The reporter in the phone booth, half a minute later, was getting one of the biggest nickel’s worth of phone service the telephone company had ever sold.
“The Invisible Man,” he shouted, talking in headlines, “double-crosses police! Takes fortune in precious stones from Nathan Ziegler while New York’s Finest are barking up wrong tree!”
The rewrite man on the other end of the wire dug savagely into a sheet of copy paper with his pencil, broke the point off short, swore and grabbed for another. A few minutes later teletype machines in a hundred cities were chattering madly.
And a few blocks away Patricia Collins leaned forward breathlessly on the seat of a taxicab that moved down Fifth Avenue close behind another cab in which Mr. L.C. Gates sat with a satisfied smile on his face and a large pigskin bag between his feet.
CHAPTER VI
The Mysterious Mr. Gates
WHEN Inspector Church burst like a raging cyclone into Nathan Ziegler’s shop he found its proprietor in a hysterical and incoherent state. In answer to Church’s torrent of questions he held out a shaking hand and gave the Inspector a small card whose size and shape were now all too familiar.
It was another impudent, taunting note from the invisible correspondent.
My apologies for having misled you. And be careful. I intend to do it again. Better luck tonight. Best regards.
— THE INVISIBLE MAN
A coldly determined, vindictive expression settled on the Inspector’s red face as he read those words and his frosty blue eyes were like twin volcanoes spouting fire. He was really mad now.
He turned from Ziegler, whom shock had left nearly speechless, and went to work on the clerk, an elderly little man who sputtered with excitement, but who was still able to answer questions with some degree of coherence.
He told about Gates’ visit and said that when he and his employer had started to return the miniatures to the big safe in the corner of the display room, they discovered at once that of the twenty which had been laid out, three were missing; and those, according to the clerk, were the pick of the lot.
Ziegler spoke up now. “I sent him to get you, Inspector. And then I went to the open safe….” Ziegler moved toward it now and stood looking in at the objects that shone gold and crystal in the light. “All the rarest pieces have been taken,” he went on haltingly. “The Oviedo rock crystal cross which the Duchess of Savoy presented to the Infanta Isabella; Charles VII’s gold locket that bore his name and the Imperial crown on its face in diamonds; a XVI century reliquary of enameled gold containing a piece of the True Cross; the Jacopo de Farnese jade cup; the only perfectly matched string of black pearls in the world; a Gribelin watch; a set of six Jacobite wine glasses …”
Ziegler moved from the safe to a display cabinet nearby. “An Aldus choir book,” he added hopelessly, “and two holograph Keats letters.”
“They sound valuable,” Church said.
Ziegler groaned. “They were priceless!”
“This bird Gates. Maybe he took the stuff out under his coat.”
Ziegler shook his head wearily. “Impossible, Inspector. The jade cup was a foot high. The choir book weighed twenty pounds. The wine glasses.
“Who is Gates?”
“I … he was a new customer, Inspector. Gave his address as Seattle. Lumber millionaire. Said he had just recently become interested in collecting miniatures and he ordered one of those that I showed him.”
“Okay. Brophy, get someone started on a checkup. Find out if that’s who he really is. Get the airport and—”
At that moment the clerk who had helped Mr. Gates to a taxi returned. Church pounced on him. “You didn’t mention this man, Ziegler. Why has he been outside?”
“He carried Mr. Gates’ bag to a taxi.”
“Mr. Gates’ bag?”
“Yes. A large pigskin travelling case. He was on his way to catch a plane at LaGuardia Field. He—”
“Brophy!” Church broke in. “Get busy. Check the airport. And put someone to work on Gates. Find out if that’s who he really is. That’s where your stuff went, Mr. Ziegler. It went out in that pigskin bag! You!” He turned to the clerk, “What’s your name?”
“B-Butterfield, sir,” the young man replied, stuttering nervously under the Inspector’s accusing glare.
“What was the license number of that cab?”
“I … I d-didn’t notice, s-sir.”
“Naturally. Nobody ever does, dammit! Did you by any chance happen to notice what direction it left in?”
“Yes, of c-course, sir. Downtown.”
Nathan Ziegler interrupted. “Inspector. The things could not have gone out in Gates’ suitcase. That is impossible!”
“Why?” Church growled, turning on him.
“Simply because I was with Gates every moment of the time he was here. He had no opportunity, and everything was quite in order when he and I left this display room and went to look at the crowd in the street outside, just before eleven.”
“Well, so what? One of your clerks loaded the bag for him.”
Ziegler shook his head more decisively than ever. “They were both with us in the front room.”
Church glanced at the Invisible Man’s card which he still held in his hand. His face grew darker than ever, even if a minute before that had not seemed possible.
“Robbins,” he growled, turning to another of his detectives. “Get this down to the lab and phone me a report.” The Inspector then took off his overcoat and got down to business.
He spent the next two hours going over the premises of Nathan Ziegler, Ltd., looking for clues and interrogating Ziegler and his two clerks. He accumulated nearly enough information about the private lives of all three men to have written three full-length biographies. But he didn’t find any clues — nothing but a strange insistence on Ziegler’s part that J.D. Belmont was the Invisible Man. He was sure it was Belmont because the financier had wanted to buy some of the very objects that had vanished.
Church didn’t like the suggestion on two counts. “Belmont’s got money to burn. He wouldn’t need to steal them. Besides I’ve just talked to the D.A. on the phone. Belmont was in his office at eleven o’clock.”
If the Inspector, however, had been with Patricia Collins in her taxi his face wouldn’t have been so long. She was having rather more success. The taxi she had followed had circled around until it headed, not toward LaGuardia Field, where the occupant had, in Butterfield’s hearing originally told the driver to go, but in a diametrically opposite direction.
Once, the man she followed left his taxi, walked a block or two and then took another. He was doing that, Pat knew, so that if the cops should find the cabdriver who had picked up a fare at Fiftieth and Fifth they’d not discover anything concerning his real destination. A few minutes later, at a red light, Pat took the opportunity to make a change herself, from a yellow cab to a checker.
The cab ahead, still going uptown, suddenly turned right, through the park. On Lexington it turned north again and Gates got out at the corner of 104th.
Pat passed him and waited at the next corner. Gates came toward her and she sat tight. He walked another block and turned left into 106th. Pat made the corner just as he ducked into a house halfway down the block. She paid off her driver, dashed for the phone in a nearby drugstore and dialed the number of the Manhattan Music Hall.
When she had been connected with Don Diavolo’s dressing room and heard Chan’s calm matter-of-fact voice over the wire, she spoke and tried hard to keep the hopeless feeling that hung heavily on her from showing in her voice.
“Pat speaking. Is Don there?”
“He just went on stage, Miss Pat. Where are you? We have been worried. Miss Mickey had to fill your spot and Don had to leave out The Great Transposition mys—”17
“Chan,” Pat said hurriedly. “Listen. I want help. I’m on 106th Street. Drugstore, corner of Lexington. I—I think I’ve found Glenn!”
17
Mickey Collins was
Pat’s twin sister, a young lady who looked so much like her that it was a standing joke as to whether or not the twins themselves knew for sure which was which. Mickey, because Don would rather not have it known that he employed a pair of twins, wore a black wig over her own blond hair in public.
CHAPTER VII
Appointment With The Unseen
AS Don Diavolo came off stage into the wings and busied himself making a lightning change of costume, Chan popped up beside him.
“Miss Pat’s on the phone,” he reported rapidly. “She was at the corner of Fifth and 50th where you had her stationed, when she saw a man she thinks was her brother in disguise get into a cab. He came from Ziegler’s shop and he carried a large pigskin bag. She followed him.”
Don threw the red opera cape around his shoulders, his eyes gleaming. “That’s a fine place to stop for breath, Chan. Get on with it.”
“She trailed him to a place on 106th Street. She’s waiting there now. What do I do?”
As the music of the orchestra before the footlights rose in a crescendo, Don said, “Get the Horseshoe Kid and send him up to take over. And see if you can locate Larry Keeler and get him down here. Scram!”
Don Diavolo whirled and ran out onto the stage just barely making his cue.
The rest of that afternoon was hectic. Between appearances Don listened to Pat’s story, conferred with Larry Keeler, and heard the Horseshoe Kid report several times at hourly intervals that Mr. Gates was still holed up.
A glum-faced Woody Haines stopped in once to report that Inspector Church was being as tight-mouthed as two clams, but that the best authenticated rumors had it that Nathan Ziegler was poorer to the tune of some two hundred grand.
Also, his informant in Church’s office had given him a photostatic copy of the note that had been left in Ziegler’s shop. The lab had found a thumbprint on this one too, though, unlike the first, this one bore no scar.
Once, between shows, Don made a hurried trip to 106th Street, looked the ground over and conferred with Horseshoe.
The latter had news. “We’ve hit a jackpot,” he reported. “I just saw St. Louis Louie go in the joint.”
“And who is St. Louis Louie?” Don Diavolo asked.
“A cheap gunman who used to play with the Blue Streak gang until it folded after Jake the Orphan got a twenty year jolt for getting in Hoover’s way. Louie’s a Chinese needle-worker who shoots first and thinks afterward — only he never thinks much.18 If Pat’s right about the guy being Glenn, I don’t like the company he keeps.”
Don Diavolo frowned. “Looks like trouble ahead. You sit tight, Horseshoe, I want to know where Mr. Gates and friend Louis are tonight when the fireworks display goes off out at Belmont’ place. We’ll play those two cards close to our vest until then. Keep the phone line working.”
Diavolo returned to the Music Hall, did his eight o’clock show and then made arrangements to keep his $10,000 appointment with J.D. Belmont, Inspector Church, and the Invisible Man.
The financier’s Oyster Bay estate on the shore of Long Island Sound was a tourists’ landmark. But they never saw it except from a distance. High walls surrounded the entire estate, except on the water side and that was constantly patrolled by Belmont’s private police department.
On a hill above the water, his turreted castle stood out against the sky like the stronghold of some medieval robber baron. Some people called him that as it was. In England, for instance, there was an association of antiquarians named the “Save Our National Relics from J.D. Belmont” Society.
Belmont was without question the world’s ace collector. Money from his pyramided companies and interlocking corporations apparently poured in on him so fast that he needed four overworked secretaries to help him spend it.
At just ten-thirty Don Diavolo braked his long scarlet Packard before the towering medieval gate that had once, centuries ago, withstood the onslaught of the Barbarian hordes and which Belmont had had brought across the Atlantic piece by piece and reassembled.
To Pat, beside him, Don said, “This is bad. I don’t see a door knocker and we forgot to bring a battering ram.”
As he spoke, from a lookout above the gate, a powerful searchlight swept down upon them.
“Larry,” Don said quickly, “Duck!”
Larry Keeler, the miniature magician who was in the seat behind, dropped quickly to the floor — and vanished. He had been standing in a large open valise which Don, reaching over, had snapped shut as Larry doubled up within it.
Lieutenant Brophy came toward them from the shadows of the gate.
“You’ll have to leave the car here,” he said. “The big gate isn’t to be opened. The Inspector’s orders. Come with me.”
Pat and Don descended from the car and Don lifted the suitcase that held Larry Keeler’s ninety pounds. They followed the detective and, moving closely one behind the other they entered through a small door that was opened just enough to allow them to slip in.
The detective indicated the high, fortress-like walls that stretched away on either side. “If that invisible loony gets in here tonight, he’s good. The top of that wall is electrified and the shore down there has a cordon of men along it that a mouse couldn’t slip through. We won’t see any invisible man tonight.”
“If he warns us he’s going to do one thing and then does something else as he did this morning, perhaps we won’t,” Diavolo said. “On the other hand, in spite of walls and guards an invisible man is a difficult visitor to avoid.”
Don was thinking that if he could sneak Larry Keeler in past all these precautions, then a completely invisible man shouldn’t have too much trouble. The reason for Larry’s secret presence was that Diavolo had decided to have one watcher that no one else knew was present.
That morning at the Museum, the Invisible Man had successfully misdirected several thousand people in an expert manner that got Don’s admiration. But Don, as a magician, knew one fact that might prove to be the monkey wrench in the machinery if the Invisible Man should try the same methods tonight. He knew that it is extremely difficult to misdirect someone that you do not know is there. The Invisible Man would naturally concentrate on misdirecting Diavolo, Belmont, the Inspector and his men. If he did not know that another pair of sharp magician’s eyes were watching, his misdirection might not be complete.
A police car sped them along the winding road that led up to the great mansion. Diavolo noticed that the grounds were alive with cops and that the house itself was surrounded as if the Inspector were expecting the Goths and Vandals to descend upon him in all their armed force. It was apparent that he was taking no chances this time around.
As they went in with Brophy, the butler met them and tried to relieve Don Diavolo of the suitcase. The magician shook his head.
Brophy asked curiously, “What are you lugging around in that suitcase? Do you expect to stay the night?”
“Brought along a few gadgets that may help us trip up our invisible visitor,” Don said. “Where’s the party going to be held?”
“Library,” Brophy answered moving down the hall and opening a door on the right.
Don Diavolo put the suitcase on the floor ten feet or so from the door, leaned over it for a moment, unsnapped the catch and slipping his hand in, came out with a common tin flour-sifter and a paper sack whose side bore the inscription Silver Medal Flour. He also took the opportunity to whisper, “Okay, Larry. Keep your eyes peeled. I’ll leave the catch free so you can get out and snoop. But Watch that door!”
Larry, curled uncomfortably inside, whispered, “Aye, aye, sir.” When Don, Pat, and Brophy went on into the room and the butler had disappeared, the Invisible Man, if he were in the hall and watching closely, could have seen a narrow slitted peephole appear in the end of the suitcase that faced the library door.
Larry, watching through it, smiled grimly and waited.
As the newcomers entered the vaulted library, Inspector Church standing before the massive Gothic fireplace nodded gl
umly toward Don and spoke to Belmont who paced the floor nervously nearby. “You don’t make it any easier for me, inviting a magician out here,” he growled. “I don’t trust him even when I’m looking at him.”
Don pretended to look hurt. “But, Inspector, you know that I was in the curator’s office this morning with Shultz watching me like a hawk. I couldn’t have been robbing Mr. Ziegler at the same time.”
“Maybe and maybe not,” Church replied unconvinced. “What about that funny business in your act where the audience watches you just as hard as Shultz did and, suddenly, when you take off that damned mask of yours, you turn out to be your assistant and your assistant who’s been helping with the props turns out to be you? When you make a living doing things like that, how can you expect me to—”
J.D. Belmont exhaled a cloud of smoke and asked a question. “Diavolo, have you figured out a way to prevent this theft?”
“I’ve got a precaution or two I’d like to take,” Don answered. He glanced around the room. “Grills on the windows,” he said. “Good. Three doors. I suggest we lock all but one.”
“I’ve done that already,” Church said. “What are you going to do with that flour sifter?”
“Even an invisible man has to leave footprints,” Don explained. “Unless he’s a ghost. If we see any footprints being made, we’ll know where he is and can take steps accordingly.”
Church said, “Hmmmpf!” unconsciously giving such a good imitation of Belmont that the latter scowled at the Inspector, wondering if he was being kidded.
“Very practical scheme,” the financier said then. “An invisible man could slip between a couple of cops. But I don’t see how he could get across a flour-covered floor without leaving traces.”
Diavolo opened his sack, filled the sifter and spread a wide twelve-foot strip of white flour across the floor before each door and window. “Any secret sliding panels or trapdoors in this room?” he asked.
Death out of Thin Air Page 14
