Death from a Top Hat

by Clayton Rawson

  There was a sealed room hereabout, Locked ever so tight, without doubt;

  But a young man named Beazle

  Contracted a measle,

  And escaped, by just breaking out.

  Gavigan, like a momentarily quiescent volcano, waited. Merlini lay, rather than sat, in his chair, his long legs trailing.

  “And that,” he went on, “might be a seventh method, except that none of our suspects exhibit the proper symptoms. But escape method No. 6 is, in several respects, positively alluring. It explains not only the Mystery of the Impossible Voices and the Perplexing Puzzle of the Absent Footprints, but also that Irritating Enigma of the Open Window and the Unused Ladder!”

  The rest of us sat up and took notice.

  “I don’t understand why it hasn’t occurred to Watson—er—I mean Harte, here, before now. The device has been used so often in detective fiction that, fully ten years ago, S. S. Van Dine, in one of his critiques, voted to outlaw it as a cliché. But perhaps Oscar Wilde’s dictum that Life imitates Art has a corollary stating that Crime imitates the Detective Story.

  “Suppose that the murder did take place earlier than first appeared. Suppose that it took place, as you suggested a moment ago, sometime between Tarot’s arrival here and the beginning of the snow. And the killer vanished not by the ladder but by simply walking out through that door and away from the house just before Grimm showed up.”

  “All right. That’s substantially what I said Jones did. And I might as well admit that Doc Hesse’s report hinted that he wasn’t quite satisfied with 10:35 as the time of death. He said that although the low temperature of the room, the muscularly well-developed physique of Tarot, and the fact that death was due to asphyxia all made an early onset of rigor mortis likely, on the other hand rigor was rather more complete and the body temperature had fallen further than he would have expected. Go on.”

  Merlini smiled, his dark eyes sparkling. “We next consider the Useless Ladder. It had a purpose in the murder scheme, a very definite one, but it was accidentally distorted, and that’s where we got into trouble. The ladder was there, not to aid the murderer in his escape, but to aid the police in escaping from the otherwise impossible situation which this room would present. We were supposed to think that the murderer left by the window. However, this carefully laid—”

  “But,” Grimm objected, “it didn’t look as if the murderer had just gone down that ladder. The snow proved that no one could possibly have—”

  “As I started to say,” Merlini cut in, “this carefully laid red herring didn’t hatch out. The Weather Bureau double-crossed the murderer when its Delphic pronouncement for Monday failed to mention snow. The snow cancelled out the ladder; and when we try to fit it, as a factor, into our equation we put ourselves out on a limb. We run smack into the very impossible situation our master mind wanted us to avoid. I rather think that snow has worried him a bit.”

  “He’s got a lot more worry ahead of him, if I’ve got anything to say about it,” Gavigan hinted darkly. “But why all the trouble to avoid presenting us with an impossibility? It’s hardly consistent with the rest of his actions.”

  “And if it hadn’t snowed?” Merlini answered. “Grimm would have heard the voices, broken in, and found what he did find. Everyone would assume that the murderer left by the window, and no one would suspect that the crime might have been committed earlier.”

  “And the voices?”

  Merlini looked at Grimm. “It has already been suggested,” he said, “that this room is haunted.”

  Gavigan’s sigh was resigned, but there was hope in his eyes.

  “That theory might bear investigation, because it’s just possible that Grimm, Jones & Company did, in a way, hear ghosts.” Merlini watched the smoke curling up from his cigarette to fuse with the blue haze around his head. He looked quickly at us and went on, the barest hint of a smile showing on his mouth. “Not the voices of ghosts,—but the ghosts of voices, spectral sound waves, conversation from behind the Beyond. There’s a chapter tide in that for you, Harte: The Garrulous Ghosts, or perhaps, The Leprechaun Speaks. Poltergeist Patter is good, too, though perhaps a bit esoteric, and—”

  Gavigan, lying back with his eyes closed, stirred uneasily and spoke to Malloy. “Send someone over to the station house for a rubber hose. We’ve got to make him talk so it means something.”

  “But, Inspector,” Merlini protested. “Use your imagination. If the murderer wasn’t in the room, and if Tarot was already dead when Grimm heard the voices…and if ventriloquism is left out of it for the moment—Well, what other means of faking voices are there?”

  Then at last I tackled an idea as it went past and threw it. “I get it,” I said. “The long-whiskered device of the phonograph recording, set and timed to spout at the proper moment. No detective story is complete without it! But, I’m damned if I can see—”

  The Inspector pulled himself to his feet. “Yeah,” he blurted. “There are several things I don’t see, but…but…Malloy! Grimm! That’s your cue. Take this place apart and locate a gadget that could have produced those voices.

  Grimm looked around uncertainly and frowned. Malloy took his hands slowly from his pockets and started to shed his coat.

  Gavigan regarded Merlini and added, a bit wistfully:

  “It seems to explain a helluva lot, but I do wish it didn’t sound so blamed much like a pulp-writer’s pipe dream. Are you sure you haven’t read too damned many detective thrillers?”

  “What choice have you, Inspector? A murderer that floats in midair? That’s a damned sight more far fetched. Even a detective story fan wouldn’t swallow that one. He’d send the author poisoned chocolates in the next mail. Besides, what if I have read too many detective stories? Perhaps the murderer has too.”

  “You’ve got this phonograph business a little too pat. You know where it is. Come on, fess up.”

  “I wish to high heaven I did knew. I haven’t the faintest notion. But Grimm and Malloy should be able—is that the right time?”

  He pointed at the clock which Grimm was investigating, holding it gingerly as if it might explode at any moment. Grimm mumbled in what would have been his beard if he had had one, “There’s got to be a time arrangement of some sort, but this seems to be on the up and up.”

  The hands of the clock pointed to 11:50.

  “Come on, Inspector,” Merlini said, getting up and reaching for his coat. “Let’s knock off for lunch. I knew something was wrong. I need food. There’s a place up on 49th Street that has really scrumptious Smorgasbord.”

  “Oh, no you don’t, my fine feathered friend,” Gavigan insisted. “We’ve going to find that phonograph.”

  “I wish you luck,” Merlini said. He picked up my hat and scaled it at me. “Come on, Harte, and while we’re eating, I’ll explain a few ideas I’ve got about that alibi list of yours.” He started for the door.

  “Hey, wait a minute,” Gavigan protested. “If you must act like one of those amateur detectives who are always stopping in the middle of an investigation to take in a symphony or go water their orchids—Malloy!” They held a hasty conference and then Gavigan came after us.

  “That last crack, Inspector,” Merlini objected, “was the unkindest cut of all. I’m no amateur criminologist, merely a professional conjurer.”

  “I suppose you think that’s preferable,” Gavigan snorted, pulling on his coat.

  As he went out into the hall Merlini called back at Malloy, “You might search out here for that phonograph, too, you know.”

  The Inspector looked at him as if he were a two-headed calf. He almost spluttered. “Do you—are you—you’re not suggesting a phonograph record with a ventriloquial recording on it!”

  “What’s the matter with that? I’ve read about crazier notions.”

  “Shows the sort of tripe you read!” The Inspector stomped out the door, and as he went down the steps he muttered, “My idea of a congenial non-official investigator is a deaf-and-dumb
mute.”

  The Inspector’s car pulled up before Merlini’s restaurant in 49th Street, and we climbed out.

  Merlini pointed. “Look, Inspector. Tarot’s hotel is just down there. You know, I could still my hunger pangs for fifteen minutes if you’d take us up for a look at his rooms.”

  “Smorgasbord, my eye!” Gavigan said. “I thought that’s why you picked this restaurant. All right. Come on. I’ve been wanting to do that myself.”

  The apartment consisted of a living room, bedroom, and bath. It was like many another hotel apartment, Tarot’s individuality having been impressed on it but little, though his profession was more or less in evidence. There were at least a dozen decks of playing cards lying about, and on one table several decks lay scattered in a jumbled heap. A queen of hearts looked down at us with her wide eyed stare from a curious position, resting quietly on the ceiling.

  Gavigan eyed the card, frowning, and Merlini explained: “That’s the trick in which a chosen card is shuffled back into the deck and the deck thrown against the ceiling. The cards fall in a shower, but the selected card remains sticking there. I’ll show you sometime.”

  Several red and green silk handkerchiefs and two or three steel hoops from a set of Linking Rings lay in one chair. On the floor near the bedroom door I saw a dress tie. And inside we found the dress clothes strewn about on the floor and on the bed. The monocle lay on the dresser.

  “Everything’s been left just as it was found,” Gavigan explained.

  Under my watchful eye, Gavigan and Merlini nosed about as if engaged in a game of Hunt the Thimble. The Inspector began investigating the contents of a desk in the living room. Merlini’s survey seemed aimless, but his quick eyes darted about, probing, scrutinizing. Finally he strolled into the bathroom and I followed. The towel with the make-up on it lay on the floor. Merlini examined it intently, then walked to the medicine cabinet and opened it. He regarded the contents briefly, started to close the door, and stopped.

  “That’s odd,” he said. He looked for a moment longer and then examined the ledge of the wash basin, which held a bar of soap and a tube of toothpaste without a cap. He got down on his knees and made a hasty but thorough search of the floor. He got up, a pucker between his brows, then silently turned and walked out.

  I opened the cabinet and took a look for myself. The contents consisted of shaving brush, shaving cream, a safety razor, a box of blades, several used blades lying loose, a box of aspirin, a bottle of shampoo, a mouth wash, Witch Hazel, a packet of flesh-colored sticking plaster, Mercurochrome, a jar of cold cream, and the stubby end of a styptic pencil. A toothbrush hung in a holder affixed to the inside of the cabinet door.

  I didn’t see anything particularly odd in that collection. Except for the cold cream, I had all those things in my own cabinet at home.

  I went after Merlini and found him in the bedroom, busily going through the drawers of Tarot’s dresser. Whatever it was he was looking for, I gathered from his expression that he was unsuccessful. He had just finished and was scowling thoughtfully at himself in the mirror when Gavigan let out a surprised snort that carried clear from the other room.

  “Listen to this,” he said as we came in. He held a bankbook and read from it, “May 27, 1935, $50,000.”

  “Hmmm,” Merlini said, “Sabbat deposits $50,000 and on the same day Tarot withdrew fifty—”

  “No,” Gavigan said excitedly, “He didn’t withdraw it. It’s a deposit.”

  “What!”

  “You heard me. I suppose there could be two people in New York City who would each deposit an even $50,000 on any one day, but if this deposit was made in cash too, then—”

  “The chances of its being a coincidence aren’t much,” Merlini finished.

  “And,” Gavigan added, “the chances that it’s blackmail are good.”

  “Obviously,” Merlini said. “But how do we connect that with the murders? None of our suspects are in any position to pay a blackmailer, or a couple of blackmailers, $100,000. Watrous is probably the wealthiest, and I’m sure that amount would have cleaned him out. What about the other entries? Tarot wasn’t stony like Sabbat, was he? According to Variety he’s been collecting almost a grand a week lately, with his radio acting and writing and his Rainbow Room engagement.”

  “No, he’s pretty well fixed, though not as well as he should be. He’s evidently dropped a good bit on the market. There are a flock of checks made out to Kneerim & Belding, Brokers. But he’s still a few thousand ahead of the game.”

  The Inspector picked up the phone and dialed. Sabbat’s number. He flicker through the pages of the bankbook interestedly as he waited.

  “Parker, this is Gavigan. Have you found any explanation of that fifty grand yet?…Well, keep at it. It gets queerer by the minute…You what? Who’s the beneficiary?…Mrs. Josef Vanek! Who the hell’s she?” Gavigan listened, and I gathered from his attitude that Parker had not been idle. Finally he told Parker to report to headquarters and have them get on it. Then he hung up and said, “Did you ever hear of Joseph Vanek and wife?”

  Merlini shook his head. “I haven’t had the pleasure. What did Parker find, a will?”

  “No, a life insurance policy for $75,000. And Josef Vanek’s handwriting, according to Parker, is identical with Sabbat’s. What do you think of that?”

  “Looks as if it might be a reason why no one seems to have heard of the man during his ten-year absence.”

  “Exactly. And when we locate Mrs. Vanek, maybe we’ll turn up something in the way of a motive.”

  Gavigan gathered up the check-and bankbooks, and we left the apartment. In the elevator he asked, “And did you find what you were looking for, Merlini?”

  “No,” Merlini answered, scowling at the back of the elevator operator’s neck. “But what’s worse, I didn’t find something I wasn’t looking for.”

  “All right, Hawkshaw,” Gavigan said, “but you won’t convince me you’re not an amateur detective until you stop trying to be cryptic.”

  “Trying to be cryptic?” Merlini said. “It is cryptic. So much so that I can see only one explanation, and that’s utterly fantastic.”

  “I can believe that. If you think it’s fantastic, it certainly must be. You can have it.”

  Chapter 21

  Dead End

  IT IS ALMOST AXIOMATIC that great detectives are fastidious gourmets. Merlini, when he selected his Smorgasbord, flew straight in the fact of tradition. He merely started at the nearest end of the table and worked around it to the left, gathering the hors d’oeuvres as he came to them with all the dainty discrimination of an automaton. Inspector Gavigan did no better, differing from Merlini only in preferring a counterclockwise route.

  They brought their heaping plates back to our table and began pecking at the food abstractedly. Before long Gavigan gave up even this pretence, and with his fork began drawing on the tablecloth a complex, interlocking design of squares and circles. After a bit he spoke, as much to himself as anyone else.

  “If we do find a talking machine,” he mused, “it would seem to let Jones out. He’d naturally be somewhere other than in front of that door when the thing began spouting. And yet, except for Duvallo, he had the best chance to set any such an arrangement. He lived there for some weeks, and he had a key to the house. Of course, one of the others might have had a duplicate made—” He grabbed at a passing waiter. “Where’s the phone in this place?” he demanded.

  As Gavigan bustled off, Merlini abstractedly began building a tower of sugar cubes, using a card house structure. It was five high when the Inspector came back and sat down grumpily. The sugar edifice toppled and collapsed.

  “I just had Malloy examine the lock on Duvallo’s front door,” Gavigan announced. “He found paraffin traces.” He scowled at his water glass. “Someone coated a blank with paraffin, put it in the keyhole, and turned it so that it touched the lock mechanism. The marks left by the points of contact served as a guide for filing the key to the proper sha
pe.”

  Merlini shook his head slightly as if to straighten out his thoughts. “Now,” he said, “that’s positively illuminating.”

  “In other words, you don’t know what the hell it means. Neither do I. It certainly doesn’t help eliminate anyone, except maybe Duvallo and Jones, who, having keys, wouldn’t need to make one.”

  “And our friend Surgat, who, though not having one, wouldn’t need one anyway.”

  “Merlini, you know these people. Which of them could have a motive for both murders?” asked the Inspector thoughtfully.

  “Well, Jones and Rappourt disclaim knowing Sabbat, while Watrous and Rappourt say they hadn’t previously met Tarot. Of the others, only the LaClaires have an obvious motive for killing Sabbat. I’m not au courant enough with Zelma’s sex life to know if Tarot figured in it too, but I wouldn’t say it was impossible.”

  “Tarot,” Gavigan said, “acted as if he had it in for Duvallo, and if that’s true the reverse is likely. Ching knew Sabbat better than the others and thus could have had more opportunity for acquiring a motive. Judy—”

  “Yes?” Merlini prompted.

  “Well, sex could rear its lovely head there. Sabbat might have made lecherous motions, and since she worked for Tarot—umm, he might have—”

  “You have a lewd mind, Inspector. He might have been blackmailing her because she’s the comely leader of a gang of dope runners, while Ching, a member of the Baluchistan Secret Service, is trying to steal from Greenland’s high command the blueprints of a collapsible submarine which Tarot had snitched from Sabbat, and was carrying sewn into the lining of his underpants. Now go on with the story.”

  “Say,” I wanted to know, “who’s writing this yarn, Oppenheim?”