Death out of Thin Air

by Clayton Rawson

  Diavolo unlatched and pushed the window wide.

  The dimly-lit street thirty stories below showed mistily through the white fog that was drifting in from across the Park. On this side the penthouse outer wall was flush with that of the building below. The drop once more was sheer. There were some small interstices between the granite blocks that might offer foothold to a human-fly; but the daredevil who tried it, Don knew, must have nerves of steel.

  Diavolo asked, “Gilles de Rais comes in through the window, Count?”

  Draco nodded. “Yes. A Vampire, as you doubtless know is — or rather, in life, was human. After death his body obeys another, different set of physical laws — laws of the spirit world. He also takes on certain attributes of the bat. Like the bat, heights mean nothing to him since he is able to fly! If you are all ready” — Draco’s eyes closed again and the rigidity of his body began to return — “The lights….”

  Diavolo snapped the switch again. The sitters had formed their circle once more, hands linked. And this time Don Diavolo joined them without deception, except that on his way across the room he touched the phone receiver and lightly tapped twice on its surface near the mouthpiece.

  As his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness he noticed that this time, with the shade raised and the window open, some little light did penetrate the room. The faint cold beams of a new moon pushed hesitantly through the haze, crept in at the open window, and crossed the room to throw its dim ghostly glimmer on the Count.

  The bound man strained in his chair, his body arching, his lips drawn back, his white teeth clenched.

  The utter silence and the rigid tenseness that held the persons in that room grew taut and grim. Time itself seemed almost to have stopped.

  And then, at last, there was a metallic sound at the window and every head that was not already staring toward it, turned instantly. The dim luminosity of the mist outside moved slowly and then gradually seemed to give birth to a shadow that developed from it. A shadow that grew larger, growing upward from below the sill — a shadow whose outlines were smudged and blurred in the dark and fog — but a shadow that was alive and which came in through the window toward them!

  Around him, Diavolo could hear the heavy, labored breathing of his companions and he felt the pulse in Estelle Saylor’s wrist pounding madly. His own was not too steady!

  Now a greenish glow appeared like the one they had seen before above the Count. This time it grew in front of the shadow and gradually revealed a face — an obscene, hideous monstrosity similar to those of the animals in that heated room of the cages — a wolfish, grinning face like the one Diavolo had seen on the quickly moving figure in Chandler’s office that afternoon.

  Don thought to himself. “If only Inspector Church were here now.”

  Then the Vampire spoke and Don noticed that his lips did not move. The words were a strange, harsh French that Don could only partly understand. He had picked up smatterings of several languages on his world tours, but he had never heard anything quite like this spoken before — he suspected that not many others had either for the last three or four hundred years. When The Bat’s voice ceased, Draco’s followed, translating.

  “Mesdames, messieurs. I thank you for your great interest in the hidden secrets, the great alchemical truth. You have, without intending it, enabled the Marshal Gilles de Rais to walk the earth once more — though not quite in human form. But you wish that I do not stay — I feel the force of your wills beating at me, trying to drive me back to join that great company of the dead who are damned to drift homelessly forever between Earth and Hell. I will not go. It is too late now for that….”

  Count Draco’s voice died away and the Vampire spoke again.

  Diavolo decided that it was time now for the fireworks. He waited until the Bat-figure had finished and then, before the Count could translate, Diavolo spoke. Using his ventriloquial skill he imitated the Count’s voice. Only one other person in that room knew what was happening — the Count himself. The Bat, Diavolo thought, should get a nice surprise out of this.

  Don spoke rapidly, trying to get as much of it as possible across before the Count could interfere. “I shall,” he pretended to translate, “from now on act through Count Draco only. Mlle. Zsgany, the medium whose real name was Marie VanReyd, was unworthy. Unbelief had entered her mind. When she sought the assistance this afternoon of the skeptic Diavolo I appeared before her and sent her soul to join the Vampire legions. I—”

  Don got no further. The green glow that shone on the Vampire’s face vanished, his shadow appeared briefly in the window opening and he was gone. Count Draco in his chair, strained forward, his eyes wide, his trance shattered, his swarthy face shining white and damp in the dim light.

  Don Diavolo grinned to himself. The others broke into frightened, astonished talk. Someone called, “The lights! For God’s sake, the lights!”

  Don slid out of his chair, moved quickly to the switch and snapped it on. Then he crossed to the window and, without looking out, hurriedly pulled it to and locked it.

  In his Maharajah voice he said, “There is going to be one other occult demonstration on the bill this evening, ladies and gentlemen. And I shall supply it.”

  The Count stared at him, his black eyes blazing. “Saylor,” he said from between clenched teeth. “Cut these ropes and let me out of this chair!”

  Don Diavolo shook his head. “No, Mr. Saylor. Stay where you are. We’ll untie the Count when I have quite finished. We’ll all be much safer.”

  Diavolo moved to the table on which rested the drumhead made of the wooden hoop and the animal skin.

  “This,” he said, holding it up, “is a Magic Drum. It is an occult invention of the Transylvanian gypsies. It is used, as Count Draco knows, for the discovery of thieves. I am going to see if it can tell us who took the Saylor diamonds!”

  CHAPTER XIII

  The Magic Drum

  COUNT DRACO, when Diavolo had previously thrown out a hint on the subject of diamonds, hadn’t reacted at all. But now the calm confidence of the Maharajah’s statement shook him visibly.

  “What are you talking about?” he said heavily, leaning forward in his chair, his black eyes staring at Diavolo.

  “It’s just a hunch, Count, Diavolo said, and then noting Draco’s amazement at his sudden colloquial command of the English language he decided to discard his Maharajah identity and raise his true colors.

  He looked down at his empty palm. Slowly reaching up, he plucked a lighted cigarette from midair. This, in a way, was Diavolo’s pantomimic signature. Nearly always, when taking a bow at the close of his act he nonchalantly performed this gesture, until it had become associated with him. The Saylors, and the Count as well, recognized it at once.

  “Don Diavolo!” Draco said, his jaw dropping.

  Don bowed. “Yes. The Maharajah does a quick change and becomes Diavolo, the Scarlet Wizard. And he’s going to wiz now.” Don looked at the Magic Drum and started to say, “The gypsy divination method is….”

  The doorbell cut him off with a short ring followed by a long steady one. Diavolo stopped, went across to the door and opened it slightly.

  A voice outside said, “Message for Mr. Kendall Worthington.”

  Don shook his head. “Sorry. You have the wrong apartment. Try the desk clerk downstairs.”

  He closed the door, returned to stand before his audience, and placed the Magic Drum, which he still held, upon the floor in the center of the rug. He pointed out the Roman numerals that were arranged in a symmetrical pattern on the stretched skin of the drum-head and he continued from where he had been interrupted.

  “The gypsies associated each of these numbers with the name of a suspect. There are several ways of doing this. We shall use the simplest. Each of you shall choose a number for yourselves. Mrs. Saylor, will you be the first?”

  Ogden Saylor stood up. “Are you insinuating that the thief is one of us?”

  Diavolo smiled. “I’m not insinuating.
I merely thought it would be interesting to find out. If the thief is not present, we would at least have eliminated several suspects. Your number, Mrs. Saylor?”

  Estelle Saylor, whose belief in occult things was as deep as her ignorance about them, said, “The mystic number — seven.”

  Rapidly Don queried the others and they chose. Ogden, number one; Inez LaValle, three; Chandler, four; Mickey, nine. The Count refused. Instead he demanded “Are you going to untie me?”

  “Yes,” Diavolo answered coolly. “But later. And if you won’t take a number, I’ll give you one. You’re six and I’ll take eight.”

  Diavolo paused. He looked steadily at the Count and explained, “The gypsies who use the Magic Drum divine the thief’s name by casting as many datura seeds upon the drum as there are numbers upon the skin. The rim of the drum is then struck a like number of times. The skin vibrates and the seeds jump. They always come to rest upon the number that indicates the thief.”8 He paused and Mickey was sure from his manner that there was a hidden meaning in his next words though she did not know what it was. “Count Draco, I wonder if you can supply me with the datura seeds I need?”

  Draco gave him a startled look, then quickly shook his head. “I have no datura seeds. And if you’re a magician you have no need to ask me for them.”

  “Of course not,” Don agreed. “But I thought you might be kind enough to save me the trouble, little as it is.” Don closed his empty right hand into a fist, made a mystic conjurer’s pass above it with his left. When he opened his fist again and tipped his hand, a trickle of small flat white seeds fell on to the drumhead!

  Ogden Saylor stared at them wide-eyed. “Dammit, man,” he cried. “You can’t do a trick like that on the spur of the moment. Those are datura seeds!”

  “Yes,” Don replied calmly. “Datura, the poison of the Indian thuggees.9 But their toxicological properties don’t interest us just now. We’ll come to that later.”

  Dramatically Diavolo struck the edge of the wooden hoop; the stretched skin vibrated; the small seeds jumped. “One!” he said, and struck again, “Two! Three! Four! …”

  The drumhead was inscribed with the figures one to nine. Diavolo struck nine times and on the ninth count the seeds were all clustered on the figure six — Count Draco’s number!

  Diavolo looked across at him. “The Magic Drum has spoken! It accuses Count Draco of being responsible for the theft of the Saylor jewels!”

  He paused just a moment for the dramatic effect and then he made a mysterious pass above the drumhead. “The datura seed production was kindergarten conjuring, Mr. Saylor. Look! When Don Diavolo really rolls up his sleeves and goes to work….”

  Slowly he lifted the drum from the floor. Beneath it, sparkling in a white blaze of light were the Saylor diamonds. The beauty of the great Star of Persia caught and held the attention of the watchers — even Don was fascinated by its scintillant brilliance.

  The Count’s voice, desperate and hard, drew their attention. “Don Diavolo, the magician, is clever — but not nearly clever enough!”

  Count Draco was standing on his feet before the chair in which he had been tied! And they all saw suddenly how the writing on the wall phenomena had occurred.

  The chair-arms were still tied tightly to the Count’s forearms. But they were no longer attached to the chair! The dowels which projected from their ends were fitted with small metal catches that had held them previously in place, but which the Count, by pressure on some hidden spring, had released.

  It was the trick that Diavolo had suspected — the same ingeniously simple, and completely practical stunt that he had caught Mme. Palladini doing in her famous Paris séances.”10

  But what was more important at that moment than the revelation of the faked chair, was the inescapable fact that Count Draco’s right hand held a blue-steel automatic which pointed directly at Don Diavolo with a deadly fixity of purpose!

  8

  A Magic Drum like the Count’s is described on pages 264-265 of the Chapter on “Divination and Fortune Telling” in Dr. Hans Gross’ Criminal Investigation. Sweet & Maxwell. Ltd., London, 1934.

  9

  A religious order of assassins in India, suppressed about 1825.

  10

  A photograph of such a chair in operation is reproduced in Joseph Dunninger’s book, Inside the Medium’s Cabinet, David Kemp Co., 1935, New York. Pages 174-175.

  CHAPTER XIV

  Double Fire

  CALMLY Don Diavolo picked a lighted cigarette from nothingness and blew a smoke ring. He didn’t feel as nonchalant as he looked, but he figured that it would be less than intelligent to let Count Draco know that. He was wishing he had the gun he’d given Woody.

  Count Draco watched them all grimly, with the intentness of a hunting falcon. He snarled at Don, “One more funny, tricky move like that out of you and it will be your last.”

  “You’ve already made the tricky move that is going to be your last,” Diavolo snapped. “Count Draco, ladies and gentlemen, is full of tricks — get-rich-quick tricks. He’s greedy and impatient. He has expensive tastes. He wants a lot of money all at once.”

  “So he concocted a pretty little scheme — a characteristically ingenious scheme — of getting that money from wealthy women — women who, perhaps because of the loss of someone near to them — have an interest in communication with the dead.”

  They all stared at Draco. Chandler said, “Then he killed—”

  “I’ve heard enough of this!” Draco cut in. “Don Diavolo has some fancy guesses up his sleeve, but he can’t prove a thing.”

  “That’s what you think, Count,” Don replied. “You see, I know the secret of the Bat. You have several flying foxes in your cages in the next room. You also have a different sort of a Flying Fox in the apartment below this one, an ex-circus trapeze artist — a man who also used to bill himself as The Human Fly.”

  “Wearing a bat mask from your collection — one like those used by the witchdoctors of the Malay States — he has been climbing one floor, from the room downstairs up to this window, and coming in to play the part of Gilles de Rais. You’re smarter than a lot of mediums, Count. I congratulate you. You coached him in speaking Old French. So many mediums make the illiterate mistake of evoking personages like Napoleon and Cleopatra and getting their messages in English!”

  Diavolo talked rapidly, stalling for time, but the Count had had enough. He stopped Don and said, “Diavolo and his assistant will stay here with me. The rest of you go into the kitchen. Quickly, and no false moves!”

  The Saylors, Chandler and Inez LaValle obeyed, and they obeyed very carefully. The Count’s manner was too menacing, the angry grip of his hand on his gun too tight, to give them any illusions about what he would do the second one of them stepped out of line. His face showed plainly that he was desperate and would as soon shoot as not.

  The Count locked the door behind them. “As for you, Diavolo,” he said, “You know too much — and yet not enough. You should have known better than to stick your long nose into my business.”

  “Sorry, Count,” Diavolo said. “I couldn’t help myself. The police think that it was I who killed Marie VanReyd.”

  “VanReyd.” Draco really started at that. “So you know that, too?”

  Diavolo nodded. “Yes, I know that too. And I suspect more. I think that you and Marie VanReyd murdered her husband Charles — on the mountain climb. You caused him to fall. What were you after — his wife and his money?”

  Draco smiled crookedly, “There’s no reason you shouldn’t know that. You’ll only take the information to your grave. And dead men do not speak — even through mediums!”

  Diavolo felt the shiver down his back. This madman, talking before Mickey as he was, must be intending to kill her too! Something would have to be done — and soon! Diavolo tried to edge, without being noticed, toward the low table on his right.

  “Yes,” the Count went on. “I killed Charles VanReyd. Marie did not help me, bu
t she knew what I was doing. We thought that she would inherit his fortune. But after he was dead we found that his father willed the money to Charles in such a way that no one else could ever touch it. In the event of Charles’s death, it was to go to charity.”

  “Marie and I went to my impoverished family estate in Austria where we stayed until last year. Then, when the Nazis came, we lost everything.

  “I decided to squeeze what I needed out of a few of these scatterbrained rich women who take up Yogi and consult with Swamis and mediums. Marie and I put on a good act together.”

  Draco’s face, dark and angry, grew more contorted as he talked. “But I won’t be cheated of the profits this time! Fox and I leave the country tonight. And we take the Saylor jewels! I would lock you two with the others so that I’d have time to get away, but I am not quite as simple as all that, my dear Diavolo.

  “A magician who can escape, as I have had the privilege of seeing you do, from a Water Torture Cell and from sealed coffins, wouldn’t be stopped long by the poor lock and bolt on my kitchen door. I prefer to take no chances of that sort.”

  “My assistant,” Diavolo said, pointing at Mickey and taking another furtive sideward step, “knows nothing of the secrets of locks. You could safely put her with the others, Count.”

  Draco shook his head. “No. I do not believe you. I have seen her work with you on the stage. My risk would be too great. She must know a great deal about your magic — and about locks.”

  The Count raised his gun, steadying it on Diavolo. The table toward which Don had been trying to move was still ten feet away. “That tears it,” Don thought, “I’ll never make it.”

  And then the Count was too clever. “Would you prefer the window or the gun?” he asked.

  Don felt hope leap again within him. “The window,” he said quickly. “I hate to oblige you because, if we jump, our deaths might be made to look accidental giving you an out. But I have always detested firearms.”