Death Locked In

by Douglas G. Greene (ed)

  I left. I’m never one to push my luck.

  I went back to the embassy and chatted with a sleepy Sam Kanton about the funeral arrangements. When I reached my room, I dug to the bottom of my pocket for the loose keys and fitted the right one into the lock. Nothing happened. It wouldn’t turn. I took it out and looked at it, then took out my key chain with the almost identical message-room key. I’d always identified them by their positions on the key ring, but obviously I’d confused them when they dropped earlier. The key on the chain opened my door.

  I was sitting on the edge of the bed, puzzling over the keys, when Carol Lake phoned. “I shouldn’t even tell you this after the way you walked out on me,” she said, “but I know how the ambassador could have been shot in a sealed car. It just came to me. Can you drive over?”

  “This is no time for games, Carol. Tell me what you know.” She gave a long sigh of loneliness. “All right. Remember the telephone in the car? Suppose McTurk lifted the receiver to his ear, and a bullet was fired from it.”

  “I’ll talk to you later,” I said, hanging up. I had to check that car one more time.

  It was the middle of the night and I was standing by the Caddy feeling like a damned fool. The car had been brought back to the embassy grounds, and it took me only a moment to establish that the telephone receiver was perfectly genuine. Of course, the police had checked it along with everything else, and besides, if Carol’s theory were to hold water, you had to imagine McTurk reaching for the receiver with his right hand and placing it against his right ear. But the bullet had entered his left temple. No one driving a car and talking on the phone would ever twist it over to his left ear. Besides, there were no powder burns.

  I turned from the car and started back to my room. I was almost to the side door when the shadows suddenly seemed to come alive.

  Then, in an instant, I was fighting for my life.

  I hit the hard asphalt driveway and rolled over, trying to shake loose my attacker. Over and over we rolled, and I felt rather than saw the knife inches from my throat. He was clinging like a tiger, gradually getting the best of me.

  Then there was a light from the doorway, and I had a blurred glimpse of Sam Kanton hurling himself at my attacker. That was the break I needed. I squirmed free, and between the two of us, we quickly overpowered and disarmed him.

  “Who is it?” Kanton asked, shining a light on the twisted face beneath us.

  “An old friend,” I answered.

  It was Marto, the guard from the bridge, with a knife this time, instead of his Sten gun.

  All thought of sleep had vanished now, and I paced the floor like a caged beast while Marto slumped in a chair in my office.

  “I must obey my colonel,” Marto said, and that was all.

  “He sent you here?” Sam Kanton asked. “To kill Harry?”

  But Marto only shrugged and said no more.

  We tried calling the palace, but Colonel Saks had retired and could not be disturbed. I bit my lip and wondered what to do.

  “You’re not going to release him?” Sam asked.

  “No,” I decided. “Let’s lock him in the basement until morning. I’ve got to puzzle this thing out.”

  I went back to my room, still uneasy, and remembered the keys. Two keys—one for my room and one for the message center—almost alike. I’d confused them when my chain broke, and I’d tried to open the door to my room with the message-center key. It hadn’t worked, of course. But then, how had I been able to open the message center earlier in the day with my room key?

  I dozed, thinking about it, until the phone rang at just after eight. It was Colonel Saks himself, sounding disturbed. “I understand you have one of my men a prisoner.”

  “You might say that, Colonel. He tried to kill me.”

  “I’m sure not! Scare you, perhaps, but not kill you!”

  “Then you did send him?”

  “Mr. Ponder, you must stop trying to stir things up. This morning at ten o’clock, Rojo crosses the bridge to talk peace. Your ambassador’s death has brought us together. Will you pull us apart with your murder investigation?”

  “I just want to know who killed him. And how. It’s my job.”

  “Go back to Washington, Mr. Ponder. While you can.”

  “Thanks very much for the advice.”

  I hung up and poured some coffee, then went out and talked to George, the driver, for a while. Sam Kanton had gone out somewhere, and none of the secretaries had come to work. The embassy was officially in mourning.

  I remembered the keys and walked down the hall to the message room. I tried the correct key and the door opened. I tried the room key and the door opened. I tried my hand on the knob and the door opened. It wasn’t locked.

  Then I went out and opened the trunk of the second embassy car—the one I’d driven to Carol’s place the night before. Beneath the spare tire, carefully wrapped in oiled rags, was a high-powered hunting rifle with a telescopic sight.

  That was when I knew how Jason McTurk had been shot to death in his sealed car, and who had done it.

  The word of Rojo’s coming had spread quickly through the city, and a large crowd was already at the bridge awaiting his arrival. He came just five minutes after ten, in an open car surrounded by armed guards on the running boards and trunk.

  “Everybody’s here,” a voice said, close to me. It was Cranston, the reporter, after one last story.

  “Stick close,” I said. “I might need you.”

  I pushed through a little closer, until I saw Colonel Saks himself come to talk peace. Then I saw Carol Lake, standing near the spot where Marto had been with his Sten gun the day before. I tried to edge closer, but the crowd was thick. Then there was cheering as Saks stepped forward to the car to shake Rojo’s hand in a gesture of friendship. I saw Sam Kanton at the edge of the crowd, standing on the roof of a car.

  “Sam!” I shouted, but he didn’t hear me above the roar. There was nothing else to do. He already had his gun out when I shot him twice in the legs and watched him tumble into the crowd.

  Colonel Saks was unhappy. He paced the floor, smoking a thin cigar. “Tell me the whole thing,” he commanded.

  “Washington already has my report,” I said. “Everything’s in it, including your attempt to scare or kill me.”

  “Forget that!”

  “I saved Rojo’s life this morning. And probably yours, too.”

  “Will Sam Kanton live?”

  I nodded. “He’ll live. And tell us about his motive, I hope. We already know he was in the pay of the Communists, trying to start a civil war here. I imagine he killed McTurk just so Rojo would be blamed for it. When that didn’t work, he tried to kill Rojo himself, hoping his followers would then kill you.”

  “But he is an American! An embassy employee!”

  I shrugged. “We have all kinds.”

  “How did you know about him?”

  I told Saks about the keys. “I never tried the knob of the message room, because it was always supposed to be locked. I just inserted the key and turned. So when the door was unlocked the last couple of days, I didn’t even realize it. Of course, he slipped in and read the messages I sent to Washington. That was how he know McTurk was meeting Rojo”

  “How did he unlock the door?”

  “Old trick. He caught me as I was coming out the other day and stopped to chat with me. He just managed to turn the inside button to the unlocked position while we talked. His mistake was leaving the door unlocked for me to discover later.”

  “You knew he was the one who unlocked it?”

  I nodded. “He told me later he heard the message bell ringing, but couldn’t get in because the door was locked. Since the door was unlocked during this whole period, I realized he’d lied about that. And once I suspected him, I knew he must have taken the second embassy car and beaten us to the bridge yesterday. I found the murder weapon in the trunk. It was a high-powered rifle. He shot McTurk from our side of the river bank, down abou
t fifty yards from the bridge.”

  “But the car! It was closed and bulletproof!”

  “Yes, it was. But I remembered hearing the shot, and that told me a lot. With those thick windows closed, I couldn’t even hear a voice yelling right next to the car. If the death shot had been fired inside by some device, I never would have heard it. Besides, there were no powder burns, and the jagged nature of the entrance wound hinted at a high-powered rifle bullet fired from a distance.”

  “But how did it enter the closed car?”

  I lit a cigarette. “Simple. The car wasn’t closed. McTurk slowed down and handed Marto your signed note giving permission to cross the bridge. To get the note out of the car, he had to open the window, of course. There was no other way. When he speeded up to cross the bridge, the window on the driver’s side had to still be open, even though we couldn’t see it. McTurk must have pressed the button for the power window and it started to close. It was almost completely closed when Sam Kanton’s bullet passed through the opening and into McTurk s left temple. His finger was still on the power button, and the window closed completely by the time the finger fell away in death.”

  “How could Kanton know that would happen?”

  “He couldn’t. He was probably quite upset that it did, since he wanted the blame clearly attached to Rojo’s snipers. He overheard our talk about the note of permission, so he guessed McTurk would open his bulletproof window as he started across, presenting a perfect target in the telescopic sight. He didn’t know the window would close and leave us with an impossible crime.”

  “The gods of chance,” Colonel Saks mumbled.

  “What can I report to Washington?”

  “That there is peace between Rojo and me. For now, at least.”

  I nodded. Soon I left the palace and drove back to the embassy. Later, I would go up to see Carol Lake, but just then I wanted to be alone. It hadn’t been a magic bullet after all that killed Jason McTurk, but I still wondered if Rojo might not have some future magic for use on Colonel Saks.

  Rooms That Kill, Footprints in the Sand, And a Mysterious Gun

  A Terribly Strange Bed by Wilkie Collins (1824-1889)

  Wilkie Collins, born and bred a Londoner, was Charles Dickens’ closest friend and the author of a string of novels of mystery and sensation including four, The Dead Secret, The Woman in White, Armadale, and The Moonstone, reckoned among the best of their kind. He was also a regular contributor of short stories to the periodicals of the day, and in the April 24, 1852 issue of Dickens’ Household Words appeared his “A Terribly Strange Bed.” This chilling tale, the idea for which had been suggested to him by the artist, Herrick, proved to be so popular that many later authors (including Joseph Conrad) used the theme again—but none of them so effectively as Collins in the original version.

  SHORTLY after my education at college was finished, I happened to be staying at Paris with an English friend. We were both young men then, and lived, I am afraid, rather a wild life, in the delightful city of our sojourn. One night we were idling about the neighborhood of the Palais Royal, doubtful to what amusement we should next betake ourselves. My friend proposed a visit to Frascati’s: but his suggestion was not to my taste. I knew Frascati’s, as the French saying is, by heart; had lost and won plenty of five-franc pieces there, merely for amusement’s sake, until it was amusement no longer, and was thoroughly tired, in fact, of all the ghastly respectabilities of such a social anomaly as a respectable gambling-house. “For Heaven’s sake,” said I to my friend, “let us go somewhere where we can see a little genuine, blackguard, poverty-stricken gaming, with no false gingerbread glitter thrown over it at all. Let us get away from fashionable Frascati’s, to a house where they don’t mind letting in a man with a ragged coat, or a man with no coat, ragged or otherwise.”

  “Very well,” said my friend, “we needn’t go out of the Palais Royal to find the sort of company you want. Here’s the place just before us; as blackguard a place, by all report, as you could possibly wish to see.” In another minute we arrived at the door, and entered the house.

  When we got upstairs, and had left our hats and sticks with the doorkeeper, we were admitted into the chief gambling-room. We did not find many people assembled there. But, few as the men were who looked up at us on our entrance; they were all types—lamentably true types—of their respective classes.

  We have come to see blackguards; but these men were something worse. There is a comic side, more or less appreciable, in all blackguardism—here there was nothing but tragedy—mute, weird tragedy. The quiet in the room was horrible. The thin, haggard, long-haired young man, whose sunken eyes fiercely watched the turning up of the cards, never spoke; the flabby, fat-faced, pimply player, who pricked his piece of pasteboard perseveringly, to register how often black won, and how often red—never spoke; the dirty, wrinkled old man, with the vulture eyes and the darned greatcoat, who had lost his last sou, and still looked on desperately, after he could play no longer—never spoke. Even the voice of the croupier sounded as if it were strangely dulled and thickened in the atmosphere of the room. I had entered the place to laugh, but the spectacle before me was something to weep over. I soon found it necessary to take refuge in excitement from the depression of spirits which was fast stealing on me. Unfortunately I sought the nearest excitement, by going to the table and beginning to play. Still more unfortunately, as the event will show, I won—won prodigiously; won incredibly; won at such a rate that the regular players at the table crowded round me; and staring at my stakes with hungry, superstitious eyes, whispered to one another that the English stranger was going to break the bank.

  The game was Rouge et Noir. I had played at it in every city in Europe, without, however, the care or the wish to study the Theory of Chances—that philosopher’s stone of all gamblers! And a gambler, in the strict sense of the word, I had never been. I was heart-whole from the corroding passion for play. My gaming was a mere idle amusement. I never resorted to it by necessity, because I never knew what it was to want money. I never practiced it so incessantly as to lose more than I could afford, or to gain more than I could coolly pocket without being thrown off my balance by my good luck. In short, I had hitherto frequented gambling-tables—just as I frequented ballrooms and opera-houses—because they amused me, and because I had nothing to do with my leisure hours.

  But on this occasion it was very different—now, for the first time in my life, I felt what the passion for play really was. My success first bewildered, and then, in the most literal meaning of the word, intoxicated me. Incredible as it may appear, it is nevertheless true, that I only lost when I attempted to estimate chances, and played according to previous calculation. If I left everything to luck, and staked without any care or consideration, I was sure to win—to win in the face of every recognized probability in favor of the bank. At first some of the men present ventured their money safely enough on my color; but I speedily increased my stakes to sums which they dared not risk. One after another they left off playing, and breathlessly looked on at my game.

  Still, time after time, I staked higher and higher, and still won. The excitement in the room rose to fever pitch. The silence was interrupted by a deep-muttered chorus of oaths and exclamations in different languages, every time the gold was shoveled across to my side of the table—even the imperturbable croupier dashed his rake on the floor in a (French) fury of astonishment at my success. But one man present preserved his self-possession, and that man was my friend. He came to my side, and whispering in English, begged me to leave the place, satisfied with what I had already gained. I must do him the justice to say that he repeated his warnings and entreaties several times, and only left me and went away after I had rejected his advice (I was to all intents and purposes gambling drunk) in terms which rendered it impossible for him to address me again that night.

  Shortly after he had gone, a hoarse voice behind me cried: “Permit me, my dear sir—permit me to restore to their proper place two n
apoleons which you have dropped. Wonderful luck, sir! I pledge you my word of honor, as an old soldier, in the course of my long experience in this sort of thing, I never saw such luck as yours—never! Go on, sir—Sacré mille bombes! Go on boldly, and break the bank!”

  I turned round and saw, nodding and smiling at me with inveterate civility, a tall man, dressed in a frogged and braided surtout.

  If I had been in my senses, I should have considered him, personally, as being rather a suspicious specimen of an old soldier. He had goggling, blood shot eyes, mangy mustaches and a broken nose. His voice betrayed a barrack-room intonation of the worst order, and he had the dirtiest pair of hands I ever saw—even in France. These little personal peculiarities exercised, however, no repelling influence on me. In the mad excitement, the reckless triumph of that moment, I was ready to “fraternize” with anybody who encouraged me in my game. I accepted the old soldier’s offered pinch of snuff; clapped him on the back, and swore he was the honestest fellow in the world—the most glorious relic of the Grand Army that I had ever met with. “Go on!” cried my military friend, snapping his fingers in ecstasy—”Go on, and win! Break the bank—Mille tonnerres! My gallant English comrade, break the bank!”

  And I did go on—went on at such a rate, that in another quarter of an hour the croupier called out, “Gentlemen, the bank has discontinued for tonight.” All the notes, and all the gold in that “bank,” now lay in a heap under my hands; the whole floating capital of the gambling-house was waiting to pour into my pockets!

  “Tie up the money in your pocket-handkerchief, my worthy sir,” said the old soldier, as I wildly plunged my hands into my heap of gold. “Tie it up, as we used to tie up a bit of dinner in the Grand Army; your winnings are too heavy for any breeches-pockets that ever were sewed. There! That’s it—shovel them in, notes and all! Credit! What luck! Stop! Another napoleon on the floor! Ah! sacré petit polisson de Napoleon! Have I found thee at last? Now then, sir—two tight double knots each way with your honorable permission, and the moneys safe. Feel it! Feel it, fortunate sir! Hard and round as a cannon-ball—Ah, bah! If they had only fired such cannon-balls at us at Austerlitz—nom d’une pipe! If they only had! And now, as an ancient grenadier, as an ex-brave of the French army, what remains for me to do? I ask what? Simply this, to entreat my valued English friend to drink a bottle of Champagne with me, and toast the goddess Fortune in foaming goblets before we part!”