Death from a Top Hat Read online

  Watrous pulled up momentarily, frowned, and then went on quite amiably as if nothing had happened.

  “Allow me to introduce Mr. Eugene Tarot, of whom you have doubtless heard. Mr. Tarot—Mr.—” He glanced at the card tacked to my door “Harte, I think.”

  I nodded coldly. The Great Tarot, of whom I had heard, was busily scowling at Watrous and didn’t even bother to nod coldly. Along with a considerable share of the public, I knew of him as the Card King, a sleight-of-hand performer of polished excellence, whose clever dexterity, chiefly in the manipulation of playing cards, had won him top theatrical bookings. He was, currently, garnering national publicity and pocketing a fat pay check for playing the title role in Xanadu, the Magician, a radio serial of his own devising that was presented nightly by a prosperous automotive sponsor.

  Watrous blandly continued: “And this is Madame Rappourt, who is on her way to being recognized, if I may say so, as the greatest psychic personality of our day. The press has been so kind of late as to give her some of the attention which she so rightly merits. You have probably read…”

  The Colonel’s introduction, continuing for another paragraph or so, began to sound like a side-show barker’s build up, and he lost my attention. The woman’s name was one that I half expected. Madame Rappourt was the Colonel’s discovery and protégée, a spirit medium who had created no little scientific and quite a lot of journalistic fuss in European circles. For the past two weeks, since her arrival in this country, the newspapers had showered the pair with publicity, largely favorable, which, paid for at line rates, would have amounted to plenty. I suspected that this was due partly to a prevailing lack of colorful news and partly to a smart press agent. When I discovered later that it was Watrous who had managed to induce the notices, I began to respect his flair for showmanship.

  According to what he had given the papers, Madame Rappourt was a native of Hungary. A large, huskily built woman, with swarthy masculine features, she almost towered over the abridged Colonel at her side. Her eyes, imbedded in a blunt, yet somehow handsome, face were black holes, in each of which a tiny spark of light burned fiercely. She had an immense amount of jet-black hair which possessed an astonishing look of vitality and almost seemed to be growing before my eyes, in slow burnished movement. She wore a black evening wrap which she clutched around her awkwardly, as if she were cold.

  I knew that she must be the owner of that oddly haunted voice, which, coming through my door, had talked of death.

  Tarot shattered the Colonel’s rush of incipient oratory with simple directness. Without my noticing it, he had resumed his kneeling position at the keyhole, and I now saw that he held in his hands a key ring on which were a number of queerly shaped, angular bits of metal. I knew, intuitively, that they were picklocks.

  “Turn off the spiel, Watrous,” he cut in, “and go see if that kitchenette door is locked.”

  The Colonel stuttered in mid-sentence and then quickly did as he was told, going toward another door some twenty feet down the hall. Tarot caught my look of surprise as I saw the implements in his hand.

  “You think,” he said, “that Sabbat is out. I don’t.”

  “Nor do I!” As Madame Rappourt spoke I was looking full at her. Her lips did not move.

  “That milk bottle,”—Tarot pointed at a pint of coffee cream standing near the door—” has presumably been there since early this morning. It is now six-thirty P.M. He hasn’t been out today, and besides…” He sat back on his heels and announced, with measured intonation, “This keyhole has been stuffed up from the inside!”

  I watched the vague ghost of a smile materialize around Madame Rappourt’s mouth.

  Watrous exclaimed loudly, “What!” and began pounding noisily on the kitchen door.

  “Here, take this.” Tarot drew one of the picklocks from the ring and flung it toward Watrous. It rattled along the floor. “See if that keyhole’s stuffed too.” Tarot started probing again at the lock, one of the mortise-knob type with the large keyhole such as is ordinarily found on connecting doors.

  Involuntarily I sniffed, and was again conscious of a vague laboratory odor. “I’d better call the police,” I said, turning.

  Tarot whirled on me.

  “You’ll do nothing of the sort—yet!” he said threateningly. “Watrous!”

  “This lock’s stuffed up too!” Watrous shouted, his voice pitched high. His velvety bumbling gone, he almost squeaked, “I think I may be able to push it out, though.” He fumbled at the lock.

  “Try it.” Tarot scowled and then added quickly, “Hell, no! Don’t be a fool. If he’s stuffed the keyhole, he’s probably thrown the bolts he has on these doors. Picking the locks won’t do us a damn bit of good. We’ll have to break in.”

  Watrous came running back to where we stood. His face had taken on a purplish hue. He quavered breathlessly, “Perhaps Mr. Harte here has something we can smash a panel with.” He looked at me.

  I was still glaring angrily at the officious Tarot. I turned without answering, went into my apartment and got the heaviest stick of firewood I had. Returning, I ignored Tarot’s outstretched hand and shoved it at Watrous. Then I walked back in to the phone and dialed Operator. “To hell with Tarot,” I was thinking, “he can’t push me around.” I told the operator to get me Police Headquarters and to snap into it.

  Outside I could hear the battering of wood upon wood as I explained to an official, somewhat bored voice at headquarters that someone at 742 East 40th Street had possibly committed suicide by gas. I went back to the corridor and found that Watrous had succeeded in splintering one panel of the door. Another powerful swinging blow cracked it open, and a heavy cloying odor came out.

  “Can you reach the bolt?” Tarot demanded.

  Watrous crooked an arm through the opening, and we heard the sound of sliding metal. His hand was busy an instant longer, and then he withdrew his arm.

  “This was in the keyhole.” He held up a wrinkled square of blue cloth and stood looking at it a bit uncertainly. I reached over and took it from him. It was the torn quarter of a man’s blue linen handkerchief.

  Tarot meanwhile had gone into action with his picklocks. He tried one, and almost immediately we heard the catch click over. I shoved the cloth into my trouser pocket and stepped forward. Tarot, hand on the knob, was pushing at the door. It gave an inch or so, then stopped as if impeded by some heavy object. Tarot applied his shoulder, and the door moved slowly. He threw his whole weight against it, and we heard something scrape across the floor inside as the door swung inward far enough to allow an entrance. Tarot squeezed in and was silhouetted against a flickering yellowish light.

  “You’d better stay here, Eva,” Watrous advised the woman and disappeared after Tarot. I started in. Madame Rappourt stood, tensely expectant, against the corridor wall, watching. Then she moved after us.

  The others, having gone five or six feet into the room, had rounded the end of a davenport that had blocked the door but now slanted inward, angling away from the wall. They stood motionless, staring toward my left, within the room.

  I jerked my head in that direction.

  The air was misty with smoke. Four ovoid shapes of light that were tall candle flames wavered in the haze. They balanced delicately above the stubby ends of thick, black candles that stood in massive candlesticks of wrought iron. These, with a fifth in which the shortened candle had guttered out, were circularly arranged in the middle of the floor. The darkness, held off by their uncertain gleaming, lay thick around the walls and was heaped up in the corners of the room.

  I saw only this at first. Then Tarot moved forward quickly, deeper into the room. Madame Rappourt behind me made a queer choking sound in her throat. On the bare, polished floor I saw the body of a man. He was clad in pajamas and dressing gown. His puffy, congested lips were drawn back from the jutting teeth in a fixed, distorted grimace; his eyes bulged hideously from their sockets and stared with an unblinking, fish-like intensity at the ceiling; his face
, swollen and livid, was contorted into a grotesquely carved mask that bore not the slightest human expression. With difficulty I recognized Cesare Sabbat.

  He lay on his back, symmetrically spread-eagled in the exact center of a large star shape that had been drawn on the floor with chalk, his head, arms, and legs extending out into the points. At the tip of each point stood one of the candles, and around this whole fantastic tableau ran a scribbled border of strange words, also in chalk.

  Tetragrammaton…Tetragrammaton…Tetragrammaton—Ismael…Adonay…Ihua—Come Surgat…Come Surgat…Come Surgat!

  The candle nearest Tarot, which had burned down to its socket, gave a final dancing flicker and went out. The darkness against the walls came closer.

  Chapter 3

  Suspects in the Dark

  Faustus sold himself to the Devil, Slashed his wrist and wrote in blood. Pledged his soul to the Prince of Evil,

  Old Dr. Faustus.

  Bold Dr. Faustus—

  Turned his face from the good.

  George Steele Seymour: Faustus

  TIME STRETCHED ITSELF OUT intolerably while we stood there, staring. The draught from the open door snatched at the candle flames, and the body almost seemed to move as the dark shadows beneath it crawled on the floor. At last Watrous broke the straining silence.

  “Sabbat!”

  His voice now was harsh, cracked, and his hands trembled. No one else spoke.

  I rubbed my palms against my trousers, wiping away the dampness, and glanced quickly around the room. On the left, beyond Sabbat’s feet, a heavy marble fireplace towered, dominating that end of the room. Above it dull gleams of coppery light picked out the raised portions of a great circular plaque and traced a complex design of intersecting circles and unfamiliar symbols. To the right of the hearth a folding screen partially concealed what appeared to be a large worktable bearing the scattered glint of glassware.

  On the floor near me, against the high, carved legs of the davenport, lay a black carpet, neatly rolled. On the side of the room opposite the door dark hangings, closely drawn before a large studio window, reached from ceiling to floor. The right half of the room was lined shoulder high with solidly filled bookshelves. The savage, eyeless faces of half a dozen ceremonial masks peered with feverish distortion from the walls and contrasted violently with the businesslike desk and steel filing cabinets in one corner, which, with several chairs, low tables, and a floor lamp or two comprised the remaining furniture. In the center of the right hand wall, slicing into the rampart of shelves, I saw the black rectangle of an arched doorway that led, I suspected, as did my own, into a short inner hall from which opened the entrances to kitchenette, bedroom, and bath.

  Watrous was incredulous. “Is—is he—dead?”

  Tarot took his eyes from the body and narrowed them on the Colonel. His voice, except for an incisive sarcasm, was emotionless.

  “What do you think? ’S a damn funny place to sleep!”

  “But I,” Watrous jerked, “I don’t…understand. There’s no gas.”

  “Gas?” Tarot looked puzzled.

  “Yes—the stuffed keyholes. This smell is incense—from that burner.” He indicated a squat bronze object on the mantelpiece. “It’s not—”

  “Use your eyes, man!” Tarot snapped. “Look at that face. Asphyxiation, yes. But not gas. He’s been strangled.”

  The thought had crossed my mind, yet I started when I heard the words. Rappourt moved and caught my attention. I saw that her rigidity and labored respiration had gone. She was bending forward, keenly alert, her eyes wide, with white showing beneath the black staring pupils.

  I said, “There’d be marks of some sort on his throat, wouldn’t there?”

  Tarot stepped over the chalked circle closer to the body and looked down. “There should be—and there aren’t. But that’s no queerer than the rest of this…” He was starting to kneel.

  “Maybe you’d better not touch him,” I warned. “The police are on their way.”

  Tarot straightened. Somehow I felt that I had put a dent in that colossal self-confidence of his which was so annoying. His monocle flashed at me.

  “While we were smashing in the door, eh?”

  I nodded, watching him.

  “But,” Watrous argued doubtfully, “you’re saying that Sabbat—”

  “Was murdered!” Tarot finished. “And since these windows look directly on to the river, it’s quite possible that the murderer…” His voice had lowered and was speculative. Leaving his thought half expressed, he turned to face the now forbidding darkness of the inner doorway. Together with his turning I saw a smooth motion of hand to pocket, and then blue metal highlights glittered in his hand. He held a square-nosed automatic.

  “Get some lights, somebody! That switch by the door.”

  I jumped at it. I flicked it with my thumb…once…twice…Thin metallic clicks came, but that was all. Tarot yanked a candle from its socket and moved toward the black hall. I grabbed the next nearest and started after him. He looked over his shoulder, stopped short and spun around. His gun, held stiffly before him, seemed to point at me.

  “You stay where you are!”

  I kept on going, partly because I disliked Tarot’s self-appointed leadership, partly because I felt that he was being a bit too melodramatic. The odds were against finding a murderer hidden on the scene of his crime.

  “All right, sap!” he said. “Take the bedroom.”

  He slipped into the doorway ahead of me, turned right, and vanished through a swinging door into the kitchen. I went on several paces and stopped before the single door on the left. Kicking it open, I held my candle high and fumbled inside for the switch. I found it and got another empty, ineffective click. I hesitated for an instant on the black brink, and then stepped in, suddenly, as if entering a cold shower.

  My candle flame dipped precariously at the quick motion, and I slowed cautiously. The room contained a bed, dresser, and chair. The bed was made. I looked under it and then investigated a clothes closet. That exhausted the hiding places. There were two windows; one faced the blank rear wall of another apartment house and overlooked a bare stone court three stories below; the other, on the river side, dropped sheer to the water. Both were securely fastened.

  “Tarot!”

  I had one hand on the window catch, trying it, when I heard Watrous yell. I turned around so fast my candle flapped out. One bound took me through the door into the hall where I smacked solidly against Tarot as he shot out of the bathroom. We both swore.

  Watrous ran at us, blurted excitedly, “She’s fainted! Give me that.” He snatched Tarot’s candle, which was miraculously still alight, and popped into the kitchen. I heard running water splash in the sink as we hurried back into the living room.

  Darkness had moved in threateningly on the two remaining candles. Madame Rappourt was a limp huddle on the floor. We lifted her into a large armchair. Her head rolled, mouth open. Watrous came with a glass of water, and Tarot leaned forward to support the medium’s head as the Colonel tipped the glass against her pale lips. Water dribbled down the side of her face and neck, and she began to come out of it, choking.

  She moaned slightly and mumbled indistinguishably in a blurred, fuzzy voice. Her eyelids fluttered and then stayed open. She looked at the Colonel, who had put aside the glass and was bent over, awkwardly rubbing her wrists.

  “I’ll be all right in a moment,” she said thinly. “Then you must take me home.”

  Watrous nodded and opened his mouth.

  Tarot spoke first. “Mr. Harte’s friends, the police, won’t like that, you know, Watrous.”

  I let that crack pass and spoke to Watrous. “You might take her across to my room where it’s light, and there isn’t any…” I gestured at the body.

  “Perhaps I’d better,” he assented. But he made no move. He frowned thoughtfully and inclined his head toward the inner hall. “In there, you found nothing?”

  I shook my head. Tarot put the
gun back in his pocket and said, “No.”

  Watrous nodded, one hand holding Rappourt’s arm, and looked across at the body. “That would have been disappointing. You know, this business is beginning to interest me highly. The authorities all state that unless very precise and proper precautions are taken during an evocation the demon may turn on the sorcerer and wring his neck. Many such instances have been recorded, though I haven’t yet found any well-authenticated modern ones. I’m beginning to think that maybe the police are going to have a bit of a job on their hands.”

  “Slow down for the corners, Colonel,” Tarot said cynically. “Your imagination’s running wild again. Maybe the dead can return to jiggle tables and blow trumpets, though I should think they’d feel damned silly doing it. But when you insinuate that some demon twisted Sabbat’s neck for him…eyewash! And you know it.”

  That was the wrong way to rub the Colonel’s fur. He argued, “But if there’s no one else here, and the doors were all locked and bolted, and the windows…”

  I walked over and pulled back the velvet hangings. A pale hint of moonlight filtered in. I glanced at the window fastening. “The windows in the other room and in here,” I announced, “are all locked.”

  “You see,” Watrous said. “What else…”

  “At the moment I don’t know what else,” Tarot snorted. “But there’s some way out of here. Duvallo should be able…” He stopped thoughtfully.

  “Duvallo!” Watrous exclaimed. “I wonder what’s delaying him. He should be here by now.”

  “That is queer.” Tarot pushed back his cuff and glanced at a silver wrist watch. “It’s six-forty-five.”

  “Is Duvallo expected?” I asked, moderately thunderstruck.

  Watrous nodded. “He was to meet us here.”