Death from a Top Hat

by Clayton Rawson

  “Do you call that explaining things?” Gavigan protested.

  “Yes. The reporters, of course, were right the first time. Duvallo did use a double, an actor who could imitate his voice. I would suspect Tarot. He was almost exactly the same build and height, and had features similar enough in general appearance so that properly applied make-up would do the trick, except before close friends. The bang-up finale, however, left Duvall’s audience so goggle-eyed that they forgot their ‘double’ theory, and when they tried to find some other explanation…there wasn’t any. Common principle in conjuring.”

  “And Duvallo got out of this room the way you did just now, after giving your little imitation of two people scrapping?”

  “Yes. Harte’s theory, trite as it was, is correct. This room does have a secret exit; and it’s a honey. I figured that out when I read the account of Duvallo’s stunt and saw the pictures in the papers. I’ve always suspected where it was, but, even so, it took me nearly fifteen minutes to find it.”

  “Stop bragging and get on with it.” Gavigan was impatient.

  Merlini walked back to the chair and squatted in the seat, Oriental fashion, legs tucked under. He braced his elbows on the chair arms. The fingers of his right hand pressed lightly on the under side of the arm where it curved over and the seat of the chair fell away, noiselessly. Merlini’s legs dropped down into a dark hole, swinging. He found a foothold, took a step downward, and, as he ducked his head, the chair seat swung smoothly and silently back into place. The whole operation had taken less than five seconds.

  “Regular Jack-in-the-Box, isn’t he?” Grimm said, blinking.

  The chair seat dropped again, and Merlini’s voice said, “Come on down.” There was a click, and light came up from the opening.

  Merlini was standing on a stepladder arrangement, the steps of which were covered with sound-absorbing black felt. Gavigan said, “Brady, you stay up here and keep your eyes open.”

  Merlini went on, “When the reporters dashed for the window, Duvallo simply dropped through here and…”

  “When I looked the cellar over last night,” Gavigan said, “this end of it seemed to be full of boxes and packing cases.”

  “Camouflage. They go clear to the ceiling, and this is behind them.”

  Following Malloy, I climbed down the ladder and found myself in a small room less than ten feet in depth. The light came from a bare electric bulb in the ceiling. There was a work-table along one end wall, heaped with a queer miscellany of odds and ends. I saw a tambourine, several slates, a headless, undressed ventriloquist’s dummy, a scattered pile of paper flowers, a rumpled quantity of cheesecloth. Hanging from hooks on the wall were several theatrical costumes, among them a pair of completely black all-over tights with a peculiar all-enveloping hood. Two black gloves lay on the floor near a dusty jawless papier-mâché skull that had rolled into one corner.

  “Behind the scenes with a spirit medium,” Merlini observed. “Dave puts on a mean séance, as you might guess from these props.” He pointed at the left-hand wall. “There’s the door. Duvallo, in working his Yogi Mystery, dashed through there and up the stairs, met his assistant in the hall, and took the snow-covered overcoat and the menu card. The latter came down here and lay doggo until the party was over.”

  “But there’s no door on the other side,” Malloy said.

  “It opens into one of the packing cases and you leave through the hinged side of that.”

  “He was cutting it pretty fine, wasn’t he?” Gavigan asked, frowning. “Suppose the reporters opened the door upstairs too soon?”

  “That’s why the padlocks on the door. They were not to keep Duvallo in the room, as everyone was led to suppose, but to keep the reporters in. In many tricks the very precautions that are taken to guarantee absence of trickery are what make it possible.”

  “Are all your magic tricks figured as closely at that?” Gavigan asked, somewhat incredulously.

  “And then some,” Merlini replied. “A magician can’t take many chances, because when a trick doesn’t come off—well, it’s like that dream where you suddenly find yourself addressing the Woman’s Club—minus clothes.”

  “I wonder,” Gavigan said, “who else besides Duvallo and Tarot knew of this place. It doesn’t seem…”

  Malloy was nosing around the worktable. “Hey,” he broke in, excitedly, “here’s the insides of another trick.” He had pulled the pile of cheesecloth to one side and disclosed a typewriter, identical with that upstairs.

  “Yes,” Merlini said, “the spirit typewriter. Duvallo has always claimed that it’s the original one on which Madame Blavatsky’s posthumously written memoirs were typed, but that was probably ballyhoo.1 While I was typing, all the keys of this machine were connected with the keys of the one above by strands of this, strong, black fishline. It’s a rather complicated setup, but it works. The strings ran up through that hole in the ceiling and through the single hollow leg of the table. Each string went over the arm of the proper key and came back, down to this hook.” He pointed to a hook in the wall, near which hung a large pair of shears.

  “When I had finished, I gathered the strings just above the typewriter in one hand, cut them at the other end close to the hook, pulled in rapidly, drew them over the arms of the keys upstairs and back down. There’s some sound up at the other end which you many have heard, since I couldn’t be there to cover it with patter. The hole in the table top has a spring-hinged cover that folds into place when the typewriter is lifted for examination.”

  “It’s all done with trap doors and threads so far. I suppose the mirrors come next,” Grimm observed.

  Gavigan, who had been in a brown study with the door closed, came out of it and said, “Maybe I’m dumb, Merlini, but I don’t see it. It might help a lot to know that Grimm’s vanishing murderer escaped down this rabbit hole, but there’s still the snow that surrounded the house, and even if he bid until after we left, early this morning—”

  “Take a deep breath, Inspector,” Merlini said, “and don’t throw anything when you hear what comes next. This all had to be looked into anyway. You, Harte, can take that woebegone expression off your face, because I’m going to put your detective yarn back on its feet. The murderer didn’t leave by this route. That door is locked on the inside!”

  Gavigan grunted and, stepping forward, yanked savagely at the door knob. “I don’t see any key,” he said. “How do you know it wasn’t locked from the other side?”

  “Because it doesn’t lock from the other side. There’s neither doorknob nor keyhole. All the lock is in here. And, furthermore, the murderer couldn’t have been hiding here until the coast was clear up above. I took a look before I came down the first time, and there was a nice, smooth, undisturbed layer of dust on the floor and on those felt-covered steps where, as you can see, our footprints show all too plainly.”

  Gavigan said nothing for a moment, staring at Merlini. Then he turned and started up the ladder. Two steps up he stopped and looked back.

  “I wish,” he said vehemently, “that instead of trying to make this investigation jump through hoops, you’d make yourself useful. Come on up here. We’ve wasted enough time.”

  As the Inspector’s legs disappeared through the trap, Merlini said softly:

  “I wonder?”

  1Posthumous Memoirs of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Boston, J. M. Wade, 1896.

  Chapter 19

  Curved Sound

  AFTER WE HAD ALL clambered back through the chair seat to the upper room, Gavigan turned to me impatiently.

  “Harte,” he said gruffly, “we’re going to give one final twist to that alibi list of yours; and then, after this wand-waving practical joker has had a last chance to speak his little piece, I’m going to make an arrest.”

  There was a knock at the front door. Gavigan strode over to the window and looked out. “Brady,” he said, “a couple of reporters got past our first line of defense. Go chase ’em away and then stay on the door.”


  “An arrest?” Merlini said. “It’s come to that, has it? You must have unearthed a lot of answers during the wee small hours.”

  Gavigan ignored him. He strode nervously up and down the room, speaking in a thoughtful growl.

  “Colonel Watrous,” he stated, “was tailed into his hotel last night at 9:55. He spluttered like Old Faithful when he found that out. Thinks the police department are a lot of nosy Peeping Toms. He says that he was in his rooms until almost eleven; then he went out, going through the drugstore, where he bought two cigars, and took his usual before-bedtime walk. Five times around Union Square! The man’s a whirling dervish!”

  “Drugstore clerk remember him?” Merlini asked.

  “Yes, but there were other customers, and he couldn’t say if Watrous was coming or going. The elevator operator says that’s when he went out, but—well, there are stairs in the place.”

  “Yes,” Merlini agreed, “it could be better. He might have ducked out immediately after arriving, and a taxi would have gotten him over here in ten minutes, just when the snow began, and just after Tarot’s arrival. They chat for a half hour, until 10:30, when Watrous finishes him off, quietly dematerializes in Grimm’s face, floats across the snow, in through the drugstore, walks up the stairs, and then comes back down in the elevator to go for his evening stroll. Simple as that.”

  “Sure, I know, you can say it so it sounds silly, but, just the same, Watrous can’t prove he was in his room at 10:35, and he gets a goose egg. Put it down, Harte.”

  Merlini said nothing. He brought his half dollar out and absently started it through its now-you-see-it—now-you-don’t routine.

  “Madame Rappourt was taken to her suite at the Commodore. Brady stationed himself on her floor and watched her door until 2 A.M., when he was ordered to rout her out. He brought her to the station house, mad as a wet hen. When I asked her what her real name was she closed up tighter than a sub-Treasury Vault and all her answers from then on sounded alike: ‘I want a lawyer.’ We may hear from London this afternoon on that angle, but she doesn’t look very promising. We’ll have to give her an out, Harte.”

  I wrote “At Hotel” and ringed it.

  Merlini said, “There goes the beautiful symmetry of your list, Harte. It’s a shame. Everyone alibied for one or the other except the mysterious Madame, who’s sitting pretty for both. As one detective fiction fan to another, I’d say that looks highly suspicious.”

  “Yeah, you would.” Gavigan went on with his report. “Zelma and Alfred LaClaire were dropped at La Rumba by the squad car at 10:25, and, though that’s suspiciously near here, in the next block, they seem to be adequately accounted for since they had only a few minutes in which to change and make ready for their next show.”

  “What result did your little set-to with Zelma have, Inspector? Did she finish her strip-tease information act?”

  “She admitted, finally, that she was the woman in the hall whom Spence heard, yes. I had to confront her with Ching before she took down her black hair and had a good cry. Sabbat, it seems, had been trying to shake her. When he told her on the phone for the third time in a week that he was busy, she got obstinate and stopped off of her way home to have it out with him. She was sure Sabbat was still there, because she heard someone move inside. That’s when Spence started hearing the rough language. Her theory now is that it was the murderer that she heard. That’s her theory. But Sabbat might eventually have let her in, and she could have left via the string through the keyhole method, throwing the bolt and switching the handkerchief last night when she was supposed to be in the bathroom.”

  “And so far, she has the most obvious motive,” Merlini said. “Hell hath no fury…and all that. But what about Alfred? Did Tony agree that he was in the bar for the whole period between leaving the night club and going home?”

  “He did not. Two or three people remember him for part of the time, but there are large gaps. He gets a goose egg, too.”

  “And Dr. Hesse’s report. What about that? Could a woman have managed the strangling?”

  “Yes. Strangling isn’t ordinarily a woman’s method, but it’s been done, and more unlikely things too. In this case it’s quite possible. Both men were knocked out first. Hesse found several microscopic particles of a light gray paper fibre adhering to the back of both their heads. That’s a cinch; we’ve met it before. You can knock out a man with a Manhattan telephone book and leave almost no external marks at all.”

  “No fingerprints on the phone books?” “None that shouldn’t be there.”

  “Whose fingerprint was it that we developed on Duvallo’s card?”

  “Tarot’s.”

  “Were his prints in your files?”

  “No, nor in Washington.”

  “What about the Grimorium and the torn out page?”

  “Some of Sabbat’s prints in the book. That’s all. And—oh, yes. We found his bank and checkbooks. Most of his checks were made out to rare book dealers, Ouaritch, Rosenbach, and so forth. But just lately he’s been flat, or so nearly so it’s the same thing. No rent payments for two months. His checkbook is full of a long list of withdrawals, and there hasn’t been a deposit to amount to anything for two years. But that was a honey. On May 27, 1935, he deposited the nice round sum of $50,000, just like that. I want to know where it came from. I’ve got a couple of men going through his files, and they may run across some explanation. But 50,000 bucks! I’m betting the explanation will be a queer one.”

  “It probably will,” Merlini agreed. “Everything about the man seems to be queer. Since you’re so full of information this morning—did you tree any of those blonde playmates of Sabbat’s, and did you examine that suitcase of Tarot’s?”

  “Yeah, we scared hell outta half a dozen dames. But we didn’t turn up anything but iron-clad alibis. The suitcase was a cheap cardboard affair, and the lab’s report wasn’t enlightening. But we did find where it came from. A second-hand shopkeeper on Third Avenue saw Tarot’s picture in the papers and reported that he sold it to him last week. He remembers the monocle. Not many of his customers wear ’em.”

  “What about the mysterious Spanish lock salesman, Mr. Williams, and what about the incident of the incriminating hanky?”

  “Nothing on the first. You can’t trace a call from a dial phone unless it’s still in progress. As for Miss Barclay, she admitted the handkerchief was hers, but claims she lost it two or three weeks ago and hasn’t the vaguest idea where, except that it wasn’t at Sabbat’s. Though for some reason she was nervous as hell all the time I was questioning her, I rather think I believe her. Her story is naïve enough to be true. It’s possible she lost it while dating Duvallo, and he picked it up, intending to return it, but lost it himself, at Sabbat’s.”

  “Did you ask her how long she’s owned the handkerchiefs?”

  “She lost the one in question the first time she carried it, the next day after she bought it.”

  “That rather leaves Duvallo out, doesn’t it? He’s been out on the road for two months and didn’t return until a week ago.

  “All right, then if Miss Barclay didn’t leave it there, who—” Gavigan stopped as the phone in the other room began to ring. Malloy took it.

  The Inspector started to speak again, then stopped, listening, as an excited undertone crept into Malloy’s voice. Finally he hung up and came back.

  “Here’s a hot one,” he said. “The permit issued for that gun has Sabbat’s name on it!”

  The Inspector looked at him blankly for a moment. “What gun is that, Inspector?” Merlini asked. “The one I took off Tarot. He said he had a permit, but we couldn’t find it. So we checked back on the gun through the number. I suppose it all means something, but I’m eternally damned if—”

  “It means,” Merlini said slowly, “that Tarot dished out a preposterous number of tall stories. And that fact is distinctly a sour note; it’s a whole chord in the wrong key. It almost looks as if he…” Merlini stared at the lady on his
half dollar.

  “As if he what?” Gavigan prodded.

  Merlini shook his head. “No, that doesn’t make sense at all.” He looked up at Gavigan and changed the subject. “What was that you said about making an arrest, Inspector? Let’s hear. You aren’t going to put cuffs on Rappourt just because her alibi looks too good to be true, are you? And I don’t see anything much in what you’re reported that would warrant actually arresting anyone except Tarot.”

  “Oh, you don’t, don’t you?” There was the beginning of a baleful gleam in the Inspector’s eye. “You might tell me why I shouldn’t arrest you as an accessory. Just why have you been keeping to yourself the fact that—”

  Abruptly Merlini jerked from his sleepy lounging pose in the chair to a stiff upright attitude. He threw up a warning hand and leaned forward, his body tense, his gaze fixed intently on the door.

  “Listen!” he exclaimed softly.

  We heard nothing, and Gavigan started, “What—”

  Merlini said, “In the hall—”

  Then we heard it. A low confused murmur, rising louder, and then, sharply, in a queer strained voice that was flat and in deadly earnest, “…I’ve got you covered! You’ve seen my face and you’ll have to take the—”

  The habitual nonchalance was washed off Merlini’s face, exposing an expression of blank astonishment. Gavigan sprang to his feet, and Grimm, who was nearest, flung himself headlong at the door.

  A gun flashed in his right hand as his left yanked at the doorknob. The door swung inward violently, and the opening framed Detective Brady, a quiet picture of repose, sitting balanced, somewhat precariously, on a chair tipped back against the further wall. His head bobbled up from the Daily Mirror he held, and he stared, jaw slack.