The Black Lizard Big Book of Locked-Room Mysteries

by Otto Penzler

  The cabinet, four and one half feet at the most, had already been emptied of more girls than it could possibly hold—and they continued to come. Now and again there was a slight pause as if the girl who had just come out were the last—but each time the music only grew more excited and more girls streamed forth. Eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one …

  The audience was sure now that each one must be the last. Then Don Diavolo clapped his hands once more as the dancers formed a line on either side of him stretching across the stage.

  He moved to the cabinet, hesitated briefly as he threw his enigmatic smile at the audience and then quickly flung the curtains aside. The audience looked intently, hoping to penetrate the secret of the inexhaustible cabinet. Instead of emptiness, the space within was filled with dancers, nine more who descended to the stage and joined the others. As the music suddenly changed and the whole chorus began to move through one of the beautifully synchronized precision routines for which they are famous, the audience looked around for the magician only to find that, having produced thirty chorus girls from a space which could have held no more than nine, he had himself vanished.

  Chan Chandar Manchu, Don Diavolo’s dresser and general boy-of-all-work waited in the wings and walked with Diavolo toward the elevator that would take them to the dressing room upstairs. He carried a valise, one of whose ends was fitted with a wire netting and inside which were the six white rabbits Diavolo had earlier produced from a silk hat.

  “Those two card kings still at it?” Don asked.

  Chan smiled, his almond eyes laughing. “Yes,” he answered in his impeccable Oxford accent. “They are trying poker deals on each other now. They have me shuffle the deck and nobody ever gets anything less than four aces. I think that perhaps poker is not a good game for heathen Chinee to risk his money on.”

  Don chuckled. “Wily Oriental catches wise quick. Playing poker with those two guys allee same like imparting hard-earned cash to Four Winds of Heaven.”

  “Game of fan-tan might have different outcome,” Chan said somewhat wistfully. “But they wouldn’t play.”

  As Don pushed in the door of his dressing room he said, “Hello, Horseshoe. Hello, Larry. Chan says you won’t take him on at fan-tan.”

  The Horseshoe Kid, an open-faced, guileless-looking gentleman shuffled a deck of cards with one hand and said, “What does he think we are, chumps? I make a living off guys who don’t know no better than to place bets on the other man’s game. Fan-tan! I’d probably lose my back teeth.”

  Larry Keeler said, “I’ve got an idea. What about a game—poker, bridge, blackjack, anything you like—with no holds barred? First man whose sleight-of-hand slips is out of the game and his chips go into the pot. How about it, Horseshoe?”

  The Horseshoe Kid, otherwise known as Melvin Skinner, John B. Crooks, H. C. Orville and numerous other names, none of them his own, growled, “You’ve got big ideas, shorty. You’re a magician, not a gambler. That stuff of yours would look swell on a stage, but across a card table it is phony as hell. Even a lop-eared fink would rumble those fancy shuffles of yours.”

  Keeler replied, “Says you,” and calmly cut the deck that the Horseshoe Kid had just shuffled. He turned up the Ace of Hearts.

  The Horseshoe Kid said, “That’s nothing. Look.” He lifted off the ace and threw it face down on the table. He gave the deck a quick shuffle and said, “I can cut to the Ace of Heavens even when it’s not in the deck.” He promptly did so. Chan reached out and flipped over the face down card only to discover that it was now the joker.

  Keeler didn’t care for it. “Your throwdown is antiquated,” he criticized. “You’re way back in the Dark Ages, still using the Erdnase method. Watch this.”

  The cardplayers in the audience outside would have blinked dazedly at this competition in dirty work. And though both the Horseshoe Kid and Larry Keeler were pretty evenly matched, Larry would probably have raised the most eyebrows. Horseshoe on the other hand would have taken away their shirts in a game.

  He was a professional gambler whose trickery with cards was necessarily accomplished with a minimum of suspicion that it was anything of the sort. Larry was a magician who let his audiences know that he was using trickery and dared them to catch him at it. His card manipulations were more amazing to the lay audience than those of many of his competitors because the average person mistakenly supposes that sleight-of-hand consists mainly in the ability to palm cards.

  Larry left them gaping because it was obvious from the start that he couldn’t hope to palm a card of the regular size. His hands were several sizes too small. Larry is a cocky little man, known along Broadway as “Half Pint the Great” though few people have ever dared to call him that to his face. He is a dwarf, four feet tall at the outside, and sensitive as the devil about it.

  His lack of stature has always prevented his debut on the legitimate stage as a serious magician because a conjurer of that size is more humorous than mysterious. Instead he plays circus sideshows and museums billed as “Wizzo, the World’s Smallest Prestidigitator.”

  Don Diavolo went on into the inner dressing room and started to change. “You boys will get conjurer’s cramp or break an arm one of these days trying to out-maneuver each other.”

  Larry had just finished his trick and the Horseshoe Kid had taken the cards and started to try and top it when Woody Haines arrived. He nodded to the card players and went on in to where Don was seated before his dressing table removing the makeup from his face.

  Woody had the build of an All-American back, which he had been, the amiable and ingenious brashness of a small boy crashing a circus, which he had done, and the breezy morale of a newspaper columnist, which he was. Running his Behind the Scenes stuff in the New York Press was his job. Tagging Don Diavolo like a large and persistent sheepdog puppy was his hobby. Don Diavolo always made news. Besides, Woody liked the guy.

  Don saw him in the mirror and greeted him. “Hello, Woody. How’s the keyhole business? You look as if you had just corralled a front page story that’ll need an eight column head.”

  “Eight column head,” Woody exclaimed excitedly. “Hellfire, yes. And 72 point caps printed in four colors—or the city desk is nuts. Listen, Don. Last night Detective-sergeant Lester Healy was murdered in his office down at headquarters, and you’ve got to tell me how.”

  “In his office at headquarters?” Don asked in surprise. “That’s hitting close to home isn’t it? And why are you so late with it? I thought you were always Johnny-on-the spot?”

  “I’m the only reporter in town who knows about it yet,” Woody answered. “I’ve got me a nice pipeline right into Inspector Church’s office, but even that almost failed me. The birdie who whispers things my way almost let me down altogether. He was afraid he’d be thrown out on his ear. I never saw a lid clamped down so tight as the one that’s on at Headquarters today.

  “D.A. is so burned up he steams, and Inspector Church nearly put me in the jug for saying good morning in a cheery tone of voice. That’s what made me suspicious that something was up. So I put the thumbscrews on.”

  “Yes,” Don said, “I can see why they’d be touchy about it. Who are the main suspects?”

  “Most of the dicks say the only person that could have possibly killed Healy is Inspector Church!”

  “What!” Don nearly exploded. The Horseshoe Kid and Larry Keeler crowded into the doorway, their eyes popping.

  “You heard me,” Woody added. “And Inspector Church says that Healy was killed by an invisible man!”

  The Horseshoe Kid grunted, “And he’s the cop who always says my alibis limp. Boy, wait until I tell him what I think of that one.”

  Don Diavolo was astonished, but he didn’t appear to think it was funny. He was scowling. “Woody,” he said slowly. “Let’s have the story. All of it.”

  Woody pushed his hat back on his tawny head and obliged. “Church went down to Healy’s office last night shortly before five o’clock. He heard a shot insid
e, someone locked the door in his face, he shot the lock off and broke in. Nobody there but Healy with a slug in his head. Then a voice came out of thin air and said, ‘See you later, Inspector,’ and the door closed.

  “Church swears he saw it closing all by itself. A flock of dicks, in the corridor outside, swear that nobody came out the door. They couldn’t find a gun. And that’s that. Except for this.”

  Woody threw a five-by-seven sheet of paper down on the dressing table before Don. “Photostat,” he said, “of a note that Inspector Church found an hour or so later. He and McShean chewed the rag in Healy’s office for half an hour and watched the fingerprint men mess the place up. Then they went out for a few minutes to interview some men that had been stationed to guard the exits from headquarters immediately after the shooting. They all swear no one got by them.

  “Then, when Church got back to Healy’s office he started to pick up his hat. He had left it lying on Healy’s desk. That note was lying on the crown of his hat.”

  Don read it aloud.

  Inspector Church and as many friends as he cares to bring are cordially invited to attend the theft of the Madras Siva from The Museum of Indian Art at precisely 11 a.m. on Wednesday. Sorry about Sergeant Healy, but what he had to tell you would have been inconvenient.

  Sincerely yours,

  THE INVISIBLE MAN.

  “Tomorrow at four,” Don said. “Chan. The Madras Siva. What is it?”

  Chan frowned. “The Madras Siva is a statue of Siva, The Destroyer, posed as Nataraja, Lord of the Dance. It is a nearly priceless sculpture assigned to the tenth century, and I should say that its theft was impossible under any conditions.”

  “Why?” Woody asked.

  “Because the statue is bronze, seven feet high and Siva has usual four arms extended in all directions like an octopus. Very unhandy object to pilfer.”

  Larry Keeler said, “It can’t be done. The guy’s a loony.”

  Don Diavolo looked at the note again. “He certainly seems sure of himself.”

  “After what happened to Healy,” Woody said, “he has a right to be. He’s got the whole Metropolitan Police Force standing on its ear right now. I’m breaking the story in the next edition and I want you to tell me—”

  “This fingerprint that shows on the notepaper, Woody. Explain that.”

  “The lab gave the note the once over with their iodine fumes and developed that print. One thumbprint with a half inch scar across it. But it’s not in the files either here or in Washington. Now what sort of hocus pocus is this Invisible bloke using? You’re the expert on that subject. I want a signed interview.”

  Don was only half listening to Woody’s request. He was more interested, and considerably startled by the curious expression that he saw on Patricia Collins’s face.

  Pat, his blond young lady assistant who gets sawed in two, burned alive, and generally mistreated at each performance only to come up smiling again at the next, had entered the room in time to hear most of Woody’s story.

  When she saw the reproduction of the note her face had gone completely white. Her hand as she reached and took the paper for a closer look trembled.

  Chapter III

  $10,000 an Hour

  Don pretended not to notice Pat’s trembling reaction and he turned quickly to Woody. “At the auto show a week ago,” he said, “The Lord Motor Company displayed their new V-12 and a Dr. Valeski Palgar trained an electrical gadget of his invention on it six times a day. He called it an Invisibility Inducer.

  “The Lord car promptly, in full view and under bright lights, faded out of sight except for the chassis and the running motor. When the doctor threw his switches into reverse the Fisher body slowly materialized again. The night before I had intended to go take a look at it someone burgled the Grand Central Palace and walked off with the doctor’s machine.

  “The next morning it was discovered that Dr. Palgar too had vanished. The papers were full of it. And now, I don’t need to be a mind-reader to know darned well that you’re going to tell me next that Sergeant Healy was working on the doctor’s disappearance. Right?”

  “Right,” Woody replied at once. “That’s what puts the finishing touch on the story. If it wasn’t for that vanishing ray the D.A. would have had Inspector Church laced in a straitjacket before now. It’s the only thing that gives him an out.”

  “Palgar’s invisibility gimmick was an advertising stunt, wasn’t it?” Horseshoe asked. “Why don’t you ask the Lord Company’s advertising department what the gaff was? I should think they’d—”

  “But they don’t,” Woody answered. “I got onto them right away. They’ve had cops in their hair ever since last night, and they couldn’t tell any of us one blamed thing. They were pretty pleased about the publicity when their invisible ray vanished as if it had backfired, but now, with a murder tacked on, they don’t like it.

  “Palgar spent a couple of days before the show opened setting up his gadget, but he wasn’t giving out any secrets. He worked behind closed doors and he yelled bloody murder every time anyone even tried to poke his nose into the place. He—”

  Chan, who had gone to answer the phone in the other room, returned and announced, “A Mr. J. D. Belmont downstairs asking to see you.”

  Woody blinked. “J. D. Belmont. Holy cats! You do move in society, don’t you, Don? What causes this?”

  “Without looking in my crystal ball,” Don said, “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never set eyes on the man before. Have him sent up, Chan.”

  “Who,” Horseshoe asked, “is J. D. Belmont?”

  Woody stared at him. “So,” he said, pretending to be greatly offended, “you don’t read my column. Or maybe you just don’t read. Try it sometime. J. D. Belmont is a millionaire about six times over—or is it sixty? I always get lost at that altitude. He is a sort of invisible man himself—the unseen mastermind behind a couple of dozen corporations and scads of holding companies. He spends his ill-gotten gains on his art collection. He’s gathered in half the Old Masterpieces of Europe, his jewel collection has never been equalled, his library of Shakespeare First Folios, Gutenberg Bibles, and illuminated manuscripts is—”

  The Horseshoe Kid, obviously interested, asked, “Does he play poker?”

  “He does,” Woody said. “But when he plays the stakes are so high you wouldn’t be able to buy into the game unless you got a finance company to back you.”

  “Hmm,” Horseshoe replied. “I’ll have to give that some thought. I haven’t met the sucker yet that I couldn’t—”

  As he heard the door to the corridor open Don got up. “You folks sit tight,” he said. He went out and started to close the door behind him.

  But Woody Haines slipped through after him, piloting his hefty frame with amazing agility. “No, you don’t,” he whispered. “I’m cutting myself in on this. It looks like a story.”

  J. D. Belmont stood in the center of the room. A stony-eyed gentleman who was obviously a private detective stuck close to his side and a uniformed chauffeur stood in the doorway, blocking it. They both had their right hands in coat pockets that bulged suspiciously.

  The chauffeur was nervous. He kept looking back over his shoulders. Both of them acted as if they had itchy trigger fingers.

  Mr. Belmont seemed a bit nervous himself; his short, gruff manner was even a little grouchier than usual. He was a large, heavily built man with bushy jutting eyebrows and a vast frown. He chewed irritably at a long cigar whose gold band bore his own initials. He emitted smoke like a Chinese dragon and there were sulphurous sparks in his deep voice.

  “Mr. Diavolo?” he grunted.

  Don nodded and introduced Woody as J. Haywood Haines without mentioning that he was a newspaper columnist. J. D. Belmont had a reputation for throwing things at reporters.

  “Sit down, won’t you?” Don asked.

  “No,” Belmont said. “Can’t stay. Much too busy. I’ve got a job for you. Don’t have confidence in the police force in this town. Bunch of n
incompoops. Hmmmph!” The Finance King, like a destroyer trying to hide from a submarine, exhaled another cloud of smoke.

  “But I have a job,” Don started to object. “I—”

  J. D. said, “I know. Damn good act too. Fooled me completely.” He said it as if that was the first time anything like that had ever happened. “That trick of yours where you put the girl in the box, slide steel plates through her neck and hips, and then show us her head and her legs with nothing at all between. How do you do it? Mirrors, I suppose?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t tell you that, Mr. Belmont,” Don replied. “You see I’ve never been able to figure it out myself. It isn’t mirrors though, I’m sure about that. First thing I thought of too. I looked. There aren’t any.”

  The financier almost produced a grin, but the heavy black eyebrows and his brusque, pugnacious manner killed it, half formed. “Yes. Of course. Quite right. About this job. It’ll last about an hour. I’ll pay you five thousand dollars. Be at my home at Oyster Bay at ten-thirty tomorrow night. Do you have a pen?”

  Don said, “I do a show tomorrow night at eleven o’clock. I don’t think—”

  Belmont broke in. “Look here, young man. Are you trying to hold me up? Hmmmph. I’ll make it ten thousand. Now stop arguing.” He took a checkbook from his pocket, seated himself and opened it across his knee. He held out his hand. “Pen please, young man. I’m in a hurry.”

  Before Don could reply, Woody Haines produced a pen and gave it to Belmont. He said, “Hmmmph” again instead of “Thanks” and started writing. Woody made motions at Don behind the financier’s back, and his mouth silently formed the words, “Take it, you dope.” Woody’s keen brown eyes obviously saw another big story staring him in the face and he wasn’t going to let it get away if he could help it.

  Don said, “Could you tell me what it is you want ten thousand dollars’ worth of, Mr. Belmont?”

  “Protection,” the man growled, waving the check briskly. “Here. I got that in my mail this morning. Thought it was a crackpot until I saw the headlines in the Press an hour or so ago. Showed the note to District-attorney Cleever. He nearly had apoplexy when he saw it. Tells me the note writer murdered a detective last night. Cleever says he expects an arrest any moment. Means he doesn’t know anything about it. I want you out there when it happens. I’ll expect you at ten-thirty.”