Deadly Hall

by John Dickson Carr

  “He’s here,” Dave assented. “We’ve seen him.”

  “I know; so have I.” Saylor nursed the cigarette. “Towards the end of January, as it happens, I heard Townsend lecture in Philadelphia. When the lecture was over, I introduced myself and shook hands. So I know him by sight.”

  “Well?”

  Their host looked still more portentous.

  “On Sunday evening, all on my own and not knowing quite what to do with myself, I decided to have dinner at the St. Charles Hotel. In the dining-room was Townsend, all on his own, having a meal with a book propped up in front of him.

  “I’d promised not to pester you or your family, Dave; you can testify I’ve lived up to it. But in spite of all the tragic circumstances —sorry!—there was no reason why I shouldn’t use my talent for questioning to pump somebody who might have information. So I went over; I said hello; I reminded him we’d met before. And he very hospitably invited me to sit down.”

  “What information did you get?” Dave asked quickly.

  “About Delys Hall or the Hobart family, very little. He hasn’t found any secret whatdyecallit, I gather …”

  Resisting the temptation to interject, “No, he hasn’t found it,” Jeff cursed himself and kept quiet.

  “As regards anything you or I would call significant,” Saylor went on, “Townsend was as close-mouthed as Silent Cal. He’s protecting Hobart interests, Dave; he likes you; he’s only stayed on here because you asked him to. But, about any place other than Delys Hall, he’ll talk a blue streak. Old houses aren’t his only hobby. He’s enthusiastic about a secondary hobby, and wants to write a book on that too, only his publisher discourages him.”

  “And what’s this other hobby?” queried Dave.

  “Disguise.”

  “Disguise?”

  “Some people, Townsend swears, can make ’emselves completely unrecognizable without any mummery of wig or dyed complexion or false beard. As a younger man, you see, he became interested in the late Sir Herbert Tree, the actor, famous even offstage for being able to change his whole appearance and personality.

  “‘I myself couldn’t do it,’ Townsend said. ‘Probably you couldn’t do it either. But I’ve met more than one person who with the simplest effects, plus acting ability, could deceive anybody except a close friend. Sometimes merely changing the hair style, together with putting on or taking off glasses, can work a surprising alteration.’ And that’s where I got my great idea!”

  “Is it your suggestion, as it’s Uncle Gil’s,” Jeff demanded, “that somebody in this affair has been leading a double life?”

  Saylor stared back at him.

  “What if I suggested, Jeff, that the guilty party is somebody we haven’t even met so far? What would you call that?”

  “Frankly, I should call it a damned poor detective story.”

  “Who’s talking about detective stories?”

  “Everybody, and my uncle in particular.”

  Dave, fuming, could not sit still.

  “Whether real life does or does not follow detective stories, Chuck, this endless monologue of yours hasn’t told us one damned thing! Haven’t you led up to the revelation long enough? If you’ve got something important to communicate, why can’t you just communicate it?”

  “I intend to, Dave, as soon as we’ve had the entertainment.”

  “Entertainment, for God’s sake?”

  Saylor stubbed out his cigarette and signalled their waiter to bring the bill.

  “Every good host, you know, will prepare a little entertainment at the end of a meal. I thought it would put you in the right mood—soften you up, sort of—for the inevitable end and climax.”

  Dave leaped to his feet.

  “Jesus H. Christ, man, do you think we’ve got to be ‘softened up’ before we’re in any shape to hear you?”

  “Easy, Dave! E-easy now! I never did know a guy so quick to fly off the handle and hit the ceiling!” Saylor counted out money on the table. “I’m taking you to a place so close to here you could almost throw a stone and hit it from the door of Henri’s; then you’ll see what I mean. Ready?”

  “We’re all ready.”

  “Right. You go first, Dave, with Old Sleuth to guide you; Jeff, you follow with Penny. This way, then, and let everybody be merry!”

  From the restaurant’s rather dark foyer they emerged into narrow Toulouse Street between Bourbon and Royal streets, but much closer to the former. Golden sunshine, as well as a temperature in the middle seventies, lay drowsily on the pastel-colored houses of the Old Square, itself at its most somnolent now.

  Dave and Saylor strolled ahead. Jeff, a short distance behind with Penny’s left arm touching his right, observed that the other two did not stroll far. A few paces brought them to Bourbon Street, where they turned to the right on its south banquette. Following the same way, Jeff instinctively glanced back over his shoulder.

  When he and Penny and Dave came in from Delys Hall, they had taken two cars. Penny drove him in her family’s Hudson; Dave drove the Stutz. Despite Penny’s dislike of driving in the Vieux Carré, it had been convenient to leave both cars in the parking lot now occupying the site of the demolished St. Louis Hotel close by.

  But Jeff, as he guided Penny to the right on Bourbon Street, did not concern himself with those cars. He glanced down at Penny; their eyes met; they both instantly looked away. But their arms still touched. So strong between them had grown the sense of communication, even of intimacy, that it brought outward embarrassment.

  He would have liked to be leading her into some romantic garden where, in warmth and secrecy, he could have spoken his mind. Penny, he knew, felt the same. Instead he was leading her … where?

  Saylor and Dave had gone only a short distance when Saylor stopped, drawing himself up like a showman.

  “Behold!” he exclaimed.

  “Behold what?” asked Dave, also stopping.

  “We are here!” the other said. “On your right, ladies and gentlemen, the south side of not-so-stately Bourbon Street, behold stateliness indeed!”

  “What stateliness? And is this the entertainment?”

  “It is, as you’ll all soon agree.”

  “Well, what is it?” demanded Dave. “If there’s supposed to be anything stately about a shop that sells pralines … !”

  “Not the shop that sells pralines, dammit! Beyond it; just beyond. That noble façade, uprearing higher than most houses hereabouts, with the electric sign unlighted in the daytime. Look at it, can’t you? Don’t just stand there griping; look at it!”

  They all looked.

  The square façade, no doubt of brick faced with white stucco, rose to something more than a two-storey height. It showed no windows looking out. Instead, above broad green double doors inscribed ‘ENTER in gilt letters, the front had been realistically painted to represent the skyline of a city on several hills, handsome buildings dominated by one impressive structure with a gold dome.

  Saylor pointed to the unlit electric sign, which read SAN FRANCISCO.

  “It has been remarked,” he was proclaiming, “that in these United States there are only three ‘story’ cities to capture the imagination: New York, New Orleans, and San Francisco. By a natural transition we pass from the second to the third. If the lady will precede us, pushing open the right-hand double door …”

  Penny glanced at Jeff. “Shall I?”

  “Yes; why not? For once, during our forays into the Old Square,” he reminded her, “we’re entering a building on the south side of the street. Cinderella’s Slipper, the Bohemian Cigar Divan: each was on the north side, respectively, of Bourbon and Royal. We can’t be far from Mr. Everard at this moment.”

  Penny went on through.

  Jeff, Dave, and Saylor followed single file into a foyer, broad if not very deep, of subdued interior lighting. In the glass-enclosed paybox against the left-hand wall sat a decorative young lady wearing clothes of some unidentifiably old-fashioned sort.


  The rear wall of the foyer had been painted and decorated to represent the ground floor, together with partially the floor above, of a massive brownstone house, abode of the very prosperous. Though the house’s front door was a practical door, a second glance showed the windows at either side to be dummies of painting and carpentry. Such subdued lighting might have been the glow of street-lamps. Beside the house door stood a ticket-taker in comic-opera uniform. Distantly, Jeff thought he could hear a cart rattling over cobbles.

  Saylor gestured towards the paybox.

  “Don’t go near that ticket-window, anybody!” he ordered. “It’s all been arranged and paid for. Usually, when a party goes through this exhibit, they’re accompanied by a spieler to give the description. On the present occasion, good friends, I’m doing the spiel.”

  “This show had better be good, whatever it is,” growled Dave, eyeing their host without favor. “You couldn’t sound more complacent if you were Kubla Khan showing off Xanadu to the visiting Elks, so this show had better be good.”

  “There’ll be no cause for complaint,” Saylor assured him. “I promised you entertainment, didn’t I?

  “My name,” he pursued in a ringing voice, “is Meldrum, Barnabas T. Meldrum. I’m a successful stockbroker with a home on Van Ness Avenue. Before you is my home, and you three are my guests. We’ve made a night of it in wide-open San Francisco; dawn is just coming up; I bring you here for a final drink before we separate.”

  Nodding towards the uniformed ticket-taker, who nodded in reply, Saylor leaned past him and turned the knob of the front door.

  “Into the lower hall, please, where a light has been left against our return.”

  Then Saylor closed the door behind them.

  They stood in a very fair simulacrum of the hall so described, with a floor which appeared to be squares of black and white marble, and a heavy staircase at the back. The whole place was so shadowy, from a mere faraway lamp-gleam, that Jeff could distinguish only the outlines of furniture which seemed old-fashioned without being ancient: it suggested the furniture in his childhood home.

  “A hearty welcome, good friends,” that stage voice continued, “to the house of Barnabas T. Meldrum! If you will go forward, and up those stairs …”

  “Just a moment, Barnabas T. Meldrum!” interposed Jeff, with more than the glimmering of an idea. “You said ‘wide-open’ San Francisco, didn’t you? If we’ve been making a night of it, what’s the date?”

  “That, sir, you will soon learn. Up the stairs, please, lest I seem to be lacking in hospitality!”

  The stairs, if somewhat scuffed from usage, at least seemed solid. Dave went first, then Jeff with Penny at his left side, and Saylor bringing up the rear.

  “If I tried hard enough,” Jeff ventured, “I think I might guess the date. Probably it doesn’t matter, but … you might stay close to me, Penny.”

  “Do you even need to ask that?” she whispered, taking his arm. “Here I am!”

  “They build well in this town,” declared the pseudo Barnabas T. Meldrum, “and especially here on Van Ness Avenue. They build for now and for the future too.” Suddenly he dropped his stage manner. “This might really be a private house, mightn’t it?” he asked in a normal tone. “The illusion is perfect.”

  The illusion could not have been called perfect, since they found no hall or landing at the top of the stairs. Instead they stepped straight through an open doorway into an oblong room where near-perfection of illusion had really been attained.

  Through two large windows opposite, which had every appearance of being real windows, filtered a bluish pink light evidently representing dawn. That eerie glow lit up heavy furniture, wallpaper in a design of multicolored cabbages, and a long-necked chandelier.

  “This room,” Barnabas T. Meldrum proclaimed, “is used as an office away from the office. Note the stock-ticker in the corner, the massive table-desk, the absence of fal-lals or other fripperies. As for our view from the windows …”

  He strode to the left-hand window, whose curtains had not been closed, and stood peering out.

  “I’ve never been in San Francisco,” said Saylor, again dropping his Meldrum role, “so I can’t guarantee the accuracy of the topography. But the people who built this display have taken a lot of care with perspective effects, light and sound effects, models that work to deceive the eye. Look there!”

  The others gathered round him.

  “We’re supposed to be fairly high up, seeing out over rooftops. Down there—east, roughly—is San Francisco Bay, with the foot of Market Street and the spire of the Ferry Building. Closer at hand, though still some distance away, that’s the gold dome of City Hall. You can see smoke going up from some chimneys; you can hear wagons moving. And, in the area called South of the Slot …”

  Here he turned, addressing Jeff.

  “You wanted to know the date, didn’t you? All right! Take a look at the wall opposite.”

  Jeff followed a pointing finger. The wall opposite, in addition to the doorway by which they had entered, had a second doorway with a closed door. At one side of this doorway hung a wall clock that at first sight appeared to be a real clock. At the other side hung a large tear-off calendar whose exposed leaf showed the date of Tuesday, April 17th, 1906.

  “Get it?” Saylor leered.

  “I think so,” said Jeff. “It’s too early in the morning for anybody to have changed that calendar. The real date is Wednesday, April 18th.”

  “And the time, as you see by the clock, is 5:12 A.M. Well? What did happen at twelve minutes past five in the morning on that date? Get that too?”

  “Yes, undoubtedly,” Jeff told him. “It seems we’re just in time for the San Francisco earthquake.”

  And then it began.

  19

  AT THE OUTSET it was sound alone: swelling sound like the rumble of a gigantic train that raced towards them from the direction of the bay. Next its first shock smote. The floor jerked and shuddered; the whole room seemed to jerk and shudder; the chandelier swung with it. That same shock flung Dave against the table-desk, which had not moved.

  “Earthquake?” Dave blurted.

  “Of course,” affirmed Saylor, chortling to himself. “Why do you think I brought you here?”

  “And this is entertainment, for God’s sake?”

  “Sure; what else? Look, Dave! You didn’t turn a hair, Jeff says, when somebody fired three shots straight at you! Don’t get upset by a make-believe sideshow that can’t do anybody the least harm!”

  “Maybe so, but the damn floor’s having a fit! It’ll be still more fun, won’t it, when bricks from the ceiling come down and conk us?”

  “Nothing like that,” Saylor staggered a little as he turned back to the window, “nothing like that happened then or will happen now. The houses in this part of town were too solidly built. A few cracked windowpanes; some broken dishes in the china closet; that’s all. They’d had earthquakes before, though never a bad one: good old Meldrum took precautions; the heavy furniture is fastened down. If you look out there—”

  More shocks had thrown Penny into Jeff’s arms, where she stayed. With his arm around her waist, as Saylor paused, he guided her over a rocking floor to the other window.

  Rooftops near and far now seemed to writhe before some crumpled. The rumble from that phantom train had been succeeded by a crash and roar of falling timbers or masonry. Through dust-cloud effects Jeff caught what appeared to be the yellow flickering of fire.

  “They’ve got the place so soundproof,” exulted Saylor, “that nothing’s audible outside. Hell of a lively show, eh? There goes most of a six-million-dollar City Hall, leaving the dome on top of the skeleton. But it’s all right, Dave! Those flames are only lights; there’s no real fire. And most people on Van Ness Avenue were asleep; they hardly knew it had happened.”

  “If they slept through this,” raved the scion of the Hobarts, “they must have been dead drunk or just plain dead. Have it your own way, P. T. Barnum;
I have only one question. How long does the bloody show go on?”

  “Well …”

  There was a distant, collapsing roar of breakage, with flames curling up. The floor ceased to tremble. Dave, who had perched on the table-desk and gripped its edges, rose to his feet.

  “O.K.!” he said. “If a pin-headed master of ceremonies has now stopped entertaining us to the top of his bent, suppose we haul our freight out of here?”

  “I don’t want to be a spoilsport,” ventured Penny, looking up at Jeff and speaking in a low voice, “but that does seem a very good idea. It is over, isn’t it?”

  “From what I remember reading, Penny, the first wave lasted about fifty-five seconds.”

  “The first wave?” yelped Dave.

  “Then there was a pause of ten seconds, after which—”

  “The rest of you may not be counting,” Dave cut in, “but I’m counting as though I had a stopwatch at the ready. And it strikes me those ten seconds are just about—”

  Again the floor rocked and the earthquake walloped, with a din as shattering as before. Saylor himself all but lost his balance.

  “Though it may seem the wrong time to mention this, Dave, you haven’t a notion what happened on that steamboat, now have you?”

  “How’s that?”

  “Well,” cried Saylor, “who was she sleeping with? Who was she really sleeping with?”

  “What the hell are you talking about? And who’s the ‘she’ in question?”

  “You don’t know that either, do you?”

  In Saylor’s manner there seemed something so sinister, even maniacal, that Jeff thought it best to intervene.

  “How do we get out of this place?” he asked. “By the same stairs we came up?”

  “No; it’s forbidden to leave by those stairs; rule of the house. There are two other exits; I’ll show you.”

  Separating Jeff and Penny, he grasped Jeff’s left arm and Penny’s right.