Death from Nowhere

by Clayton Rawson

  Church interrupted disgustedly, “He’s at it again! Another pipedream coming up. First it was tight-wire walkers, then leopards, and now God knows what! You can save it for the D.A. I’ve had enough. Put the bracelets on him, Brophy.”

  Don Diavolo held out his hands. The lieutenant linked his own right wrist to the magician’s left, and then the Inspector’s left, to the magician’s right. Church took a .45 from his shoulder holster. He flipped the safety catch so that it was ready for action. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  CHAPTER VIII

  The Great Elevator Trick

  INSPECTOR Church and Lieutenant Brophy, with Don Diavolo sandwiched between them, moved together like Siamese triplets. As they came out into the anteroom, the magician noted three things, minor details which, if they meant what he hoped, might yet give the Inspector an unwelcome surprise. Woody Haines had disappeared again. He had left his gray hat conveniently on the corner of Miss Skinner’s desk where Don, in passing, could reach it. And he had taken Don’s own brown hat with him.

  Diavolo snagged the hat as they passed the desk and put it on. Brophy, seeing nothing suspicious in so innocent an action and not knowing that it wasn’t Don’s hat, lifted his arm so that Don could place it on his head.

  The elevator Branner had ordered waited for them in the corridor. As they stepped in, Church spoke to the boy who operated it. “Phone in this car?”

  The operator nodded, “Yes sir.”

  “Good. Let’s have it.”

  The Inspector spoke to the starter in the lobby. “I want you to keep your ear glued to this phone. And stand ready to cut the power on these cars immediately if I give you the word. Can you do that? … Good.” He turned to the operator. “Take her down.”

  Church was taking no chances at all. He had previously had a demonstration or two of Don Diavolo’s ability to vanish into thin air at just those times when the Inspector wanted him most. He knew very well that this time, with a murder rap hanging over his head, Diavolo would be more anxious than ever to give another such exhibition at the slightest opportunity. The Inspector wasn’t going to give him any encouragement if he could help it.

  One little thing upset the Inspector’s calculations. It happened when they reached the ground floor and the operator threw back the doors. Woody Haines, on Diavolo’s promise of an even bigger and completely exclusive story to come, had informed every city desk in town that murder had occurred in the Emperor Theater Building. He had not told them in just what office, but he had left the impression that their informant was Lieutenant Brophy and that Inspector Church was about to give out a press release in the lobby.

  That was why, as they stepped out of the car on the main floor, they encountered a ravenous horde of reporters and photographers. This sudden diversion surprised the Inspector just enough that he forgot for one brief moment that he’d sworn not to take his eyes off his captive. That moment was enough.

  The magician had already, during their descent, manipulated the handcuffs so that the ratchets were loose around his wrist. He merely needed to withdraw his wrists to be freed of them. Don Diavolo’s practiced, lightning-fast fingers had made quick work of the handcuff diddle. Of the one hundred and more cuffs in his private collection he had familiarized himself and practiced most with the current regulation police cuff.

  Now, as Church and Brophy met the charge of the newspaper brigade, Don Diavolo shed the cuffs instantly and eased swiftly back into the elevator. He whirled on the elevator boy, gripped his shoulders and threw him from the car. The boy collided jarringly with Church’s and Brophy’s backs. Simultaneously the elevator doors clanged shut!

  Don Diavolo pulled over the lever that would set the car in motion, but Church outside, after one small flabbergasted second of delay when he saw the cuff dangling empty from his wrist, was too quick.

  His voice thundered at the elevator starter. “Throw that switch!”

  The starter, warned that he might get such a command, had his hand already on it; he jammed it down.

  The elevator had risen less than two feet when it stopped dead.

  The Inspector and Brophy threw themselves at the closed door. Elevator doors aren’t made to open easily from the outside. The detectives discovered at once that this one wouldn’t open at all. Don Diavolo, pushing upward on the inner lever as he was obviously doing, could with his advantage resist the efforts of half a dozen men.

  Then his voice came out to them through the closed door. “Calm down, Inspector. You can come in in just a moment. That is, you can if you’ll make a deal. It happens that I did not commit any murders this afternoon, or any other time. I know now how the real murderer did escape from that room upstairs. I have a darned good notion as to the identity of that second body. I’ll trade you that information for—”

  “You’ll trade me nothing!” Church howled. “You’re still cornered and you know it. You’re in no position to bargain with anybody. Come on out of there and make it snappy!”

  Diavolo’s voice, unhurried, continued calmly. “I’ll trade you that information for twenty-four hours time in which to clear myself. There was another clue upstairs, one that you didn’t pay enough attention to, one that may lead us right to the real murderer. But it’s only a clue, not proof. Give me twenty-four hours to get that proof and—”

  “I’ll give you solitary confinement! Open up this door!”

  “That’s your final answer?” Diavolo asked. “Better think it over. Because if you refuse, those photographers out there may get some pictures that you won’t want to see in the papers tonight.”

  “Brophy,” Church ordered. “Get a crowbar. He can’t hold that door if we get enough leverage to—”

  Don’s voice cut him short. “Don’t go, Brophy. I’ll let you in. You may open the door when I count three. Ready? One …”

  Church yanked at the door.

  “Hold it, Inspector,” Don’s voice said. “Don’t be impatient. Stand back!”

  Church stopped trying to force the door, but he held his gun ready. “Okay,” he said. “And remember I’ve got you covered.”

  “the magician’s voice came. “That’s what you think, Inspector. Maybe now you’ll believe that someone could have vanished from Hagenbaugh’s office. Two,” Three!”

  Church and Brophy pulled at the door. It slid open. Behind them the reporters pressed forward. A dozen flashbulbs exploded simultaneously.

  The pictures in the paper that night showed Inspector Church and Lieutenant Brophy of the New York Homicide Squad staring at the interior of any empty elevator.

  Their quarry, the man whose voice had issued from within the car only a second before, was no longer there!

  CHAPTER IX

  The Leopard Man

  THERE are four exits from the Emperor Theater Building. You may go out from the lobby where the elevators are, through the main doors to Broadway. The fire stairs and freight elevator in the rear will lead you to a service exit on 43rd Street. And, if you really know your way around, it is possible to get from the business office portion of the building directly into the Emperor Theater itself, and thence to 44th Street via the stage door or to Broadway through the theater lobby.

  Church’s men, several at each door, carefully scrutinized every person that entered or left the building. They had been doing that for the last hour.

  Now, when they heard the shrill sound of Lieutenant Brophy’s police whistle, they sprang immediately into action on a prearranged plan. All the doors swung shut. Every bit of traffic into or out of the building was completely suspended. Mayor LaGuardia himself would have experienced difficulty in penetrating that guard— at least until after Inspector Church himself had investigated to make sure that he was not Don Diavolo in disguise.

  J. Haywood Haines eyed these precautions with some amusement. The police weren’t exactly locking the barn after the horse was stolen because Don Diavolo was still within the building — but Woody was afraid that their actions were not going
to have much more effect.

  He was beginning to understand why the magician had told him to wait at the curbside directly before the marquee of the Emperor Theater in a Skyview Taxi. The Skyview Transportation Company’s cabs are designed to satisfy the visiting fireman’s desire to crane his neck at New York’s towering skyscrapers. Their roofs, above the back seat, contain a rectangular opening covered in winter by a glass panel. In the summertime, these panels may be moved back.

  The one above Woody’s head was open and waiting.

  It was three minutes after the Inspector had stared into an empty elevator and some two minutes after the doors had been closed that Don Diavolo ran out on the theater’s marquee and dropped off its end, straight into the taxi at Woody’s side.

  The cab driver threw in his clutch and the Skyview Taxi moved out on to Broadway and was lost in its ever flowing stream of traffic.

  “You see, Woody,” Diavolo grinned. “Those other boys you tipped off get the story of The Great Elevator Mystery. But you, in exchange for your invaluable aid, get the inside story of how it was managed. Crime pays.”

  “There’s a phone at the next corner,” the reporter replied. “Let’s have it. I let all the other papers in town in on my scoop. I got a ten-foot length of piano wire from that theatrical supply house on 45th. I coiled it neatly inside my gray hat and then dashed back upstairs and switched my hat for yours. I had this cab, parked as ordered, open at the top and raring to go. But how did you shake Church & Company?”

  “I vanished from a locked elevator,” Diavolo replied. “But one other thing first. Have you gone in for mindreading? How did you happen to arrive when you did? Church grabbed the phone out of my hand before I could tell your office where I was.”

  “Elementary, my dear Sherlock,” Woody answered. “They said you’d called. I phoned Chan. He said you’d gone to see Hagenbaugh. So that seemed a likely place to look. “What do you mean you vanished from an elevator?”

  “I was handcuffed between Church and Brophy,” Diavolo explained. “That wasn’t too tough. I had to get out of regulation police cuffs six times a day when I was working that escape routine on the R.K.O. circuit two years ago. I had that licked by the time we reached the lobby.

  “Then, when your colleagues made a wild dash for us, they diverted the Inspector’s eagle eye for a moment and I backed into the elevator again, threw the operator out, and slammed the door. I looped the wire you concealed in the hat around the lever that operates the door and tied it to that decorative grille-work in the car’s top. That kept the door closed so I could use both hands to vanish. You see?”

  Woody scowled at him. “You know darned well I don’t. Get on with it. And don’t tell me you needed your hands to make mystic passes or that you crawled into a hole and pulled it in after you.”

  “Crawling into a hole and pulling it in after me is just about what I did do,” Don said. “Every elevator has a concealed exit so that if anything goes haywire and the car is trapped between floors its occupants can be released. The one in this car was in the ceiling. I got it open and pulled myself through, and I kept talking every minute so that Church would be sure I was still inside. I knew that once he thought I had gotten out, he’d think of the trap himself. And I didn’t want a welcoming party ready for me on the second floor.

  “Once on the roof of the car, my head still down through the trap so that my voice still seemed to come from inside, I untied the wire and held it tight. Then I told Church he could come in on the count of three. At two I pulled the wire up after me. At three I pulled in my head like a turtle and closed the trap. Then I made tracks.”

  “Out the elevator doors on the second floor?”

  “Yes, and down the corridor, through the Emperor Theater’s scene-design department, up over a drafting table, and out the window on to the marquee. I’m afraid I left a footprint on the master sketch for the backdrop of next week’s stage show. It’s one of those wacky surrealist affairs and, since the scene painter will never guess it’s not part of the original design, Inspector Church will have a ten by twenty foot footprint for a clue! Did you reach Chan?”

  “Yes. He said he’d meet us at 46th and 11th with your car. I think that’s him up ahead in the next block.”

  It was, but he wasn’t alone. The Horseshoe Kid and the twins, Patricia and Mickey Collins, Don’s two young lady assistants, were also with him. The girls, better known as Pat and Mike, were so identical in appearance that even Woody who was in love with Pat had trouble trying to tell them apart.

  The girls, mirror-images of each other, shared the same shade of golden yellow hair. Don Diavolo, so as not to broadcast the fact that he had twins in his employ, had insisted that one of them must always wear a black wig whenever they appeared together in public. The trouble was that he had failed to specify which of them should wear it. Woody, as a consequence, was never quite sure if Pat was the light or the dark one. And when Mickey, who loved to tease Pat’s boy friend as sisters do, acted as she did now, it left Woody completely baffled.

  Simultaneously with Pat she gave the reporter a bright welcoming smile and said, “Hello, darling!” Then she turned toward Pat just as the latter faced her. Their voices came together, both using exactly the same words in the same tone of injured surprise.

  “Mickey! Just whose boy friend do you think he—”

  “The old, gag,” Woody said. “I’ll attend to you two later. Business comes before pleasure.” He left them, running for a phone.

  “Chan,” Don demanded. “Who are all these people? We’re not going on a picnic. I’m a fugitive from a chain gang.”

  “Sorry,” Chan apologized. “I was surrounded by superior forces. Car captured by Blitzkrieg. Now reinforcements have arrived — shall we throw them overboard, sir?”

  Mickey, the dark one this time as Woody found later, said, “But on the phone, Woody said you were going to a circus.”

  Pat added, “Fugitive from a chain gang? What do you mean?”

  The Horseshoe Kid said, “Oh-oh. Trouble. Now what?”

  He looked pleased.

  “Move over, Chan,” Diavolo ordered. “I’m driving.” Then rapidly he gave them an earful. But it only convinced the girls more than ever.

  “Just try to run out on us now,” Pat said. “You’ll need a whole detachment of assistant detectives. We could — well, we could vamp the Inspector, couldn’t we?”

  “He’s married,” Don objected.

  “So what?” Mickey shot back. “That’s a minor detail. Let’s go.”

  Woody hurried back just then and Don Diavolo threw in the clutch and stepped on the gas. “I haven’t got time to argue with you now,” he said. “But if you all spend the night in jail don’t say I didn’t warn you.” The big car roared up the ramp at 49th Street on to the elevated highway.

  Dubiously Woody said, “I don’t see how you can get away with it, Don. Church will be so close on your tail that—”

  He broke off.

  Diavolo gave the car more gas. “Maybe,” he said. “On the other hand he’s so sure I’m the guilty party he may not look for me where we’re going. He’ll watch the trains, boats and airports expecting me to flee the country — for a while at least. He’ll be busy for another hour or so searching the Emperor Theater Building. Then, when he finds I’m not there, he’ll rush around like mad putting out the dragnet. Finally, when he sits down and takes time to think he’ll begin to get wise. But that should give us a few hours.

  “And what you need,” Horseshoe added gloomily “is a couple of weeks.”

  “I know it,” Diavolo replied. “But with luck we might manage to make Church doubtful. I do have this.” The magician made the mystic gesture that usually produced a coin or lighted cigarette from midair. This time he got a folder of paper matches. He gave them to Horseshoe. “That’s the clue Church didn’t realize was one. It’s the match folder he found in the pockets of the second corpse. If it means what I think it does it may be a lead.”r />
  The Kid and Chan scowled at the still damp match folder. Woody and the girls leaned across from the back seat and did the same.

  “Mr. X, our mystery corpse,” Woody hazarded, “might have been in Canada recently. That’s all I get. Does it tell you who he is?”

  “Oh no,” Diavolo said. “I know who he is. The match folder doesn’t have anything to do with the unidentified body.”

  “But what does it have something to do with?” Mickey asked. “I don’t see—”

  “You wanted to be a detective,” Don told her. “Let’s see you detect.”

  She subsided.

  “Okay, mastermind,” Woody said. “But I certainly hope you’ve got something. I’d hate to be in your shoes when the Inspector catches up with you.”

  The magician grinned widely. “That,” he said in a tone that Woody wasn’t at all sure he liked, “is an idea. It might work too.”

  “Hey!” Woody demanded uneasily. “What do you mean?”

  But before Diavolo could answer, Chan exploded his bomb. Ever since Diavolo had told them about the bare footprint, the leopard and the scratches on the two bodies, Chan’s brown forehead had been creased in a scowl.

  Now he said, “I think I have a clue too. Billboard Magazine this week lists acts now working in Hagenbaugh-Powers sideshow. In view of current events one act seems distinctly ominous. Possibly will solve case.”

  Don said, “Huh?” And then, “Chan, what do you have up your wily Oriental sleeve? Out with it!”

  “Feature attraction with sideshow is a Leopard Man!”

  They all blinked. Woody said, “Wow!”

  “Leopard man?” Pat asked. “But what—”

  Don laughed, “Chan has been reading Weird Horror Tales Magazine or maybe Fantastic Jungle Stories. A sideshow Leopard Man hasn’t anything to do with the case. They’re nothing more sinister than negroes with a skin disease — vitiglio. It bleaches them in an irregular spotty fashion, and so some of them dress up in leopard skins, practice a wild look in their eye, and hire out to circus sideshows.”