Death from Nowhere

by Clayton Rawson

  She looked up as Woody followed Don in and growled at him, “I’m not speaking to you!”

  Woody said, “Now wait, sugar. What have I done?”

  She muttered indistinguishably and Karl answered for her. “We just heard a radio news broadcast. Pat thinks there should be some way you could keep murders from happening on the afternoon of the day you’ve promised to take her to the theater. She suspects it means that you have to work again, as usual.”

  Pat nodded, glaring.

  “But I didn’t commit the murder,” Woody protested. “And besides Don and I know who did, so we may have it all cleaned up by curtain time.”

  All together three voices said. “You know who …”

  But Don shook his head. “Don’t be so blamed optimistic, Woody. We don’t know who. All we’ve got so far is a nice promising lead that Church doesn’t know about yet. And you won’t make it by curtain time, so you’d better give your ticket to Mickey. Oh Chan, come in here!”

  The next hour was a busy one.

  Don phoned Sayre, gave him a buildup about the famous psychic researcher, Prof. Molyneaux, who had unexpectedly dropped in with an India fire-walker named Ram Dass, and wangled dinner invitations for them.

  Chan asked who Ram Dass was and was told to look in a mirror. Don and Woody changed into evening clothes, the latter donning a spare set of Don’s. They didn’t fit too well in spots and the reporter, particular about his dress, protested.

  Don squelched his objections by telling him that a foreign professor of psychic research would dress funny anyway and that it helped the impersonation.

  Karl Hartz who viewed Don Diavolo’s side excursions into crime with alarm, partly because he always seemed to end up with a crack on the head, said gloomily, “Pat told me about the astral double and the vanish that Sayre described. I don’t like it. There’s something wrong somewhere. It sounds like the Indian rope trick to me.”

  “You’re too skeptical, Karl,” Don replied. “India is the home of magic and mystery. Many strange and wonderful things—”

  Woody broke in. “All joking aside, Don. India isn’t exactly like Forty-second Street. Some very funny things have happened there. I know a man who—”

  “Sure.” Don said. “So do I. There are some tall tales come out of India and Tibet. Some of the fakirs and lamas claim to be able to do some very first-rate magic. But they don’t spend any time practicing sleight of hand and they don’t hire a man like Karl here to help out.

  “Instead, they go into tsams — shut themselves up in an absolutely dark cave for three years and repeat a kyabdo formula ten thousand times a day. Or they do a long series of monotonous breathing exercises and practice trying to think about nothing at all by staring for hours on end at the lighted end of a gom shing, an incense stick.

  “If you take a close look at those methods you’ll see that they are fairly good ways of inducing self-hypnosis. And once you’ve hypnotized yourself you can vanish, float in the air, or what have you — or rather, you think you can. Trouble is nobody else can see you doing it.

  “But Mr. Shivara seems to have a new one up his wily Oriental sleeve. If we can believe Sayre and the secretary they’ve actually witnessed his miracles.”

  “That secretary,” Horseshoe muttered. “I’ve seen his mug some—”

  It was then that Mickey discovered the burglar. She let out a whoop that would have done credit to the N.B.C. Blue Network.

  Don and the others charged up the stairs like a band of Apaches on the warpath. Mickey pointed toward the dark doorway of a bedroom.

  “A man,” she cried. “In the hall at the head of the stairs, listening. He went in there.”

  Don plunged through the doorway into the dark and saw a dark figure silhouetted before the open window. He jumped, hit the bed with both feet and used it as a springboard to launch himself toward the intruder. But his quarry heard him coming and sidestepped swiftly into the darkness.

  Don swerved in that direction. His outstretched arms closed firmly on emptiness.

  A fist smashed the back of the magician’s head and brought him to his knees. Don shook the stars from before his eyes and pivoted around.

  His assailant was between him and the light from the hall. Don saw the metallic glitter of the blue steel automatic as the man drew it and swung it up, aiming for Woody and Horseshoe as they came together through the doorway.

  Don Diavolo sprang upward.

  His hands clutched at the burglar’s shoulders. Then Don dropped, letting himself fall backward and pulling the man with him. As he fell, he placed his right foot against his opponent’s back and pushed up. When Don hit the floor this caused the gunman to turn a neat flip flop above him in the air.

  Diavolo rolled quickly on to his feet, expecting to hear the thud of the man’s body as it smashed against the wall. But no sound came. Then light flooded the room as Woody’s hand found the wall switch. Don Diavolo, all set for a follow-up attack, stopped and stared.

  There was no one to attack, The burglar, somersaulting up from Don’s foot, had not come down! He had apparently vanished in midair!

  Woody solved the puzzle. “You put that one right between the goalposts,” he said.

  And then Don saw what he meant. The mysterious intruder had sailed neatly through the open window.

  The magician jumped for the window and heard an angry voice outside muttering profanely. He vaulted the window sill and let himself drop through the dark toward the soft earth of the flower bed below. But he landed on something else — the broad back of a man who was on his hands and knees. The man’s face ploughed the earth as Don hit him and his growling ceased.

  Don Diavolo lifted him and dragged him into the kitchen. The others arrived a moment later. Mickey looked at the man who sat on the floor, swaying dizzily and clutching at the linoleum as if afraid he would fall off.

  “But that—” she cried. “That’s not the burglar! He was a little guy with a handkerchief over his face. This is a great big—”

  Don blinked and then The Horseshoe Kid laughed. “What you’ve got there,” he said, “is Detective O’Hearn of the homicide squad!”

  O’Hearn gulped in another lungful of air and then inquired dazedly:

  “Do you have to jump on a guy when he’s down?”

  “If you and your boss weren’t so blamed nosy,” Don said, “you wouldn’t be underfoot all the time. What happened?”

  “I was out in the alley,” the detective explained. “I heard a dame scream and I started in toward the back door. I wasn’t expecting anybody to come out through a second story window. He landed on me, knocked me flat, and scrammed. I was just picking myself up out of the zinnias when you arrived. The Inspector’s orders are to let him know who leaves this place. Who was it?”

  “He didn’t leave a card,” Don said. “Have you been here ever since Woody and I came back from the hotel?” Don asked.

  The dick nodded.

  “Another one of the boys is out front, I suppose?”

  The dick nodded again.

  Don Diavolo scowled. “That’s just dandy. It means our burglar friend got here before you did and has been hiding under a bed or something for an hour or more. It would be very interesting to know just what he was after.”

  A search of the upstairs rooms didn’t help much. Whoever the visitor had been, he had apparently not been interested in loot. Nothing at all had been taken.

  O’Hearn insisted on sending for squad cars but Don said, “No. You’re still pretty white around the gills. Chan, I think he could use a pick-me-up — rye. I’ll phone.”

  He went into the next room and started to dial. But he kept the receiver down and whispered to Woody, “Sleeping pills. A double dose. Get them and slip them to Chan. If we have squad cars we won’t get to keep our dinner date.

  Fifteen minutes later the detectives in the street outside still watched the front-door. All the downstairs lights were full on and the radio blared noisily. Detective O’H
earn slept peacefully in the Diavolo guest room.

  There was no one else in the house.

  CHAPTER VII

  The Seeing Mind

  THE Sayre house was one of those pretentious stone mansions that line the east side of upper Fifth Avenue opposite Central Park. Its Doric columns and formal Grecian ornament gave it something of the appearance of a bank.

  The precautions Nicholas Sayre had devised to protect the famous Oriental collection that it housed suggested a bank also. The burglar-alarm system was the best that money could buy. Photo-electric eyes and beams of invisible light tirelessly spied on every door and window.

  To all this, Don Diavolo added a precaution or two of his own.

  Pat and Mickey had, after a bit of argument, been sent off with Woody’s tickets to the theater. The Horseshoe Kid was placed with his deck of cards on a park bench across from the Sayre front door and told to deal himself some solitaire, to try not to cheat himself, and to keep both eyes peeled. Karl Hartz was stationed around the corner to watch the servant’s entrance.

  Then Diavolo, Woody Haines and Chan Chandara Manchu went in to begin one of the most extraordinary and terrifying evenings any of them had ever experienced.

  The butler took their things and showed them into the living room where a young woman awaited them — a handsome, frank-faced girl with violet eyes and honey-colored hair. She smiled and came toward them across the room, the pale gold of the evening gown that sheathed her slim young body glowing like a warm candle flame in the subdued light of the great room.

  “I am Judith Allison,” she said. “My uncle will be here in a moment.” She turned to the butler. “Give us five minutes and then tell him his guests are here.”

  Don introduced his companions as Professor Molyneaux and Ram Dass. Then the girl led them back across the room toward the figure who had risen at their entrance and waited there — a quiet man with a grave handsome face, a small dark mustache, and alert quick eyes whose glance was sharp and as penetrating as a surgeon’s knife.

  There was a touch of gray in the dark hair at his temples that contradicted the sleek, assured, youthfully vigilant pose of his body.

  “This is Dr. Conrad Bent,” Judith said. “He and I wanted to speak to you a moment before you see my uncle and — and Shivara.”

  There was a quiver of distaste on her lips as she spoke the Hindu’s name and a faint trembling in her voice. A shadow flickered into her eyes and was quickly gone.

  Dr. Bent looked at Don Diavolo and the magician thought that even in that calm, coldly logical face he divined a hint of something like fear.

  “Judith tells me,” the doctor said, “that her uncle has invited you to try your magician’s skill at explaining the somewhat unusual feats our Hindu friend has to offer.”

  “Something like that,” Don admitted. “Though he didn’t put it just that way. He bet me ten thousand dollars that I couldn’t. Have you seen the performance?”

  “Yes,” the girl nodded. “And I’ve seen yours. I’m afraid the Great Diavolo is going to find he has some stiff competition. But” — her voice was strained and intense — “you must somehow, some way, discover how he does it and show us that it’s nothing but a trick.”

  Dr. Bent added, “Miss Allison and myself are both concerned with the effect these things are having on her uncle. He is not a well man and his interest in occult matters has lately become so intense that it almost amounts to a mania. Psychologically, Mr. Shivara’s presence has done Mr. Sayre a great deal of harm.”

  Don Diavolo knew then where he had heard Conrad Bent’s name before. He had seen it in the papers only a few weeks ago in connection with a court trial. Dr. Bent had given evidence as a witness for the prosecution in their attempt to counter the defendant’s plea of insanity. He had been referred to as one of the country’s leading psychiatrists.12

  “As a scientist, Dr. Bent,” Don asked. “You have no explanation for the phenomena?”

  The doctor spread his hands helplessly. “None. Mr. Shivara’s effect on all our minds has been distinctly upsetting. The” — Dr. Bent hesitated a fraction of a second and then finished the sentence in a way he hadn’t intended when he began. “The election will undoubtedly be close. Mr. Roosevelt—”

  Don and the others turned. Nicholas Sayre and Mr. Shivara were moving ward them.

  The Hindu, as Don had predicted to Woody earlier, did wear a large white turban. He was a slight man of medium height and his expensively tailored evening dress was immaculate. He bowed as Sayre introduced him and his thin dark lips turned upward in a smile.

  Nicholas Sayre, afraid perhaps that the Hindu might have heard the name Don Diavolo and know what it meant, introduced the magician as Mr. Daniels. This was an error.

  Shivara’s smile vanished as suddenly as an electric light is turned off. His eyes knew and could not hide a secret triumph.

  “No,” he said, “You should not attempt to mislead me in that way, Mr. Sayre.” His voice had the measured softness of a cat’s tread. “My powers would be small indeed if they could not divine so transparent a deception. To one who has gone but a little way along The Sixfold Path any introduction is vain, and false ones foolish.

  “This man’s name is not Daniels, but Diavolo. He is a vaudeville artist, a conjurer. His friend, the esteemed professor, has never seen France and his psychic researches are confined almost exclusively to Broadway’s night clubs and cafés. His name is J. Woodford Haines. He is a reporter employed by the New York Press.”

  Nicholas Sayre should have blown up at this last revelation, but somehow, in the Hindu’s presence, his customary explosive force was dampened.

  Shivara continued, “And Ram Dass, though he comes from India, has a name of nobler descent.” The Shivara smile returned, not quite so polite now, but every bit as smooth, and supremely confident. “I am not angry, Mr. Sayre, only disappointed in that the small proofs I have already shown you of the powers I possess have been so inadequate.”

  Sayre grew a bit purple around the edges and stuttered: “But — but it’s not that way at all. I wanted you to show this — this parlor trickster what real magic really is. I—”

  The Hindu only smiled again. “I am not so sure that that was the true reason, Mr. Sayre. But we shall say no more about it. It will be a very interesting experiment to discover how an occidental conjurer reacts to the superior knowledge of the ancient East.

  “I am afraid that he, like my scientist friend, Dr. Bent, may be considerably annoyed. If that is so I will be very sorry.” Shivara’s smile contradicted those last words very effectively. “As for the ten thousand dollars,” he went on, “perhaps Mr. Sayre will send it in my name to one of his charities.”

  Mr. Shivara’s smiling confidence, the utterly calm certainty with which he spoke sent frosty chills sliding along the backs of more than one of his listeners.

  Don Diavolo already realized that this man was no easy antagonist, that he was far more than the ordinary fakir with the standard bag of tricks. How much more, Don only wished he knew.

  “Ten thousand dollars,” Don said, “is not too great a price if Mr. Sayre’s description of your powers is accurate.” Don reached and took a lighted cigarette from thin air at his fingertips.

  Shivara’s smile remained undisturbed. His black eyes glinted with amusement.

  “A few of your occidental imitations of magic are fairly clever,” he said evenly. “But they never rise above expert juggling. One day the complacent Western World may learn that there is a greater force than all the whirring dynamos that move its great machines.

  “Your gross material science will find that it has traveled the wrong path, and will at last discover that secrets do exist which may not he plumbed with the slide rule nor trapped within the test tube. Knowledge of that force and the means of using it have been preserved in Tibet, since the days before Atlantis sank beneath the sea, by the Masters of the Great White Lodge.”

  “And that force,” Sayre asked, is
—”

  “Gompa,” Shivara answered. “The limitless power of thought. The adept who has trained himself in Padmasambhava’ six stages of the mystic Path knows that concentration of the mind can accomplish all things. The Universe is but a mirage which exists in the mind, springs from it, and sinks into it. Om vajra guru padma siddhi hum!”13

  Don Diavolo, with an absent-minded gesture took another lighted cigarette from midair, passed it to Woody. and then like a fencer testing the strength of his adversary, tried one preliminary thrust.

  “I’ve never taken Padmasambhava’s advanced course in ‘How to Win Friends and Concentrate Heavily,’” he said, “but I sometimes have mystic hunches. That little stunt of yours of telling us who we really were wasn’t half bad. I can sometimes do something like it myself. I think I could tell you, Mr. Shivara, where you were at — well say 2:30 P.M. this afternoon. Of course, it’s just a psychic hunch and my magic is only a poor imitation—”

  There was a frown in the Hindu’s eyes and though his smile was still there on the narrow face it suddenly seemed tighter. “Yes?” he said curiously.

  “You were in a hotel on 35th Street. There is a W in the name of the hotel and I get a dim picture of a room on the seventh floor. The rest is vague and indistinct.”

  Shivara hesitated just perceptibly and then turned to Nicholas Sayre. “Is Mr. Diavolo’s strange power of clairvoyance accurate?”

  Sayre shook his head. “It will have to improve greatly, I’m afraid. At 2:30 this afternoon Mr. Shivara and I were here looking over my collection of Bodhisatva paintings.”

  Don Diavolo’s poker face showed no signs of disappointment. His eyes were on his cigarette which rose mysteriously from his left hand and floated slowly up through space to his right.

  “It’s a good trick,” he said, “when it works. Perhaps I should practice it more.”

  But what he thought was, “My boy, if you really can project an astral double it isn’t going to do that alibi a lot of good!”

  12 His well known textbook “The Mind and Its Mechanism” (Edmund Kressy & Sons, New York, 1938) is a standard authority in its field.