Death from Nowhere

by Clayton Rawson

  Pat took the glass and drained it. Then Diavolo poured another. He offered it again to the Inspector. “You’ll miss the show if you don’t.”

  Church hesitated, but his curiosity won. He followed Pat’s example.

  Then Don talked rapidly, his words coming in a long monotonous stream. It reminded Woody of the way Shivara had talked at dinner.

  “Shivara told us,” he said, “that the concentrated power of thought was the only force he used, that mind is everything. And he was telling the truth, or most of it. His magic is a magic of the mind. And it is not new, but old. He has, however, discovered a means of removing the uncertainty, of boosting the percentage of success to one hundred per cent. I’m surprised that the miracles he showed us were not more astonishing.”

  As he talked Don watched Church and Pat closely. Finally, he saw what he waited for. A slight glazing of the eyes, a steady, almost winkless stare.

  Then his patter changed. “Inspector,” he said, “and Pat. You will listen closely to what I say; you will see what I tell you to see. You sleep now, but when you awake and when you hear the words Om vajra guru padma siddhi hum, you will listen to my voice, and will see what I tell you to see; but you will not remember afterward that I spoke, nor that I told you what to see!”

  Don repeated that command in those same words half a dozen times, his voice compelling and hypnotic. Brophy, Sayre, Judith, Bent, Woody, Mickey and the detectives watched him curiously. Shivara scowled. Church and Pat watched him with a steadiness and fascination of gaze that was abnormal.

  Don clapped his hands once and commanded, “Awake!”

  Church and Pat relaxed. The stiff rigidity of body and the fascinated stare with which they had watched the magician melted. It was as if two statues had returned to life.15

  Then, once again Don used Shivara’s mystic Buddhist formula. “Beside me,” Diavolo said, “you see a misty form appearing in the air, a form that grows stronger as you watch, and gradually takes shape. It is an image of myself, a twin, a second Diavolo. It moves and bows.”

  The Inspector’s face was gray. Pat took a step back. They were watching the empty air at Don’s left. The other watchers saw nothing.

  Don’s voice went on. “When I count three the phantom vanishes. One. Two. Three!” Church and Pat turned their eyes suddenly back to Diavolo.

  That would have been enough, but he gave them still more. At last Don had the chance to present the trick that all magicians dream of, the trick for which India is famous.

  “Chan,” he said. “There’s a coil of rope on the floor beside you. Give it to Pat.”

  Chan had seen a hypnotic performance before. He stooped and pretended to lift the imaginary coil of rope. He went forward and held his hands out to Pat.

  She took the invisible rope from him and examined it interestedly. It was obvious to the watchers that Pat was convinced she held a real rope. The fact was plain in every movement of her hands.

  Then Don asked for it and she gave it to him. He pantomimed the motions of tossing one end in the air, describing each action as he made it, telling Church and Pat what they were to see, placing the hallucination in their minds by suggestion. Church and Pat thought they saw the rope go up and remain standing on end in midair.

  “Chan,” Don continued, “could now climb the rope and vanish in midair, but I think that’s enough. The performance is over. The rope is slowly fading away, until now it vanishes completely. Like it, Inspector?”

  He grinned.

  “No,” Church said, “I don’t. What have you done? What—”

  “Take it easy,” Don cautioned. “Ask Brophy what he saw.”

  Church threw Brophy an inquiring look. And the Lieutenant answered. “I didn’t see a damned thing, Inspector. What was in that water?”

  “A drug, Brophy — one of the hypnotics,” Don said. “We’ll have it analyzed.”

  That statement was Don’s mistake. The two dicks on either side of Shivara were too engrossed in Don’s performance. They hadn’t quite understood it yet, and, to them, it seemed that Inspector Church must have gone completely off his rocker. While they stared, Shivara made a sudden leap forward, reached the water carafe with his steel-linked hands, and quickly dumped the remaining contents. Don grabbed for him too late.

  Shivara’s old smile was back again. “No,” he said. “I think not. That secret remains with me.”

  Don said, “I’m not so sure, Shivara, I’m afraid you may have been too late.”

  The detectives hauled Shivara back in to line. Inspector Church caught Don’s arm. “Dammit! Am I drunk? What … what … what—”

  “You’ve been seeing things that weren’t there,” Don explained rapidly. “Shivara’s miracles were all hallucinations, post-hypnotically produced; There are drugs which aid the production of a hypnotic state. Potassium bromide is one. Somewhere in the East, among the Tibetan lamas, I suspect, Shivara has come upon a drug or a combination of drugs that induces 100 per cent suggestibility. It allows him to hypnotize anyone without his or her consent. For the science of medicine that discovery can be of vast value. It’s a more important discovery than all of Alexander’s gold. But Shivara has been using it as a weapon. He—”

  Church had had too much. “Hypnotism!” he bellowed. “No. I won’t take it. I’ve seen hypnotic acts on the stage. They use a lot of stooges. How you made that rope go up in the air, I don’t know, but—”

  “I hate to do this,” Don broke in. “But I can’t stop to argue now. Om vajra guru paddma siddhi hum! Inspector you will not deny anything I say about the subject of hypnotism. Hypnotism is a well founded medical fact. You understand?”16

  Again it worked.

  Church nodded agreeably. “Yes, of course.”

  To the rest of his audience Don said, “Some hypnotic subjects have what are known as hypnogenic zones, certain spots on the body which if touched induce immediate hypnosis. Shivara conditioned his subjects to a verbal hypnogenic zone.

  “He had dosed us with his drug at dinner, hypnotized us, prepared us to experience a post-hypnotic state whenever he uttered his Tibetan formula. The words themselves were not important. He could have used anything — ‘Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party’ or ‘Abracadabra.’

  “His vanishing before the Inspector was the exact opposite of his astral double stunt. It was a negative hallucination. Actually the Inspector saw him all the time, but it had been suggested under hypnosis that he would not see him. The literature of hypnotism furnishes case after case in which partial or complete loss or impairment of all the senses may be induced. Sour things can be made to taste sweet, or have no taste at all. Sight, hearing, touch, smell can all be affected.17 You understand, Inspector?”

  Church, hypnotized into a belief in hypnotism, was proof to the others of what he had not wanted to believe.

  He nodded. “Sure, sure. It explains Shivara’s moving poker, his astral double and his vanishing. When he disappeared on me, he tried to get away with the dagger then, but he forgot to suggest that the dagger become invisible too!

  “When he picked it up, I saw it float. I fired at it and he had to get out from under. Since the dagger showed me where he was, he had to drop it like a hot potato. He knew the sound of the shots would bring the rest of you on the run, so he locked the door to gain time. I saw the key turn and fired at that. He jumped again.

  “And then when I let you in, he had to take it on the lam through the window, because he knew that Brophy and the other detectives hadn’t had any of his drug and couldn’t be hypnotized into not seeing him. But there’s still one whale of a lot that even hypnotism won’t explain.

  “Shivara could have had Woody Haines hypnotized when he followed Richards. He could even have suggested that Haines would see Richards killed by a floating dagger. But Richards really was killed!

  “He was alive when he left the library after I’d questioned him. He didn’t go near Shivara and Shivara didn’t leave the lib
rary. Shivara couldn’t even have left his astral double standing by the window and sneaked out invisibly to knife Richards. You just said yourself that Brophy wasn’t under his influence. Brophy watched him in the living room here all the time!

  “And what’s more, since Richards tipped off the murderer on the phone call and was later killed because he threatened to spill the beans unless he got a bigger cut, the man who killed him was the only one who knew where VanRyn was. VanRyn’s attacker and Richards’ murderer have got to be the same. But, even if you could explain how Shivara could have been in two places at once while Brophy was watching him — even if he had hypnotized Sayre into thinking they were together between two and three o’clock — Shivara did not knife VanRyn!”

  Don Diavolo stood very still. His eyes flickered over the members of the listening group. It was coming now — one last final devastating explosion.

  “You sound very sure of that, Inspector,” Don said.

  “I am,” Church thundered, “Ted VanRyn swears that Shivara is not the Hindu who knifed him!”

  The tension in the room grew until it was a tangible thing, vibrating in the air like a taut steel wire.

  “The Hindu who knifed VanRyn and the Hindu who knifed Richards are one and the same. Shivara didn’t attack VanRyn and yet he was the only Hindu in this house when Richards died. We searched the place from top to bottom. Everyone had alibis except Haines, but Haines has an alibi for two-thirty. I checked with his office. There has to be only one murderer — and there has to be two! It doesn’t make sense. Nothing makes sense!”

  “I think it does,” Diavolo said quietly. “Good sense. Your trouble, Inspector, lies in the fact that though this piece has only one murderer, it has two villains working at cross purposes. And the second villain, like Shivara, also had an astral double. He could be in two places at once — or make it took that way.”

  “Shivara didn’t want to kill VanRyn. He only wanted certain information from him. But another member of our cast did want VanRyn dead. He had faked VanRyn’s death, and, when Ted came back unexpectedly and too soon, he had to make it good. He’s the one other person who knew enough from the beginning to penetrate Shivara’s hypnotism secret and duplicate it for himself — the one person who uses hypnotism in his profession — the eminent psychiatrist, Dr. Conrad Bent!”

  15 Don Diavolo, as Shivara had done, was using posthypnotic suggestion, his subjects obeying while in a fully conscious state, the commands previously given in the hypnotic state.

  16 The performances of stage hypnotists has tended to make many people hold the Inspector’s view that the subject of hypnotic suggestion is a faked theatrical stunt, unworthy of serious scientific research and without factual foundation. Nothing could be farther from the truth as even a cursory survey of the authoritative literature on the subject will show.

  17 Lloyd Tuckey, in his Treatment by Hypnotism and Suggestion explains this matter of negative hallucination in more technical terms with the statement that, “A physical impression has been made on the retina, but it has not undergone that cortical coordination or registration in consciousness without which there can be no perception.”

  He describes a case in which a wife, fully awake, but under the influence of a post-hypnotic command could not hear or see her husband until told that she might, though he was within a few feet of her and spoke to her. The authoritative literature of hypnotism is filled with such instances.

  Alfred Binet and Charles Féré describe the case of a young lady who was told she would not see another person in the room. He was completely invisible to her, but when he put on his hat, it floated in the air as did the dagger before the Inspector. Not only the senses, but even memory itself can be erased and amnesia produced by post-hypnotic suggestion. See Dr. J. Milne Bramwell’s Hypnotism: Its History, Practice and Theory, published by J.B. Lippincott (page 110). See the works of Edmund Gurney, Delboeuf, Charcot, Liebeault, T.W. Mitchell, etc., etc.

  CHAPTER XIV

  The Man Who Could

  Be In Two Places At Once

  DR BENT’S face was white. “I was with Miss Allison when Richards was killed,” he objected, “and my secretary …”

  Don shook his head. “They may tell us that, yes. But you recognized Shivara’s hypnotism for what it was a week ago. You noticed that he performed each time after a meal or after drinks. You knew enough about the subject to deduce that he was using drugs. You sneaked a sample and analyzed it. Then you stole his thunder.

  “You told me that Judith was impossible as a hypnotic subject — that you had tried and failed to hypnotize her. That was probably true originally, but Shivara’s drug turned the trick. Judith may swear you were with her at two-thirty and again when Richards was killed. She was in a hypnotic sleep both times. It was easy for you to give her the drug in the guise of medicine. You were her doctor! As for your secretary—”

  Bent’s face was tense but he still had control. “You can’t prove any of that. No jury in the country would believe a word of it.”

  Inspector Church was half convinced but he still had a doubt. “The Hindu that VanRyn saw was clean shaven,” he objected. “Bent has a mustache.”

  “And that,” Don insisted, “is the one little fact that finishes off Dr. Bent. He’s always had a mustache, but he shaved it off today before he made up as a Hindu to throw suspicion on the very suspicious Mr. Shivara. That was one reason Ted failed to recognize him. If the mustache Dr. Bent wears now is the one he has always worn and not an imitation, then I’ll take back all the accusations I’ve—”

  Don Diavolo didn’t find that necessary. Bent drew a gun and fired as Church leaped for him.

  He had aimed it at himself.…

  Mickey steered the big red Packard back toward Fox Street. Karl Hart, whose tidy mechanic’s mind hated loose ends, said, “While Ted was out of touch with civilization in the Persian desert, Bent hired someone in the East to send a phony cable announcing Ted’s death. And then Richards carefully held back all the letters that came from Ted addressed to Judith. But why was Richards working for Bent?”

  “When the Inspector checks on that,” Don said, “I think he’ll find that Bent was the psychiatrist who helped Richards beat the rap with an insanity case and later got him released from Matteawan.

  “As a psychologist, Bent knew how to handle Nicholas Sayre, and recommended Richards as a secretary. The motive was, of course, to make Judith believe Ted was dead long enough so that Bent, using more of his psychology, could get her married to him and thus be in line for the old man’s millions.

  “Bent, the man who knew so well how people’s minds worked, had neglected to psychoanalyze himself. He had maneuvered so many people’s lives with his psychoanalytic treatment and his hypnotic suggestions, that he came to have the idea that he himself was something very special. The feeling of power his profession gave him went to his head. It made him an egomaniac. Conrad Bent, The Man Who Thought He Was God!”

  For a moment or two they all were silent.

  Pat said, “So that’s how he put on his clairvoyant act for Ted. He knew about Ted’s treasure hunt from the letters Ted had written to Judith and which she never got.”

  Woody Haines, who had phoned the flash into his paper, but wasn’t going to be pried loose until he had gotten the last small detail of his scoop, had a question too. “Bent,” he said, “took Judith to her room after she had fainted and then, later, sneaked down the back stairs to meet Richards in the collection room. But he didn’t feed me any of Shivara’s dope. Why—”

  “He didn’t need to,” Don replied. “Don’t you remember that when you told us your story you started to say that Richards had greeted you with Shivara’s Om vajra patter? Then you took it back. You nearly had the whole business by the tail right there.

  “That’s just what did happen, only it wasn’t Richards who met you — but Bent. The drug Shivara had fed you at dinner was still effective and, when you broke in to find Bent standing over Richards w
hom he had just that minute killed, he fired Shivara’s magic cue words at you.18 Then he told you to forget that you had seen him at all, and he described exactly what he wanted you to see, what to tell the others you had seen, and made you forget that you had been told.

  “I suspect he ordered you to wait a minute or two before you raised the alarm and to forget that also. That gave him time to get away. According to your story, everything you said you saw only took three or four minutes. But I was in there, madly doing card tricks for Brophy and trying to prevent his noticing your absence for at least twice that long.”

  Mickey, behind the wheel, shivered. “Maybe you have got it explained all nice and neat,” she said. “But with Dr. Bent dead, only Shivara knows the secret of his hypnotic drug. And all Church has on him is the potshot he took at Lieutenant Brophy. When he gets out again.… I get cold chills thinking about it.”

  “I know,” Don Diavolo said gravely. “It amounts to real Black Magic. He has the power to commit murder before witnesses and yet make their testimony completely valueless. It gives him power to do nearly anything he likes — or to make people believe he’s doing it, which amounts to the same thing. Something drastic will have to be done about Mr. Shivara.”

  Something was done about Mr. Shivara. But Mr. Shivara did it. The story was in the morning papers.

  GANG ATTACKS POLICE CAR

  HINDU FASCIST AGENT ESCAPES

  A gang of gunmen last night attacked a police car on Canal Street as it neared headquarters carrying a Hindu Fascist agent who had been arrested for shooting a lieutenant of the Homicide Squad during the investigation of murder at the Fifth Avenue home of Nicholas Sayre earlier in the evening. (Story in Col. 1).