Death from a Top Hat (7 page)

As the light came up Merlini looked at me and started to speak, when his eye caught the rigmarole of words and circles traced on the floor. His eyebrows lifted the tiniest bit, and then flattened in a frown. He glanced swiftly around the room. His eyes came back to the chalked diagram, and he asked,

“What the devil have you—or rather, what have you and the devil been up to, Ross?”

“Breaking and entering, for one thing. Discovering a corpse for another.”

That announcement got me some attention.

“That doesn’t sound like a gag.”

“It isn’t. Look behind you.”

He turned and saw the covered form on the davenport.

“The gentleman’s name,” I went on, “is—or rather was—Cesare Sabbat. He—”

“Who?” Merlini’s steady calm evidenced a slight wobble.

“Dr. Cesare Sabbat. Know him?”

Merlini took two steps and lifted a corner of the dressing gown. He looked at the face a moment.

“Yes, but—” He regarded me thoughtfully. “The face doesn’t exactly suggest an easy death, and, judging from the numbers of the forces of law and order outside, I’d guess it was far from normal.”

“He was strangled,” I explained. “And since there was no noose of any sort found, he could hardly have accomplished it unaided.”

“And yet you had to force an entrance.” He eyed the splintered door panel. “This is an interesting contradiction. Quite, particularly since the dressing gown is incomplete.”

“The dressing gown—what’s the matter with it?”

“There are loops on each side which indicate that it’s built to tie around the middle. I don’t see the cord. By the way, what am I wanted for?”

I stared at the dressing gown and answered, “Not for murder—at least, not yet. I think Inspector Gavigan of the Homicide Bureau would like you to explain how the Walking-Through-A-Brick-Wall Trick is done. It looks as if Sabbat’s murderer knew the answer. So far, the Homicide Squad hasn’t been able to discover any other way out of this apartment. The doors, both of them, were locked, bolted, and the keyholes stuffed, from the inside. The windows haven’t been opened in months.”

“You’re off to a swell start, Ross. Don’t stop.”

With studied calm I produced another thunderbolt. “What’s more, all the witnesses hereabouts seem to be customers of yours. There are so many magicians floating around that they positively get in your hair.”

“Some of them do that, singly,” Merlini said dryly, and then with entreaty, “Harte, will you please stop running on in this Scheherazade manner and tell me what’s happened? And don’t put all your climaxes in the first scene. It’s bad theater. Besides, I’m punch drunk already.”

“So you can’t take it?” Gavigan’s voice preceded him into the room. They shook hands and the Inspector asked, “Have you met the corpse?”

“Yes,” Merlini answered, “Ross did the honors. But I knew him before, some ten years ago. He used to be rated tops as an anthropologist in the magic and primitive religion line. Then he dropped out of sight so suddenly and completely that I rather thought he must have gone to continue his other-world researches closer to their source.”

“What caused the sudden eclipse?” Gavigan asked interestedly.

“His subject ran away with him. He began taking such things as vampires, werewolves—and maybe pixies, for all I know—seriously. He even hung the traditional sword and sprigs of garlic on his door as a vampire preventive. Odd, because he looked a bit vampirish himself. There was a Lon Chaney-Boris Karloff feel to him. You almost expected him to bare a set of yellow fangs at any moment and say boo! Last time I talked with him, he was full of some new experiments in what he called modern alchemy.”

Merlini gestured toward the worktable and the bottle-laden shelves in the further corner of the room. “Still at it, evidently. Then he began writing books and articles that his scholarly colleagues couldn’t swallow.
Lycanthropy Today
and
The Secret Heresies
were two of the titles I remember. The latter book treated Telekinesis, Cryptesthesia, and Astral Projection as established facts. The editors of scientific journals began sending him rejection slips, and his scholarly reputation nosed over into a power dive.”
¹

“But what about his disappearance? What did he do, start pouting and go hide?” Gavigan asked impatiently.

“He had a frightful temper, and he nearly killed an eminent German archeologist at a scientific congress by clubbing the poor man over the head with his own umbrella. He’d been trying to convince the old boy that Pyramidology was an exact science. The Herr Doktor swore out a warrant for his arrest and Sabbat skipped. No one ever seemed to know where.”

“Pyramidwhatsis wasn’t taught at Public School 67, as I remember. What is it?”

Merlini shucked his overcoat and dropped it with his hat on a near-by chair.

“It’s one of the fancier divination systems and is based upon certain measurements of the Great Pyramid of Cheops, notably those made in 1864 by Piazzi-Smyth, the Astronomer Royal of Scotland. The occultists say that this is the world’s oldest existing structure and was built 100,000 years ago by the Atlantaeans just prior to the sinking of their continent, as a repository of learning and a temple for the initiation of adepts. Similar temples are said to have been set up somewhere in the unexplored—oh, always the unexplored—portions of either Brazil or Yucatan—the authorities disagree—and in Tibet, where the Great White Lodge of the Himalayas is supposed to be today the one remaining active chapter of this ancient priesthood.
²
Their thesis is that if a pyramid inch—they invent their own inches—is taken as a year of our time, then the course of the Pyramid’s inner passageways predicts the course of world history and civilization. According to that science the world came to an end at 4 A.M. on September 16, 1936. Did you know?”

“Sabbat,” the Inspector broke in, finally, “was trying to convert the German professor to that theory?”

Merlini nodded.

“Well,” Gavigan said emphatically, “we know one thing then. He was as batty as they come. Which explains a lot of things in this room.” He scowled up at a Balinese devil mask on the wall, whose varnished fury, glistening in the light, showed that its owner had been a discriminating connoisseur of the hideous.

“There are people who would dispute that conclusion, Inspector. Even in this streamlined Twentieth Century there are plenty of people outside of nut houses who believe firmly in that sort of thing. Southern California is full of them. I could name you a dozen books issued quite lately by reputable publishing houses whose authors state their belief in all sorts of black magic, from teleportation to levitation, werewolves to banshees. Sir Oliver Lodge, William Crookes, and Professor Zoellner were convinced of the truth of spiritism. Conan Doyle took photographs of fairies—the winged variety—and Dr. Alexander Cannon, a member of the British Medical Association’s Executive Council, says he has made thought take objective form and seriously warns his readers to beware of the evil forces set up in the ether by black magicians. And he cites instances. Madame Blavatsky still has her followers, and Evangeline Adams’ writings on that hardy perennial of the divinatory systems, astrology, are still best sellers. A recent convention of the National Association of Fortune Tellers in Trenton, New Jersey, voted to picket all tearooms employing non-association tea-leaf readers. They also introduced to a waiting world a new method of divination or skrying, beer suds reading. Pennsylvania still has its witches, the rite of exorcism for diabolic possession has by no means fallen into complete disuse and Satanic Masses are still—”
³

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.”