Death from a Top Hat Read online

  The Inspector said, “Forget it, Grimm. And go watch Jones and that Chinaman before they take a run-out powder.” And to Duvallo, “Now you’re here you can stay, but you’ve put yourself right where I want you. One crack out of you at the wrong time and I’ll run you in for assault and battery. That clear? Sit down.”

  “But what…?”

  “I said ‘sit down!’ ” Gavigan’s Irish temper was moving over a wet pavement, skidding.

  Duvallo started for a place next to Miss Barclay.

  Gavigan objected, “No, over here.”

  Duvallo looked at the Inspector obstinately for a moment, then obeyed. Taking out a pack of cigarettes, he tossed one across to Judy and took one himself.

  The Inspector stood over Judy. “How did you happen to stop in here just now?”

  She held up her cigarette and smiled at him. He took a paper of matches from his pocket and lit one for her.

  “It sounds criminal, Inspector, the way you put it. I was on my way home when I noticed the police cars out in Grove Street. Naturally I was curious.”

  “You live near here?”

  “On Bedford Street, just around the corner off Grove.”

  “And you were coming from—?”

  “A movie at the Music Hall. Mystery thriller, full of policemen that barked. I didn’t like it.”

  Gavigan elected to ignore that one. “You went by yourself?”

  “Yes, I work at NBC in Radio City. Mother was having her evening of bridge tonight, so I stayed uptown for dinner and then went to the show.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Time, please.”

  “Oh, am I a suspect, Inspector?”

  “I don’t know. That’s what I’m trying to find out.” Gavigan saw Duvallo edge forward in his seat as if about to speak. “Well? You were going to say something?” It didn’t take a mind reader to gather that what the Inspector really meant was, “You aren’t going to say anything.”

  Duvallo settled back. “I’m as quiet as a mouse, Inspector. Go ahead, browbeat the lady.” But that wasn’t what he meant either.

  Judy broke in, “I finished work at five-thirty, dined at the Hotel Bristol from six to seven, and entered the Music Hall at a quarter to eight. I believe I still have my ticket stub.” She looked in her purse and finding it, handed it to Gavigan.

  “What do you do at NBC?”

  “I write continuities for sustaining programs.”

  “Where were you at 2 to 3 A.M. this morning?”

  Judy had placed her cigarette to her lips, but she took it away without drawing on it. “Do you always ask people that, Inspector, or do those times mean something?”

  Duvallo straightened again, then relaxed as she went on, “I was home and in bed. I have to be at work at 9 A.M., you know.”

  There was a commotion at the door, and Dr. Hesse walked in. He started to take off his coat when he saw the pictures on the walls. He stood there, one arm in and one out, looking around the room with a mildly thunderstruck expression on his face. There was a covetous gleam in his eye as he surveyed the posters and playbills.

  “Where are we anyway?” he asked. Then he saw Duvallo. “Oh, I see.” He finished removing his coat and threw a distasteful glance at the corpse. “Hmm! Some more of the same. Is this going to go on all night, Inspector? Maybe I’d better just stick around. No sense in all this commuting.”

  “Stop griping, Doc. And get on with it. I’m busy.” Gavigan faced Duvallo. “Do you own a twenty-foot ladder?”

  Duvallo’s eyebrows went up. “Yes. There’s one in the garden. Lying by the wall. Why? Someone been using it?”

  “Something like that. This is an interesting place you have here, Duvallo. Would you mind showing us the trap doors and secret passageways?”

  “Oh, oh! Another locked-room gag.” He turned and eyed the door, noticing for the first time that it had been removed from its hinges. Getting up, he went over and looked at the lock. “Sorry about the secret passageways, but those only come with castles. Walls aren’t thick enough here. I’m thinking of buying a moat, though. They’re useful things.”

  “It would be a lot less messy if you didn’t take that line, Duvallo,” Gavigan appealed. “I’d like to hear if you can give us as neat an answer this time. It’s on your home grounds.”

  Duvallo looked at Merlini. “You at a loss again? Or is he just asking to hear my answer?”

  “You’re too suspicious, Dave,” Merlini said, from where he sat near Judy. “He wants information. He’s just had several answers shot out from under him, and he’s looking for a replacement.”

  “Okay. If he’ll stop snapping at Judy, I’ll take a stab at it. Try anything once. What’s the setup?”

  Rapidly Merlini explained, and Duvallo listened eagerly, his bright, black eyes shifting impatiently, searching the room. Presently, as Merlini told about the window and the ladder, they went into the study. Judy followed, listening.

  Just then Grimm’s voice came from upstairs. “For Crissake! Will you stumblebums get the hell outta there! I mean it. Scram now!”

  Coming up from the garden outside, a new voice replied, “All right, Juliet. Don’t get sore about it. When’s the Inspector going to feed the animals?”

  The two windows near the Turk that were black empty squares flared briefly with bright, soundless flashes of light.

  “Malloy,” the Inspector exclaimed quickly, “get some men out there and keep those reporters from messing up that yard. Hurry!”

  Malloy was gone before he had finished.

  Dr. Hesse snapped his black bag shut and announced, “Same report as last time, Inspector. Death from same cause with same markings. Weapon still missing?”

  “No. Grimm found that around his neck.” Gavigan pointed at the cord on the mantelpiece.

  Dr. Hesse examined it and nodded. “Yes, that’s about what I’d expect.”

  The others came back from the study just then, and Gavigan faced Duvallo. “Well, was it another string trick? Or is it mirrors this time?”

  Dr. Hesse stood in the doorway, putting on his overcoat. “Pardon me, Inspector, but haven’t you forgotten something?”

  “What?”

  “It’s not like you. You didn’t ask me when he died.”

  “Thanks, but we know that. Ten thirty-five.”

  “Oh? Well, that’s a help. Good night. There’ll be a report on your desk in the morning.”

  He went out, and Gavigan reminded Duvallo, “Well?”

  There was a deep scowl on Duvallo’s face and a worried, restless look in his eyes. “Offhand, Inspector, I don’t know. And this time that’s on the level. I doubt if you realize how much I hate to have to admit that.”

  “Miss Barclay?” Gavigan asked.

  “Me? Heavens, no! If Dave is up a tree, who am I to have a guess?”

  “And neither of you have any suggestions as to who might have had a motive for killing Tarot?”

  They both shook their heads.

  “And you, Miss Barclay. Did you know Cesare Sabbat?”

  “Did I know…?” she turned to Duvallo. “Has he been—murdered, too?”

  “Yes.”

  I saw her breast rise as she caught her breath quickly. Duvallo put his arm around her again, but her slender body was stiff, unyielding, except for the hand that held her purse and trembled.

  “No,” she said, keeping the tremor from her voice, “I didn’t know Dr. Sabbat. I’ve heard Dave speak of him, but that is all.”

  Gavigan hesitated, eyed Merlini once, and then said, “All right, you two can go for now. Duvallo, you’d better camp out tonight. This is going to be a busy place, and you wouldn’t get much sleep.”

  “I don’t think I will anyway. This vanishing stunt has me worried. Come on, Judy.”

  The sounds in the hall indicated the arrival of more detectives. When Duvallo and Miss Barclay had gone, Gavigan had several of them in. His brusque commands crackled efficiently as he threw
the switches that set in motion the routine machinery of detection. It was obvious that the Homicide Squad was going to meet the dawn sleepless. Watrous, Rappourt, the LaClaires were to be collected at headquarters and gone over by expert inquisitors. Their backgrounds, along with those of Duvallo, Judy, Jones, Sabbat, and Tarot were to be checked and double checked, as were their lives, loves, friends, fingerprints, and habits. Telegrams to the Federal Identification Bureau were mentioned, and cablegrams to Europe for information on Rappourt, Sabbat, and Watrous. The dressing-gown cord, the stone, the Grimorium and its torn page were to be taken to the laboratory for more thorough examination. Two men with insufflators began dusting the room for prints, and Bennett was told to finish his pictures, getting the usual shots of the room and some of the garden and the roof.

  Malloy answered the phone once, and came back with a report from the detectives who had been going through Tarot’s apartment. They had found his evening clothes—opera cape, hat, coat, trousers, vest, shirt, and tie—strewn about on the floor, as if he had changed in great haste. His monocle was there, and a towel with cold cream and make-up on it.

  The Inspector told Malloy to send Jones over to the Charles Street Station, have him sign a statement, and then release him. And to bring in Ching Wong Fu. As Malloy left, Gavigan saw me fish in my pocket and bring out my alibi list.

  “What are you going to do with that?” he asked.

  “Add Miss Barclay’s name,” I said.

  “And how are you checking her off?”

  “One up and one to go. The movie isn’t any great shakes as an alibi, of course.”

  Gavigan scowled. “I’m almost inclined to give her a clean slate, just because she’s not a magician.”

  “Not so fast, Inspector,” Merlini put in. “She’s not a magician. There aren’t many among her sex, but there are a lot of female magicians’ assistants. You see, she used to work for Tarot. The lady he sawed in two.”

  Gavigan threw up his hands. “I might have known it!”

  “He also used her in a transposition effect. He put her in a trunk that a committee from the audience locked, roped, and sealed. Then, when he clapped his hands she appeared at the back of the theater and ran down the aisle with a revolver, firing blanks and shouting, ‘Here I am!’ They were playing Detroit one day when Judy got a little mixed and came dashing down the aisle of a theater next door where an audience of Guild subscribers were viewing O’Neill’s Mourning Becomes Electra! The Detroit Free Press next day captioned its story, ‘Mourning Becomes Electrified.’ ”

  “Oh,” Gavigan said, “so she can disappear too. I wish we had just one suspect who couldn’t vanish at the drop of a hat. Oh, yes—I forgot Jones. What does he do for a living?”

  Merlini made no answer. He was thoughtfully regarding a handkerchief which he had spread out on the divan beside him. It was small and obviously feminine; white polka dots scattered on a deep maroon. I had last seen it tucked under one corner of the flap on Judy’s purse. Apparently Gavigan also recognized it.

  “How did you get that?” he demanded.

  “Don’t hound me, Inspector,” Merlini replied. “I’ll talk. I used a little sleight of hand of the pickpocket variety.”

  Merlini’s hand delved in his coat pocket and with a slow conjurers movement drew out a second and nearly identical handkerchief. It had the same dotted design and differed only in that its color was blue.

  “But I didn’t steal this one. I found it. Pushed down behind the seat cushion of the armchair in Sabbat’s apartment. Do you suppose, by any chance, they could belong to the same set?”

  The Inspector was suddenly all business. “The boys at the lab can tell us if the cloth is identical, and they might even manage fingerprints.” He knelt by the side of the divan and held a glass over first one, then the other, of the pieces of cloth. “And if both have touched her face there may be enough powder grains adhering that a microanalysis will establish identity. If we’re lucky—” He stopped abruptly and bent closer. After a long careful scrutiny, he sat back on his heels and said:

  “Here, Harte. Tell me what that is.”

  He gave me the glass and I looked through it where his finger pointed at a spot on the blue handkerchief, the one from Sabbat’s apartment.

  “It’s a hair,” I said. “And it seems to be red.”

  1Mystery and Magic in Tibet, Claude Kendall, 1932.

  2“Maelzel’s Chess Player,” an article in the Southern Literary Messenger, April 1836. Or see Poe’s Complete Works, Stedman and Woodberry, Vol. 9, Page 141 et seq.

  Chapter 17

  The Heathen Chinee

  “I FEEL AS IF I were riding on a ferris wheel,” Inspector Gavigan said. “First we’re up, then we’re down, but all the time we’re moving in a circle.”

  Captain Malloy came in then, followed by Ching Wong Fu. I had been wondering what a Scotch Chinese Menace looked like. This one was, by a good majority, just plain American. He did have the short stature and bland, round face that made a Chinese make-up plausible, but he was no more Oriental, off stage, than a kippered herring. Or Scotch, for that matter; it was obvious that this branch of the clan MacNeil was several generations removed from its native heath. He used his stage name in private life as Tarot did his opera cape, for reasons of publicity. His personality was effervescent, supercharged with enthusiasm. He talked like a bottle of seltzer water, and his pudgy hands were full of nervous, hackneyed gestures. He wore a derby and spats, and carried gray gloves and a cane.

  He bounced in, eyes round with excitement and, completely failing to catch either the mood or tempo of the scene, greeted brightly, “Hello, Merlini! What’s all this international intrigue I’m surrounded with? Mysterious message asking for rendezvous at hide-out of sinister alchemist. I depart in haste and fall smack into the arms of the law! Never saw so many cops and detectives! Thick as anything, and twice as uninformative. Somebody snatch the Crown jewels, or get away with the air defense plans, or—”

  His roving eyes glimpsed the body, and his rapid-fire patter stumbled and fell headlong.

  “Who…what…damn! I seem to have put my foot in it again.”

  The Inspector swung while Ching was off balance. “Did you know that man?”

  Ching moved closer, hesitantly. “Yes,” he said soberly. “It’s Tarot. But what’s—what—” He foundered completely.

  “Why did you phone Sabbat tonight?”

  Ching swung around. His eyes probed the Inspector’s. “Why shouldn’t I? And just what did happen up there anyway?”

  “He was murdered too. Why did you phone him?”

  Ching Wong Fu looked from Gavigan to Merlini, and back at Gavigan. I felt that somewhere behind his astonished face some fast thinking was going on.

  Merlini helped out. “The inquisitive gentleman is Inspector Gavigan of the Homicide Squad. I think Emily Post would advise, in such circumstances, that you overcome your natural shyness and provide answers.”

  “Excuse me, Inspector,” Ching said, “but you do have a nasty way of knocking a man all of a heap. I called Cesare to ask if he was home to visitors. I thought I’d fill in the evening with a social call. Anything wrong with that?”

  “Where were you and what were you doing from midnight last night until 10 P.M. tonight?” I divined an eagerness about the Inspector that his gruff tone didn’t quite cover.

  Ching blinked and said, “What is this, a game of Twenty Questions?”

  “Something like that, yes. Only when I play I do all the asking. Let’s have it.”

  Ching took two slow steps toward the nearer sofa and then seated himself on it, his back to the body.

  “From midnight until two-thirty,” he said in a level monotone, “I was working at the 13 Club, on East 48th Street. Dinner-table magic between floor shows. I left shortly before three and went home to bed. This morning—”

  “You got home at what time?” Gavigan asked.

  “It was just three-thirty. I remember because my wat
ch had stopped and I asked the elevator boy.”

  “Take a taxi?”

  Ching shook his head, “No. Subway. I walked to Grand Central and shuttled across to the Seventh Avenue line.”

  “And you didn’t stop anywhere between the 13 Club and the subway entrance in Grand Central?”

  Ching regarded the Inspector searchingly; then, though his eyes didn’t move, he half smiled and said, “From a magician’s point of view you’re a bad audience, Inspector, I see that. No deception allowed. You know too much. Mind telling me what brand of clairvoyance you use?”

  “Not at all. I’ve a witness who saw you coming out of Sabbat’s building at three this morning. Simple as that.”

  “Oh. Yes, I did pass someone. But he exaggerates. I wasn’t coming out of the building, though I’m afraid it may have looked that way. I had intended calling on Sabbat, and I went there with that intention, but I…er…I changed my mind at the door.”

  “Sabbat expecting you at that hour?”

  “I was under that impression. He’s not an actor, but he keeps that sort of hours. I’d phoned him earlier in the day, and he had suggested that I stop in after my last turn at the Club.”

  “Sabbat was expecting you; you went there intending to call on him; and you were seen coming away from the building. What do you mean, you changed your mind?”

  Ching put a cigarette in his mouth, scowled at a paper of matches, then scratched one and applied it. “I meant just what I said. It seemed rather obvious that Sabbat had forgotten all about my coming. He was a bit eccentric.” He expelled a cloud of blue smoke. “There are two doors at the entrance of that place, the inner of which is locked, and the mailboxes with names and bell pushes are between them. When I opened the first door I saw a woman letting herself in at the second. Thought it was some tenant, at first, as she had her own key. Don’t think she saw me, but she should be able to tell you that I didn’t follow her up to Sabbat’s.”

  “How do you know that’s where she went?”

  “That wasn’t hard. The inner door is glass and, as it closed behind her and she went on toward the stairs, I recognized her. I didn’t see her face, but I saw the platinum-blond hair and I recognized her—well—her walk. Knowing who it was I had a good idea where she was going and deduced further that, in this case, three might very possibly be a crowd…I came away. Do I have to explain any further?”