Death from Nowhere
Page 12
“He simply stands there before you and vanishes!”
CHAPTER IV
Murder Without Corpse
Don Diavolo looked at Nicholas Sayre for a moment. Then he turned abruptly on his heel and went out into the hall.
“Pat!” he called up the stairs. “Come down here a moment, will you? And bring that monk’s costume we used in the Now You See It — Now You Don’t routine.”
Pat, sensing the excitement in Don’s voice, was down in less than half a minute carrying the long black monk’s robe.
Don Diavolo took it from her and draped it over her shoulders. He pulled the cowl up over her head. “Now stand here,” he said, leading her to a spot in the center of the living room floor, well away from any concealing chairs or sofas, and within six feet of Nicholas Sayre.
“We don’t need to be Grand Masters of the White Lodge of the Himalayas,” he told Sayre. “Watch!” He placed one hand on Pat’s right shoulder and turned her with her back toward Sayre. He placed his other hand on her left shoulder. “All set?” he asked, and then as she nodded her head, he counted, “One! Two! Three! Go!”
On the word, “Go” he gave the robe a shake and then threw it over his arm. Patricia Collins had vanished as completely as a puff of smoke in a high wind.11
Don Diavolo turned to Sayre. “Is that the general idea?” he asked.
And for once the Great Diavolo’s audience sat on its hands. Sayre shook his head.
“No,” he said. “If that’s the best you can do, you can make out a check for the ten thousand dollars now. You’re doing your trick in your own house which is probably honeycombed with trapdoors. You had to use something to cover the girl. But Shivara vanishes in my house, where there aren’t any trapdoors, and in full view!”
“Oh,” Don said. “He just fades away, I suppose.”
And Nicholas Sayre nodded. “Yes. That’s exactly what he does!”
Diavolo turned to Richards. “Have you seen him do that?”
Richards nodded too. “Yes. I have.”
“This,” Don said seriously, “is beginning to get interesting. What else does Mr. Shivara do?”
“Clairvoyance,” Sayre replied. “Materializations, telekinesis, levitations, the projection of tulpas — all the phenomena that a real gomchen can command, all those feats of Tibetan and Indian magic that we find difficult to believe because so few Western eyes have ever been privileged to see it. Half the time he can tell me exactly what I’m thinking. Sometimes I’m afraid …”
Don Diavolo was beginning to realize now the real reason why Sayre had come to him. The man had hunted ceaselessly for genuine psychic phenomena and now at last, when he’d got it, or thought he had, it was too much for him.
He had uncovered something that was too big, and it had him scared pink. Don had a hunch that Sayre, though he might not admit it, more than half hoped Diavolo could prove Shivara a faker.
“Diavolo asked. “You mean thought-forms — the astral double?”Tulpas ?”
Sayre nodded. “Yes. He can project a thought image of himself — materialize it in full view until there seems to be two of him there before you!”
“That,” Don said seriously, “is quite a trick. You’re quite sure that he doesn’t have a twin brother?”
Sayre got suddenly to his feet. “Sitting here telling you about it is a waste of my time. I don’t expect you to believe it until you’ve seen it. And I’m so sure of my facts this time that I’ll make you a ten thousand dollar challenge.
“If you can show me how he uses trickery to accomplish any one — any one, mind you — of his feats, I’ll pay you that amount. Be at my house for dinner eight o’clock tonight.”
Sayre started out. Then he stopped. “Oh yes. One thing. Mr. Shivara knows nothing of your ten thousand dollar challenge. He would not care. He probably would dislike it if he knew I had accepted for him. He will not know that you are investigating him. He is not interested in proving his powers to doubters like yourself. And you will not bring any reporters with you. I’ll see you tonight?”
“You’ll see me,” Don answered.
“Richards!” Sayre barked.
“Yes sir,” Richards said, jumping.
“Come on!”
Richards went.
As the two of them descended the steps toward the limousine and chauffeur that awaited them they passed a stocky, pink-cheeked individual whose guileless, innocent face might have been that of a Sunday School Superintendent.
If you had ever made the mistake, however, of thinking that was what he was and accepted his invitation to a little game of cards, the odds are several million to one that you would have lost your shirt — and pants.
The agile fingers of Melvin C. Skinner alias John B. Crooks alias R. Wiley Draper could make a deck of cards sit up and beg, lie down and roll over, jump through a hoop, and deal itself out in poker hands of any sort desired.
Mostly you got deuces and he got aces, which was why Broadway, unable to keep track of his ever-changing aliases, called him the Horseshoe Kid. Though his occupation of professional gambler was strictly extra-legal, he did try to make a point of shearing only those lambs whose bank balances were so large that it was next to impossible that the whole sum could have been acquired honestly.
As he said, “Any mark who assays more than a couple of million has to hire a good mouthpiece to keep him out of stir.”
His nimble-fingered dexterity with the pasteboards made him, for Don Diavolo, an irresistible acquaintance, and his up-to-the-minute first-hand knowledge of the underworld and its members had come in very handy on more than one occasion.
He turned to watch Sayre and his secretary as they drove off. Then he came up the steps and said, “Say, who is that guy?”
“Mr. Nicholas Sayre, Diavolo replied. “The ex-king of stock and bond manipulators and the current authority on Oriental psychic shenanigans.”
“Yeah,” Horseshoe said, scowling. “I recognized him. I mean the jumpy little guy who was hitched on behind.”
“Fellow named Richards. He’s Sayre’s secretary.”
“Oh.” The Kid scratched his head. “Secretary, huh? Um. I thought his face looked familiar, but I can’t remember … Say, what goes on here anyway? Isn’t Sayre the guy who thinks a magician is the kind of a bug with six legs that makes business for exterminating companies?”
“He did,” Don replied, “but I’ve got a hunch he’s beginning to change his mind. His researches into the occult seem to have left him with a hot coal on his hands — and it’s one that is beginning to sizzle.”
Shivara, pistol raised, went down before the sharp assault
When Don and Horseshoe went into the living room they found Patricia Collins rematerialized and waiting for them.
“I heard that about the astral double,” she said. “I don’t like it. If he really could do that and you found out how, you wouldn’t need twins in the act any more. Either Mickey or myself would be hunting a new job.”
“Don’t worry,” Don replied. “If Mr. Shivara really can do that he won’t be asking me for your jobs. He’ll go into business for himself.” Don grinned as he spoke but there was a worried pucker on his forehead. He raised his voice and called, “Chan!”
Chan popped in so quickly that it was fairly obvious that he too had been an interested listener to the Sayre interview.
“Mr. Siddahshivara,” Diavolo asked. “Ever hear of him, before now, Chan?”
The boy shook his head. “No. Very sorry. Lots of people in India.”
“But there aren’t many Hindu fakirs who can take the sort of rabbits out of hats that Sayre says Shivara can, are there?”
“Lots of stories about same,” Chan answered. “But most A-1 jadhoo-wallahs quite shy. Very hard to find. Garden variety of Indian street fakir nowadays sends money order to Merlini’s magic shop on Broadway and gets Western tricks to use on tourists. He often has Chan translate instructions into Hindustani before shipping goods.”
The magician made for the phone, lifted the receiver and dialled Bryant 3-3824 again. “Altogether too much India — and too much mystery,” he said to no one in particular. Then, into the phone, “Mr. Alexander, please.”
And, a moment later, as he heard the connection go through, “Is this Mr. Alexander?”
The answering voice said, “No, but I’ll try to get him. Who shall I say is calling, please?”
Don suddenly felt exactly as if he had been kicked by a mule, stepped on by an elephant, and short-circuited by an angry electric eel. He knew that voice!
“Well, well,” he replied into the transmitter, “Fancy meeting you here. How have you been, Inspector, and how is Mrs. Church? I hope your gout is better.”
There was dead silence on the other end of the line. It lasted for about ten seconds and then the previously polite, helpful voice was transformed suddenly into an official, gruff and deeply suspicious one. It growled:
“So! You! Will you tell me why in blazes, when there are 450,000 numbers in the Manhattan telephone book, you have to be calling this one? Can’t I investigate a murder without — without—”
The Inspector had said too much and he knew it. He stalled.
Don felt the mule kick him again.
Quickly he said, “I was calling Butterfield 3—3824. Maybe I dialed it wrong. What number do you—”
But Church howled. “Butterfield 3! There isn’t any such exchange. And, even if there were, you asked for Mr. Alexander. Don’t try to tell me you meant to say Smith or Hammerstein or something! You stay right where you are until Brady comes down there to pick you up. Understand?”
Don asked, “Sure you know where I am? I might be calling from Grand Rapids, or maybe Rangoon.”
“No,” the Inspector contradicted. “And see that you don’t light out for any of those places either. I know where you are. Every call that comes in here is traced as soon as it hits the switchboard.” Diavolo heard Church’s voice call, “Brady!” Then came the click as Church hung up.
Behind him, Don heard Pat, Chan and Horseshoe all together saying, “Inspector Church! What—”
But he was busy dialing again — Bryant 3-3824. This time when the operator said. “Hotel Winfield,” Diavolo told her: “I want to speak to J. Woodford Haines. He’s a reporter on the Press and I suspect he’s somewhere in your lobby. Will you have him paged, please? This is his office calling.”
Diavolo’s deduction was verified. Woody was on the phone inside of two minutes.
“This is Don, Woody,” the magician said rapidly. “I’ve been gazing into my crystal ball and I just got a glimpse of the homicide squad, the Hotel Winfield and a body. What goes on down there?”
Woody’s voice came back. “Your crystal needs polishing a bit. It must be dusty. Church and the boys are here all right — up in Room 713. And there’s lots of blood, but they can’t seem to find the body!”
11 This vanish is one that many readers will remember having seen. It was used by Bela Lugosi in the stage version of “Dracula” and is the invention of Guy Jarrett.
CHAPTER V
The Man Twice Dead
THE Hotel Winfield’s Room 713 bore a strong resemblance to Times Square on a New Year’s Eve. Jammed into it was a small army of uniformed men, plain clothes men, and laboratory experts who poked, peered, pried and probed. They were grim, thorough, hot and disgruntled.
In addition to the lack of a corpse, there was also a discouraging scarcity of clues.
The fingerprint man, for instance, had labored mightily and found just three measly fingerprints, all of which had been traced to the maid who had cleaned the room the day before. This was, of course, a clue of sorts, but an annoyingly negative one. It meant that the man who had eaten from the dishes on the nearby table had either (a) worn gloves while he ate — a fairly unlikely procedure — or (b) someone had carefully wiped off each of the knives, forks, spoons, glasses and plates that he must have touched.
This last theory, though hardly helpful, at least indicated that whatever it was that had happened in that room could certainly be classed as dirty work.
The bullet that had been found and the blood that had soaked the carpet on the floor might just possibly have been the result of accident, but Inspector Church knew very well that a total absence of fingerprints could seldom, if ever, be classed as accidental.
The Inspector stood now in the center of this whirlpool of official activity, watching his harried assistants with a glum eye and prodding them every now and then with an impatient order.
He was a bulky, broad shouldered man with a clipped gray mustache, a square-cut determined jaw, and an explosive forcefulness that usually threw off blue sparks like a spinning dynamo. Usually, but not just now.
Church was tired. Daily life was a conspiracy aimed directly at his head. The Commissioner had been riding him for the last two weeks about a particularly exasperating series of bodies that had been fished, with monotonous regularity, out of the East River. The matter of identification alone had swamped his department with an overtime schedule of routine tracing and checking that sent an unceasing flood of reports sweeping across the Inspector’s desk like a great tidal wave.
And now, to top it off, here was the mystery of Room 713 to rear its ugly head.
The fact that the nearly complete absence of clues would not add any long detailed reports to the stream that already inundated his office was not calculated to make the Inspector any happier. The fact that Don Diavolo was somehow concerned in the mess made him boil. If his tone of voice didn’t give off the usual bright electric sparks it did something even worse: It seethed and bubbled like a white hot pool of fresh volcanic lava.
That was why, when Don Diavolo arrived, the Inspector did not greet him with any show of enthusiasm. Instead, as the magician was ushered in by one of the cops who was on duty in the corridor, Church’s greeting consisted simply of a scowl — one that was filled so near the brim with suspicion that the slightest jar would have sent its acid contents dripping over the edge to fall and burn smoking holes in the carpet.
Don noted this attitude and a small ominous voice inside him whispered with malevolent glee, “There’s trouble ahead!” Don agreed without any argument that it looked like it.
Woody Haines, who had hitched on when Diavolo came through the lobby, also saw the Inspector’s expression and decided that his reporter’s nose smelled a story.
That pleasant aroma did not, however, last long. The Inspector glared at J. Woodford Haines and threw a frostbitten order at one of his men.
“Sergeant,” he said, “take that reporter by the seat of his pants and drop him down the elevator shaft. And don’t listen to any of his double talk.”
Woody, as the Sergeant closed in on him, protested. “Inspector, what did I ever do to you that you should treat me this way? The free publicity I’ve given you in my column, figured at the regular advertising space rates would pay our stockholders such large dividends that—”
But Church didn’t even listen and the sergeant, advancing like a thirty-ton armored tank, made Woody retreat on all fronts until he found himself, a moment later, in an elevator that dropped at top speed toward the main floor.
The first question Church served across the net at Don was:
“Where is Brady?”
Diavolo shrugged. “I don’t know. Down at Fox Street maybe. I didn’t wait for him, and you hung up on me before I could tell you that I wouldn’t need an escort.”
This answer didn’t make the Inspector feel any more sociable. His second question went straight to the point without any preliminary monkeying around.
“Where were you at two-fifteen?”
“Two-fifteen P.M. today?” Don asked.
Church grunted something that sounded like, “Yes.”
“Two-fifteen,” Diav
olo said slowly. “You know, Inspector, you can ask the most embarrassing questions. I don’t know how you do it.”
“Get to the point,” Church snapped. “Where were you?”
“I was at home. Karl and I were down in the basement cutting off a young lady’s head. I’m afraid that’s not the best alibi in the world, but—”
Church, not knowing how near the truth that was, merely took a firm hold on his temper and growled, “Stop trying to be funny — and answer me!”
“I’m not trying to be funny,” Don said calmly. “And I’m telling you. We were cutting off Pat’s head with Karl’s latest model, rubber-cushioned action, floating-control, automatic-safety guillotine. It’s something like sawing a woman in two, only quicker. It—”
Church snorted slightly. “Ummmpf. Another trick! And a couple of witnesses who’ll say anything you want them to. Okay. We’ll skip it for the moment. Were you still cutting her throat at two-thirty?”
Don thought a moment. “No. We’d finished. I don’t suppose by any chance you’ve got any witnesses who heard a phone ringing in this room at just that time, have you?”
“And just how,” Church snapped, “did you happen to know that?”
“I didn’t,” Don replied. “I just hoped you might. I was on the other end of that phone call and I can produce four witnesses. So if you’re harboring any nasty-minded theory that I was here in this room at that time, you can forget it and start thinking up a new one. Why all these suspicious questions anyway? And why me in particular?”
“That’s what I want to know,” Church returned. “Why did you phone this room when you did?”
“Chan took a call while I was out. The message—”
“What time was that?”
“Around one, I think. A Mr. Alexander asked for me and, when informed that I wasn’t in, told Chan to have me call him back and gave this number. The first time I called I didn’t get an answer. The next time I got you.”