by Otto Penzler
Lying prostrate on a heavy lotus pedestal was the small kicking figure of a dwarf whose back supported the right foot of the mighty Siva figure that balanced above, majestically, gracefully, caught by the sculptor in the midst of the symbolical movement of the Dance of Siva—graceful and yet, with his wide spread four arms, monstrous. The dark gold-green of the old bronze shone dully in the harsh white light.
Church glowered at the statue. “What the devil would anyone want with that pipe-dream? Now I know I’m dealing with a crackpot.” He reached out, touched its metal surface experimentally, and shook his head. “Anybody’d need a derrick, a gang of expert piano movers, and a truck to lift that.”
Church lifted his arm and looked at his wrist watch. The hands stood at five minutes to eleven.
Don Diavolo, standing at ease just outside the single doorway, his guards on either side of him, asked, “Well, Inspector?”
Church looked at him. “You make me nervous,” he said. “Schultz, take him into the curator’s office and put him on ice. I don’t think anything is going to happen, but if it does, I don’t want him around. But I want to know where he is.”
Inspector Church, as it turned out, was right on both counts. Nothing happened; yet it did. And that came about in this way.
On the other side of 55th Street, directly opposite the Museum, there was a shop whose window bore the words: Nathan Ziegler, Ltd., lettered in a conservative, dignified gold-leaf. Mr. Ziegler didn’t bother to inform the passerby what sort of a shop it was. The man in the street wasn’t a customer of his, and everyone who might conceivably be a prospective client knew about Mr. Ziegler.
They all knew that he was one of the three really important art dealers on this side of the Atlantic. They knew that if they wanted an El Greco or a jeweled medieval reliquary Ziegler, if anyone, could get it if it was to be had at all. They also knew that Ziegler was an art expert whose opinion of the authenticity of an artistic rarity had seldom been questioned.
At the moment when the Inspector looked at his watch, Nathan Ziegler stood at the door of his shop, his back stooped in its characteristic attitude, his small dark eyes peering out at the densely packed, waiting crowd along the street.
By his side another man stood, a dark-complexioned, straight-backed man whose blue eyes were quick and bright behind the pince-nez with its broad black ribbon. He wore a fashionably tailored overcoat over sedately correct morning clothes. He pointed toward the show window. “That Medici goblet and the T’ang vases are in danger. If the crowd should push too heavily against your window …”
Ziegler saw the risk. He motioned quickly to the two clerks who were nearby also watching the scene outside. “Clear the window out, quickly.” Then he turned to his companion. “It is preposterous. Some publicity stunt, I suppose. It would take more than one man, invisible or not, to remove the Siva statue from that museum, even though it were quite unguarded. Do you care to look at more of the miniatures, Mr. Gates? It is nearly eleven and since you have so little time …”
Gates shook his head. “Not just yet.” He gestured toward the crowd outside that had now grown silent and intent, all eyes on the museum doorway. “This interests me greatly. You know, I’m not so sure that it is a hoax. There was something about the way those letters were written that sounded devilishly serious. I half believe that somehow, in spite of that crowd and those policemen, the note writer, invisible or not, may get what he is after.”
“But what would he do with that statue if he did get it?” Ziegler asked.
Gates shook his head. “That’s the mystery. That is what makes the whole affair so intriguing.”
Behind the two men, in the rear of the shop, a clock began to strike the hour. Nathan Ziegler, who had never been more completely wrong in his life, said, “Nothing will happen.”
As the last stroke died away, the crowd outside stirred uneasily. They watched intently now, hoping for some incident that would give them an indication of what was going on inside the museum. But the closely formed line of patrolmen at attention before the doorway remained stolid and immovable.
Ten minutes later the scene was still the same. Gates looked at his watch. “Perhaps you are right, Mr. Ziegler. Either the Invisible Man is late or it is a hoax of some sort. Shall we look at the miniatures again? I would like to see the documents certifying the authenticity of that Coswell portrait of the Prince Regent.”
Ziegler led the way back through the little rear door into the display room. He started toward the great safe on the left whose door was partly ajar as Ziegler had left it. Gates, who had gone across to a display case along the rear wall suddenly exclaimed, “Ziegler! This Caxton Book of the Hours! My copy has an earlier date, and you have this listed as his earliest piece of liturgical printing.”
Ziegler turned immediately, and went to join Gates. “No,” he said, obviously perturbed by Gates’s statement. “That couldn’t be true. It is a very well authenticated fact that William Caxton—”
Footsteps crossed the floor behind the two men.
“Mr. Gates?” a voice asked.
Gates turned. “Yes?”
A Western Union special messenger held out a pad and pencil. “Sign here, please.” When Gates had done so, he handed over an envelope, took the tip Gates gave him and walked quickly out.
Gates ripped the message open. “From my New York office,” he said. “I told them I was going to stop here.” He read quickly and then frowned. “I must return to the office before catching that noon plane. I shall have to leave immediately.”
He stuffed the message in his pocket, crossed the room and quickly gathered up his hat, cane, and gloves. “Send me photostats of the Coswell documents,” he said. “If they are satisfactory, I shall send you a check for the portrait.” He stooped to lift the large pigskin travelling case by the door.
“Wait,” Ziegler said. “Let my clerk help you with that. Butterfield! Come and carry Mr. Gates’s bag out for him. If you can force your way through that crowd, you should be able to get a cab on Fifth Avenue.”
“Thank you,” Gates said as the clerk came in. “I shall see you again when I am in town. If you should locate another of the Florentine pamphlets, let me know immediately. Goodbye.”
Ziegler saw him to the door, and, after watching the still expectant crowd for a few moments, returned to the display room and started to return the miniatures he had laid out for inspection to their places within the safe.
At that moment, Don Diavolo, standing in the window of the curator’s office, was looking down upon the upturned faces of the crowd. Woody Haines, below, who had been watching that window like a hawk ever since Don had appeared in it, saw him shake his head. Quickly Woody slipped away and headed for a phone.
That was how Woody, for once in his life, missed the excitement. Just at the moment when he was telling a rewrite man that the Invisible Man had failed to keep his promise, things began happening on 55th Street.
The first thing was the clerk who ran white-faced from Nathan Ziegler’s shop, pushed through the crowd and hurried, as if Siva the Destroyer was at his heels, across toward the Museum. Four cops jumped on him at once. The newsreel cameramen’s long faces brightened and their cameras swung into action.
The crowd saw the clerk gesturing frantically. They saw a detective leave the group around him and dash into the Museum.
A moment later Inspector Church, at the head of a running squad of men emerged, gathered the clerk in passing, and charged across the street like a football backfield going over for the final touchdown. They ploughed through the waiting mob and vanished into the little shop. Reporters converged on the scene of activity piled up against the shop’s doors like a wave against a breakwater. More cops arrived and began pushing the crowd back.
One of the reporters buttonholed a detective who owed him money from last night’s poker game. “All right, Joe,” he threatened. “Talk, or else.”
The detective whispered a few words in his ear and the r
eporter, his eyes popping, whirled and vanished. He made the drugstore phone booth down the street just as Woody Haines was coming out. The reporter saw him and slowed to a walk at once. “Hi, Woody,” he said. “Can I use the phone? The wife’s having a baby and I ought to call the hospital.”
Woody nodded, stepped aside and then as the door closed, turned, scowled after his colleague, muttered, “Damn, that guy only got married last week!” When that realization exploded under his hat Woody legged it for the street at a pace that would have made Seabiscuit envious.
The reporter in the phone booth, half a minute later, was getting one of the biggest nickel’s worth of phone service the telephone company had ever sold.
“The Invisible Man,” he shouted, talking in headlines, “double-crosses police! Takes fortune in precious stones from Nathan Ziegler while New York’s Finest are barking up wrong tree!”
The rewrite man on the other end of the wire dug savagely into a sheet of copy paper with his pencil, broke the point off short, swore and grabbed for another. A few minutes later teletype machines in a hundred cities were chattering madly.
And a few blocks away Patricia Collins leaned forward breathlessly on the seat of a taxicab that moved down Fifth Avenue close behind another cab in which Mr. L. C. Gates sat with a satisfied smile on his face and a large pigskin bag between his feet.
Chapter VI
The Mysterious Mr. Gates
When Inspector Church burst like a raging cyclone into Nathan Ziegler’s shop he found its proprietor in a hysterical and incoherent state. In answer to Church’s torrent of questions he held out a shaking hand and gave the Inspector a small card whose size and shape were now all too familiar.
It was another impudent, taunting note from the invisible correspondent.
My apologies for having misled you. And be careful. I intend to do it again. Better luck tonight. Best regards.
—THE INVISIBLE MAN
A coldly determined, vindictive expression settled on the Inspector’s red face as he read those words and his frosty blue eyes were like twin volcanoes spouting fire. He was really mad now.
He turned from Ziegler, whom shock had left nearly speechless, and went to work on the clerk, an elderly little man who sputtered with excitement, but who was still able to answer questions with some degree of coherence.
He told about Gates’s visit and said that when he and his employer had started to return the miniatures to the big safe in the corner of the display room, they discovered at once that of the twenty which had been laid out, three were missing; and those, according to the clerk, were the pick of the lot.
Ziegler spoke up now. “I sent him to get you, Inspector. And then I went to the open safe.…” Ziegler moved toward it now and stood looking in at the objects that shone gold and crystal in the light. “All the rarest pieces have been taken,” he went on haltingly. “The Oviedo rock crystal cross which the Duchess of Savoy presented to the Infanta Isabella; Charles VII’s gold locket that bore his name and the Imperial crown on its face in diamonds; a XVI century reliquary of enameled gold containing a piece of the True Cross; the Jacopo de Farnese jade cup; the only perfectly matched string of black pearls in the world; a Gribelin watch; a set of six Jacobite wine glasses …”
Ziegler moved from the safe to a display cabinet nearby. “An Aldus choir book,” he added hopelessly, “and two holograph Keats letters.”
“They sound valuable,” Church said.
Ziegler groaned. “They were priceless!”
“This bird Gates. Maybe he took the stuff out under his coat.”
Ziegler shook his head wearily. “Impossible, Inspector. The jade cup was a foot high. The choir book weighed twenty pounds. The wine glasses …”
“Who is Gates?”
“I … he was a new customer, Inspector. Gave his address as Seattle. Lumber millionaire. Said he had just recently become interested in collecting miniatures and he ordered one of those that I showed him.”
“Okay. Brophy, get someone started on a checkup. Find out if that’s who he really is. Get the airport and—”
At that moment the clerk who had helped Mr. Gates to a taxi returned. Church pounced on him. “You didn’t mention this man, Ziegler. Why has he been outside?”
“He carried Mr. Gates’s bag to a taxi.”
“Mr. Gates’s bag?”
“Yes. A large pigskin travelling case. He was on his way to catch a plane at LaGuardia Field. He—”
“Brophy!” Church broke in. “Get busy. Check the airport. And put someone to work on Gates. Find out if that’s who he really is. That’s where your stuff went, Mr. Ziegler. It went out in that pigskin bag! You!” He turned to the clerk, “What’s your name?”
“B-Butterfield, sir,” the young man replied, stuttering nervously under the Inspector’s accusing glare.
“What was the license number of that cab?”
“I … I d-didn’t notice, s-sir.”
“Naturally. Nobody ever does, dammit! Did you by any chance happen to notice what direction it left in?”
“Yes, of c-course, sir. Downtown.”
Nathan Ziegler interrupted. “Inspector. The things could not have gone out in Gates’s suitcase. That is impossible!”
“Why?” Church growled, turning on him.
“Simply because I was with Gates every moment of the time he was here. He had no opportunity, and everything was quite in order when he and I left this display room and went to look at the crowd in the street outside, just before eleven.”
“Well, so what? One of your clerks loaded the bag for him.”
Ziegler shook his head more decisively than ever. “They were both with us in the front room.”
Church glanced at the Invisible Man’s card which he still held in his hand. His face grew darker than ever, even if a minute before that had not seemed possible.
“Robbins,” he growled, turning to another of his detectives. “Get this down to the lab and phone me a report.” The Inspector then took off his overcoat and got down to business.
He spent the next two hours going over the premises of Nathan Ziegler, Ltd., looking for clues and interrogating Ziegler and his two clerks. He accumulated nearly enough information about the private lives of all three men to have written three full-length biographies. But he didn’t find any clues—nothing but a strange insistence on Ziegler’s part that J. D. Belmont was the Invisible Man. He was sure it was Belmont because the financier had wanted to buy some of the very objects that had vanished.
Church didn’t like the suggestion on two counts. “Belmont’s got money to burn. He wouldn’t need to steal them. Besides I’ve just talked to the D.A. on the phone. Belmont was in his office at eleven o’clock.”
If the Inspector, however, had been with Patricia Collins in her taxi his face wouldn’t have been so long. She was having rather more success. The taxi she had followed had circled around until it headed, not toward LaGuardia Field, where the occupant had, in Butterfield’s hearing, originally told the driver to go, but in a diametrically opposite direction.
Once, the man she followed left his taxi, walked a block or two and then took another. He was doing that, Pat knew, so that if the cops should find the cabdriver who had picked up a fare at 50th and Fifth they’d not discover anything concerning his real destination. A few minutes later, at a red light, Pat took the opportunity to make a change herself, from a yellow cab to a checker.
The cab ahead, still going uptown, suddenly turned right, through the park. On Lexington it turned north again and Gates got out at the corner of 104th.
Pat passed him and waited at the next corner. Gates came toward her and she sat tight. He walked another block and turned left onto 106th. Pat made the corner just as he ducked into a house halfway down the block. She paid off her driver, dashed for the phone in a nearby drugstore and dialed the number of the Manhattan Music Hall.
When she had been connected with Don Diavolo’s dressing room and heard Chan’s calm m
atter-of-fact voice over the wire, she spoke and tried hard to keep the hopeless feeling that hung heavily on her from showing in her voice.
“Pat speaking. Is Don there?”
“He just went on stage, Miss Pat. Where are you? We have been worried. Miss Mickey had to fill your spot and Don had to leave out The Great Transposition mys—”1
“Chan,” Pat said hurriedly. “Listen. I want help. I’m on 106th Street. Drugstore, corner of Lexington. I—I think I’ve found Glenn!”
Chapter VII
Appointment with the Unseen
As Don Diavolo came off stage into the wings and busied himself making a lightning change of costume, Chan popped up beside him.
“Miss Pat’s on the phone,” he reported rapidly. “She was at the corner of Fifth and 50th where you had her stationed, when she saw a man she thinks was her brother in disguise get into a cab. He came from Ziegler’s shop and he carried a large pigskin bag. She followed him.”
Don threw the red opera cape around his shoulders, his eyes gleaming. “That’s a fine place to stop for breath, Chan. Get on with it.”
“She trailed him to a place on 106th Street. She’s waiting there now. What do I do?”
As the music of the orchestra before the footlights rose in a crescendo, Don said, “Get the Horseshoe Kid and send him up to take over. And see if you can locate Larry Keeler and get him down here. Scram!”
Don Diavolo whirled and ran out onto the stage just barely making his cue.
The rest of that afternoon was hectic. Between appearances Don listened to Pat’s story, conferred with Larry Keeler, and heard the Horseshoe Kid report several times at hourly intervals that Mr. Gates was still holed up.
A glum-faced Woody Haines stopped in once to report that Inspector Church was being as tight-mouthed as two clams, but that the best authenticated rumors had it that Nathan Ziegler was poorer to the tune of some two hundred grand.
Also, his informant in Church’s office had given him a photostatic copy of the note that had been left in Ziegler’s shop. The lab had found a thumbprint on this one too, though, unlike the first, this one bore no scar.