The Hollow Man

by John Dickson Carr

  O'Rourke laughed, showing gleaming teeth under the elaborate moustache. The wrinkles of amusement deepened round his eyes.

  'Oh, well! That's different! That's a lot different. Look, I'll tell you straight. When I offered to swing out the window on that rope, I noticed you. I was afraid you were getting ideas. Get me? I mean about me.' He chuckled. 'Forget it! It'd take a miracle man to work any stunt like that with a rope, even if he had a rope and could walk without leaving any tracks. But as for the other business -' Frowningly O'Rourke brushed up his moustache with the stem of his pipe. He stared across the room. 'It's this way. I'm no authority. I don't know very much about it, and what I do know I generally keep mum about. Kind of - he gestured - 'kind of professional etiquette, if you get me. Also, for things like escapes from locked boxes and disappearances and the rest of it - well, I've given up even talking about 'em.'

  'Why?'

  'Because,' said O'Rourke, with great emphasis, 'most people are so damned disappointed when they know the secret. Either, in the first place, the thing is so smart and simple - so simple it's funny - that they won't believe they could have been FOOLED by it. They'll say, "Oh, hell! don't tell us that stuff! I'd have seen it in a second." Or, in the second place, it's a trick worked with a confederate. That disappoints 'em even more. They say, "Oh, well, if you're going to have somebody to help -!" as though anything was possible then.'

  He smoked reflectively.

  'It's a funny thing about people. They go to see an illusion; you tell 'em it's an illusion; they pay their money to see an illusion. And yet for some funny reason they get sore because it isn't real magic. When they hear an explanation of how somebody got out of a locked box or a roped sack that they've examined, they get sore because it was a trick. They say it's far - fetched when they know how they were deceived. Now, it takes BRAINS, I'm telling you, to work out one of those simple tricks. And, to be a good escape - artist, a man's got to be cool, strong, experienced, and quick as creased lightning. But they never think of the cleverness it takes just to fool 'em under their noses. I think they'd like the secret of an escape to be some unholy business like real magic; something that nobody on God's earth could ever do. Now, no man who ever lived can make himself as thin as a postcard and slide out through a crack. No man ever crawled out through a keyhole, or pushed himself through a piece of wood. Want me to give you an example?'

  'Go on,' said Hadley, who was looking at him curiously.

  'All right. Take the second sort first! Take the roped and sealed sack trick: one way of doing it.' [See the admirable and startling book by Mr J. C. Cannell]. O'Rourke was enjoying himself. 'Out comes the performer - in the middle of a group of people, if you want him to - with a light sack made out of black muslin or sateen, and big enough for him to stand up in. He gets inside. His assistant draws it up, holds the sack about six inches below the mouth, and ties it round tightly with a long handkerchief. Then the people watching can add more knots if they want to, and seal his knots and theirs with wax, and stamp 'em with signets - anything at all. Bang! Up goes a screen round the performer. Thirty seconds later out he walks with the knots still tied and sealed and stamped, and the sack over his arm. Heigh - ho!'

  O'Rourke grinned, made the usual play with his moustache the could not seem to leave off twisting it), and rolled on the divan.

  'Now, gents, here's where you take a poke at me. There's duplicate sacks, exactly alike. One of 'em the performer's got all folded up and stuck inside his vest. When he gets into the sack, and he's moving and jerking it around, and the assistant is pulling it up over his head - why, out comes the duplicate. The mouth of the other black sack is pushed up through the mouth of the first, six inches or so; it looks like the mouth of the first. The assistant grabs it round, and what he honest - to - God ties is the mouth of the duplicate sack, with such a thin edge of the real one included so that you can't see the joining. Bang! On go the knots and seals. When the performer gets behind his screen, all he does is shove loose the tied sack, drop the one he's standing in, stick the loose sack under his vest, and walk out holding the duplicate sack roped and sealed. Get it? See? It's simple, it's easy, and yet people go nuts trying to figure out how it was done. But when they hear how it was done, they say, "Oh, well, with a confederate -"' He gestured.

  Hadley was interested in spite of his professional manner, and Dr Fell was listening with a childlike gaping.

  'Yes, I know,' said the superintendent, as though urging an argument, 'but the man we're after, the man who committed these two murders, couldn't have had a confederate! Besides, that's not a vanishing - trick ...'

  'All right,' said O'Rourke, and pushed his hat to one side of his head. ' I'll give you an example of a whopping big vanishing - trick. This is a stage illusion, mind. All very fancy. But you can work it in an outdoor theatre, if you want to, where there's no trap - doors, no wires from the flies, no props or funny business at all. Just a stretch of ground. Out rides the illusionist, in a grand blue uniform, on a grand white horse. Out comes his gang of attendants, in white uniforms, with the usual hoop - la like a circus. They go round in a circle once, and then two attendants whisk up a great fan which - just for a moment, see? - hides the man on the horse. Down comes the fan, which is tossed out in the audience to show it's O.K.; but the man on the horse has vanished. He's vanished straight from the middle of a ten - acre field. Heigh - ho!'

  'And how do you get out of that one?' demanded Dr Fell.

  'Easy! The man's never left the field. But you don't see him. You don't see him because that grand blue uniform is made of paper - over a real white one. As soon as the fan goes up, he tears off the blue one and stuffs it under the white. He jumps down off the horse, and just joins in the gang of white - uniformed attendants. Point is, nobody ever lakes the trouble to count them attendants beforehand, and they all exit without anybody ever seeing. That's the basis of most tricks. You're looking at something you don't see, or you'll swear you've seen something that's not there. Hey presto! Bang! Greatest show on earth!'

  The stuffy, gaudily - coloured room was quiet. Wind rattled at the windows. Distantly there was a noise of church bells, and the honking of a taxi that passed and died. Hadley shook his note - book.

  'We're getting off the track,' he said. 'It's clever enough, yes; but how does it apply to this problem?'

  'It don't,' admitted O'Rourke, who seemed convulsed by a noiseless mirth. 'I'm telling you - well, because you asked. And to show you what you're up against. I'm giving you the straight dope, Mr Superintendent: I don't want to discourage you, but if you're up against a smart illusionist, you haven't got the chance of a snowball in hell; you haven't got the chance of that.' He snapped his fingers. 'They're trained to it. It's their business. And there ain't a prison on earth that can hold 'em.'

  Hadley's jaw tightened. 'We'll see about that when the time comes. What bothers me, and what's been bothering me for some time, is why Fley sent his brother to do the killing. Fley was the illusionist. Fley would have been the man to do it. But he didn't. Was his brother in the same line?'

  'Dunno. At least I never saw his name billed anywhere. But - '

  Dr Fell interrupted. With a heavy wheeze, he lumbered up from the couch and spoke sharply.

  'Clear the decks for action, Hadley. We're going to have visitors in about two minutes. Look out there! - but keep back from the window.'

  He was pointing with his stick. Below them, where the alley curved out between the blank windows of houses, two figures shouldered against the wind. They had turned in from Guilford Street; and, fortunately, had their heads down. One Rampole recognized as that of Rosette Grimaud. The other was a tall man whose shoulder lunged and swung as he walked with the aid of a cane; a man whose leg had a crooked twist and whose right boot was of abnormal thickness.

  'Get the lights out in those other rooms,' said Hadley, swiftly. He turned to O'Rourke. 'I'll ask you a big favour. Get downstairs as quickly as you can; stop that landlady from coming up and
saying anything; keep her there until you hear from me. Pull the door after you!'

  He was already out into the narrow passage, snapping off the lights. Dr Fell looked mildly harassed.

  'Look here, you don't mean we're going to hide and overhear terrible secrets, do you?' he demanded. 'I've not got what Mills would call the anatomical structure for such tomfoolery. Besides, they'll spot us in a second. This place is full of smoke - O'Rourke's shag.'

  Hadley muttered profanities. He drew the curtains so that only a pencil of light slanted into the room.

  'Can't be helped; we've got to chance it. We'll sit here quietly. If they've got anything on their minds, they may blurt it out as soon as they get inside the flat and the door is shut. People do. What do you think of O'Rourke, by the way?'

  'I think,' stated Dr Fell with energy, 'that O'Rourke is the most stimulating, enlightening, and suggestive witness we have heard so far in this nightmare. He has saved my intellectual self - respect. He is, in fact, almost as enlightening as the church bells.'

  Hadley, who was peering through the crack between the curtains, turned his head round. The line of light across his eyes showed a certain wildness.

  'Church bells? What church bells?'

  'Any church bells,' said Dr Fell's voice out of the gloom. ' I tell you that to me in my heathen blindness the thought of those bells has brought light and balm. It may save me from making an awful mistake ... Yes, I'm quite sane.' The ferrule of a stick rapped the floor and his voice became tense. ' Light, Hadley! Light at last, and glorious messages in the belfry.'

  'Are you sure it's not something else in the belfry? Yes? Then for God's sake will you stop this mystification and tell me what you mean? I suppose the church bells tell you how the vanishing - trick was worked?'

  'Oh, no', said Dr Fell. ' Unfortunately not. They only tell me the name of the murderer.'

  There was a palpable stillness in the room, a physical heaviness, as of breath restrained to bursting. Dr Fell spoke in a blank, almost an incredulous voice which carried conviction in its mere incredulity. Downstairs a back door closed. Faintly through the quiet house they heard footsteps on the staircase. One set of footsteps was sharp, light and impatient. The other had a drag and then a heavy stamp; there was the noise of a cane knocking the banisters. The noises grew louder, but no word was spoken. A key scraped into the lock of the outer door, which opened and closed again with a click of the spring - lock. There was another click as the light in the hallway was snapped on. Then - evidently when they could see each other - the two burst out as though they had been the ones who held in breath to suffocation.

  'So you've lost the key I gave you,' a man's thin, harsh quiet voice spoke. It was mocking and yet repressed. 'And you say you didn't come here last night, after all?'

  'Not last night,' said Rosette Grimaud's voice, which had a flat and yet furious tone; 'not last night or any other night.' She laughed. ' I never had any intention of coming at all. You frightened me a little. Well, what of it? And now that I am here, I don't think so much of your hideout. Did you have a pleasant time waiting last night?'

  There was a movement as though she had stepped forward and been restrained. The man's voice rose.

  'Now, you little devil,' said the man with equal quietness, 'I'm going to tell you something for the good of your soul. I wasn't here. I had no intention of coming. If you think all you have to do is crack the whip to send people through hoops - well, I wasn't here, do you see? You can go through the hoops yourself. I wasn't here.'

  'That's a lie, Jerome,' said Rosette calmly.

  'You think so, eh? Why?'

  Two figures appeared against the light of the partly - opened door. Hadley reached out and drew back the curtains with a rattle of rings.

  'We also would like to know the answer to that, Mr Burnaby,' he said.

  The flood of murky daylight in their faces caught them off - guard; so much off - guard that expressions were hollowed out as though snapped by a camera. Rosette Grimaud cried out, making a movement of her raised arm as though she would dodge under it, but the flash of the previous look had been bitter, watchful, dangerously triumphant. Jerome Burnaby stood motionless, his chest rising and falling. Silhouetted against the sickly electric light behind, and wearing an old - fashioned broad - brimmed black hat, he bore a curious resemblance to the lean Sandeman figure in the advertisement. But he was more than a silhouette. He had a strong, furrowed face, that ordinarily might have been bluff and amiable like his gestures; an underhung jaw, and eyes which seemed to have lost their colour with anger. Taking off his hat, he tossed it on a divan with a swashbuckling air that struck Rampole as rather theatrical. His wiry brown hair, patched with grey round the temples, stood up as though released from pressure like a jack - in - the - box.

  'Well?' he said with a sort of thin, bluff jocularity, and took a lurching step forward on the club - foot. 'Is this a hold - up or what? Three to one, I see. I happen to have a sword - stick, though - '

  'It won't be needed, Jerome,' said the girl. 'They're the police.'

  Burnaby stopped; stopped and rubbed his mouth with a big hand. He seemed nervous, though he went on with ironical jocularity. 'Oh! The police, eh? I'm honoured. Breaking and entering, I see.'

  'You are the tenant of this flat,' said Hadley, returning an equal suavity, 'not the owner or landlord of the house. If suspicious behaviour is seen - I don't know about suspicious, Mr Burnaby, but I think your friends would be amused at these - oriental surroundings. Wouldn't they?'

  That smile, that tone of voice, struck through to a raw place. Burnaby's face became a muddy colour.

  'Damn you,' he said, and half raised the cane, 'what do you want here?'

  'First of all, before we forget it, about what you were saying when you came in here- '

  'You overheard it, eh?'

  'Yes. It's unfortunate,' said Hadley composedly, 'that we couldn't have overheard more. Miss Grimaud said that you were in this flat last night. Were you?'

  'I was not.'

  'You were not... Was he, Miss Grimaud?'

  Her colour had come back; come back strongly, for she was angry with a quiet, smiling poise. She spoke in a breathless way, and her long hazel eyes had that fixity, that luminous, strained expression of one who determines to show no emotion. She was pressing her gloves between the fingers, and in the jerkiness of her breathing there was less anger than fear.

  'Since you overheard it,' she answered, after a speculative pause while she glanced from one to the other, 'it's no good my denying it, is there? I don't see why you're interested. It can't have anything to do with - my father's death. That's certain. Whatever else Jerome is,' she showed her teeth in an unsteady smile, 'he's not a murderer. But since for some reason you are interested, I've a good mind to have the whole thing thrashed out now. Some version of this, I can see, is going to get back to Boyd. It might as well be the true one ... I'll begin by saying, yes, Jerome was in this flat last night.'

  'How do you know that, Miss Grimaud? Were you here?'

  'No. But I saw a light in this room at half - past ten.'

  BURNABY, still rubbing his chin, looked down at her in dull blankness. Rampole could have sworn that the roan was genuinely startled; so startled that he could not quite understand her words, and peered at her as though he had never seen her before. Then he spoke in a quiet, common - sense tone which contrasted with his earlier one.

  'I say, Rosette,' he observed, 'be careful now. Are you sure you know what you're talking about?'

  'Yes. Quite sure.'

  Hadley cut in briskly. 'At half - past ten? How did you happen to see this light, Miss Grimaud, when you were at your own home with us?'

  'Oh, no, I wasn't - if you remember. Not at that time. I was at the nursing - home, with the doctor in the room where my father was dying. I don't know whether you know it, but the back of the nursing - home faces the back of this house. I happened to be near a window, and I noticed. There was a light in this room;
and, I think, the bathroom too, though I'm not positive of that -'

  'How do you know the rooms,' said Hadley sharply, 'if you've never been here before?'

  'I took jolly good care to observe when we came in just now,' she answered, with a serene and imperturbable smile which somehow reminded Rampole of Mills. 'I didn't know the rooms last night; I only knew he had this flat, and where the windows were. The curtains weren't quite drawn. That's how I came to notice the light.'

  Burnaby was still contemplating her with the same heavy curiosity.

  'Just a moment, Mr - Inspector - er -!' He humped his shoulder. 'Are you sure you couldn't have been mistaken about the rooms, Rosette?'

  'Positive, my dear. This is the house on the left - hand side at the corner of the alley, and you have the top floor.'

  'And you say you saw me?'

  'No, I say I saw a light. But you and I are the only ones who know about this flat. And, since you'd invited me here, and said you would be here -'