Death from a Top Hat

by Clayton Rawson

“I don’t know. I’d have to see one. Watrous brought her over here just recently, and she’s not given any public performances as yet. But if she is fraudulent and has Watrous fooled, she’s got something good. He’s nobody’s fool, even though he does talk like it at times. Trouble is, he wants to find genuine phenomena, and that unconscious bias is his weak point. He’s never bit on anything obvious though, and the few mediums to whom he has given his okay are still bones of contention.”

  “Well, just now it’s a case of does he get my okay. O’Connor! Send Colonel Watrous in here.”

  The Colonel’s entrance was excited and angry. He waved his hands. Meeting the Inspector’s unsympathetic stare, he drew himself up, adjusted his pince-nez more firmly on his bulgy nose, and cleared his throat with a prefatory rumble.

  “Where is Madame Rappourt?” he blurted. “What have you done to her? Why are you…I’ll have you know…”

  “Pull up, Colonel,” Gavigan ordered. “I’ll have you know something. This is a murder case, and since I happen to be in charge I’ll ask the questions. You answer ’em. Madame Rappourt gave us some answers and now it’s your turn. You were at the séance last night?”

  The Colonel’s carbonated sputtering went suddenly flat. His still open mouth plopped shut. Then, after a moment, it opened again. “I was at Madame Rappourt’s apartment from ten until nearly three-thirty A.M. But what…”

  “Who tied her up in that bag?”

  “Why…ah, we all did…but what did she…what has that to do…”

  “Stop asking questions! What happened after you tied her up? Come on. Talk!”

  Watrous puffed up, pigeon-like. “I fail to see that any connection exists between our experiments last evening and the lamentable tragedy that has happened here.”

  “I don’t see any myself, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t one. My job is to find out. All I know, at the moment, is that her specialty is the supernatural. And this case has more than its share of spook atmosphere…”

  Watrous seemed to get the idea. He took off his glasses and tapped them nervously on his hand. “I’m not at liberty at this time to release any statements concerning the results of our experiment of last night.”

  “Was it a dark séance?”

  Watrous looked puzzled, but nodded. “Yes, why?”

  Gavigan threw a glance where Merlini had been, only to discover that he was back poking into the bookshelves again. He returned his attention to the Colonel.

  “Then no one can testify that you were in the apartment continuously?”

  The glasses weren’t tapping now. “On the contrary,” Watrous’ tone was indignant, “two persons at least could swear I was there every minute. During the time that the lights were out we were arranged in the usual psychic circle, each person holding the hand of the one next to him. To establish a proper contact, you know.”

  Inspector Gavigan’s patience looked a bit thin. He had examined three suspects so far and had drawn three gold-plated alibis. He left it at that for the time being.

  “Who is Surgat?” He flung the question at Watrous.

  “I don’t know,” the latter answered. “I’ve come across the name somewhere in my researches, I’m sure, but…” He frowned thoughtfully at the chalked incantation, shaking his head.

  “Does the name Svoboda mean anything to you?”

  Watrous answered with another apparently puzzled negative.

  “You say you left the séance at three-thirty this morning. What did you do then?”

  “I took a taxi home and went to bed. I rose at eleven, and I spent the afternoon writing up an account of the experiment in my day book. My meals were sent up. Shortly before four I left for Madame Rappourt’s.”

  “Your relations with Sabbat were what?”

  “I have had none for at least ten years. Before that time we were rather good friends. In 1925, however, I found it necessary through the columns of The Occult World to call attention to some rather grievous misstatements which Dr. Sabbat had made concerning…ah…concerning psychic doubles. Having been stationed for some years in India, having traveled with the Granby expedition through Tibet, I feel that I can lay some claim to first hand knowledge of that type of psychical manifestation. Sabbat, however, had traveled extensively in the East, but his none too adequate knowledge of Oriental dialects handicapped him. He took my purely impersonal criticism as a direct personal attack, even going so far as to threaten me with bodily harm. He was quite capable of carrying out such a threat, and I avoided him. I never saw him again until tonight.”

  “How’d that happen?”

  “Mr. David Duvallo informed me that he had recently met Mr. Sabbat, and Saturday, I think it was, he said that Cesare was extremely anxious to meet Madame Rappourt and that our old quarrel had been forgotten. Under other circumstances I might have been loath to revive such a distressing acquaintanceship, but the reports of certain occult experiments he was making quite intrigued me.”

  “And they were?”

  For a hard-headed skeptic who thought occult matters were on a par with the freaks at Coney Island, Gavigan was a bear for punishment.

  “I am told,” Watrous said, “that he claimed to have produced levitation phenomena in himself that equalled those amazing, still unexplained, experiments of D. D. Home. I felt that this, at least, deserved investigation, though, when I knew him last, he was trying to rediscover such chimerae as the lost hermetic formulas for invisibility and the Universal Alkahest.1 I was somewhat skeptical. But since a priori skepticism among scientific investigators is what has for so long kept the psychical sciences in a rudimentary state, I couldn’t very well—”

  The Inspector had heard all he thought necessary of that. He came over on a new tack.

  “Where do the LaClaires come into this?”

  “I don’t know. They were not invited to the gathering here this evening, so far as I know.”

  “You know them well?”

  “Alfred’s father did Indian duty in my regiment.”

  What do you know about Sabbat and Mrs. LaClaire?”

  “Pardon?” Watrous asked. “I don’t believe I quite understand.”

  “Were they having an affair?”

  Watrous mounted his high horse and went into a dignified canter.

  “I know no particulars as to Mr. Sabbat’s ah—er—love life, except that he did have an unsavory reputation where the ladies were concerned.”

  “When are you and Madame Rappourt going to release the results of last night’s hand-holding in the dark?”

  “When we are in a position to refute quite positively such skeptics as yourself, sir.”

  “You may have to do that sooner than you think—if I need the information. You are fully satisfied then, I take it, that Madame Rappourt is bona fide?”

  Watrous flushed slightly and then said stiffly, “My integrity as an investigator has never been questioned by any competent critic. I have discovered, as anyone who has read my books would know, several genuine instances of psychic phenomena, inexplicable on any materialistic basis. As for Madame Rappourt, I think I may safely say that if her mediumistic powers are the result of trickery, then she is by far the cleverest impostor I have ever met. And I might add that if she is genuine, modern science will be faced with something it cannot ignore. Her telekinetic phenomena, in particular, are so remarkably…”

  “Who,” Gavigan cut in impatiently, “do you think might have killed Sabbat?”

  Watrous said slowly, “You are sure that someone killed him?”

  “Suicide is out of the question.”

  “Yes, I know. I also know that a similar case occurred in Devonshire in 1903 and that many investigators have considered it explainable only on the assumption that some enemy who held a malign control over etheric vibrations must have…”

  “Strangled by vibrations?”

  “There have been stranger things, Inspector.”

  Gavigan sniffed, then said abruptly, “Okay, you can go. But
just stay handy. I’ll want you again.”

  The Colonel placed his pince-nez firmly on his nose, glared at the Inspector a moment, then wheeled and stalked out. I thought I detected a flicker beneath his mustache of what may have been a faint smile of amusement.

  When he had gone Gavigan said, “That old dodo shouldn’t be allowed out alone. He needs a nurse—and a psychoanalyst.”

  Merlini walked over from the bookshelves, bringing with him, one finger between its leaves, a large and dusty volume. “Don’t judge the Colonel too hastily. I had a feeling there at the last that he might have been spoofing you a bit. He shouldn’t be a bad actor, you know. His father was the famous Shakespearian actor, Sir Herbert Watrous. And besides, some of what he says sounds silly only until you’ve looked into it a bit. He’s right when he says that science should take the field of psychical research a bit more seriously. A few men are beginning to do it. Professor Rhine’s experiments in parapsychology at Duke University have pretty well demonstrated that something suspiciously like telepathy may exist. And J. W. Dunne’s book, An Experiment with Time, gives me the willies every time I look into it. I find it difficult, though, to believe that the dead can come back, largely because they seem to act such idiots when they do return. It shouldn’t really be so difficult for a disembodied spirit to show a conjurer aces and spades. As for the occultists, if they’d just forego the dark and bring but one of their dog-headed Elementals out into the light of day—”

  “I wish to heaven,” Gavigan said, “that you and Rappourt and Watrous wouldn’t be so damned technical. I’m going to have to have an occult glossary compiled for me before I get out of these woods. What in hell is an Elemental?”

  Merlini laughed. “An Elemental in hell, Inspector, is at home. There’s quite a tribe of them, Ginn, Ginee, Salamanders, Undines, Efreets, Poltergeists, etc. Hindu authorities place them in the scheme of reincarnation as unattached human spirits who are waiting their next incarnation. Madame Blavatsky, whom the Colonel mentioned, used to have them about. On one occasion, when a small one pestered her by pulling at her skirt, she said that it wanted something to do. Olcutt, the Theosophical Society’s president and her mentor, suggested that she have the sprite hem some towels he had purchased. She locked the material in a bookcase with needle and thread. Twenty minutes later they heard a mouse-like squeaking, which she translated as meaning that the work was done. Olcutt opened the bookcase and found the towels hemmed, though, as he said, ‘after a fashion that would disgrace the youngest child in an infant sewing class.’ ”

  “In other words,” Gavigan said slowly, almost absently, and without the ghost of a smile, “the hemstitching was elementary.”

  Merlini threw a startled glance in my direction, and as Gavigan moved away toward the window, followed it with a delighted wink and whispered, “A policeman who puns! He’s defying all the ancient tradition, every canon of criminal investigation!”

  “I suppose I can expect anything now,” I whispered back. “Yours are always a fearful earful when you have competition.”

  The Inspector stood looking out the window thoughtfully. Half to himself, he said, “That Rappourt woman gets me down. I’ve heard alibis in my time that were miracles of watertight ingenuity, but she can pick up the marbles and take ’em away. And Watrous matched it! Three suspects questioned, and we get three alibis that are too damned slick for any good use! I never saw such a good batting average in all—”

  His soliloquy petered out Merlini, seated now, was again absorbed in his book.

  Gavigan shook his head wearily and turning said, “Merlini, you’ve been nosing about in those books long enough to have discovered something about our mysterious Surgat, the demon nobody knows. Let’s have it.”

  Merlini nodded. “Yes, it’s about time we cleared up his identity. Listen to this.”

  He glanced down at the book, open across his knees, and began to read.

  1The Universal Alkahest was the alchemist’s ideal solvent, a super-hydrofluoric acid that would act on any and every thing. It never was decided just what sort of a container to keep it in once it was found.

  Chapter 8

  The Grimorium of Pope Honorius

  Like one that on a lonesome road

  Doth walk in fear and dread

  And, having once turned round, walks on

  And turns no more his head

  Because he knows a frightful fiend

  Doth close behind him tread.

  Coleridge: The Ancient Mariner

  MERLINI’S FACE WAS SOLEMN and his voice low and serious as he read: “Pliny states that the dried muzzle of a wolf is efficacious against enchantments and that perfume made of peewits’ feathers drives away phantoms.” He looked up at us, grinning.

  The Inspector said, “Sure, and a stew made of nitwits’ brains is what causes ’em. Is that the sort of stuff those books are full of?”

  “There’s a good bit of that sort of thing here, yes. And there are some that are more serious. That book, for instance,” he drew out a large musty looking one, “is Sprenger and Kramer’s Malleus Mallificarum, one of the most important of the source books on witchcraft. It’s a guide for the use of judges in witchcraft trials, the inquisitor’s handy manual. And it’ll give any imaginative person who reads it the holy horrors, because it smells to high heaven of blood and torture and sadism. This is the early 1489 edition, bound in human hide. The rarity of the item is due almost entirely to its date of issue; a great many of the source books on this subject have that type of binding.”

  He replaced it on the shelf and indicated another volume nearby, a small one bound in faded red leather. “King James the First’s Daemonologia, the vade mecum of the professional witchfinders, who, in the seventeenth century, set themselves up in the business of legalized murder and travelled from town to town consigning harmless old women to the flames at so much per head—reductions on gross lots.” He ran his finger along the shelf. “Gaule’s The Mag-astro-mancer, or the Magi-call-astrologicall-diviner posed and puzzled, Hedelin’s Des Satyres, Brutes, Monstres et Demons, Jacquerius’ Flagellum Daemonum Fascinariorium, Saint-Hebin’s Culte du Satan, Jules Delassus’ Les Incubes et les Succubes, Glanville’s Saducismus Triumphatus, Cotton Mather’s The Invisible World Displayed—he’s got them all, from Apollonius of Tyana right on up to Eliphas Levi, Arthur Edward Waite, Manly P. Hall, Montague Summers.”

  The Inspector frowned, not at all sure what, if anything, Merlini was leading up to. He waited silently, somewhat interested, I think, in spite of himself.

  “This section,” Merlini said, moving over, “is devoted to the alchemists, Nicholas Flamel, Saint-Germain, Althotas, Roger Bacon, Albertus Magnus, and Alain de l’Isle, who is reputed to have actually discovered the elixir vitae—he lived to be 110. Here’s a biography of Raymond Lully, who had an alchemical laboratory in the precincts of Westminster Abbey about 1312, where, years later, a quantity of gold dust was found. The fly-leaf bears the signature of Dr. John Dee, Queen Elizabeth’s astrologer, and alongside is the Doctor’s own quaintly titled work, A true and faithful relation of what passed for many years between Dr. John Dee and some spirits. Also present are the more sober anthropological authorities—Frazer, Breasted, Budge, Murray, Thorndyke, et al.

  “Oh, oh!” He grabbed at another book. “This is a bit out of place. Les Secrets des Sorciers. It’s about witchcraft, all right, but it’s an original manuscript, and the shelf numbers plainly indicate that it is the property of the British Museum. Perhaps you’d better take charge of it, Inspector.”

  “I wish you’d get on with it,” Gavigan said, his impatience beginning to overflow. “I’m after a murderer, not a book thief. I don’t see that this literary chat is getting us anywhere.”

  Merlini didn’t seem to hear. He had crossed to the shelves in the corner behind the desk and, pointing to a row of yellowed paper-bound pamphlets, explained, “Here’s a particularly choice collection of the English pamphlet literature. I don’t know how the
y ever sold any of the things. Their authors had an odd journalistic habit of telling almost the whole story on the title page. Listen to this:

  The Wonder of Suffolke, being a true relation of one that reports he made a league with the Devil for three years, to do mischief, and now breaks open houses, robs people daily…and can neither be shot nor taken, but leaps over walls fifteen feet high, runs five or six miles in a quarter of an hour, and sometimes vanishes in the midst of multitudes that go to take him. Faithfully written in a letter from a solemn person, dated not long since, to a friend in Ship-Yard near Temple-Bar, and ready to be attested by hundreds…London, 1677.

  Merlini showed signs of continuing indefinitely, but Gavigan put his foot down. “Harte,” he said, “does Merlini have these spells of talking like a book collector’s catalogue very often? He’s worse than Philo Vance!”

  I shook my head. “I think he’s better,” I said. “At least he hasn’t annoyed us with any quotations from the Bhagavad-Gita in the original Sanskrit.”

  Merlini smiled a bit sheepishly. “I’ll be good, Inspector,” he promised. “But when you turn a bookworm of my inclinations loose in a pasture like this—” He gestured at the shelves and shrugged helplessly. “However, we are getting a more revealing picture of Sabbat than any description his friends might be able to provide.”

  “And a very pretty picture it is,” Gavigan commented acidly.

  “Here’s a shelf full of assorted occultism, presentation copies of those remarkable works on Theosophy by Helena Blavatsky, and most of Churchward’s and Spence’s books on Mu and Atlantis. On the shelves by the window you’ll find all the important works on the modern witchcraft, spiritism. Richet, Podmore, Lodge, Doyle, Flammarion, Zoellner, Crookes, Price, Carrington—the whole lot—and a nice set, in good condition, of bound volumes of the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research. Watrous would have a picnic over in that corner.”

  He made an inclusive gesture at the shelves. “It’s all quite complete. If you want to know anything about the sorcery of the Esquimaux, Maori Tohungaism, Negro Voodooism, the Berserkir of Iceland, or Indian Shamanism, it’s here. He must have spent a young fortune collecting this library. He didn’t swipe all the books, and some of them are pretty rare items.”