The Black Lizard Big Book of Locked-Room Mysteries

by Otto Penzler

  “Ah—here’s where the hell-hound lurked—eh? Cover those marks over very carefully,” Brantyngham ordered; “I want them to hang a man—or a beast—I really cannot tell which.”

  … The Superintendent now began to tell us that the police theory was that the unfortunate Lorrequier had been shot at from behind the gates—from the road.

  “What? Shot at from the road, in the dark? A hell of an expert marksman would be required. And how is a man facing that house to be shot in the forehead by another, hidden fifty yards away behind his back? Use your commonsense, please!”

  Then I saw Brantyngham put his head in the air and sniff, as a hound does. His mood changed; his voice softened and his eyes opened wider. Quite quietly and gently he asked:

  “You have rather extensive moors hereabouts, have you not? There’s a smell of peat and ling in the air.”

  “Can’t say that I notice it much,” growled the officer; “got something else to do but sniff at wind.”

  Brantyngham chuckled. “But you see, Superintendent, I am also doing things. For instance, I’m helping to hang that man I was telling you about—partly by that smelling of air! Tell me, there are moors near at hand, and mines and quarries, are there not?”

  He was told that he judged rightly.

  “And I gather that your water supply comes off those moors?”

  “It does—worse luck; gives people ‘Derbyshire neck,’ they do say.”

  My heart leapt; here was a connection indeed! Here was that place for which Sir Richard had sought. Here was the reason for our mysterious advent into the Peak district.

  “Sphagnum moss … plenty of that; can smell iodine in the air.”

  “Aye—that’s t’main cause, they say—that and water that runs from the galena-ore in the limestone.”

  “And now you can give me details of all found on Lorrequier’s person … and tell me all that you know of the tenant of that house.”

  The Superintendent did as he was bade … told us about the wallet of keys and the coins; then, referring to the tenant:

  “He calls himself Charles Dixon now. Once we had him registered as an alien: a Hungarian, and he was named Zickel—Pether Zickel. He’s naturalised and as wealthy as needs be. Retired broker, I’m told, with a turn for inventing things. Anyway he has a laboratory, as he calls it, into which he never allows anyone to set foot—all his servants are local folk; they talk, y’know. Makes a lot of trips to London, he does. Up to some six weeks ago he stayed in Town for weeks.”

  “And he’s a shuffling fellow with red-rimmed eyes and prominent teeth—broken and yellow teeth; dark eyes; Jewish looking?”

  “Aye—that’s right,” the officer agreed. “B’gow, but y’ve got him to a ‘T’ … and he is a Jew—a Hungarian Jew, now you mention it!”

  “Thank you—we’ll go up to the house and have a talk with him.”

  VI

  We entered the warm wide hall of Danton Lodge. “Dixon” invited us from it to a room, but Brantyngham curtly refused. He would stay in the hall, he said; and stay he did—his careful eyes taking note of all therein.

  “The dead man, Lorrequier—he was a friend of yours?”

  “Vell, not vat you would call ein vriend.”

  “Surely not an enemy?”

  “Dixon” twitched and drew back.

  “Ach nein! … Vell, then, ein vriend.”

  “Did you expect his visit to you to-night?”

  “No, he was callin’ all on his owns.”

  “A regular habit with him—eh?”

  “Ach, no! No ’abit at all—nein.”

  “Not a great friend of yours, nor yet an enemy?”

  “So!”

  “An acquaintance, unexpected?”

  “Right; an ackvaintance—ja!”

  “Do you usually allow your acquaintances to carry on their persons a private key to your well-locked and walled demesne, Mr. Dixon?”

  The man shrank a little, but laughed, easily.

  “If this Lorrequier ’ad ein key ’e gotten it vrom som’vher I not know.”

  “Um—but that lock on your gate is very subtle in its wards, Mr. Dixon. I really think you must be forgetting—yes, forgetting. Hardly anyone could make a duplicate for such a piece of work, or get hold of one without the knowledge of the man who brought that lock.” He yawned. “However, let that pass, Mr. Dixon … not your right name, by the way?”

  “My right nom—Yes! Why not it? I am ein natralised Englishman, sir!”

  “A Jewish Hungarian, I believe—from Central Hungary?”

  “Vas—why you damn’ vell ask?”

  “Oh, I was just taking an interest in these beautiful rams’ horns and these fleeces—wonderful things—you use as ornaments and rugs in this hall.” He negligently waved around. “Rather out-of-the-way specimens—what? D’you know the Hungarian sheep is by way of being almost a noble animal! Semi-wild, too.”

  “Ach so; verry ’ard to control.… But, hell, ya not gome to me to talk about sheeps—hein?”

  “And of course the wolves, that are always nosing about the flocks on the Hungarian plains, take pretty hefty toll of their numbers—eh?”

  “Ja, d’ volves do—ja!”

  “And that fact necessitates the shepherds taking strange precautions”—I saw a sudden film come over the man’s brilliant eyes, like the veiling of the orbs of a fowl, and there was a change in his face, as though slowly-pouring mud was silting down behind his yellowish skin—“to guard their flocks. I suppose they have eyes like eagles, yet even so they must find it very difficult to penetrate the rising clouds of dust that the sheep set up.… Again, for all the flatness of the plains, and the keenness of their keepers’ vision—it would be almost impossible to tell over an enormous flock without the shepherds used—Ah, grab him there—Get the devil—!”

  They shackled Pether Zickel, alias Dixon, alias Zweiterbach, and formally charged him on the dual points of murder and attempted murder: of Lorrequier and of Greenwood.

  Then: “By the way, Zickel”—Brantyngham slurred the cruel words—“you didn’t let me finish my little chat about telling over the flocks of Hungarian sheep; impossible, without overlooking them, above the dust-clouds they raise—impossible, without the shepherds use … stilts!”

  VII

  Two days after Pether Zickel was hanged I went around to Bellington Square to see Brantyngham. Harry Greenwood was making slow progress and his account of the affair was all in the Third Service Chief’s possession. From it I can knit together the remainder to be told.

  It appears that Greenwood met Zickel at the Patents Office when the first-named was registering the designs of a gold-casting machine for dental work, and the Hungarian was protecting a new kind of refrigerating plant. Dentists, Greenwood told Zickel, have always needed a machine to cast molten gold into the form of plates to cover the human palate—so perfectly cast as to reproduce every tiniest line and contour of the palate … from wax impressions. Several casting machines were already on the market; but Greenwood swore that his would oust them. It would cast a hair in gold—a butterfly’s wing; a flower petal. And he proved it by exhibiting specimens of such casting.

  The evil brain of Zickel saw certain possibilities. He mentioned them, and Greenwood unfortunately fell in with the scheme. Now enters Lorrequier, a marvellous artist and an expert numismatist. He had a “students’ permit” allowing him, in certain foreign museums and so on, to handle, examine and take detailed notes and drawings of the world’s richest treasures in ancient gold-work. From the time of Zickel’s employment of him he no longer took drawn copies and notes—he took waxen impressions. These Greenwood cast in his machine … and when next Lorrequier visited a museum to examine pieces, he substituted the miraculously exact fraud for the real treasure.

  But after a while, when half the European centres had been so denuded of their priceless pieces, Greenwood’s conscience began to prick. Zickel would not allow him to indulge his expensive tastes lest su
spicion should be aroused, and here again was cause for disorder. And as Zickel took the lion’s share of all monies accruing from the secret sale of the stolen pieces, in the United States, there arose more cause.

  By some means Greenwood heard of Sir Richard Brantyngham, and evidently got it into his head that here was some kind of a private detective—instead of knowing he was wishing to deal with the head of a Department of State Intelligence. He determined on consulting Sir Richard, and fell in love with the little Sugden girl. But Zickel, getting wind of his plan, was forever on the watch. Each night he was there in the gardens of Bellington Square watching from his collapsible stilts, high among the branches of the plane trees. And those stilts functioned for him as do the stilts of the Hungarian sheep-watchers—they not only supported his legs, but also had a third stilt that could be used as a shooting stick is used. High in the air, comfortably seated, as a shepherd sits all day out on the Hungarian plains, he watched and waited … not wanting to kill Greenwood unless there was grim cause. Greenwood’s telling Mary Sugden that he was no longer going to take her advice and intended to see Sir Richard—overheard by the sinister Zickel, lurking just across the narrow road—meant death to him.

  Zickel grabbed Greenwood’s hat, in which the plans of the casting machine were always concealed, struck his death-dealing blow … pulled his stilts up after him into the tree, and sat there, grinning, no doubt, at the futility of the police searchers. But overhearing and overseeing all that went on, he realised that Greenwood would have a chance to recover; hence his cursing and his shivering as he made off in the taxi, long after all had quieted down … after he had flung away the hat.

  And now Lorrequier, returning to England with more waxen models, would surely hear of the crime—put two and two together and condemn. Lorrequier had also to die … and he did. The second time, Zickel made no mistake. He straddled there above the dark and snow-covered road and just shot down on the walker’s head.…

  Sir Richard had argued stilts, from the beginning, after thinking about that isosceles triangle in the garden. The ice nodules directed him to look for a place where mining and moors ran together; recognised in the analysis the composition of minerals and salts that give rise to “Derbyshire neck,” and acted accordingly. Then the ice on Zickel’s clothing, that night … as it had not melted, he assumed that it was not frozen water—but frozen air, an intensely colder matter.

  Zickel had intended his patent refrigerating plant to make use of this principle. He killed with it instead. All was done simply: he contrived a brazen cylinder, like a fire-extinguisher or a miniature pneumatic drill, such as they employ to break up concrete, and instead of a charge of air—compressed and hot—he charged up with compressed liquid air—compressed and intensely cold. He had a barrel in this thing: as the true barrel in a machine-gun’s outer coil. In that barrel was a spicule of frozen water, an icicle like a barb.

  Discharging the novel weapon, he flashed down that frozen bolt on his victims. The contact of the liquid air with ordinary air produced the simulation of a human scream; the “shot” sound was the mark of its sudden release—as of fulminated gun-powder bursting to gas. And the mist of frozen air plated the very cloth he wore, and his beard, with ice that would not melt for hours, so cold was it … frozen air.

  All things considered, my old chief did not make to Inspector Templeton any statement that over-rode subsequent fact; and all things told, I do not think he enjoyed a problem more.

  THE DAY THE CHILDREN VANISHED

  THE BEST-KNOWN pseudonym of the prolific mystery novelist and short-story writer Judson Philips (1903–1989) is Hugh Pentecost, taken from a great-uncle who was a noted criminal lawyer in New York at the turn of the last century. The author’s other pseudonym, Philip Owen, was also borrowed from a relative. Although Philips wrote thirty novels and more than a hundred stories under his own name, the Pentecost pseudonym became better known and many of his earlier stories were reprinted under that more familiar name.

  Born in Massachusetts, the author’s family traveled extensively when he was young and he was educated in England before returning to get his AB degree from Columbia University in 1925. Selling his first story while still in school, he became a full-time writer for the rest of his life, even when suffering from emphysema and near blindness in later years. He was one of the founders of the Mystery Writers of America, became its third president, and was honored with the Grand Master Award for lifetime achievement in 1973.

  “The Day the Children Vanished” became part of newspaper headlines when a California school bus was hijacked in July 1976 and the FBI was alerted to the Pentecost short story. It became abundantly clear that the kidnappers had no knowledge of the story, but the publicity garnered with the appearance of life following art resulted in Pentecost expanding the plot into a full-length novel of the same title, rushed into print later in the same year of the crime.

  “The Day the Children Vanished” was first published in This Week magazine in 1958.

  HUGH PENTECOST

  ON A BRIGHT, clear winter’s afternoon the nine children in the town of Clayton who traveled each day to the Regional School in Lakeview disappeared from the face of the earth, along with the bus in which they traveled and its driver, as completely as if they had been sucked up into outer space by some monstrous interplanetary vacuum cleaner.

  Actually, in the time of hysteria which followed the disappearance, this theory was put forward by some distraught citizen of Clayton, and not a few people, completely stumped for an explanation, gave consideration to it.

  There was, of course, nothing interplanetary or supernatural about the disappearance of nine children, one adult, and a special-bodied station wagon which was used as a school bus. It was the result of callous human villainy. But, because there was no possible explanation for it, it assumed all the aspects of black magic in the minds of tortured parents and a bewildered citizenry.

  Clayton is seven miles from Lakeview. Clayton is a rapidly growing quarry town. Lakeview, considerably larger and with a long history of planning for growth, recently built a new school. It was agreed between the boards of education of the two towns that nine children living at the east end of Clayton should be sent to the Lakeview School where there was adequate space and teaching staff. It was to be just a temporary expedient.

  Since there were only nine children, they did not send one of the big, forty-eight passenger school buses to get them. A nine-passenger station wagon was acquired, properly painted and marked as a school bus, and Jerry Mahoney, a mechanic in the East Clayton Garage, was hired to make the two trips each day with the children.

  Jerry Mahoney was well liked and respected. He had been a mechanic in the Air Force during his tour of duty in the armed services. He was a wizard with engines. He was engaged to be married to Elizabeth Deering, who worked in the Clayton Bank and was one of Clayton’s choice picks. They were both nice people, responsible people.

  The disappearance of the station wagon, the nine children, and Jerry Mahoney took place on a two-mile stretch of road where disappearance was impossible. It was called the “dugway,” and it wound along the side of the lake. Heavy wire guard rails protected the road from the lake for the full two miles. There was not a gap in it anywhere.

  The ground on the other side of the road rose abruptly upward into thousands of acres of mountain woodlands, so thickly grown that not even a tractor could have made its way up any part of it except for a few yards of deserted road that led to an abandoned quarry. Even over this old road nothing could have passed without leaving a trail of torn brush and broken saplings.

  At the Lakeview end of the dugway was a filling station owned by old Jake Nugent. On the afternoon of the disappearance the bus, with Jerry Mahoney at the wheel and his carload of kids laughing and shouting at each other, stopped at old man Nugent’s. Jerry Mahoney had brought the old man a special delivery letter from the post office, thus saving the RFD driver from making a special trip. Jerry and
old Jake exchanged greetings, the old man signed the receipt for his letter—which was from his son in Chicago asking for a loan of fifty dollars—and Jerry drove off into the dugway with his cargo of kids.

  At the Clayton end of the dugway was Joe Gorman’s Diner, and one of the children in Jerry’s bus was Peter Gorman, Joe’s son. The diner was Jerry’s first stop coming out of the dugway with his cargo of kids.

  It was four-thirty in the afternoon when Joe Gorman realized that the bus was nearly three-quarters of an hour late. Worried, he called the school in Lakeview and was told by Miss Bromfield, the principal, that the bus had left on schedule.

  “He may have had a flat or something,” Miss Bromfield suggested.

  This was one of seven calls Miss Bromfield was to get in the next half hour, all inquiring about the bus. Nine children; seven families.

  Joe Gorman was the first to do anything about it seriously. He called Jake Nugent’s filling station to ask about the bus, and Old Jake told him it had gone through from his place on schedule. So something had happened to Jerry and his busload of kids in the dugway. Joe got out his jeep and headed through the dugway toward Lakeview. He got all the way to Jake Nugent’s without seeing the bus or passing anyone coming the other way.

  Jake Nugent was a shrewd old gent, in complete possession of all his faculties. He didn’t drink. When he said he had seen the bus—that it had stopped to deliver him his letter—and that he had watched it drive off into the dugway, you had to believe it. Cold sweat broke out on Joe Gorman’s face as he listened. The dugway had a tendency to be icy. He had noticed coming over that it hadn’t been sanded. Joe hadn’t been looking for a major tragedy. But if the bus had skidded, gone through the guard rail …