Death out of Thin Air

by Clayton Rawson

  “Up those stairs,” the voice said, and the door slammed.

  Mickey and Woody had gotten a quick look at the tanned, broad-shouldered man whose small eyes held a hard, suspicious stare and whose nose had a queer smashed look as if a sledge-hammer or Joe Louis had once whacked it.

  Woody stared at the closed door. “Something wrong there,” he said. “This apartment house is lull of fat stock brokers and social-register lounge-lizards. That bird isn’t the type.”

  Diavolo lit one of his gold-tipped cigarettes. And he was humming the chorus of The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze. “You’re right about that, Woody. It looks like a case of social climbing. But the last time I saw that bird he was climbing around in a circus tent. A trapeze artist. Larry Fox of The Flying Foxes. That’s how he got the nose. He missed the bar and the net one day. Last I heard of him he was — guess what?”

  “I wouldn’t even try,” Woody said. “An acrobat is likely to do anything.”

  “He was barnstorming in the Middle West doing a human-fly act. He’d climb the side of the county courthouse and do a handstand atop a chair balanced on two legs on the roof’s edge. And then pass the hat.”

  Woody and Mickey stared at Don. Together they said, “The Bat!”

  Don smiled mysteriously. “Maybe,” he said. “Woody, I guess you don’t get to cover the séance after all. I need offstage help. Listen. And don’t argue.”

  Woody was so excited at the discovery they had just made and at the exclusive story it was going to make for his column that he listened for once without arguing.

  But he frowned at what Don asked him to do and said, “Oh, is that all? Suppose he’s got a gun?”

  “He has,” Don said. “And you can have this one. Now beat it.” Don handed him the gun that Mickey had made him bring. Woody took it and hurried toward the elevators.

  Don took Mickey’s arm and steered her toward the stairway that led upward to Count Draco’s penthouse.

  “Take a deep breath, kid,” he said. “Here we go!”

  CHAPTER XI

  The Devil Signs His Name

  COUNT DRACO opened the door for them himself. He was a tall man with a dark, swarthy complexion. His coal black hair that started in a sharp V point above the high bony forehead was plastered back so smoothly it might almost have been painted there.

  Dark staring eyes were set in cavernous hollows and their glance had a steely penetrativeness that cut like a knife. He stood, heels together, his stiff-backed formality betraying military schooling. His voice had a guttural Austrian accent and a compelling intensity that was hypnotic.

  He bowed stiffly. “I am greatly honored by your Highnesses’ presence.”

  Inside Don Diavolo a small warning voice said, “Here’s where you’ll have to do some first-rate acting. This laddie won’t be easy to fool.”

  The Count’s apartment was a curiously exotic place. He was a collector of extremely unorthodox tastes. The walls were covered with exhibits that a museum would have envied, items of a diverse sort; but all having one thing in common — the supernatural.

  There were ancient Buddhist tapestries and magic prayer rugs from Tibet; devil masks from China, Africa, Polynesia — weird leering faces whose distorted lineaments seemed to hold all the evil of this and half a dozen other worlds.

  Strange old books in half a dozen forgotten languages filled the bookcases. On the mantel above the fireplace Diavolo saw something that few people have laid eyes on since the Middle Ages. Mounted on a small ebony pedestal was a dried human hand, its fingers bent inward. A candle was held upright between the knuckles of the second and third fingers. Don shivered slightly at the sight of this evil charm — the infamous Hand of Glory.7

  Count Draco’s interests were directed along strange paths.

  On a table nearby Don saw another magical instrument of which he took particular note. It consisted of a large wooden hoop on which an animal skin had been tightly stretched like a drumhead. The Roman numerals from one to nine were inscribed in a curious symmetrical pattern on the skin.

  Where the Hand of Glory was an aid to thieves, this curious article, as Don knew, was a gypsy divination device whose principal use was the detection of thieves. Diavolo wondered if, before the evening was over, he might not be able to use it himself.

  Count Draco said, “I was about to show the others a different sort of collection when you came. An even more interesting collection. The exhibits are living ones. I think you would be interested, Your Highness, since one or two of my specimens are from your own country.”

  Diavolo bowed, “I am also a collector. Strange objects such as you have gathered fascinate me. This collection you speak of consists of what sort of specimen?”

  “Bats,” the Count said. “The order of chiroptera, the strangest and most interesting animals in the world — the only mammal that has a true wing.” He paused a moment and then added, “Your own interest lies where?”

  Don watched the man closely as he said, “I collect diamonds, the strangest and most interesting jewel in the world — and one of the most precious.”

  If Don expected that this veiled insinuation would get a reaction from Count Draco he was mistaken. The man merely smiled, opened a door behind him and ushered them into a room whose warm, fetid odor was that of the tropical jungle. The room was lined with cages of varying sizes, wire cages in each of which was one or more specimens of that curious link between the animal and the bird — a bat. Their dark ugly shapes hung head downward from the roofs of the cages.

  Mickey’s half whisper was audible in the silence that hung over the staring group. “The bat aviary!” she said.

  Draco gave her a puzzled, scowling glance and then proceeded to point out his choicest exhibits. He seemed amused at the involuntary distaste on the faces of the women and the nervous tenseness that had fallen upon the men.

  He pointed to the largest cage of all in which a monstrous shadow hung. Most of the bats were small creatures, but the body of this one was a good two feet in length. “From India,” the Count said, “the largest member of the species, the pteropodidae, a fruit-eating bat whose wingspread sometimes reaches five feet, as in the case of this one. You have doubtless seen them many times, Maharajah. In some parts of India the sky at night is black with them.”

  Don nodded. “Yes, of course. They have a head like that of a fox and my people call them flying foxes.”

  Count Draco nodded, giving his guest a sharp glance, “Yes, the bat is a curious zoological mixture. About 1,600 species of them are known and about one hundred fossil species extending with almost no structural change back to the Eocene epoch.”

  He indicated another cage. “This one is also from India, a carnivorous member of the species called the False Vampire. Both it and the South American vampyrus spectrum which is an insect eater, were originally thought to be bloodsuckers. The true vampire bat is actually a harmless appearing creature less than five inches in length.”

  He pointed to two more cages, in one of which was a saucer, half filled with dark red liquid. “I have the two more important of the five known species here. They come from South and Central America, the Javelin Bat and the Short-nosed Vampire.”

  Mrs. Saylor asked a question and was sorry she did. “But — but what, or rather how do you feed them, Count Draco. It would seem difficult—”

  “No, not at all,” Draco’s grin had a foxlike quality that mirrored those of his bats. “I purchase fresh blood from a slaughter house. At fifty cents a gallon, in case you are interested.”

  Mrs. Saylor had had enough. She definitely wasn’t interested in any more little items of information of that sort. She turned suddenly and left the room, her face pale.

  The Count paid no attention, but continued his little lecture as if enjoying the effect it made.

  “It is regrettable that my interest in these creatures should have had such disastrous effects on the séances which Mlle. Zsgany had been giving. “This” — he indi
cated the cages with a wave of his hand — “is obviously the reason why Gilles de Rais, in his vampire form, was drawn toward our medium. The astral aura set up by the proximity of these vampire bats apparently produced a favorable psychic condition.”

  “That the surroundings in which a medium works can thus affect the type of her materializations is a new and important fact that psychic investigators everywhere should take into account. Once we have exorcised the malign being that is Gilles de Rais so that he no longer menaces us, I must submit these findings to the Psychical Research Society.”

  “Perhaps,” Ogden Saylor put in, “if you destroyed the bats, Gilles de Rais would leave us.”

  Count Draco glared at him. “You are joking, Mr. Saylor. No, there are other methods. Tried and tested methods. Perhaps we had better begin. It is close to midnight now.”

  As they left the bat room, Diavolo said. “Mlle. Zsgany. Is she here tonight? I’m anxious to meet her. I have heard so much about her.”

  “No,” Draco replied. “Unfortunately Marie cannot be with us tonight. But the situation is desperate and I myself will undertake the trance. Mlle. Zsgany is a far better medium than I; but what must be done, must be done at once.”

  “You are going to try to call forth the Vampire again?” Avery Chandler asked, sending a sideways look at Diavolo.

  The Count inclined his head. “Yes. Call him forth and then send him back to join the legions of the dead!”

  They returned to the living room and the preparations for the séance went forward rapidly. Once the phone rang and the Count answered it only to discover the caller had apparently been given a wrong number. He replaced the receiver on the hook. Don smiled to himself, knowing that his own preparations were also going forward.

  All the doors of the living room were locked, and bolted on the inside. Diavolo examined the fastenings with an expert eye. Secretly, he balanced a paper match across the top of each bolt so that if the bolt should be drawn in the darkness of the séance the match would fall and later tell him what had happened.

  The steel-framed windows were also latched on the inside, and Don repeated his precaution with the matches here too. Then Count Draco indicated a simple straight-backed office chair, and several lengths of stout hemp rope. The chair, as he pointed out, was securely bolted to the floor so that it was immovable.

  Don examined the bolts and found no trickery.

  Avery Chandler made a suggestion. “Perhaps, since he is new to our circle, His Highness would like to do the tying so that he may be satisfied, as we have been before, that there is no deception.”

  The Count assented without hesitation. “Yes, of course, I think that would be advisable. I want His Highness to realize fully how obvious it is that the phenomena he is about to witness can be nothing but genuine.”

  The Count sat in the chair and placed his arms along the top of the chair’s arms. “If you will take the rope and securely tie my arms to the chair, please.”

  The Count closed his eyes and began to breathe with a deep even regularity. As Diavolo started tying him, his body gradually became motionless and rigid.

  To himself Diavolo thought, “I wonder if he knows what he is letting himself in for.”

  Don’s escape work had made him familiar with a thousand varieties of knots and tying methods. He used the best ones he knew, strapping the Count’s arms securely to the chair. From the elbow to the wrists they were covered with rope, drawn so tightly that the circulation was nearly cut off, and the man’s hands turned white and bloodless.

  “If he gets out of that,” Don whispered to Mickey when he was done, “Then he is good. I’m not too sure I could wriggle loose from that tie myself!”

  The sitters took the customary position, sitting in a circle and joining hands. Most mediums, as Diavolo knew, require this, in order “to set up a flow of the astral force.” He also knew that the phony mediums’ real reason was to prevent any skeptics among the sitters from moving about in the dark and stumbling upon some evidence of fakery — some evidence to show that the medium had escaped from his bonds and was producing the psychic phenomena himself.

  Sometimes the mediums themselves join hands with the sitters and Don knew how, in those cases, they did manage to leave the circle. He used the same method now himself. He contrived to be the person who turned out the lights and he maneuvered the seating arrangements so that his own place was between Chandler and Mrs. Saylor.

  As soon as the lights were out he slid into his chair, took Chandler’s hand, drew it across before himself and placed it in Mrs. Saylor’s hand. He had warned Chandler that he would do this and Mrs. Saylor naturally assumed she was holding the hand of His Royal Highness, the Maharajah of Vdai-Loo. She was quite thrilled.

  Silently, Diavolo slid back out of his chair and crossed the room. Slowly and quietly he lifted the phone receiver from its cradle and laid it on its side on the table top.

  Then he felt his way toward a low table by the window on which he had noticed a lamp, an ashtray, and several books. He took a penny from his pocket and put it to a use that the United States Government had not intended when they minted it. Then, silently, he waited.

  Would the Count, in spite of the locked doors and windows which cut off all aid from outside be able to produce psychic phenomena? Or would some member of that circle, in league with him, steal quietly away from the others, as he had done, and aid Draco? Or would Draco himself manage to free himself from the bonds Diavolo had so expertly tied?

  Don did not have to wait long.

  Soon a faint greenish glow appeared, wavering in the air above the place where the Count sat in the dark. Quickly Don moved forward and passed around the circle, his outstretched hand lightly touched the heads of the six persons in the circle — Chandler, Mickey, Ogden Say lor, Inez LaValle, Mrs. Saylor. They were all in their places; Draco was receiving no help from them!

  At his touch, Mrs. Saylor, probably suspecting that this mysterious spirit hand was that of the Vampire, screamed. Don felt her slump forward, fainting. He stepped to the wall and pushed the light switch.

  Everyone except himself was in his proper place.

  Count Draco’s body, apparently exhausted, drooped in his chair. All that prevented him from pitching forward to the floor were the undisturbed ropes that bound his arms exactly as Don had tied them.

  Diavolo sent a swift glance around the room toward the doors and windows. All the tell-tale matches were still in place. No one else had entered the room from outside.

  Yet, high on the wall, behind the Count, three words were chalked in large scrawling letters, an inscription that had not been there before the séance began.

  The words formed the signature of the medieval murderer, Gilles de Rais!

  7

  In the middle ages few sorcerers or witches were without this gruesome instrument. A book published in Cologne in 1722, Secrets merveilleux de la magie naturelle et cabalistique du Petit Albert, explains its use and gives the recipe.

  “The use of the Hand of Glory is to stupefy those to whom it is displayed and render them motionless in such a way that they can no more stir than as if they were dead.

  “It is thus prepared: Take the right or left hand of a felon who is hanging from a gibbet beside the highway; wrap it in part of funeral pall and, so wrapped squeeze it well. Then put it into an earthenware vessel with zimat, nitre, salt and long peppers, the whole well powdered.

  “Leave it for a fortnight, then take it out and expose it to full sunlight during the dogdays until it becomes quite dry. Next make the candle of the fat of a gibbeted felon, virgin wax, sesame and ponie, and use the Hand of Glory to hold this candle when lighted, and then those in every place into which you go with this baneful instrument shall remain motionless.”

  Witches often furnished thieves with this charm to aid them in committing robbery.

  CHAPTER XII

  The Vampire’s Other Voice

  THE Count’s body stirred after a moment as
if his trance were leaving. Mickey and Inez worked over Mrs. Saylor. Diavolo unlocked the door to the kitchen and found a jar of ice water in the refrigerator. He brought glasses of it for both Mrs. Saylor and the Count. His mind, as he did so, was working rapidly.

  Don knew that, in spite of the expert manner in which the man had been tied, it had been the Count and the Count alone who had produced the green light and the chalked inscription. The Count hadn’t ever escaped those bonds, and, though the chalked words were high up behind him a good twenty feet away, it was he, and not a spirit force, that had made them.

  Don had seen another medium do the same thing before.

  Draco recovered rapidly now, coming out of the “trance” in a jerky automatic fashion, breathing heavily.

  “Were we successful in establishing contact?” he asked. “Did you witness any manifestation?”

  “Mrs. Saylor appears to have seen rather too much,” Diavolo said. “Perhaps it would be better if she—”

  “No. No. I won’t!” Mrs. Saylor protested, weak but insistent. “I am going to see it through. I—I will not faint again.”

  Count Draco looked at her. “I admire your bravery, Mrs. Saylor. The force we are fighting is an evil one — a force that grows stronger each day that Gilles de Rais is free in the world. Tonight will be our last chance—our last hope of regaining control over him. If we fail—” Draco shrugged. “Then I fear we have unwittingly let loose a fearful horror upon the world, the results of which only the Devil himself can foretell.

  “We have gone too deeply into the realms of darkness, knowing too little. But we shall make one last effort. Your Highness, if you will open that window wide, please.”

  The man is a real showman, Don thought as he obeyed the command. He plays upon the emotions of his victims like a master. He works them up to the point that, when the crucial moment comes during which exposure might be feared, they are in no condition to observe properly or think logically.