“We used to be, darling,” her husband said, patting her hand. “I’m afraid that’s the point.” He turned back toward the desk. “There is something I’ve been wondering, Lieutenant. Are you certain it was murder? Couldn’t it have been an accident, like a gun going off during a cleaning? Who knows how long it’s been since anyone has tinkered with those old gears.”
“We’re looking into that, sir,” the detective admitted. “The man who sold the doll to Mr. Wintour is answering questions downtown.”
Harry, who had resumed his study of the carpet, looked up in surprise. “You don’t mean Josef Graff, do you?”
Lieutenant Murray consulted his notebook. “Yes, Josef Graff. Runs a toy shop, I believe. On the side he arranges purchases for collectors such as Mr. Wintour.”
“A fine fellow,” offered Hendricks. “I deal with him myself on occasion. you mean to say Josef sold Le Fantôme to Bran without offering it to me first?”
“In the circumstances,” Lieutenant Murray said, “I should think you’d be grateful.”
“You don’t suspect old Graff of having a hand in this?” Mr. Hendricks appeared genuinely dismayed.
“I’ve known the man for years!”
“As have I,” Harry said quietly.
“He sold the doll to Wintour,” the lieutenant said flatly. “Now Wintour is dead. I think it’s reasonable to ask him a few questions.”
“Is he being detained?” Hendricks spoke as if dealing with an impertinent houseboy. “Has Josef Graff been placed under arrest in this matter?”
I glanced at Harry. His face had gone deathly pale.
“So far as we know, he was last to see the murdered man alive,” Lieutenant Murray said. “We would be remiss if we did not treat him with some measure of suspicion.”
“See here!” Hendricks was on his feet now. “Graff is a feeble old man! you can’t just bung him in jail because—”
“With respect, sir,” Lieutenant Murray interrupted, “there are elements of this investigation with which you are not familiar. I would ask that you defer to my judgement for the time being.” The policeman’s tone was even and deferential, but there was no mistaking the core of iron.
Hendricks studied Lieutenant Murray’s face for a moment and saw that it was pointless to argue. “I just don’t understand the point of detaining Mr. Graff, that’s all,” he said, sitting down beside his wife. “He’s a harmless old man.”
My brother had been silent during this exchange. Now he rose from his contemplation of the floor and carefully brushed at the knees of his trousers. “I have completed my examination of the carpet,” he announced.
“Have you?” Lieutenant Murray turned to face my brother, his lips pressed together in amusement.
“I am prepared to announce my conclusions,” Harry continued.
“Your conclusions?” The lieutenant was smiling broadly now. “Look, Mr. Houdini, as I said before, we just want you to show us how the automaton works.”
“I will do so, of course. At the same time, I will also demonstrate that Josef Graff had nothing whatever to do with Mr. Wintour’s death.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Josef Graff had nothing whatever to do with Mr. Wintour’s death. He may have sold Le Fantôme to the dead man, but he is completely innocent of any wrong-doing. I promise you that on my mother’s life.”
“And how can you be so certain of that?”
“Because Le Fantôme did not kill Branford Wintour.”
All traces of amusement drained from Lieutenant Murray’s face. His eyes became very still, the way a terrier’s will when he’s about to take a chunk out of your hand. “May I ask how you arrived at that conclusion, Mr. Houdini?”
“Because there is no red dot,” said my brother.
Dr. Peterson, the police physician, perked up at this. “No blood, you mean? There was a bit, if you looked closely, but the puncture wasn’t deep enough to cause any serious bleeding.”
Dr. Blanton, Mr. Wintour’s friend, nodded his head in vigorous agreement. “In some cases, the poison need not even enter the bloodstream directly. The smallest scratch is sufficient to—”
“I did not mean blood,” Harry said. “I refer to a red dot of a very different kind. A red dot that only Houdini would think to look for. I have made an exhaustive search, gentlemen, and there is no red dot on the body, or on the floor, or on the desk.”
Lieutenant Murray locked his hands behind his back. “I think you’ll have to explain yourself for us, Mr. Houdini.”
“Of course,” my brother said, warming to the role. “You and your men cannot be faulted if you are slow to grasp this. It is a matter where only the rarefied knowledge of Houdini can be of service.”
“Uh, Harry—?” I began.
“That’s all right,” Lieutenant Murray said to me. “Please, Mr. Houdini, we’d be ever so grateful if you could put us on the right track here.” He held up his hands for silence. “Boys? Could I ask you to stop with all this unnecessary police work for a moment? It seems our visitor here has stumbled upon the solution to our little problem, and I think we should all give him our attention.”
There was general laughter from the men in uniform, and even Mr. Hendricks and Dr. Blanton appeared amused. A lesser man might have resented the lieutenant’s facetious tone. Harry, with his steel-plated vanity, did not notice. Instead, he puffed out his chest and smoothed his lapels, a gesture he invariably made when he was about to take the stage.
“Thank you, Lieutenant Murray,” he said. “I must first correct a misstatement in the lieutenant’s kind introduction. I do not claim to have solved the murder.” A ripple of mock protest went up among the officers. “No, no,” Harry said. “I only wish to demonstrate that Le Fantôme is blameless. you see, when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
He surveyed the group of young officers. “First, I will need a volunteer from the audience. You, sir” —he pointed to a strapping patrolman— “may I prevail upon you to join me here at the front of the desk?”
The officer received a desultory round of applause as he stepped forward.
Harry reached into his pocket. “Your name is—? Robbins? Very good. Now, Mr. Robbins, I hold here in my hands a perfectly ordinary pack of playing cards—”
Lieutenant Murray gave a loud cough. “Look here, Houdini—”
I put a hand on his arm to restrain him. “Give him three minutes,” I said in a low whisper. “He’s on to something.”
He gave me a look that suggested I had just staked my life on the fact.
“officer Robbins,” Harry continued, “will you examine the cards and confirm that they are all different? you may shuffle them, if you like.” Grinning nervously, the young patrolman gave the cards an awkward shuffle.
“Thank you,” said Harry. “Now I will ask you to deal five cards off the top. Do you see the five ivory tiles in front of Le Fantôme? I want you to place one card face down on top of each tile.”
Robbins bent over the desk, biting his lower lip as he dealt out the five cards.
“Very good,” said Harry. “Now, while my back is turned, select one of the five cards and show it to the aud—to the other gentlemen.”
Robbins lifted a card—the five of clubs—off the desk and held it up for inspection.
“Now replace the card,” Harry continued, “but remember what it was. you are finished now? Excellent. Now, with the help of Le Fantôme, I shall attempt to locate the card you selected.”
“See here, Houdini,” said Lieutenant Murray, “you can’t tamper with that thing—it killed a man tonight.”
“I assure you it did not.”
“Besides, there’s no key to turn it on.”
“It does not require a key,” Harry said. “Observe.” He stretched his finger across the desk and depressed a glass bead on the figure’s headdress. We heard a faint click, and slowly the tiny figure stirred. In spite of himself, Lie
utenant Murray watched in fascination as the cross-legged figure slowly moved its head from side to side, as if studying the five cards spread out before it. We heard a soft creak as Le Fantôme’s left arm bent and its hand rose to stroke its temple, as though lost in contemplation. Abruptly, the figure’s head snapped upward and its mouth opened in a crude simulation of a smile. I cannot claim that it was a pleasant smile. In fact, it was downright spooky. Then the left arm straightened and pointed to the middle card in the row of five.
From the Chesterfield, Mrs. Hendricks began applauding at the apparent conclusion of the effect. Her husband and Dr. Blanton joined in, as did a handful of the policemen. Le Fantôme nodded its head as if to acknowledge the applause.
“You see?” Harry cried. “It is a harmless trick, a simple effect with cards. Officer Robbins, you may now turn over the card that Le Fantôme has indicated. It is the card you selected, is it not?”
Robbins looked at the card, hesitated, and looked again. “Uh, no, sir,” he said. “I picked the five of clubs. This is the nine of diamonds.”
“What? Impossible!” Harry darted forward and snatched the card from the patrolman’s hand, glaring at it with undisguised annoyance. “This cannot be!” He winced at the sound of sniggering from the back of the room. “Le Fantôme is foolproof! Possibly its workings have become fouled through the years of disrepair, or perhaps I failed to—”
We never learned what Harry might have failed to do. Throughout his tirade, a remarkable change had come over Le Fantôme. Unseen by Harry, who had his back to the desk, the automaton stirred to life once again. This time, its right hand—which held the tiny bamboo tube—rose from the folds of its robe. With a swift, sure movement, the figure raised the tube to its lips in the manner of a blow gun. Lieutenant Murray gave a cry of warning and hurled himself across the desk at my brother. The pair of them crashed to the floor just as some ten or twelve of New York’s finest dove for cover.
No poison dart came. Instead we heard a gentle puff of air and the sound of a wet splotch. Very deliberately, my brother disentangled himself from Lieutenant Murray, dusted off his trousers, and rose to his feet.
“I appreciate your concern for my safety,” he said, “but I assure you it was not necessary. you will see that one of the remaining cards is now marked with a spot of red pigment.” He held up the card to show a blob of red coloring. “This is what Le Fantôme expels from its pipe—and the only thing it is capable of expelling. So you see, Le Fantôme cannot be the culprit. Therefore, someone else must have slipped into this room, killed Mr. Wintour, and slipped out again without disturbing the locks or arousing the suspicions of the household. I suspect, Lieutenant Murray, that this will alter the direction of your inquiries.”
The lieutenant said nothing. He stared down at Le Fantôme’s wooden smile while the tendons in his neck worked back and forth.
“Oh, and one last thing,” my brother said. He held up the card with the red splotch. “officer Robbins, would you care to show our friends the card which Le Fantôme has marked?”
Robbins flipped the card face-front to show the five of clubs.
From the desk, we heard a soft wooden creak as Le Fantôme’s lips pulled back in a chilling smile.
3
THE INSIDE TALKER
“HARRY,” I SAID, AFTER WE HAD WALKED A FEW BLOCKS FROM THE Wintour mansion, “you really can’t treat the police like that.”
“Why can I not?” he asked.
“It’s disrespectful. Lieutenant Murray is just doing his work. It’s one thing to make a suggestion. It’s another to humiliate him.”
“I needed to demonstrate that Le Fantôme could not have been the instrument of murder.”
“It would have been enough to explain it to him. you didn’t need to put on the whole song and dance routine.”
He seemed to consider it. “It is my nature,” he said. “I see these men in uniform and something in me grows angry. Men in uniform have not always been kind to me—to our family.” We walked on for a few moments in silence before he continued. “Besides, it is what I do,” he said, as if considering the matter for the first time. “I escape from restraints. Chains. Ropes. Handcuffs. One day, this will mean something to people—to the immigrants who escaped to America just as our mother and father did. They will see a man escaping from fetters and they will recall their struggles. They will think of freedom.”
I studied his face as we passed under a street lamp. My brother was not a man given to introspection. When it came, however, it was generally worth the wait. “But you are probably right,” he allowed. “If I took an improper tone with Lieutenant Murray, I will apologize in the morning.”
“Are you certain that you’re right about this?” I asked. “Isn’t it possible that the automaton could have fired the dart?”
“Yes,” he admitted, “but not without a splotch of red pigment. There is no firing mechanism apart from a bladder filled with liquid. This is squeezed between two cogwheels so that a small amount of dye squirts forth. If the poison dart had been loaded into the figure’s blow pipe it might possibly have been propelled into the victim’s neck, but not without an accompanying splash mark.”
We stopped at a corner and waited for a horse and trap to pass by. “I find that possibility very unlikely, though,” Harry said. “If I were attempting to stage manage the murder of Mr. Wintour, I would never place my confidence in so unreliable a device. What is the likelihood that a poison dart fired in such a way would find its target? It seems incredible to me that it should have struck Mr. Wintour at all, much less that it hit him in a vulnerable spot. How could the murderer even be certain that the blow pipe would be facing in Mr. Wintour’s direction when it fired?” He shook his head. “If I were a murderer, I would not be content to leave so much to chance.”
“But if Le Fantôme didn’t kill him, how did the murderer get out of the study? It was locked from the inside.”
“A pretty problem, is it not?”
“Yes, Harry. A pretty problem. Do you have the answer?”
“I confess I do not,” he said. “Although no doubt the Great Houdini could think of at least seven ways to enter the study undetected. But I must gather more data. After all, I never guess. It is a shocking habit—destructive to the logical faculty.”
“ ‘Destructive to the logical’—is that another bit of wisdom from the pages of Sherlock Holmes, by any chance?”
He pretended not to hear me.
“Where are we going, by the way?” I asked. “The house is in the other direction.”
“We’re going to see Josef Graff.”
“The magic dealer? He’s being held at police headquarters!”
“I’m aware of that, Dash. That’s why we’re going to see him. I want to assure him that the Great Houdini will secure his release at the earliest opportunity.”
“Harry—”
“Did I not prove beyond all doubt that Le Fantôme could not have been the cause of Branford Wintour’s death? And yet, when I insisted that Mr. Graff be released, Lieutenant Murray refused!”
“He didn’t refuse, Harry. He merely said—”
“—that it would be necessary to confirm my ‘interesting speculations’ before the suspect could be released. Yes, Dash. I heard him. What twaddle! Such is the man whom you would have me treat with greater respect.”
I hauled out my Elgin pocket watch and popped open the cover. “It’s late, Harry. They won’t let us in at this hour. We’ll have to wait until morning.”
“Well, perhaps not quite that long,” Harry said. “First we will call on Mrs. Graff. The poor woman is undoubtedly distraught.”
“That’s a good idea,” I said. “Perhaps you could run the shop for her until Mr. Graff is released.”
“Run the shop? Don’t be foolish! I intend to see her husband vindicated! The Great Houdini will not rest until Josef Graff is released from his bonds!”
“I think we’d better leave the crime-solving to the po
lice,” I said. “We might be more useful keeping his business open.”
Harry sighed. “You have no imagination, Dash.”
It was a familiar refrain, as my brother had long despaired over my lack of imagination. Not three days earlier, my lack of imagination had been very much on his mind when I tried to talk him out of an especially hare-brained bridge leap. I should explain that Harry had been leaping from bridges since the age of thirteen—usually wearing a pair of handcuffs, or tied in sturdy ropes, or wrapped in a long length of heavy chain. As a magician, his stage manner was indifferent at best. As an escape artist, he was unparalleled. He would stand atop the guardrail of a high bridge, trammelled up in some impressive restraint, and whip his audience into a state of frenzied anticipation as he described his “death leap” into the frigid waters below. When the leap finally came—usually after a tender word of farewell to Bess—the crowd would literally gasp with horror. I don’t know how many times I stood by watching as tearful young ladies gripped the railing and scanned the smooth surface of the water below, where seconds earlier Harry had splashed to his “watery destiny.” What they did not know, these impressionable young admirers, was that Harry had usually sprung the cuffs or slipped the ropes before he ever hit the water. His showman’s instincts told him not to make it look too easy, so he would remain under water while the minutes ticked away, silently treading water below the surface. His lung capacity and endurance were phenomenal, having been honed by long practice sessions in the family bath tub. At his peak, he could remain underwater for five minutes, so that when at last he broke the surface, waving the handcuffs or ropes above his head, the roar from the crowd would be deafening. It seemed to them that they had seen a man cheat death. Actually, they had seen a man who could hold his breath for an uncommonly long time.
Harry was never content to let this stunt alone. He was forever adding more chains and leaping from higher vantages in an attempt to add drama to the escape. Then one day he announced his intention to jump off the new Brooklyn Bridge—wrapped in fifty pounds of iron shackles. It seemed to me, I told him, that he could accomplish much the same effect with a leap from the top of our apartment house. At a certain point, I tried to explain, it really didn’t matter whether he was leaping into water or onto solid ground. Harry wouldn’t listen to my arguments about the unprecedented height of the bridge, or the added danger of the extra restraints. When it became apparent that I couldn’t talk him out of it, I appealed to a higher authority—I mentioned Harry’s plan to our mother. She took him aside for a quiet word, and the subject of the Brooklyn Bridge leap was never mentioned again.
The Dime Museum Murders Page 5
