Death from a Top Hat

by Clayton Rawson

  I had listed our suspects in the order of their appearance, and had noted, in separate columns, the whereabouts of each at the times of Sabbat’s and X’s murders. I boxed those alibis which, to me, seemed sufficiently corroborated.

  Burke, who had been busy with the phone in the study, came in and followed Gavigan across the room. He looked at what I had written and suggested, “You might fill in those blanks after the LaClaires. Jennings says they were on the floor doing their turn at La Rumba at ten-thirty.”

  That amendment made, the result looked like this:

  “Two murders,” Gavigan said unhappily, “and all the suspects covered for one or the other. Watrous and Rappourt are going to supply answers for those question marks, but I’d give a month’s pay right now to know where Mr. Eugene Tarot was at 10:35 and where he is now.”

  Merlini struck a match and held it to a cigarette. He might just as well have applied it to a stick of dynamite.

  “I’ll take you up on that offer, Inspector,” he said. He paused, smiling, then went on, speaking with a slowness of tempo that was technically sound, artistically perfect, and damned exasperating.

  “At 10:35 Eugene Tarot was in this room. And now…well, he’s still here, or rather, his body is.”

  We all turned and stared at the dead man.

  Chapter 16

  The Red-Haired Wench

  “Here’s the blood of a bat

  Put in that, oh, put in that.

  Here’s lizzard’s bane

  Put in again.

  The Juice of toad, the oil of adder Those will make the yonker madder. Put in; there’s all, and rid the stench; Nay, there’s three ounces of the red-hair’d wench

  Round, around, around…”

  Middleton: The Witch

  AS WE STOOD THERE WAITING for the Inspector to verify this amazing assertion, the sound of voices and footsteps came from outside the window.

  “Damn!” said the Inspector. He stepped into the hall, and as the front door opened, we heard him order, “Malloy, you’ll find Detective Grimm upstairs. Take Duvallo up there. Bennett, you come in here and get busy with that camera. Who’s this gentleman?”

  “Ching Wong Fu, Inspector. He showed up just after you left.”

  “All right, he goes up with Grimm, too. Then you come in here.”

  “Dammit, Inspector,” Duvallo’s voice said, peevishly, “what’s the idea? Malloy has to spend a half hour dictating a report before he leaves, then he stops on the way and putters around at the station house and takes half the night to get here. What’s happened here, anyway?”

  Gavigan’s reply should easily reach the finals in any contest for the best understatement of the year. “I’m not quite sure yet,” he said. “But you’ll hear about it soon enough. In the meantime, please do as I suggest.”

  His tone made it obvious that there was no alternative.

  Duvallo gave in reluctantly. “I’m getting fed up with this nonsense.” Then he went slowly up the stairs, Ching and Malloy following.

  Bennett came in and busied himself over the body with camera, tripod, and lights. In a few moments Malloy returned and, while we waited, Gavigan gave him a hasty summary of the situation. When Bennett finally said, “Okay, Chief,” we gathered around the body.

  Gavigan lifted the glasses from the still face, looked through them and said, “Dime store.” Then he pulled tentatively at the mustache and found that it peeled off.

  “I didn’t get a decent look at Tarot in good light at Sabbat’s,” he said, “but this still doesn’t look much like him to me.”

  “That facial expression, of course,” Merlini said, “is hardly characteristic of the suave Tarot, and the absence of the monocle makes him look positively naked. I’ve never before seen him without it. But what makes the greatest difference is the sun tan.” He ran his finger across the dead man’s cheek and held it up. There was a yellowish-brown smear on the finger and a pale streak across the face.

  “Make-up,” he said.

  Gavigan leaned forward and twisted the head to one side, looking closely at the right side of the jaw.

  “You win,” he said gravely.

  I saw it too. The strip of adhesive that had seemed so out of place on the immaculately groomed Tarot was there, covered and partially concealed by the cosmetic.”

  Merlini, seeing it for the first time, scowled. “Tarot had that on his face before?”

  Gavigan nodded, and then reasoned, “He could just about have made it. After ducking out of that taxi at 49th Street, he could have made a quick change at his hotel, and then…well, the subway would get him here in under fifteen minutes. Allowing another fifteen minutes for the change into this disguise, he’d have arrived here maybe five minutes to ten, but not any earlier. A taxi’s no faster than the subway for that distance. That gets him here just before the snow and no trouble about footprints. But why the disguise?”

  “Maybe,” I suggested, “he was doing a little private detecting. He seemed to think Duvallo was the guilty person, so he might have come here to hunt for evidence. The disguise was to prevent his recognition should Duvallo happen to be at home.”

  “He seems to have done a bit of ‘breaking and entering,’ at any rate. He’s got no key and, this time, no picklocks, so he must have come in by the ladder. But Grimm was out front from ten on, saw and heard nothing. What was Tarot up to during that half hour?”

  “I wouldn’t know that,” I said. “Something sinister, probably, and the murderer coming along caught him at it, recognized him, and let him have it.”

  Gavigan made a wry face. “Harte,” he protested, “if you’re going to submit theories make the words mean something. The murderer just ‘comes along,’ does he? Isn’t it bad enough that he got away without leaving footprints? You’ve got him coming in that way.”

  “If he did it once,” Merlini said, “he might have done it twice.”

  “Sure, but it would be a damn sight simpler to suppose he came in like Tarot, before the snow. That leaves us a little less to explain.”

  “Does it?” Merlini asked. “It leaves me wondering what two people, murderer and victim, did to amuse themselves so quietly during the half hour Grimm was outside.”

  “Any way you look at it, there’s plenty to wonder about. For instance, where did that ladder come from in the first place?”

  “The murderer,” Merlini said slowly, “may, as you say, have entered by the ladder; but if we could prove he left by it, then we’d know one very interesting fact about him.”

  “Such as?”

  “We’d know that he was a Lung-Gom-Pa.”

  “That would be such a help,” Gavigan said, suspecting where this was leading. “I don’t want to hear about it.” He turned and busied himself examining the catch on the window and then, stepping part way out, surveyed the balcony.

  Grimm, however, was interested. “What is it in English?” he asked.

  “Madame Alexandra David-Neel,” Merlini said, watching Gavigan out of a corner of his eye, “a Frenchwoman who lived in Tibet for eighteen years and who claims to be the only white woman ever to have made the dangerous trip, in disguise, to the holy city of Lhassa, writes that one day when travelling she came upon a naked lama whose sole wearing apparel consisted of heavy chains wrapped about him. Inquiry disclosed that this conception of what the well-dressed lama should wear was not as lacking in logic as might be supposed. Through the practice of Lung-Gom the fakir’s body had become so light that, without sufficient ballast, he was always in danger of floating in midair.”1

  Gavigan studiously avoided any appearance of interest. Grimm snorted, “Does Barnum and Bailey’s know?”

  “In order to get off that ladder,” Merlini went on, “without having disturbed the snow that surrounds its foot, Mr. X would have had to float in midair, no less. Just what the practice of Lung-Gom is, Madame David-Neel neglects to say. One of the breath-control systems, probably. Nevertheless it’s the only practicable method of
getting off that ladder. I have many times caused a young lady assistant to float some six feet above a stage floor and then passed an examined hoop completely over and around her body. I didn’t resort to Lung-Gom, and the method I did use is, in this instance, quite useless.”

  Quickly, before Merlini could go on, Gavigan put in, “That’s your way of saying that the window and the ladder are out. Okay. Perhaps you know how the murderer did get out? Let’s have it, and no moonshine about Tibetan lamas, Transylvanian werewolves, Javanese hobgoblins, or witches on broomsticks. It may be entertaining table talk, but we’re supposed to be busy catching a murderer.”

  “Hmm,” Merlini said speculatively, “sailing out the window on a broomstick. I missed out on that one.” He pushed his cigarette, lighted end first, into his closed fist, and by squeezing gently made it vanish. Gavigan’s face flew storm signals, and he took a step toward Merlini.

  Quickly the latter said, “Perhaps it is time we looked into the possibilities. There’s one method in particular—”

  “Oh, so there are a couple of methods, are there? All right, Mr. Magician, bring out your rabbits.”

  Merlini turned to me. “How about you, Harte? Doesn’t our recent review of Dr. Fell’s outline suggest anything?”

  “Yes,” I said not too cheerfully, “it does. But I don’t like it. It would be an awfully flat finish to what is so far a really writable mystery yarn.”

  “Class B, method 2, the secret exit?” Merlini asked.

  I nodded.

  “That would be lamentable,” he agreed, “though, unless he’s still in it, you’d also have to postulate a tunnel that would bring him out a block or so away in order to duck that snow. Still, I suppose we’d better look into it.”

  “I intend to,” Gavigan said. “Duvallo’s a magician, and this house is probably riddled with secret passages. If he denies it, we’ll take the place apart.”

  “Don’t count your chickens too soon, Inspector. The Merlini mansion doesn’t have those conveniences. Mrs. Merlini says secret passageways gather dust and attract mice. Grimm, have you any ideas?”

  Grimm was disgruntled. “Oh, sure,” he said sarcastically. “The murderer might have had an Autogiro parked in the air outside the window, only I’d have heard it. Or he could be one of those human cannon balls they have in the circus, and he shot himself through the window, landing over on Barrow Street somewhere, only I haven’t seen anything that looks like a cannon. If Tarot only could have strangled himself.”

  “Has anybody,” Merlini asked, “thought what an odd feature of this case that is—both here and at Sabbat’s? Usually when a corpse is found in a locked room the murderer uses a means of death consistent with suicide. Much more logical. There’s always the chance that the police may fall for it.” He gestured toward the study. “As to your preoccupation with the open window, Grimm, there’s a simpler and somewhat more practical possibility. Duvallo mentioned it at Sabbat’s. Rope.”

  The Inspector spoke to Patrolman O’Connor. “Get Duvallo’s keys and open that trap door to the roof. Look for footprints, and—and you might include the top of that carriage house next door while you’re at it.”

  “Not counting Grimm’s pulp magazine suggestions,” Merlini said, “two methods have been submitted. And I think Gavigan is toying with number three. A variation on the davenport theory. Am I right?”

  “Any reason why not? It’s still the simplest. The murderer hid behind that chair near the French window. After Grimm and Jones came in and dashed madly into the study, he slipped out on to the balcony and hoisted himself from the top of the railing to the roof of the carriage house next door. It’s low enough so that it wouldn’t require any abnormal acrobatics.”

  “I knew Jones had something to do with it,” Grimm broke out, apparently taking to the Inspector’s idea. “If that’s what happened, he knows it. He didn’t follow me into the study. He was still standing just inside the window when I came out of the study.”

  “If O’Connor finds tracks on the roof, you can take Jones apart.” Gavigan turned to Merlini. “There are three possible solutions to an impossible situation. I don’t suppose it’s too much to ask you for a fourth, and a better one?”

  “No, not at all,” Merlini grinned. “Do you know what that is?” He pointed at the silent Turk who sat rigidly, contemplating his chessboard.

  “No, do you?”

  “It’s an exact replica of Maelzel’s Automaton Chess Player, the original of which was destroyed when the Chinese Museum in Philadelphia burned in 1854. Mechanical marvels weren’t common as dirt in those days, as they are now; and a machine that could apparently think through the complicated moves of chess, and, what’s more, almost invariably win, created what Variety would term ‘a hit playing to stand-up biz’.”

  Merlini walked over and opened one of the doors in the face of the cabinet, disclosing an intricate mass of cogwheels, springs, and pulleys. “These doors are for the purpose of showing that the innards are purely mechanical. Maelzel opened a door in the rear and held a lighted candle there to show that this compartment contained nothing but cogs and gears. Edgar Allan Poe, for one, however, demonstrated very ably that a chess genius, by name Schlumberger, who was connected with Maelzel’s party, but who was never in evidence when the automaton was playing, could have concealed himself in the compartment behind those other doors and then, when Maelzel had closed the rear door, could move over behind the machinery so that the two remaining doors could be opened.2

  Gavigan’s hand came from his pocket gripping an automatic.

  “Open those other doors,” he commanded.

  Merlini pulled with both hands and swung them open simultaneously. Gavigan’s gun pointed squarely at the black opening, and from behind him Malloy flashed a torch. The interior was empty. Merlini stepped behind the cabinet and opened the rear door he had mentioned.

  “Nobody home,” he said. Coming around to the front again, he knelt and stuck his head inside, peering about interestedly. “Well, there goes solution number four. If the murderer had never left this room the mystery of the absent footprints would dissolve. It would have been the simplest solution of the lot.” Grimm suddenly turned and went into the study. He came back almost at once announcing, “And that Spanish Maiden contraption is just as empty.”

  There were steps on the stair and O’Connor came back. “The roof’s clean as a whistle,” he reported, “except for snow. And there’s not a footprint in a carload.”

  “And the roof next door?” Gavigan asked.

  “It’s the same.”

  Merlini had been swallowed by the automaton until only his long legs projected awkwardly from one of the open doors. The Turk’s hand lifted, with a jerky mechanical motion, and completed the move with the Bishop which he had been studying so long. Merlini’s muffled voice issued from the Turk’s chest.

  “Checkmate, Inspector! Three from four leaves one. You can get odds on your secret exit now, Ross.” The Turk caressed his beard in deep thought.

  Gavigan said, “Merlini, if you could pull those long legs of yours inside, I’d lock you in for the duration of this case. Crawl out of there and—”

  He stopped, listening. In the hall a woman’s voice was saying, “I want to see Mr. Duvallo at once.” The voice was young and determined.

  A patrolman appeared in the doorway, and Gavigan said, “Show her in.”

  The girl stopped abruptly just inside the door. “Dave…” she started, and then saw that he wasn’t there. “Where’s Mr. Duvallo and who—” Her blue eyes, frank and direct until they took in the body, grew suddenly wide, startled. She stepped back, one hand reaching for the door jamb.

  Her tall, slim figure stood there, arrested in a pose that was at once graceful and rigid. Her face was cool, capable, and her complexion had a smooth, wind-blown look. She wore a short fur jacket over a smartly tailored blue dress and an oddly twisted snippet of cloth perched insecurely on her head pretending to be a hat. Her mouth was so
ft and crimson.

  “Your name, please?” Gavigan asked.

  As she turned her head, the light in her hair flashed warningly, a hot, bright red. The waves of her coiffeur swirled down from under the hat and broke in a foam of small curls at the back of her neck.

  “You’re the police?” she said.

  The voice from the Turk spoke again, louder this time. “Miss Barclay, this is Inspector Gavigan of the Homicide Squad. Also Captain Malloy and Mr. Harte.”

  Merlini slid out of the automaton. “David is upstairs and will be down any moment.”

  The girl turned again toward the body and stared. Her shoulders shivered a little, then drew themselves straight.

  “You know the man?” Gavigan asked gently.

  “Yes!” Her voice was low and taut. “I didn’t at first, but I do now. It’s Eugene! But why is he here? What…what has happened?”

  “He’s been murdered,” the Inspector said, stepping across the room so that he stood between her and the body.

  From somewhere over our heads we heard a solid thump, a cry, and then feet came pounding down the stairs.

  “Judy!”

  Duvallo burst in at the door and took her in his arms.

  “Dave,” she said breathlessly, “I was afraid…I saw the police cars outside and I had to know—who did it?”

  Duvallo glowered at the Inspector. “I’m fed up with being pushed around. When I heard Judy I tripped up my jailer and came on. What’s going on in here anyway? Why—?”

  Gavigan moved to one side, and Duvallo saw the body. His arm tightened around the girl, and he turned her so that she couldn’t see. But he kept on looking over her shoulder. Grimm appeared in the doorway behind him, rubbing his jaw, revenge written all over his face.

  Duvallo said, “Listen, kid, you wait outside for a minute. Then I’ll take you home.”

  She moved away from him and took a seat on the divan. “Don’t be silly. I’m of age. I want to know what happened.”

  He scowled at Gavigan. “I’d like to know myself.”