Death Locked In

by Douglas G. Greene (ed)

  Alleyn opened the door for her and watched her walk into the foyer. “Check up with the dresser, Thompson,” he murmured, “and get Mr. H. J. Bannington.”

  He saw Coralie Bourne sit on the lower step of the dress-circle stairway and lean her head against the wall. Nearby, on a gilt easel, a huge photograph of Canning Cumberland smiled handsomely at her.

  H. J. Bannington looked pretty ghastly. He had rubbed his hand across his face and smeared his makeup. Florid red paint from his lips had stained the crêpe hair that had been gummed on and shaped into a beard. His monocle was still in his left eye and gave him an extraordinarily rakish look. “See here,” he complained, “I’ve about had this party. When do we go home?”

  Alleyn uttered placatory phrases and got him to sit down. He checked over H. J.’s movements after Cumberland left the stage and found that his account tallied with Mike’s. He asked if H. J. had visited any of the other dressing-rooms and was told acidly that H. J. knew his place in the company. “I remained in my unheated and squalid kennel, thank you very much.”

  “Do you know if Mr. Barry George followed your example?”

  “Couldn’t say, old boy. He didn’t come near me.”

  “Have you any theories at all about this unhappy business, Mr. Bannington?”

  “Do you mean, why did Cann do it? Well, speak no ill of the dead, but I’d have thought it was pretty obvious he was morbid-drunk. Tight as an owl when we finished the second act. Ask the great Mr. Barry George. Cann took the big scene away from Barry with both hands and left him looking pathetic. All wrong artistically, but that’s how Cann was in his cups.” H. J.’s wicked little eyes narrowed. “The great Mr. George,” he said, “must be feeling very unpleasant by now. You might say he’d got a suicide on his mind, mightn’t you? Or don’t you know about that?”

  “It was not suicide.”

  The glass dropped form H. J.’s eye. “God!” he said. “God, I told Bob Reynolds! I told him the whole plant wanted overhauling.”

  “The gas plant, you mean?”

  “Certainly. I was in the gas business years ago. Might say I’m in it still with a difference, ha-ha!”

  “Ha-ha!” Alleyn agreed politely. He leaned forward. “Look here,” he said: “We can’t dig up a gas man at this time of night and may very likely need an expert opinion. You can help us.”

  “Well, old boy, I was rather pining for a spot of shut-eye. But, of course—”

  “I shan’t keep you very long.”

  “God, I hope not!” said H.J. earnestly.

  Barry George had been made up pale for the last act. Colorless lips and shadows under his cheek bones and eyes had skillfully underlined his character as a repatriated but broken prisoner-of-war. Now, in the glare of the office lamp, he looked like a grossly exaggerated figure of mourning. He began at once to tell Alleyn how grieved and horrified he was. Everybody, he said, had their faults, and poor old Cann was no exception but wasn’t it terrible to think what could happen to a man who let himself go downhill? He, Barry George, was abnormally sensitive and he didn’t think he’d ever really get over the awful shock this had been to him. What, he wondered, could be at the bottom of it? Why had poor old Cann decided to end it all?

  “Miss Bourne’s theory,” Alleyn began. Mr. George laughed. “Coralie?” he said. “So she’s got a theory! Oh, well. Never mind.”

  “Her theory is this. Cumberland saw a man whom he mistook for her husband and, having a morbid dread of his return, drank the greater part of a bottle of whiskey and gassed himself. The clothes and beard that deceived him had, I understand, been ordered by you for Mr. Anthony Gill.”

  This statement produced startling results. Barry George broke into a spate of expostulation and apology. There had been no thought in his mind or resurrecting poor old Ben, who was no doubt dead but had been, mind you, in many ways one of the best. They were all to go to the Ball as exaggerated characters from melodrama. Not for the world—he gesticulated and protested. A line of sweat broke out along the margin of his hair. “I don’t know what you’re getting at,” he shouted. “What are you suggesting?”

  “I’m suggesting, among other things, that Cumberland was murdered.”

  “You’re mad! He’d locked himself in. They had to break down the door. There’s no window. You’re crazy!’’

  “Don’t,” Alleyn said wearily, “let us have any nonsense about sealed rooms. Now, Mr. George, you knew Benjamin Vlasnoff pretty well. Are you going to tell us that when you suggested Mr. Gill should wear a coat with a fur collar, a black sombrero, black gloves and a red beard, it never occurred to you that his appearance might be a shock to Miss Bourne and to Cumberland?”

  “I wasn’t the only one,” he blustered. “H. J. knew. And if it had scared him off, she wouldn’t have been so sorry. She’d had about enough of him. Anyway if this is murder, the costume’s got nothing to do with it.”

  “That,” Alleyn said, getting up, “is what we hope to find out.”

  In Barry George’s room, Detective Sergeant Bailey, a fingerprint expert, stood by the gas heater. Sergeant Gibson, a police photographer, and a uniformed constable were near the door. In the center of the room stood Barry George, looking from one man to another and picking at his lips.

  “I don’t know why he wants me to watch all this,” he said. “I’m exhausted. I’m emotionally used up. What’s he doing? Where is he?”

  Alleyn was next door in Cumberland’s dressing-room, with H. J., Mike and Sergeant Thompson. It was pretty clear now of fumes and the gas fire was burning comfortably. Sergeant Thompson sprawled in the armchair near the heater, his head sunk and his eyes shut.

  “This is the theory, Mr. Bannington,” Alleyn said. “You and Cumberland have made your final exits; Miss Bourne and Mr. George and Miss Gay are all on the stage. Lord Michael is standing just outside the entrance to the passage. The dressers and stage-staff are watching the play from the side. Cumberland has locked himself in this room. There he is, dead drunk and sound asleep. The gas fire is burning, full pressure. Earlier in the evening he powdered himself and a thick layer of the powder lies undisturbed on the tap. Now.”

  He tapped on the wall.

  The fire blew out with a sharp explosion. This was followed by the hiss of escaping gas. Alleyn turned the taps off. “You see,” he said, “I’ve left an excellent print on the powdered surface. Now, come next door.”

  Next door, Barry George appealed to him stammering: “But I didn’t know. I don’t know anything about it. I don’t know.”

  “Just show Mr. Bannington, will you, Bailey?”

  Bailey knelt down. The lead-in was disconnected from the tap on the heater. He turned on the tap in the pipe and blew down the tube.

  “An air lock, you see. It works perfectly.”

  H. J. was staring at Barry George. “But I don’t know about gas, H.J., H.J., tell them—”

  “One moment.” Alleyn removed the towels that had been spread over the dressing-shelf, revealing a sheet of clean paper on which lay the rubber push-on connection.

  “Will you take this lens, Bannington, and look at it. You’ll see that it’s stained a florid red. It’s a very slight stain but it’s unmistakably greasepaint. And just above the stain you’ll see a wiry hair. Rather like some sort of packing material, but it’s not that. It’s crêpe hair, isn’t it?”

  The lens wavered above the paper.

  “Let me hold it for you,” Alleyn said. He put his hand over H. J.’s shoulder and, with a swift movement, plucked a tuft from his false moustache and dropped it on the paper. “Identical, you see. Ginger. It seems to be stuck to the connection with spirit-gum.”

  The lens fell. H. J. twisted round, faced Alleyn for a second, and then struck him full in the face. He was a small man but it took three of them to hold him.

  “In a way, sir, it’s handy when they have a smack at you, “ said Detective Sergeant Thompson half an hour later. “You can pull them in nice and straightforward without any
will you come to the station and make a statement’ business.”

  “Quite,” said Alleyn, nursing his jaw.

  Mike said: “He must have gone to the room after Barry George and Miss Bourne were called.”

  “That’s it. He had to be quick. The call-boy would be round in a minute and he had to be back in his own room.”

  “But look here—what about motive?”

  “That, my good Mike, is precisely why, at half-past one in the morning, we’re still in this miserable theatre. You’re getting a view of the duller aspect of homicide. Want to go home?”

  “No. Give me another job.”

  “Very well. About ten feet from the prompt-entrance, there’s a sort of garbage tin. Go through it.”

  At seventeen minutes to two, when the dressing-rooms and passage had been combed clean and Alleyn had called a spell, Mike came to him with filthy hands. “Eureka,” he said, “I hope.”

  They all went into Bannington’s room. Alleyn spread out on the dressing-table the fragments of paper that Mike had given him.

  “They’d been pushed down to the bottom of the tin,” Mike said.

  Alleyn moved the fragments about. Thompson whistled through his teeth. Bailey and Gibson mumbled together. “There you are,” Alleyn said at last.

  They collected round him. The letter that H. J. Bannington had opened at this same table six hours and forty-five minutes earlier, was pieced together like a jig-saw puzzle.

  “Dear H.J.

  Having seen the monthly statement of my account, I called at my bank this morning and was shown a check that is undoubtedly a forgery. Your histrionic versatility, my dear H. J., is only equaled by your audacity as a calligraphist. But fame has its disadvantages. The teller has recognized you. I propose to take action.”

  “Unsigned,” said Bailey.

  “Look at the card on the red roses in Miss Bourne’s room, signed C.C. It’s a very distinctive hand.” Alleyn turned to Mike. “Do you still want to be a policeman?”

  “Yes.”

  “Lord help you. Come and talk to me at the office tomorrow.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  They went out, leaving a constable on duty. It was a cold morning. Mike looked up at the facade of the Jupiter. He could just make out the shape of the neon sign:

  I CAN FIND MY WAY OUT by Anthony Gill.

  The Suicide of Kiaros by L. Frank Baum (1856-1919)

  Before he wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and other classic fairy tales for children, Lyman Frank Baum contributed short stories to adult periodicals. “The Suicide of Kiaros,” which appeared in an 1896 issue of the now obscure magazine The White Elephant, is a cleanly told murder story without the sentimentality that permeated many other stories of the period. And unexpectedly it foreshadows some of the Oz books: The Lost Princess of Oz and Glinda of Oz come close to being detective stories, and the unmasking of the Wizard in the first Oz book is similar to the solutions of many locked-room murders in which the seemingly magical turns out to be humbug. It is not surprising that two masters of the impossible crime, Ellery Queen and John Dickson Carr, grew up reading the Oz books.

  I

  MR. FELIX MARSTON, cashier for the great mercantile firm of Van Alsteyne & Traynor, sat in his little private office with a balance-sheet before him and a frown upon his handsome face. At times he nervously ran his slim fingers through the mass of dark hair that clustered over his forehead, and the growing expression of annoyance upon his features fully revealed his disquietude.

  The world knew and admired Mr. Marston, and a casual onlooker would certainly have decided that something had gone wrong with the firm’s financial transactions: but Mr. Marston knew himself better than the world did, and grimly realized that although something had gone wrong indeed, it affected himself in an unpleasantly personal way.

  The world’s knowledge of the popular young cashier included the following items: He had entered the firm’s employ years before in an inferior position, and by energy, intelligence and business ability, had worked his way up until he reached the post he now occupied, and became his employers’ most trusted servant. His manner was grave, earnest and dignified; his judgment, in business matters, clear and discerning. He had no intimate friends, but was courteous and affable to all he met, and his private life, so far as it was known, was beyond all reproach. Mr. Van Alsteyne, the head of the firm, conceived a warm liking for Mr. Marston, and finally invited him to dine at his house. It was there the young man first met Gertrude Van Alsteyne, his employer’s only child, a beautiful girl and an acknowledged leader in society. Attracted by the man’s handsome face and gentlemanly bearing, the heiress encouraged him to repeat his visit, and Marston followed up his advantage so skillfully that within a year she had consented to become his wife. Mr. Van Alsteyne did not object to the match. His admiration for the young man deepened, and he vowed that upon the wedding day he would transfer one-half his interest in the firm to his son-in-law.

  Therefore the world, knowing all this, looked upon Mr. Marston as one of fortune’s favorites, and predicted a great future for him. But Mr. Marston, as I said, knew himself more intimately than did the world, and now, as he sat looking upon that fatal trial balance, he muttered in an undertone:

  “Oh, you fool—you fool!”

  Clear-headed, intelligent man of the world though he was, one vice had mastered him. A few of the most secret, but most dangerous gambling dens knew his face well. His ambition was unbounded, and before he had even dreamed of being able to win Miss Van Alsteyne as his bride, he had figured out several ingenious methods of winning a fortune at the green table. Two years ago he had found it necessary to “borrow” a sum of money from the firm to enable him to carry out these clever methods. Having, through some unforeseen calamity, lost the money, another sum had to be abstracted to allow him to win back enough to even the accounts. Other men have attempted this before; their experiences are usually the same. By a neat juggling of figures, the books of the firm had so far been made to conceal his thefts, but now it seemed as if fortune, in pushing him forward, was about to hurl him down a precipice.

  His marriage to Gertrude Van Alsteyne was to take place in two weeks, and as Mr. Van Alsteyne insisted upon keeping his promise to give Marston an interest in the business, the change in the firm would necessitate a thorough overhauling of the accounts, which meant discovery and ruin to the man who was about to grasp a fortune and a high social position—all that his highest ambition had ever dreamed of attaining.

  It is no wonder that Mr. Marston, brought face to face with his critical position, denounced himself for his past folly, and realized his helplessness to avoid the catastrophe that was about to crush him.

  A voice outside interrupted his musings and arrested his attention.

  “It is Mr. Marston I wish to see.”

  The cashier thrust the sheet of figures within a drawer of the desk, hastily composed his features and opened the glass door beside him.

  “Show Mr. Kiaros this way,” he called, after a glance at his visitor. He had frequently met the person who now entered his office, but he could not resist a curious glance as the man sat down upon a chair and spread his hands over his knees. He was short and thick-set in form, and both oddly and carelessly dressed, but his head and face were most venerable in appearance. Flowing locks of pure white graced a forehead whose height and symmetry denoted unusual intelligence, and a full beard of the same purity reached full to his waist. The eyes were full and dark, but not piercing in character, rather conveying in their frank glance kindness and benevolence. A round cap of some dark material was worn upon his head, and this he deferentially removed as he seated himself, and said:

  “For me a package of value was consigned to you, I believe?”

  Marston nodded gravely.

  “Mr. Williamson left it with me,” he replied.

  “I will take it,” announced the Greek, calmly; “twelve thousand dollars it contains.”

  Marston start
ed.

  “I knew it was money,” he said, “but was not aware of the amount. This is it, I think.” He took from the huge safe a packet, corded and sealed, and handed it to his visitor. Kiaros took a pen-knife from his pocket, cut the cords and removed the wrapper, after which he proceeded to count the contents.

  Marston listlessly watched him. Twelve thousand dollars. That would be more than enough to save him from ruin, if only it belonged to him instead of this Greek moneylender.

  “The amount, it is right,” declared the old man, re-wrapping the parcel of notes; “you have my thanks, sir. Good-afternoon,” and he rose to go.

  “Pardon me, sir,” said Marston, with a sudden thought, “it is after banking hours. Will it be safe to carry this money with you until morning?”

  “Perfectly,” replied Kiaros; “I am never molested, for I am old, and few know my business. My safe at home large sums often contains. The money I like to have near me, to accommodate my clients.”

  He buttoned his coat tightly over the packet, and then in turn paused to look at the cashier.

  “Lately you have not come to me for favors,” he said.

  “No,” answered Marston, arousing from a slight reverie; “I have not needed to. Still, I may be obliged to visit you again soon.”

  “Your servant I am pleased to be,” said Kiaros, with a smile, and turning abruptly he left the office.

  Marston glanced at his watch. He was engaged to dine with his betrothed that evening, and it was nearly time to return to his lodgings to dress. He attended to one or two matters in his usual methodical way, and then left the office for the night, relinquishing any further duties to his assistant. As he passed through the various business offices on his way out, he was greeted respectfully by his fellow employees, who already regarded him a member of the firm.

  II

  Almost for the first time during their courtship, Miss Van Alsteyne was tender and demonstrative that evening, and seemed loath to allow him to leave the house when he pleaded a business engagement and arose to go. She was a stately beauty, and little given to emotional ways, therefore her new mood affected him greatly, and as he walked away he realized, with a sigh, how much it would cost him to lose so dainty and charming a bride.