Death out of Thin Air

by Clayton Rawson

  The seeds are given to the victim to make him unconscious so that robbing him will be easier. Many of the natives popularly and mistakenly believe that the datura is not poisonous to death, and their victims often die, due to the accidental overdose necessary to put the robber on the safe side. See Criminal Investigation — Gross, page 442.

  14

  The seeds of the common capsicum and of the chili pepper are also very likely to be confused with datura. Gross, on pages 442-3, takes great pains to give a table of the few discernible differences so that medical examiners, when they come upon suspicious seeds in the stomach of a deceased person during autopsy, will be able to distinguish between the innocent tomato, etc., and the deadly datura.

  CHAPTER XVI

  Man into Air

  NOW Chandler too sprang to his feet. “Of all the damned nonsense!” he shouted. “What if the letters of my name do happen to be the same as his? Those letters can be arranged to spell a lot of different words. Are you crazy, Diavolo? You’ve just said that you saw the Bat in my office when he knocked me out.”

  Don nodded. “Yes, and that Bat was you! You knocked yourself out, or pretended to. I never saw you both together.”

  “But — but you even searched my room. You found no cloak or mask!”

  Don Diavolo nodded agreement.

  “No, Avery, I didn’t. But that was easy enough for you — a theatrical producer. The cape was made of paper; the mask of papier mâché. You got them from a theatrical supply house, and you had soaked them in a potassium nitrate solution. Touch a match to them then and they burn to nothing in a few seconds — much less time than it took me to pick the lock on your door. It’s an old stage trick. I’ve used it myself.”

  Chandler looked at the others, “Diavolo is ingenious, but wrong. He’s trying to frame me for this for some reason. Why would I want to impersonate the Bat and steal my own money? It makes no sense.”

  “Oh, yes it does, Chandler,” Don contradicted. “Good sense, too. You impersonated the Bat twice. First in order to kill the woman who was still your wife — for revenge and so that you would be free to marry Inez LaValle. And you wanted Draco, who had once tried to murder you and who had stolen your wife, to take the rap. So you killed in the guise of the Bat, hoping it would both conceal your own identity and point suspicion toward the Count. You had already intended to do that and were prepared.

  “When Marie came to you and told you that she suspected the Count of faking her phenomena and playing her for a sucker, she said that she was going to ask me to expose him. But she also told you that, in spite of your changed appearance — in spite of your gray hair, your glasses, your face that had aged so greatly after that terrible ordeal of the fall in the mountains and your long convalescence — in spite of the fact that the short-legged limping Chandler was nothing like the young, athlete mountain-climber she had known — she told you that she had recognized you!

  “You knew that if she ever told anyone who you really were, you could never hope to take your revenge upon her safely. So, this afternoon when she left your office — earlier tonight Woody Haines checked with your secretary on her visit, so I’m not guessing — you followed her. You’d have killed her in your own office before she left, but you thought it much safer to have the crime occur and the body be found on someone else’s doorstep.”

  “You climbed in at my dressing room window from the floor below — you were a skilled mountain climber once and the crevasses you have climbed would give even Larry Fox a headache. Since Marie did not scream, you probably blackjacked her before giving her the injection. And then, though the Count’s scopolamine is a deadly poison, it is not fast enough. You had to use something that would be sure to kill her before she could tell anyone who you were.

  “You had tough luck there. You used the second quickest poison known, nicotine. But it’s not easy to get in its pure form. You used an insecticide that contained it. I’m afraid the makers cheated you. Their product didn’t have quite as high a nicotine content as their label claimed — or it may have been in solution with other ingredients that slowed its action. Marie was able to write half your last name on the floor with lipstick pencil before she died. That was why you phoned me.15

  “Inez who was at the Music Hall saw the name on the floor. She mentioned it when she described Mlle. Zsgany’s death to you. That bothered you, so you got me up to your office and acted the part of the Bat once more, trying to get over the idea that you and he were two different persons and that Draco was the murderer.

  “That was another mistake. You put on your little act before a window which looked out on a sheer drop that really was unclimbable. I knew, as soon as I saw it, that no human-fly, no mountain climber, nothing human had ever or could ever have gone out that window. I knew that the Bat I’d seen must still be in the room. Since I was pretty sure I wasn’t the Bat myself, it had to be you!”

  Mrs. Saylor couldn’t quite believe it, even then. “But his leg,” she objected. “He couldn’t do a human fly act up the side of the Music Hall with that crippled leg.”

  “Exactly,” Chandler said. “That knocks your whole rickety theory to pieces.”

  “All right, Chandler,” Diavolo said. This is the showdown. Take off that shoe and show us your crippled foot!”

  Mrs. Saylor squeaked like a mouse.

  Chandler’s face filled with rage and fear. He stood there for a moment without moving, his face working.

  “His leg’s perfectly all right,” Don went on quickly. “That specially reinforced shoe is phony. His leg goes right on down to its base. The top of the shoe is really half way up his shin. Both his legs are the same length. He adopted the short leg as an additional disguise right after he escaped from the mountain ‘accident’ in order that no one, particularly Draco and his wife, when he should meet them, would recognize him.

  “He thought that they would not make any connection between a man who apparently had had a short leg since infancy and the dashing athletic Charles VanReyd. His thirst for revenge was so great he’d have worn an elaborate disguise of a movie Quasimodo for years if he’d thought it necessary. I knew Chandler’s feet were all right as soon as I saw a pair of shoes in his office closet. Chandler took off his phony, reinforced shoe and wore a pair of ordinary ones when he impersonated the Bat—another safety device to prevent suspicion ever falling on him!”16

  Avery Chandler finally let himself realize that he was beaten. He shrugged and played a last card. He swiftly drew his gun. “Don Diavolo. Put your hands up!”

  Don did not like the crazed gleam that was now in Chandler’s eyes. He started to raise his hands, slowly, but he kept on talking — driving one last long nail into Chandler’s coffin.

  “The odd thing,” he said, “is that Marie VanReyd, dying, actually did tell us the name of her murderer. She only wrote part of it on the floor but she just managed to speak his first name too before she died. Her last words were — not ‘The bat’s aviary’ as I thought then — but ‘The Bat is Avery!’”

  “If I had known that,” Chandler snarled, “I’d have killed you before now!” He raised his gun.

  Don looked at the weapon. “Everyone wants to shoot me,” he said quickly. “This is getting to be monotonous.” His half-raised hands were still rising, empty.

  But his words were Mickey’s cue. Like Pat, she knew the mental telepathy routine and she divined what it was that Diavolo wanted. She struck out with her hand, pushed a vase of flowers from the table by her side and sent them crashing to the floor!

  It worked. Misdirection, the magicians’ favorite ally aided Diavolo once more. Chandler, startled, turned his head toward the sound for a fraction of a second.

  That was all Don Diavolo needed. Earlier, when Woody had released the others from the kitchen, Don had seen that Chandler was armed and he had prepared for gunplay. He had secretly concealed Draco’s gun, tucking it beneath a fold on the top of his Maharajah’s turban.

  He drew it now and fir
ed with the same motion.

  The bullet struck Chandler in the shoulder, spun him and threw him backward, off balance. He had been standing too near the open window. Now, as he felt the backs of his knees strike the sill, a look of horror swept his face. He clutched wildly for some support — and his fingers closed on air!

  To the watchers it almost seemed as if the man had vanished by some uncanny magic before their eyes. One instant he was there — the next, gone!

  What shattered the illusion was the piercing scream of utter terror that came up to them from the dark fog-filled night beyond the sill — a wild high note that faded as the body dropped….

  Suddenly it stopped.

  Inez Lavalle sobbed in Estelle Saylor’s arms. Gilles de Rais, the bogus vampire who had walked the night, had been laid. And now, Charles VanReyd, the man who would not stay dead, had fallen for a second time to his death — this time he was to return from the grave no more.

  In the street below a police siren shrieked, a long banshee wail that echoed Chandler’s.

  Quickly, Diavolo turned to Ogden Saylor. “Give them Draco, Fox and the story,” he said. “And the compliments of the Maharajah. We’re leaving. Inspector Church and the Maharajah can take the credit for solving the case. If Diavolo takes it, the Inspector will be annoyed. I’ll get more publicity of the sort I really want if I can stay in his good graces and obtain permission to do my jail escapes.

  “You owe me something, Saylor, for the recovery of the diamonds. I’ll appreciate it if you do not know that the Maharajah has another name. Good night.” Diavolo smiled, bowed and exited. Mickey and Woody followed him out.

  They had gotten as far as the floor below when they heard the elevator ascending. Hurriedly Don led his companions into Fox’s apartment to wait until Inspector Church had passed.

  He closed the door quietly.

  While they waited, Woody said, “Don, I’m still not entirely convinced that Fox wasn’t a real vampire after all. I put him in the bathroom and he did a Diavolo vanish. One minute he was locked in there and the next thing I knew he was out and socking me on the back of the head. Could you please put the brain to work and figure out that little parlor trick?”

  “You mean bathroom trick, Woody.” Diavolo approached the bathroom door and looked in thoughtfully. He saw no means of exit at all at first. Then, when he pulled the shower curtain aside, he grinned. Behind it in the wall, there was a small window. It was open.

  “Simple, you see.”

  Woody groaned. “Out and across the face of the building back to that living room window again! My back was toward it when I went to the bathroom door; he slipped in across the sill, picked up that small table and sailed it at my head before I could turn to use my gun.”

  “That’s about the size of it,” Diavolo said. Then he grinned mischievously. “Count Draco showed us several interesting varieties of bats in his bat room, but Larry Fox, in his bathroom, was still another sort. He really was a bat after all — an acrobat!”

  Two simultaneous puns? Woody and Mickey groaned in unison.

  At noon the next day, breakfast hour in the world of the theater, Don Diavolo, his assistants in duplicate — Pat and Mickey — and his vice president in charge of mechanics, Karl Hartz, were busily attacking bacon and eggs and the morning papers. They were paying particular attention to the column written by Woody Haines who once more had scooped the town. The final paragraphs read:

  One mystery still remains. Who is the man who solved both the Manhattan Music Hall vampire murder and the impossible theft of the Saylor Star of Persia? Who is the mysterious Maharajah of Vdai-Loo?

  Reporters last night searched vainly through the city’s hotel registers. Washington knows nothing of His Highness’ presence in this country. He and his lovely Maharanee both seem to have vanished into thin air as though they had never been!

  Chan, freed now from the Inspector’s hungry grasp, smiled blandly as he poured Diavolo’s coffee. The magician pushed back his plate, reached with his right hand and extracted a glowing, gold-tipped cigarette from nothing at all.

  He blew a smoke ring that rose lazily in a mystic circle above the table. Then with a broad grin on his lean handsome face, he said, “The elusive Maharajah simply removed his turban and washed his face. I wish disappearances into thin air were always that easy. We wouldn’t have had to invest $10,000 in perfecting the vanish of The Princess and the Elephant.”

  “Oh, you do, do you?” Karl objected. “I don’t. I’d be out of a job.”

  Chan, clearing away the dishes hummed a happy little tune, a melody that most people would have thought was some strangely exotic and ancient Oriental chant. But his friends, knowing that Chan had never been able to master the Occidental harmonic system, were familiar with the weird manner in which he could musically distort a popular song hit.

  They were able to recognize the air as that of The Little Man Who Wasn’t There!

  15

  A point which Diavolo never did get a chance to explain was the fact that Woody had not found Chandler’s stolen securities in Fox’s apartment with the jewels. This indicated that they had not been stolen by Fox, but only hidden by Chandler.

  16

  The two real bats — the one Chandler let loose in Diavolo’s dressing room and the one that he was holding against his own throat when Don found him on the office floor — were obtained from an animal supply house with which Chandler, as a producer, had previously dealt. Later, hearing Count Draco’s lecture on bats, Diavolo realized that Chandler had made another slip. Not being able to purchase the rarer small, four-inch, bloodsucking vampire bat he had had to use the larger fruit-eating false vampire, Vampyrus Spectrum!

  CHAPTER I

  The Crime at Centre Street

  LESTER HEALY walked slowly, reluctantly up the steps of the famous and dingy gray-stone building on Centre Street in which the New York City Police Department’s Headquarters is located. Had you been there watching him you would have wondered why he was entering that building without handcuffs on his wrists and a cop on either side.

  You would have spotted Lester Healy on first sight as being a crook and you would have been quite wrong. People were always making that mistake, and a good percentage of them suddenly found themselves getting their mail at Sing Sing on account of it.

  Healy’s slouchy posture, his cynical squint, the hard lean face with its ever present drooping cigarette, the underworld argot that was in his speech made him look the way you thought a gangster should look and gave you a jolt when you discovered — in court — that he was a sergeant of detectives.

  At the moment, Healy was working on a special assignment for the Bureau of Missing Persons.

  Shortly after Dr. Palgar had disappeared, Healy had picked up a rumor on the underworld grapevine that looked like a promising lead. Inspector Church had agreed that it could bear investigation and Healy had gone to work on it.

  For the past week he had been a member of New York City’s underworld. He had successfully tracked the rumor to its source and what he had discovered gave him a distinctly uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach. He had just witnessed something that he was positive was utterly impossible, but which had happened just the same — something which he knew spelled trouble in big, nasty-tasting doses.

  Sergeant Healy was more than a match for the average crook and for a lot that rated considerably above average. His experience had taught him just about all the answers; he knew what made the underworld and its members tick.

  But this time he was up against something strange and unprecedented. This time he didn’t have an answer because he’d never met anything like it before, and deep down within him he hoped he’d never meet anything like it again. If a man stopped to think about it, the criminal possibilities were enormous, utterly unpredictable and very possibly unbeatable.

  He had decided that the smart thing for him to do was to turn in his facts and let some of the hot shots at headquarters do the worrying. He on
ly hoped he could get them to believe he hadn’t simply developed a case of delirium tremens or taken to using narcotics.

  Healy, you see, had, under bright lights, just watched a man vanish into thin air. He had seen him fade slowly and completely into nothing at all. But it was even worse than that. He had been faced with clearly unmistakable evidence that the man who disappeared was still there under those bright lights — still there but quite invisible!

  Inspector Church, Healy knew very well, wasn’t going to accept a report like that without a good healthy argument. Church was an efficient, hard-hitting, no-nonsense cop who heartily disliked fairy stories in any shape or form, especially when they turned up in official reports.

  Only a few weeks ago he had been involved in a curious case that the newspapers had referred to as The Vampire Murder. Church was still growling about it and a smart dick was careful not to make the slightest reference to it anywhere within a couple of hundred yards of the Inspector.

  And now Healy had to take him a story like this!

  Healy unlocked the door of his office, went in, threw his hat at the coat rack in the corner and seated himself at his desk. He put his hand on the phone and then sat there for a moment considering what would be the gentlest way of breaking his news to Inspector Church. He finally took a deep breath like a man about to dive into ice-cold water and started to lift the phone receiver.

  At that moment his door opened abruptly and an excited man burst in and nearly overwhelmed Sergeant Healy. He jumped across the room, leaned over the desk, grabbed the startled Sergeant’s hand and pumped it effusively.

  He had a thick Italian accent. “You finda my leetle bambina. We are so happy! Maria, she is coming down to thank you herself. She was so afraid for Angelina and then you bring her back. I don’t know how to tell you how happy—”