Conan Doyle groped for his revolver and found the lanyard dangling free beneath his arm.

  The Red Death held up the Webley-Green, pinching the barrel between his fingers like a greengrocer showing off a prize carrot. “I’m certain you appreciate the necessity of relieving you of this.”

  Sir Arthur heard the pistol clang off in the darkness like a piece of discarded iron pipe. Another course of bricks rose before him. “This addition was scheduled for completion a month ago …” The masked stranger talked on as he worked. “Then, the supervising engineer was fired. Now, there’s disagreement between the new firm and the city building inspectors. Be at least another month or two before the issue is resolved and any work resumes …”

  The knight made no reply. He felt thick and drugged. The Red Death
set the final row, wielding his trowel delicately as a pastry chef icing a wedding cake. Only one brick remained to complete the wall. “Should you get thirsty …” The hideous skull peered through the aperture. “I’ve left you a very nice wine. In pace requiescat!” The final brick slid into place.

  Sir Arthur was alone. Far off, penetrating the deathly silence, he heard the steady drip of what he presumed to be water. He rubbed his eyes on the loose sleeve of his absurd Pierrot costume. Be more appropriate if he’d worn Harlequin’s lozenge-patterned motley. That costume even had bells to jingle.

  He picked up the bottle beside him, sniffing the fruity amontillado. Doubtless poisoned. It would be to the killer’s advantage for him to die as quickly as possible. Less risk of premature discovery.

  He set the bottle down. Perhaps in a few days’ time, he’d welcome a drink. Best thing not to panic, he told himself. It seemed preposterous that he shouldn’t soon be found. He resided in one of the world’s great hotels, not some forgotten Italian catacomb. Surely those laundresses would hear him.

  “Halloo!” he shouted. “Is anybody there?” No answer. He sat very still, listening to the distant dripping.

  Conan Doyle lurched to his feet. Even stretching his chain out full-length, he was unable to touch the new wall with his other hand, the wet mortar inches from his fingertips. Don’t go yelling your head off before hearing someone approach, he thought. Must conserve my strength.

  Stooping, he picked the burning candle off the floor, raising it for a better look at his surroundings. He was immured within a narrow masonry-walled niche twice as long as it was broad, his right hand fastened to a water pipe on the rear wall by a pair of steel handcuffs. He tried tugging on the chain, although attempting to bend the pipe appeared a futile exercise.

  Taking a closer look, Sir Arthur noticed the broad arrow and crown marking the, case-hardened steel. Jersey Giants! By God, these were Scotland Yard darbies! The knight rapped the handcuff soundly against the stone wall as Houdini had taught him. The lock snapped open at once and his wrist came free.