Another shot from behind the curtains. Simultaneously all four curtains burst into flame, giving off a thick, black smoke. Through the smoke I could dimly see something ascending the rope. The fire died down an instant later and soon the air cleared. The curtains were gone. Dr Marlin and Mustapha were seen alone, at the base of the rope, staring up at Ali. With his white loin-cloth, shaved head, and brown skin clearly visible in the air, Ali was clinging to the top of the rope twenty feet above us.
Raising my camera, I took picture after picture.
Then – Dr Marlin raised his pistol and fired again. Instantly Ali vanished like a soap-bubble. All that was left was his white loincloth, which dropped to the pavement below. The rope still twisted and writhed above our heads for a few seconds more. Then it suddenly collapsed and fell to the concrete. Mustapha picked up the loin-cloth, turned and gave it to Dr Marlin, who handed it to my uncle. It was empty, and nowhere in the enclosed field was there any sign of the vanished Ali!
My mind was in a turmoil; I wondered if I could be crazy. I turned to my uncle for reassurance, but did not get it. He was as flabbergasted as I.
Dr Marlin suggested that we return to the house, and led the way, while my uncle and I followed with Mustapha. With an effort my uncle seemed to rouse himself as from a trance.
“I wouldn’t have believed it,” he said, “but we both must have been hypnotized. Thank God, you had your own camera. If your film shows nothing up in the air, we’ll know it was only an hallucination.”
“But suppose the film does show Ali at the top of the rope?”
“Then,” my uncle said grimly, “under the terms of my trust. I’m afraid I will have no choice. I will have to give Dr Marlin a draft on the University for $500,000.”
“It may have been a trick of some kind.” I suggested.
“How could it be? There couldn’t have been any mirrors used, and, anyway, you and I were on opposite sides of the pavement. It’s appalling!”
“Well, it isn’t your money,” I said.
“It’s worse than that, Jimmy. Everyone will believe what you mentioned before – that I gave Dr Marlin a false certificate that he made the demonstration.”
“But he did make it.” I said.
“Yes, but no one will believe it. Everybody will think that Dr Marlin bribed me with part of the reward. And why shouldn’t they think I was bribed? I’m not a rich man. They’ll say that Dr Marlin and I conspired together to ‘fake the film and split the cash.’ I’ll be expelled from my scientific societies, and will have to resign from the Board of Trustees. . . . Still, no doubt, when we develop your film we’ll see that the whole thing was only an hallucination – but, my God, what an hallucination!”
Dr Marlin led us past the house and down a steep path to the wharf. He picked up a robe and tossed it into a motor-boat. “Ali will be needing that,” he remarked. “As you noticed, I could transport Ali, but he had to leave his loin-cloth behind. The subject has to co-operate to be dematerialized. The power doesn’t extend to inanimate objects such as clothes.”
“Where is Ali now?” my uncle asked.
Dr Marlin pointed to the island about two miles away. “He has rematerialized over there. I thought it would make the demonstration more dramatic to transport him over water. As you see, the only boat is on this side. Shall we start?”
Mustapha took the wheel and we four set out for the Island. About half-way there, Mustapha gave a cry and pointed. Ahead was a dark figure struggling feebly in the water. As we almost reached it, it sank below the waves. Jerking off my coat and shoes I plunged in. Again and again I dived, but without success. I was almost exhausted when finally by luck. I reached the motionless figure. Grabbing an arm, I brought the body to the surface.
“My God, it’s Ali,” exclaimed my uncle as he and Mustapha lifted the nude figure into the boat. My uncle tried artificial respiration as Dr Marlin took the wheel and we headed back to the wharf. On shore, my uncle continued his efforts, but it was useless. Ali was dead.
Mustapha seemed stunned at the death of his son. Dr Marlin himself seemed shaken. “Poor Ali!” he said. “He must have made some error in concentration. He rematerialized too soon, before he reached the island, and fell in the water. I blame myself! But we never had any trouble before. If only he could have kept afloat a little longer . . .”
Then, with an abrupt return to his old manner, Dr Marlin said, “But, Mr Dobbs, this tragic accident doesn’t affect the result of my demonstration. Here is an ink-pad and some paper. I suggest that you take the finger-prints of the corpse and compare them with those in your pocket.”
My uncle seemed taken aback for a moment, but he complied, while Dr Marlin took me to the house for some dry clothes. On my return my uncle was putting his magnifying-glass back in his pocket. “There isn’t any doubt,” he said. “The two sets of prints are identical.”
“Yes,” said Dr Marlin, “Now, I suggest that you two gentlemen retire to the dark-room in the house to develop your pictures, while I telephone the police about the accident. When you have examined the films, come out on the verandah. We will all have a drink together, and then, Mr Dobbs, I shall be most happy to receive your cheque for $500,000!”
It would have been more decent, I thought to wait at least until Ali’s dead body had been taken away, but my uncle disagreed and we retired to the dark-room. My hands were shaking as I put my film in the developer.
As the image appeared, I gave a shudder. In the dim red light we saw the rope extending twenty feet in the air with Ali clinging to the top. We printed enlargements, and when they were fixed my uncle turned on the light and examined them with his glass. “It’s Ali, all right,” he said. “What we saw, Jimmy, wasn’t any hallucination.”
We went out to the veranda. I gave a loud cry and my stomach turned over. There at the top of the cliff in a pool of blood lay Dr Clive Marlin, stabbed to death and with a knife in his heart.
I was nearly overcome with the succession of shocks. For an instant so was my uncle, but he drew himself together. Glancing at his watch, he took out a notebook. “One ten p.m.” he said. “I’d better write it down.”
I looked at my own watch. “It’s 1.15,” I said; “your watch must have stopped.”
“No, it’s still going. Didn’t the water affect your watch, Jimmy?”
“No, it’s waterproof, and, anyway, water wouldn’t make a watch run faster.”
Just then a police car, followed by the hearse for Ali, drove up. Two police got out, stiffened as they saw the body of Dr Marlin, then turned to stare at us.
An hour later, after the police had been reinforced by their superior officers, my uncle and I were summoned to a room in the house, where a police inspector and his sergeant were questioning Mustapha and Juan, the overseer. As we entered I gasped, for Mustapha, who supposedly spoke only Hindustani, was, in fluent Spanish, pouring out a flood of accusations against my uncle and me.
According to him we were desperate criminals who had not hesitated to murder Dr Marlin when he demanded the reward for demonstrating the Indian rope trick. “They want the five hundred thousand dollars for themselves!” he shouted. “They didn’t know I understand English. I heard them talking about it on the way to the wharf!”
With horror I remembered my uncle’s conversation. The police looked ominous, and I remembered stories of accused persons in Latin America who had not been held for trial, but who had been shot out-of-hand “while attempting to escape”.
But my uncle remained cool, and said in Spanish. “Inspector, before we do anything else, let us find out the correct time.” The police, puzzled but courteous, compared watches, and we found that my uncle’s and mine were both fast – his by seven minutes and mine my twelve. “I thought so,” he said to me.
Turning to the police he said, “My nephew and I were developing pictures when Dr Marlin was killed. Unless one of the workmen did it, the only person who could have killed him was this man – Mustapha!”
; Juan broke in, “But, Señor, I and all my men were working together, by Dr Marlin’s orders, at the far side of the house. We saw this man – Mustapha – the entire time seated in his upstairs room. We could see him through the window.”
“I don’t doubt it,” my uncle said, “but Mustapha could have been in two places at the same time.”
“Surely you don’t think he left his astral body upstairs for an alibi while he went down to the cliff to kill Dr Marlin?” I asked.
“Something of the sort, Jimmy . . . Inspector, I suggest that we search this man’s room at once.”
Mustapha objected vehemently, but was overruled. In the room my uncle’s eyes fell on a closed door. It was locked, and Mustapha insisted that he had lost the key; but the police soon forced the door open. I gasped, for seated on the floor of a small closet was Mustapha.
My uncle gave a tug, and the figure collapsed like an over-sized doll. “A very fine dummy,” my uncle said as he parted the clothes at the back. “See, the figure is entirely hollow. Clever but not quite original. Walter Gibson reports that Houdini designed a similar hollow dummy for one of his illusions shortly before he died.”
Turning to the dejected Mustapha, my uncle said with authority, “Your only chance is to tell the truth! Isn’t this what happened? You killed Dr Marlin in self-defence when he tried to kill you because you knew that he had murdered Ali!”
Mustapha started and nodded vigorously, “As God is my witness, that is the truth! . . . But how did you know?”
“I missed it at the time, but Dr Marlin made a slip when we were taking the finger-prints. He said, ‘You may think that Ali had a twin brother?’ Already, before the demonstration, Dr Marlin was thinking of Ali in the past tense.”
“But, Señor Dobbs,” the police inspector objected, “how could Dr Marlin have murdered this Ali? Do you believe in magic?”
“There was no magic at all, Inspector. The whole rope trick was only a ‘stage illusion,’ but quite an elaborate one. But Dr Marlin made one mistake. He forgot about the watches. When I learned that Jimmy’s watch and mine had suddenly become erratic, I guessed part of the truth.”
“How so, Señor Dobbs?”
“I’ll start at the beginning and describe what I think happened,” my uncle replied. “Mustapha can correct me if I go wrong on details. But let’s go and sit on the veranda, as this will take some time.”
On the veranda my uncle resumed, “There are really two parts to the Indian Rope Trick-both universally considered impossible. The first is to make a rope rise miraculously in the air. The second is to make the boy suddenly disappear from the top and have him reappear at a distant spot.
“There can be no doubt that this morning something like a rope really did rise in the air – the photographs prove it. Now, there is no way to make a rope do that, but this ‘rope’ must have had as a core either a wire or chain of magnetic metal. Isn’t that so Mustapha?”
Receiving a nod, my uncle continued, “The fact that both Jimmy’s watch and mine behaved erratically could mean only one thing – that they had been exposed to a strong magnetic field and had become magnetized. This gave me the clue. As you know, while opposite poles of a magnet attract each other, similar poles repel each other with equal force. I remember at the exposition in San Francisco in 1939 seeing an exhibit where a metal bowl was made to float in the air by a powerful electro-magnetic field underneath. Later I read that mediums used this method to make metal tables rise from the floor during fake seances. Perhaps Dr Marlin first got his idea there.”
Mustapha nodded again, as my uncle continued, “Dr Marlin made his ‘rope’ a chain or wire of highly magnetized metal covered with a thin layer of hemp. Under the ground in the field he had built a very large system of electro-magnets designed to project a cone of force. When the current was turned on magnetic repulsion raised the ‘rope’ above the ground as if by magic.”
“But, Uncle Edward,” I objected, “if it’s as easy as that, why hasn’t someone done it before?”
“It’s far from easy, Jimmy. As the ‘rope’ rises above the ground, the magnetic force diminishes very rapidly. To raise a ‘rope’ twenty feet takes something like a baby cyclotron. Making one would take years of work and cost a small fortune.”
“Three years and fifty thousand dollars,” Mustapha broke in. “At least so Dr Marlin told me. But the reward was enormous.”
“But what happened to Ali; how did he vanish from the top of the rope?” I asked.
“Let’s take things in order,” my uncle said. “When we arrived yesterday, Dr Marlin took us to the field to watch the pouring of the concrete. The real reason for the pavement was to keep us from digging later and finding the electro-magnets. Dr Marlin also introduced us to his two assistants, supposedly from India. Where do you really come from, Mustapha?”
“From Mexico City, Señor. Ali and I have had a Hindu act for some time.”
“You might have chosen better names,” said my uncle.” ‘Mustapha’ and ‘Ali’ sound more like Mohammedans than Hindus . . . To come to this morning. At the start of the demonstration Mustapha, Ali, and Dr Marlin were all present on the pavement. But that was the last time the three were really together until we found Ali in the water.
“Dr Marlin ‘forgot’ his ink-pad, and we three, with Ali, went to the laboratory to take the finger-prints. As soon as we had left, Mustapha produced the hollow dummy of himself from some hiding-place nearby (perhaps in the hedge) and arranged it in a sitting position on the pavement. Leaving it there, he, himself, ran up to the house.
“When we came back from the laboratory we never doubted that the dummy was Mustapha. (But remember, Jimmy, ‘Mustapha never moved’ when you gave that loud sneeze.) Dr Marlin and Ali rejoined ‘him’ on the pavement and closed all four curtains.
“Then Dr Marlin ‘discovered’ that the rope was ‘defective’ and sent ‘Mustapha’ for another one. What really happened was that the hollow dummy was placed on the cycle, and Ali crept inside it, came through the curtains and rode rapidly up to the house in the semblance of Mustapha. He had no trouble balancing on the tricycle; all he had to do was to sit still and steer. We never doubted that Ali was still behind the curtains, but, really, at that time Dr Marlin was there alone.
“When Ali reached the house, out of our sight, he emerged from the dummy, took it upstairs and hid it; while the real Mustapha walked back to the field, to give Ali more time, and ‘returned’ to us with another rope.”
“But,” I objected, “we saw Ali at the top of the rope.”
“No, Jimmy, we only thought we did. After the real Mustapha rejoined Dr Marlin behind the curtains, he started a chanting wail while Dr Marlin pressed a concealed switch – probably in one of the iron rods. This turned on the electro-magnets underneath and, as if by magic, the ‘rope’ rose in the air.
“Then either Dr Marlin or Mustapha brought from his pocket a collapsed rubber dummy which, when inflated, was an exact life-sized replica of Ali. Incidentally, that was why Ali had to shave his head. Hair would be hard to imitate, but the rubber looked just like dark skin.
“Instead of using air, Dr Marlin inflated the rubber dummy with helium. I don’t know just how; did you have a small cylinder of it under your robe, Mustapha?”
“No, Señor, the helium was under pressure in a tank beneath the concrete. One of the iron rods was really a pipe with a concealed nozzle. It took only an instant to inflate the dummy, which looked exactly like Ali. Dr Marlin paid three thousand dollars to have it made by an expert in magical supplies in Mexico City.”
“Next,” continued my uncle, “Dr Marlin placed a loin-cloth on the figure to weigh it down in position, and attached the dummy with dark threads to the bottom of the ‘rope’. Then he fired a blank cartridge, set fire to the curtains, and under cover of the dense smoke the released dummy, filled with helium and exactly weighted with a light ballast, rose to the top of the ‘rope,’ where the large knot prevented it from going higher. You m
ust have used a very light loin-cloth, Mustapha?”
“Made of paper, Señor.”
“I see. That instant must have been the trickiest part of the whole illusion. We might notice that ‘Ali’ was rising, not climbing. But the dense smoke and the thrashing about of the ‘rope’ – caused by slight magnetic variations-entirely deceived us. Then, too, our critical faculties had just been almost paralysed by the miraculous rising of the ‘rope.’ After that we were in a state to see and believe almost anything. I don’t say we would have been fooled a second time, but Dr Marlin only had to make the demonstration once.”
“It certainly fooled me,” I said.
“No more than me, Jimmy. Next the smoke cleared, and in the air above us we saw ‘Ali’ at the top of the rope – not for long, but long enough to take photographs. Then Dr Marlin raised his pistol; but this time, instead of a blank he fired a real bullet, which pierced the dummy. The dummy instantly collapsed, and the shrunken rubber was drawn back inside the loin-cloth where we couldn’t see it as it fell to the ground. Ali had vanished before our eyes! What happened to the paper loin-cloth, Mustapha?”
“I picked it up, Señor, and by sleight-of-hand exchanged it for a real one I had under my robe. I gave the real one to Dr Marlin, who handed it to you.”
The police inspector broke in, “All this is most interesting, Señor Dobbs, but what about the murder?”
“We will come to that in a minute. The plan was that after the demonstration we should find Ali on the island-rematerialized there by magic-or rather by supra-normal powers. Apparently the only boat was still on this side, but there must have been another one hidden. Did it have a silent engine, Mustapha?”
The Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes & Impossible Mysteries Page 23
