Death from a Top Hat Read online

  Gavigan held up his hands to stem the flood of information and said, “Sure, sure, I know. I’ve got a niece who believes in Santa Claus and has a theory about storks. So what? I still think the Doctor was off his nut.” The Inspector hastily dismissed the whole subject and addressed me, “Harte, you bring Merlini up to date while I clean up a few odds and ends before we get those vaudeville acts next door in here for questioning.”

  I assented, and he turned to issue a brisk flow of orders. Brady was busily messing up the place with an insufflator that belched clouds of aluminum powder. Gavigan began a painstaking examination of the room, part of the time on his hands and knees. I noticed that he kept an ear tuned in on the rapid resume which I rattled off for Merlini.

  When I mentioned the difficulty with the lights, Gavigan added a marginal note. “The electrician found all the fuses blown. And new ones popped out as fast as they were put in. He deduced a short. Then he found a penny in a light socket. After removing that he blew some more fuses. Then finally he discovered that pennies had been put in five different outlets. He blew about four sets of fuses finding that out. Does that information mean anything to anybody?

  “Doesn’t sound very illuminating, to say the least,” Merlini commented. “Let’s hear more, Ross, lots more.”

  As my recital progressed, his eyes beamed like those of a small boy with his first bicycle. His quick, alert movements indicated a growing inner excitement, though his face, except for the eyes, was bland and inscrutable. I took my story up to the arrival of the Homicide Squad, and Gavigan, rejoining us at that point, added a brief summary of the subsequent events. Merlini inspected Duvallo’s card and the pieces of torn handkerchief, Gavigan having brought the one from the kitchen back with him.

  “No sliding panels or secret exits,” Gavigan concluded. “Three walls of this apartment are outside ones. The fourth, along the hall there, is plastered on both sides, and you can’t conceal a door in a wall like that. And anyway, just to be sure, I’ve looked. Ditto for the ceiling, of course. As for the floor—well, with the carpet rolled aside you can see for yourself, and, besides, Malloy says that a trap door would drop one straight into the bedroom of a maiden lady who’d yell bloody murder at the very thought. Just why the blazes a murderer has to go and commit a murder like this, I don’t know. It’s the damnedest—”

  “It’s a swell alibi, isn’t it?” Merlini said. “If you can’t explain how it was done you can’t convict. You might know who the murderer is, place him right on the scene, and have a dozen witnesses, but just as long as he isn’t actually seen within or leaving this room, he’s quite safe—as long as the impossible situation isn’t punctured, of course. It’s also possible that he may be a murderer with some regard for others and doesn’t want any innocent person convicted. As long as it looks impossible, we can’t even do that. Or perhaps he couldn’t manage to manufacture any proof that he was somewhere else at the proper time—he may even have been seen near here at the time of the murder. The impossibleness of the murder gets over all that.”

  “Sure, and that’s your job. Puncture the impossibility. Tell me how someone got out of this room, and it’s a ten-to-one shot we’ll know who it was.”

  “Give me a chance to warm up, will you? I’m pretty well grounded in locked room theory, and I supply the profession with escapes from leg-irons, lead coffins, strait jackets, and the like, but—well, this situation is something of a honey. All the usual locked room trimmings, plus a new one. And that’s obviously going to be the headache. Those keyholes.…” He broke off, frowning thoughtfully at the door. Then he said, “Inspector, let’s see you put on your Torquemada act. Before I hand in a report, I’d like to hear what those witnesses have to say for themselves.”

  “That’s fair enough,” Gavigan answered. “Brady, we’ll start with Rappourt. Shoo her in.”

  Brady withdrew, and the Inspector held a quick whispered conference with Malloy, who then went out, stepping aside at the door for Madame Rappourt. She glanced briefly at the covered figure and then quickly at the Inspector. Though more composed than before, she held herself stiffly alert, and her gaze was restless. Merlini, as she came in, retired suddenly to the bookcases where he began browsing.

  “Sit down,” Gavigan said, pushing forward a chair. Madame Rappourt moved her head negatively and stood, waiting.

  “How long have you known Dr. Sabbat?” the Inspector began.

  Behind me, at the desk, Quinn scribbled shorthand.

  Rappourt’s voice was deep, almost masculine, and mysteriously pleasing.

  “I’d never met him,” she said, speaking with the abnormal precision of one whose native language was not English. “We were to meet tonight for the first time.”

  “You knew of him?”

  She nodded. “Yes. I’ve read some of the things he has written.”

  “Colonel Watrous knew him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know why Mr. Sabbat invited you here?”

  “He wanted to study my trance state, I believe.”

  “I see.” Gavigan said that as if he did see. “Perhaps you know of someone who might have desired to kill Mr. Sabbat.”

  “No. I do not.”

  “Please detail your movements from say ten o’clock last night up to now.”

  Impassively and without hesitation she replied: “At ten o’clock last evening I was in my apartment at the Commodore Hotel. There were several persons present, including Colonel Watrous. They stayed until after three o’clock. I slept late this morning and did not leave my room until I came here. At four this afternoon Colonel Watrous arrived, and shortly after Mr. Tarot called for us.”

  “Who was present last night besides Watrous?”

  “Is that information quite necessary?”

  “It is.” Gavigan was polite but firmly emphatic.

  She hesitated slightly, then flatly, as if repeating a grocery order, named two Columbia University professors, a distinguished physicist, a well-known, syndicated editorial writer, and a radio news commentator.

  “You were holding a séance?” the Inspector asked.

  “We were conducting an experiment.”

  “In what?”

  “Astral duplication.”

  Gavigan sighed a bit helplessly. “What’s that?”

  “I’m not sure I could explain it so you would understand it.” The impression she gave was that, further than that, she didn’t intend to try.

  “Okay. I’m not very interested anyhow. Besides, I can ask the professors or the Colonel.”

  She made no reply to this, and Gavigan’s inquiry made a right-angle turn.

  “How did you know there was death in this room tonight before you entered it?”

  She closed her eyes. “I could feel it.”

  “Clairvoyance, I suppose?”

  She frowned slightly, then nodded as if she didn’t like the way he said it.

  “Could you turn some of it on now and tell us who killed Sabbat?”

  For the first time her voice was something other than flatly expressionless. There was a hint of anger in it as she said:

  “Do I look like a fool, Inspector?”

  “Meaning that you could but won’t?”

  “Meaning that you wouldn’t believe that any information I gave had been clairvoyantly obtained. Madame Blavatsky used her occult powers once in pointing out a murderer for the Russian police. Their gratitude took the form of trying to arrest her as an accessory.”

  “I suppose there’s something in that,” the Inspector admitted. “And if I promised immunity?”

  Rappourt shook her head. “I wouldn’t trust you.”

  Gavigan stepped closer to her. “You know, of course,” he said threateningly, “that I can arrest you for the séance you have admitted holding. Perhaps if you told me who the murderer was…”

  “I know nothing of the sort.” Rappourt’s shiny black eyes glistened angrily. “You are bluffing. I collected no fee.”

&
nbsp; “Maybe not, but you’re out to get yours one way or another. And you’ll do well to remember I’ve got an eye on you from now on. Can your guests of last evening swear that you were at the séance the whole time?”

  She smiled now, for the first time, in an unpracticed sort of way, hesitated a moment, and then with cool amusement said:

  “For two hours during the latter part of the evening I was in a deep trance.”

  “And how do I know you didn’t walk in your sleep?”

  “Because, as my guests will tell you, I was sitting in a large, thoroughly examined canvas bag, the mouth of which was drawn tightly around my neck and the drawstring tied with many knots to the back of my chair. The knots were sewn through with needle and thread and covered with sealing wax. Ropes around my legs and body outside the bag held me to the chair, and the chair was screwed to the floor of a cabinet whose door was triple locked with all the keys held by the sitters.”

  There was a slightly adenoidal expression around the Inspector’s mouth. Visibly he collected himself and started to speak, but Rappourt had not finished.

  “Tapes had been sewn and sealed about each of my wrists, and their further ends, which passed out through two small buttonhole openings in the bag and through an air vent in the door of the cabinet, were held constantly by the experimenters.”

  Gavigan glanced helplessly toward Merlini’s back, but the latter gave no indication of having heard. The Inspector nosed about for a more fruitful line of investigation. “What,” he asked Rappourt fiercely, “do those hentracks on the floor mean?”

  “They are obviously some form of invocation. Sabbat seems to have been a black magician.”

  “What other kinds are there?”

  “Black magic is occult power applied for evil; white magic is occult power applied for good. According to Manley P. Hall there also exists a gray and a yellow magic. Gray magic is the unconscious perversion of—”

  The Inspector had had enough of that. He cut in, “Who is Surgat?”

  “I don’t know that. There are many demons.”

  Gavigan turned toward Merlini, scowling. “Do you know?”

  The latter pushed a large dusty folio back into place.

  “No,” he said, and then faced us, his eyes on Rappourt. “But if we don’t find it here, this reference library isn’t as complete as I think it is. May I ask Madame Rappourt a question?”

  This, I think, was what the Inspector wanted. He nodded.

  Merlini smiled at her innocently and asked, “Was your séance—pardon me—your experiment conducted in the darkness usual to the production of that type of phenomena?”

  He had only half done when Rappourt began acting strangely. Her eyelids dropped; her arm swung up jerkily; the back of her hand pressed against her forehead. She swayed backward, and then forward, stiffly, and too far.

  Gavigan caught her as she dropped.

  1His more scientifically acceptable books were: Daughters of Hecate, The Road to Endor—A History of Prophecy, and Studies in Superstition, this last an encyclopedic six volume work that is still the standard authority on the subject.

  2A colony of 1000 Lemurians (from the Pacific’s even more ancient lost continent of Mu) was reported as late as 1932 to exist on the slopes of Mt. Shasta surrounded by an invisible wall of force that prevents approach by either man or forest fires!

  3See Montague Summers : The Vampire in Europe, Dutton, 1929, and A Popular History of Witchcraft, 1937; Alexander Cannon: Powers That Be, Dutton, 1936; Hamlin Garland: Forty Years of Psychic Research, Macmillan, 1934; Charles Fort: Wild Talents, Kendall, 1932; Maurice Magre: Magicians, Seers and Mystics, Dutton, 1932; etc.

  And if you really want to go to town, see Harry Price: Short-title Catalogue of the Research Library from 1472 A.D. to the present day, University of London, Council for Psychical Investigation, 1935.

  Chapter 7

  The Ghost Hunter

  Witchcraft is not dead, nor are Satan’s winged hosts entirely banished to the Limbo of Myth. Psychic phenomena have, through the ages, been so intertwined with superstition, mental aberration, and religion, and the issue so clouded by fraudulent imposters, venal quacks, and the clumsy exposés of prejudiced conjurers that Science, engrossed in the mysticism of modern Physics and prostituting itself on the couch of commercial Chemistry, disdains to investigate, afraid that it might—as it would—uncover some shining Truth its materialistic philosophies could not explain.

  Col. Herbert Watrous: A Plea for Psychical Research

  THE INSPECTOR PLACED RAPPOURT in the armchair, and Quinn, like a well-trained jack-in-the-box, sprang up from his chair and was swiftly at the department’s black suitcase. He brought an ammonia ampoule which he held and broke under her nose. Merlini knelt at her side and began rubbing her wrists. After a moment her eyelids fluttered, and she moaned faintly.

  The Inspector went to the door and stood there talking to Malloy, who was just outside. They spoke in undertones. Pretending to watch Rappourt, I backed in their direction until I was close enough to eavesdrop.

  Gavigan asked, not very hopefully, “Well?”

  Malloy said, “A blank. He doesn’t think so, but he’s hot any too sure. Lousy witness. The over-cautious type.”

  The Inspector seemed to have a card up his sleeve, but apparently didn’t know whether or not it was an ace.

  Rappourt showed signs of reviving, when suddenly her body tensed. Her head jerked and her eyelids flicked back, exposing white eyeballs, no pupil. Her breath was expelled in a long whistling exhalation through clenched teeth.

  Quinn warned, “Hey, Chief. She’s going to throw a fit!”

  Merlini, watching her closely, said, “I think she’s going into a cataleptic trance, Inspector. Fresh air should help. You’d better get her outside.”

  Gavigan eyed her odd behavior with curiosity, and then alarm. “All right,” he said, “see to it, Malloy. Put her in a taxi and have a couple of the boys deliver her back at her hotel. If she’s not out of it by then they’d better get a doctor.”

  Malloy and Brady carried her out.

  When they had gone Gavigan looked at Merlini speculatively, then growled, “What is this trance business, anyway?”

  “I don’t think she wanted to answer any more questions. She does the catalepsy well, don’t you think?”

  “Oh—just an act, huh?”

  “I think so. Chafing her wrists gave me a chance to feel her pulse. Instead of being subnormal, it was excited.”

  “And what was the idea of aiding and abetting her by suggesting that I get her out of here?”

  Merlini spread his hands wide. “What else can you do with a woman like that? Besides, you seemed to have finished with her—and she didn’t seem to want to answer my question.”

  “Why not? Did it have any occult significance I didn’t get?”

  “I’ll know that when we get an answer either from Watrous or the others who attended the séance. My main purpose in asking was to see if she’d recognize me.”

  “If that song and dance was because she recognized you, then your effect on the ladies is damned devastating. Explain yourself.”

  Merlini snapped open a cigarette case and held it toward the Inspector. “You may have noticed that I moved upstage when she came on and stuck my nose in a book. I’ve met the lady before. She’s changed a good bit, and I wasn’t quite certain until she spoke. But I couldn’t mistake that voice. In 1915 she was in London, and her name was Svoboda.”

  “During the war, eh? I suppose she did a rushing ouija board business then?”

  “Not ouija boards, Inspector. She’s more original than that. But she did evoke quite a few spirits of the war dead for their relatives. She’s obviously not English, and the Military Intelligence Department began eyeing her suspiciously. I was playing the Palladium, and a member of the department asked me to check up on her for them. They thought her séances might be a clearing house for spy information, foreign agents attending and going home
to decode her spirit messages. ‘Heaven is just too lovely. Having wonderful time. Wish you were here. Love. Cecil’ meaning ‘Convoy embarks Liverpool Friday. Midnight,’ That sort of thing.”

  “Svoboda the Secret Agent,” I said, “sounds like a dime novel.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Merlini answered. “If she was a spy, you would hardly expect her to go asking for investigation with a name like that. But the M.I.D. was taking no chances.”

  “Well,” Gavigan asked, “what about it? Is that what she was doing?”

  “I don’t know. My presence on several of the London Psychical Society’s investigating committees had given me rather more notoriety among mediums than I’d suspected. I wore a pair of dark glasses and was introduced as a blind man, but I should have taken more pains with the disguise. She recognized me, and the séance was a complete frost. All very ordinary and nothing startling enough to require either supernatural or fraudulent aid. So she may have been a spy, or she may merely have been hostile to conjurers. I never did find out. On the way back to the hotel that night I managed to be one of the few persons in London on whom the Zeppelins successfully dropped a bomb. I got a splinter in my arm that terminated my engagement, and I sailed for home the first boat out.”

  “I’ll check London on that,” Gavigan said. “What about these séances she’s giving now?”