Gun in Cheek

by Bill Pronzini

  A simultaneous gasp went up from Dale and Miss Cornelia.

  It was Anderson, the detective! And he was—the Bat!

  "It's Mr. Anderson!" stuttered Dale, aghast at the discovery.

  The Unknown gloated over his captive.

  "I'm Anderson," he said. "This man has been impersonating me. You're a good actor, Bat, for a fellow that's such a bad actor!" he taunted.

  There is one more brief flurry of action when the Bat, in spite of handcuffs, jerks the revolver away from the real Anderson and throws down on everybody. But Miss Cornelia heroically disobeys his order to put up her hands and tells him that she took the bullets out of the gun two hours ago. Whereupon the Bat flings the revolver at her and tries to flee, but Anderson gets the drop on him with the Bat's own weapon. Miss Cornelia then reveals that the gun really is loaded after all: she breaks it open and lets five shells fall to the floor. "You see," she says, "I too have a little imagination."

  In the final wrap-up, we learn that the Bat "had probably trailed the real detective all the way from town," knocked him unconscious, and stole his identity papers. How did the Bat find out about the money hidden inside the house by Courtleigh Fleming? We are never told, although there is an inference that he somehow managed to tap the telephone wires to police headquarters. Who is the Bat? Where did he come from? Why did he keep running around with his Bat costume on, when he could have accomplished more with less trouble in his guise as a detective? Mrs. Rinehart chose neither to divulge nor infer the answers to these and several other questions. And perhaps she knew best.

  Why clutter a perfectly bad melodrama with logic and plausibility?

  Logic and plausibility—of a sort—are present in another perfectly bad melodrama of the same period, The Invisible Host (1930), by Gwen Bristow and Bruce Manning. So is a different kind of supercriminal: the brilliantly cunning madman. The Invisible Host was also produced as a play, under the title The Ninth Guest (which was what Popular Library called its paperback reprint of the novel in 1975), though in this case the book came first. It was the maiden effort, in fact, of the Bristow and Manning team—they having been husband and wife at the time, despite the different surnames; they perpetrated three additional mysteries in 1931 and 1932, all published by the redoubtable Mystery League, none of the same tour-de-force proportions of The Invisible Host. Bristow went on to write a successful string of historical novels bearing such titles as Calico Palace and Jubilee Trail. It is not generally known what Manning went on to do.

  Just one of the many remarkable things about The Invisible Host is the fact that its plot is quite similar to Agatha Christie's Ten Little Niggers (also published as Ten Little Indians and And Then There Were None). This is made even more remarkable by the added fact that the Bristow/Manning opus was published nine years before the Christie. Dame Agatha is certainly above reproach and doubtless was unaware of the existence of, much less had read, The Invisible Host when she conceived her masterpiece; writers of her stature do not look elsewhere for inspiration. The truly fascinating point is that a team of young American writers and the British grand dame should have come up with essentially the same plot nine years apart and have made of it a pair of classic novels, one at each end of the mystery spectrum.

  The Invisible Host is set in New Orleans, among the café society of the French Quarter fifty years ago. Eight telegrams are sent to eight individuals, men and women, all of whom are acquainted with each other; each telegram reads as follows:

  CONGRATULATIONS STOP PLANS AFOOT FOR SMALL SURPRISE PARTY IN YOUR HONOR BIENVILLE PENTHOUSE NEXT SATURDAY EIGHT OCLOCK STOP ALL SUB ROSA BIG SURPRISE STOP MAINTAIN SECRECY STOP PROMISE YOU MOST ORIGINAL PARTY EVER STAGED IN NEW ORLEANS. And each one is signed YOUR HOST.

  The eight recipients each think a different person sent the telegram, for a different reason. Thus, a clever ploy to introduce each character in turn. The eight are: Margaret Chisholm, a snooty dowager; Dr. Murray Chambers Reid, a hard-hearted university dean; Peter Daly, playwright and nominal hero; Sylvia Inglesby, "an admirable lawyer, logical and coldly inspired"; Henry Abbott, also known "in the lopsided familiarity of the Quarter" as Hank, an intellectual who has been tossed off the university faculty for preaching subversive social theories; Jean Trent, a "beautiful, misty, diaphanous" movie star who has come home to New Orleans on a holiday; Jason Osgood, a pompous philanthropist; and Tim Slamon, a local politician whose main characteristic is that he never chews his cigars in public.

  When the principals gather in the Bienville penthouse on Saturday night, none of them admits to being the host. The consensus is that the host hasn't yet arrived. While they wait for him or her, the guests engage in much gay party talk as well as some barbed exchanges and not a little philosophizing about death.

  "But—" Jean hesitated. "Maybe it's a trick party. Maybe he'll come in costume, or drop through the ceiling, or come up the dumbwaiter—"

  "Jean's been to Hollywood, Hollywood, Hollywood," sang Out Jason Osgood, waving his cigar in the air to mark time.

  "Be still," ordered Margaret, spanking his cheeks with her fan.

  "Age is heartbreaking to contemplate," agreed Tim. "I dread growing old."

  Peter almost shuddered. "Who wants to grow old—sitting huddled in an armchair clutching at the withered dry cord that he feels slowly being drawn away from him—"

  "Exactly," said Hank, "until at last Death, the great housewife, sweeps one's puzzled moldiness into the dustbin."

  Suddenly a large console radio crackles to life. "This is Station WITS broadcasting," a strange, flat voice says. "I trust you have enjoyed the first part of the evening's entertainment. You are listening, ladies and gentlemen, to the voice of your host."

  The voice goes on to tell them that they are about to play an amusing intellectual game—a very different game from any they have ever played before, for they "must be tired of gatherings at which you hear only the soft bubbling of elegant effervescence." This game pits the host against the eight guests in an ultimate battle of wits, with the prize being death. "If I should win," the voice of the host tells them, it is my privilege to inform you that you will all be dead—before morning."

  The guests are horrified, of course. And even more so when the host informs them that they are trapped in the penthouse, for "retreat constitutes a violation of the rules." The only exit is the door by which they entered and the doors in the patio wall, and all are "charged with electricity sufficient to kill ten men." The host then does a little more philosophizing on the subject of mortality:

  "Death has too long been a portentous affair, solemn, sedate and distinctly annoying. With your kind permission I shall introduce to you tonight death in a new guise, amusing, nonchalant and clever; death, in fact, presented as a social divertissement. . . . Choice diversion, carefully planned to amuse the eight most exacting guests in macabre New Orleans. Tonight you shall learn to laugh with death, the bogey man of the ages. . . . [For] death should be flippant, the last snap of the fingers at a bungling stage manager. Death ought to be the playful unicorn forever teasing the edges of life."

  After the host signs off, the guests frantically explore the penthouse. The butler and waitresses who served drinks earlier are discovered in the kitchen, unconscious from having drunk drugged wine with their dinner. The voice of the host comes back over the radio, to taunt the guests with comments about each, proving that he knows them well, and with explanations of his cleverness in rigging his little penthouse game. There are high-tension wires strung atop the patio wall, so they can't climb up and signal for help; they can't start a fire to draw attention because the fire-sprinkler system is "provided tonight not with water for the extinguishing of fire, but with lethal gas for the extinguishing of the flame of life"; they can't flood the apartment so that water will drip through the ceiling because the supply has been cut off at the kitchen and bathroom taps; the electrified patio gates can't be battered down with a piece of nonconductive furniture because they are sufficiently str
ong to withstand any sort of battering ram.

  But, the host says, he has also made other preparations to assure them of a pleasant evening: liquor, cigarettes, cigars, and other items have been provided in copious quantities. He mentions the favorite drink of each guest, prompting Peter to say that the host must be "a bartender running berserk." And he announces that Jason Osgood will be the first to die.

  When he signs off again, the guests split up to conduct a more intensive search of the penthouse in an attempt to find out where the host is hidden. All except Jason Osgood, that is. Osgood slips back inside the front room and "hisses in a sibilant whisper" at the radio; after which he offers the host three million dollars to spare his, Osgood's, life. No answer from the radio. Osgood then offers to be the host's partner in the murder plot; he'll help kill all the others in exchange for his life. Still no answer. But Osgood is a man possessed; his cowardice drives him to mix eight cocktails, seven of which he laces with the contents of a silver flask the host has told them is prussic acid (should any of them want to commit suicide instead of playing his game). Osgood puts the cocktails on a tray, carries them in to the others. But before any of them can drink, the host's voice warns them not to. And suddenly, without warning, Osgood drops his glass and slumps across a chair, dead.

  "I knew it!" Tim almost shouted. "I knew it—when we saw those coffins - - ."

  "Coffins?" Margaret repeated. "Tim—what coffins?"

  "On the patio," he answered, sinking back into his chair. "Eight coffins."

  "Heaven's mercy," whispered Sylvia.

  "My friends," said the voice of the host.

  "You mad squeaking devil!" cried Tim. .

  Margaret covered her face with her hands. "I think I am going to die before he can kill me," she said.

  The question of how Jason Osgood was murdered is soon answered by the host. "The flask was prepared to give double assurance of suicide in the event that one of you sought that method of escape. Its grape-topped cap spurts tetraethyl lead through a cleverly constructed hypodermic. The cap fits close, and in the effort to unscrew it he pricked his hand in several places and the pressure sent the poison into his blood." The "cleverly constructed hypodermic" must also have injected instant-acting Novocain, since Osgood did not seem to feel any of the needle pricks. But then, why quibble with genius?

  The others, Out of terror, begin to turn on each other and make accusations that this or that person is responsible for Osgood's death—at the same time dragging before the reader all sorts of past indiscretions that (a) make each of them a likely target for homicide, and (b) give each of them a motive for homicide. The host has told them that if he hasn't claimed a second victim by midnight, they will have won the game and will be allowed to go free; so when twelve o'clock comes and they all seem still to be alive, they become jubilant. Then they discover that Margaret, who hasn't spoken for some time, isn't alive. The voice of the host comes over the radio again to tell them how he accomplished her death.

  "If you will lift the cushions in the chair occupied by Mrs. Chisholm, you will find hidden just where her head rested a thin black rubber object that looks like a double foot rule, joined with three clasps. This is a receiver connected with this radio by a wire which runs through the leg of the chair and under the floor. When the chair is resting on a particular spot the connection is made. . . . While you were engaged in your entertaining conversation, I whispered into Mrs. Chisholm's ear and what she heard was a secret so terrible that Mrs. Chisholm, weighing it, preferred to die rather than to face the world again; for I told her that in five minutes you would all hear what she was hearing. So she died."

  Masterful stuff. Except for the fire-extinguisher ploy of Ennis Willie, can there be any more ingenious method of murder in all of mysterydom?

  The voice goes on to reveal what it was he whispered in Margaret's ear that made her heart stop beating: She was a bigamist, by virtue of a first husband whom she had thought dead turning up alive after she had married her current, and very wealthy, spouse. Enough to- make any reputable café-society matron die on the spot, to be sure.

  The next victim turns out to be the Irish politician, Tim Slamon. He gets his while sitting in a particular chair that has rococo carving in which is concealed "a little knob at the front of each arm, and another on each of the front legs. These, if pressed with the finger, will release four needles, each capable of injecting into the blood a sufficient quantity of tetraethyl lead to cause quick cessation of life. When the lights clicked off a few moments ago, Mr. Slamon, already under a nervous strain caused by his having received word that his death was imminent, started and gripped the arms of the chair, and with a characteristic convulsive motion curled his legs about the front legs of his chair."

  The host goes on to give further evidence of his ingenuity:

  Perhaps Miss Sylvia Inglesby will be able to explain why in all her dealings with Mr. Slamon, she was never able to make him overcome the effects of his lowly origin? . . . If Miss Inglesby had taken a little while from her so-called legal practice to outline to Mr. Slamon the elements of good taste, he might still have been among us. . . . How did I know Mr. Slamon would select the chair prepared for him? Because, ladies and gentlemen, that chair was included in the furnishings of this apartment with the purpose of attracting Mr. Slamon's approval. Mr. Slamon, you will observe, had elected to sit in the only chair in the room which is in thoroughly bad taste."

  In the face of such an overwhelming indictment against her, Sylvia loses control of herself and tries to flee through the front door. And gets herself electrically fried for her tacky display of panic.

  A few minutes later, the lights go out again, slowly, causing darkness to gather "like the creep of shameless abominations." Then there is a pistol shot and the sound of breaking glass. When the lights come back on, Peter and Jean find Hank Abbott slightly wounded and a bullet hole in one of the windows opening onto the penthouse terrace. They also find Dr. Reid dead, shot in the chest. "The bullet that killed Dr. Reid," Peter observes, "was fired from above Hank's head. It took a downward course. The hole in the glass is just above the back of Hank's chair. The bullet came in there, grazed the side of Hank's head, and struck Dr. Reid's heart, which was lower still."

  Sound deductive reasoning. But not accurate, as we soon discover.

  Peter and Hank go into the bathroom, ostensibly to bandage Hank's wound; instead, Peter knocks Hank down and proceeds to wrap him up mummy-fashion with adhesive tape. When Jean enters, Peter tells her that Hank is the madman. Hank, in turn, says that Peter is the madman, which causes Peter to tell him to "stop your grinning, you ghastly death hound!"

  The result of the verbal battle that ensues is that Jean sides with Peter—she has had a yen for him ever since they were kids—and Hank, still mummified and helpless, shrugs and confesses his guilt. He claims to have had cause, real or imagined, to hate every one of his victims and to want each of them dead. "Don't you know who they were, that crew I've mercifully reduced to the elements? The epitome of narrowness, dishonesty and crookedness—in their heyday they've cost New Orleans more in broken hearts and misspent cash than the town can recover from in a decade."

  Hank then claims to have swallowed a slow-acting poison while Peter was trussing him up, because he had vowed that he will never meet the hangman. Before he dies, though, he says, he'll willingly dictate a confession that will exonerate Peter and Jean of any complicity in the murders and not incidentally allow them to explain all those corpses scattered around the penthouse. This is his explanation for the mysterious voice of the host:

  "Under the name of Roger Calvert—chosen at random from a tombstone—I had taken the suite directly under the penthouse and had placed there the phonographs on which my records were to be played. You who read this may play the records again if you like. You'll find there three microphones in a circle of talking machines. Each machine is controlled by a switch in this penthouse, and will change its own records. One of the microphones
is in action. The others are strung for emergency.

  ". . . Each record [was] designed to follow the other in perfect sequence as the crime developed. For in planning these murders I had a simple task; there was nothing more intricate than arranging the lines in the same fashion that a playwright arranges them."

  And this is his explanation for the murder of Dr. Reid:

  ". . . I turned off the lights and took a pair of target pistols from a recess behind the chair I was occupying, where I had hidden them. In the darkness, with a pistol in each hand, I pointed one at Dr. Reid and the other toward the window behind me, and I fired both at the same time.

  "Both pistols were equipped with Maxim silencers. Both had long barrels that smothered the flash. One had an aluminum bullet with a light charge of powder. Synchronizing my touch, I had placed the muzzle of the pistol in my left hand just where the aluminum bullet would graze my temple, and go through the glass of the window behind me.

  "Giving the pistols a polish with my handkerchief to take away fingerprints, I dropped them back into their hiding place and turned on the light."