Death From a Top Hat

Chapter 10 Into Thin Air

It was at this point that I began to see myself writing a detective story after all. If things kept on happening at this rate, I’d only need to do a simple, straight-forward job of reporting. Even if the case fizzled at the finish, which didn’t seem indicated, I’d still have one hell of a good running start.

The remainder of Detective Janssen’s report cinched it. With a “sock” like that at the start of his story, one might have expected the rest to be anticlimatic. It wasn’t.

Gavigan glanced sharply at Captain Malloy and jerked a thumb toward Zelma LaClaire. Malloy took her out into the hall.

The Inspector scolded into the phone. “All right, Janssen. You lost him. Let’s have your alibi, and make it good.”

We could hear the blurred metallic sound of the detective’s voice, talking fast. Merlini and myself got his report in a disconnected fashion. We heard, first, the Inspector’s share of the conversation, which didn’t make sense; and then his quick resume of what Janssen had said, which didn’t make sense either. Janssen later repeated his half of the conversation for my benefit, and I report it here with the Inspector’s conversation as it occurred.

“It’s good and cockeyed, Chief. Maybe you can tell me where I went wrong. Listen. When I left you I went downstairs and told the boys at the front door to let Tarot out when he showed. Then I hiked to the corner and grabbed a cab. Just as I climbed aboard, I saw Tarot hurry out and do a line buck through the mob of reporters that had collected on the front stoop. I thought for a minute that they had him stopped, but he held one arm over his face, lowered his head, and did a line buck right through. I don’t think the pictures they got were worth much. That little fat photog from the Mirror got a poke in the slats that sent him backwards over the hedge. He landed flat on his Graflex.

“Tarot headed my way, got himself a cab, and came north. In a hurry too. I tagged along. And behind me a whole cabful of nosey Parkers.

“We turned west on 42nd Street to Grand Central. Tarot got out and paid off the driver. The rest of us dittoed. I made the newspaper boys scram, and then kept right on Tarot’s tail, because this didn’t look like Radio City to me. He went in and picked up a suitcase he had salted away in one of those dime-in-the-slot lockers near the subway entrance. It began to look like a sneak. But instead of heading for the Concourse, he goes upstairs and ducks out the Vanderbilt Avenue exit, and gets another taxi from the stand there. I followed suit.

“We cut over to Madison, uptown to 49th, and turned toward Fifth. I started to breathe easier. It looked like Radio City might be on the itinerary after all; but we sailed right past. At Eighth Avenue he started acting like a dope. He got out at the corner, paid off the cabbie, and started walking north on Eighth. That’s not such a flossy neighborhood, and everybody eyed the topper and opera cape. I stuck to my cab, just in case he took it into his head to ride again. He did. What does he do but walk once around the block and come right back to where he started. Don’t ask me why. He didn’t do a damn thing but walk; I had my eye on him every second. He didn’t even speak to anyone. When he got back near Eighth again he speeded up a bit and ducked around the corner with me right on his heels. And there was that same cab still there. He popped into it, and the driver stepped on the gas pronto, as if he’d been waiting for him. Maybe taxis make him seasick or something and he has to take the air every so often. I don’t know. The whole layout was funny as hell. I wish now I’d grabbed him then, but you said follow him, so I did. Besides, he hadn’t done anything he shouldn’t, except not go where he said he was going.

“We headed up and across town, and then over the Triborough Bridge into the Bronx. I was right behind him the whole time. After a while he started stepping it up, zigzagging crosstown, and, in general, acting as if he was trying to shake me. He didn’t have any luck at that, though. We nosed right after him. And listen, Chief, I want to say right here that from the minute old high hat got into that bus until we caught up with it, the car wasn’t out of my sight once! And my driver will ditto that.

“It began to get interesting now, and, after he’d sailed through two stop lights without noticing them I decided to pull him in. I told James to step on it, but they kept ahead of us. By this time we were going along at a pretty good clip. We sailed through another red light, and a big beer truck with the right of way came along, and smacked our car up against an El pillar! I didn’t have to be no Einstein to know damn well, by this time, that Tarot was up to something funny. After all the trouble I’d had chasing him — not to mention the cab fare — I wasn’t going to lose him like that. So I piled out and took a couple of pot shots at his cab. I planted one bull’s-eye through the little back window, and it showered glass all over the inside of the car. The driver lost control — he got cut up a good bit — and the cab did a one and a half spin, bounced off another El pillar, and rolled over on its side.

“I ran up and opened the door on top. And this is straight! There was just one guy in that hack, the driver, and he was out — cold! He had a nice big bump on his head, and he was sort of bloody. But that magician must have crawled into his silk hat and pulled it in after him! I saw him get in; I know damn well he didn’t get out; and yet, he wasn’t there! That’s the story, and it looks like I’m stuck with it.”

Inspector Gavigan objected, “Why couldn’t he have jumped out on the way? It’s not so damned light at this time of night. Are you sure—?”

“Sure, I’m sure,” Janssen protested. “That’s just the trouble. “I was right close to his tail every minute. I swear there wasn’t a chance, and my driver’ll tell you the same.”

“All right, then you only thought you saw him get into the cab.”

“Just as you say, Inspector. Only, in that case, how come I found his suitcase in the cab, after it had updumped?”

“The suitcase!” Gavigan’s eyes lit up briefly. “What was in it?”

“Nothin’,” Janssen said. “It was empty.”

“Has the driver come to yet?”

“No. We’ve got an ambulance here, and the doc’s going over him now.”

“Hang on,” Gavigan ordered. Turning to us, he quickly summarized Janssen’s story. “This is your department, Merlini,” he finished. “Could Tarot pull a stunt like that, or has he got Janssen hypnotized, or what? I’ve seen magicians vanish ducks, but this—” He shrugged doubtfully.

Merlini sat on the edge of the desk, listening. His fingers, unwatched, played absently with a half dollar that twinkled in the light as it alternately vanished and reappeared. Now, in answer to the Inspector’s question, he looked meditatively down at the coin and then flipped it, spinning, into the air. He caught it deftly in his right hand and held the closed fist out toward the Inspector. A half smile touched his lips as he opened the hand slowly, fingers spread wide. The half dollar was not there.

“Hypnotism not needed, you see,” he said. “Ask Janssen just why he’s so sure he saw Tarot get back into that cab.”

After a minute of phoning, Gavigan reported, “He says he didn’t actually see Tarot get in, but he’d bet two months’ pay that he did. Tarot ran around the cab and got in on the off side. He heard the door slam, and there was no place else for him to go. The car drove off immediately, the pavement was empty, and Tarot couldn’t possibly have reached a doorway unseen. There was no one else within thirty feet of the cab, and no manhole covers nor anything to hide behind. That corner is well lighted with street lights and illuminated signs.”

“Good,” Merlini said, grinning. “That settles it. Tell Janssen to make thorough search of the cab, and then call us back. And if the driver comes to — well, he’d call us in that case anyway.”

“What should he look for? Don’t tell me Tarot is hiding under the seat?”

“Something like that. Tell him to look there first.”

Merlini’s tone was far from facetious, and so Gavigan, after a moment’s hesitation, passed his instructions on, ending with, “Get going, and phone back at once!”

He clicked the phone rest and dialed headquarters. “And where should I really have ’em look for Tarot?” he asked Merlini.

“I don’t know. If the men you sent to his hotel haven’t picked him up, as seems to be the case, I haven’t the slightest idea where he has got to.”

Gavigan started uneasily. “I thought you sounded as if you were going to explain this hocus-pocus?”

“I am.”

The Inspector told headquarters to send out a general alarm for Tarot. Then he tipped back in his chair and said, “Okay, let’s have it. But don’t tell me it was done with mirrors or trap doors. Not in a taxi. If you can clear up a mess like this, maybe we can go to town on this locked room headache. Tarot leaves a taxi without using any of the usual means of exit, such as doors; and a murderer left this room in the same way. Though, offhand, I’d say the taxi stunt seems to be the most difficult.”

“They’re both good,” Merlini said. “But then, so is Tarot… and so is our murderer.”

“I’m not so sure they’re two different people. That alibi of Tarot’s is going to get a raking over. If I can break that—”

“I’m afraid that an explanation of the Great Taxi Trick isn’t going to help much with our locked room tangle. The two effects are, as you say, similar; but the means of accomplishing them were quite different.”

Gavigan sat up straight. “Then you know,” he almost shouted, “how this locked room escape was managed?”

Merlini eyed a bronze sacrificial knife that hung on the wall just behind and over the Inspector’s head. “I didn’t say that, Inspector. But I know that the methods must be different, because the cab, after Tarot had vanished, contained a living, though unconscious, driver; whereas this apartment, after the murderer’s escape, held only a dead man.”

“Come on, speak English,” Gavigan muttered.

Merlini wasn’t going to have his climax rushed. He continued in the same even, unhurried, tantalizing tempo.

“Deception is eighty per cent psychology and is mostly accomplished by hindering the audience’s observation in some manner, so that it is either incomplete or incorrect. That’s the primary principle. Even a trained observer cannot possibly see more than a portion of the things within his view at one time, nor can he look in more than one direction at a time. It only remains to place the device or stratagem that works the trick among those things that are not seen, or if seen, not properly observed. The end result is actually a normal one, but, thus distorted, has the appearance of impossibility, of magic, sorcery, legerdemain, hocus-pocus, conjuring… ”

Gavigan’s fist pounded on the desk. “I didn’t ask you for a lecture on the psychology of swindling, dammit! There’s a murderer running around loose, and it’s my job to catch up with him. Get on with it!”

“Objection sustained, Inspector.” Merlini bowed apologetically. “The theory class is dismissed. The situation as it stands, then, is this: You are annoyed because Janssen’s story states an impossibility. This means merely that some one of his statements is false, that somewhere along the line he was cleverly misled into thinking he saw something that didn’t happen, or into missing something that did happen. Or a little of both.

“He and other bystanders swear that Tarot was not in the wrecked cab. He and his driver both swear that Tarot could not have left the cab en route without being seen. And, finally, they both insist that he entered the cab because he couldn’t have gone any place else. Suppose we assume the opposite of each statement in turn and see what happens. Suppose, first, that Tarot was in the cab when it overturned. That merely leaves us with another miracle. Tarot must not only have been invisible, but also impervious to flying glass.”

Gavigan, irritated by Merlini’s round-about approach, interrupted, “And, if he left the taxi without ‘Eagle-Eye’ Janssen seeing him, that makes him invisible, too. So what? This isn’t a story by H. G. Wells.”

“Suppose he didn’t get into the taxi the second time, then. Suppose he didn’t even go near it. He wouldn’t have to be invisible to do that.”

“Merlini,” the Inspector begged, “will you please stop giving an imitation of an assistant instructor in beginning logic and talk so it makes sense? He wouldn’t have to be invisible; he’d have to be the opposite of invisible. He’d have to appear to be some place he wasn’t. Now you’ve got me talking that way!” Gavigan’s growl was distilled frustration.

“But that’s exactly what he did do, Inspector! He only appeared to get in the taxi. Janssen saw him? How does Janssen know it was Tarot? He was following him; he didn’t see his face, merely the back of his head, the hat, the opera cape, and the suitcase. Someone else could have”

“So! It wasn’t mirrors or trap doors. Just a confederate! Now, all you have to explain is how this Mr. X you’ve invented got out of the taxi. If you so much as hint that he was a vampire who dissolved into thin air on the stroke of twelve and went back to his grave, I’ll… I’ll… ”

“You’d have an apoplectic fit, so I won’t suggest it. Anyway, it happened before midnight.” Merlini took out a package of cigarettes and selected one. “No, it’s much simpler than that. Mr. X, once in the cab, simply stayed there. He was in it when it crashed — and he wasn’t invisible at all!” Merlini’s match scratched along emery paper and flared brightly.

Gavigan stood up. “It won’t wash! You’re saying that the cab driver, dressed in some of Tarot’s clothes and carrying his suitcase, walked around the block, got back into the cab, and took Janssen on a wild goose chase, Tarot in the meantime having vamoosed. The hat, which folded, and the cape, you want us to believe, were hidden under—”

He stretched out his arm and snatched at the phone receiver before the initial ring had been completed. He listened, and then said:

“Under the seat! Damn! How about the driver?… What!.. ” He listened intently, amazement and understanding spreading over his face. At last he said, “Get a stenographer up there and get that on paper, with witnesses!” Then he hung up and scowled sheepishly at Merlini.

“You win,” he said. “Janssen found the hat and cape under the front seat-cushions. And the driver just woke up and talked himself blue in the face. But I’m going to be mean and make you come through with the rest of it — if you can.”

“On the spot, eh?” Merlini smiled. “I’ll take a chance. When the cab stopped at 49th and Eighth the driver got out, wearing the hat and cape, and carrying the suitcase, all of which Tarot had shoved over from the back seat. Janssen wasn’t in a position to see that his quarry came out through the forward, rather than the rear, door of the cab; the driver, probably feeling pretty silly in such unfamiliar get-up, took his mysterious and seemingly senseless promenade around the block. Tarot, meanwhile, vanished by simply going away from there. Returning, the driver again prevented Janssen’s getting a complete picture of what was happening by entering on the off side of the cab. It wouldn’t have looked quite right for Janssen to have seen Tarot popping into the driver’s seat. The give-away, of course, was the fact that although the man was in a hurry he circled clear around the car before getting in. Inconsistent. Only reason, obviously, was concealment.

“Tarot made Janssen think he saw the exact opposite of what really happened. Tarot left the cab on the very spot where Janssen and his driver swore he must have entered it!”

The Inspector’s bark was softer now and more respectful. “So far, so good,” he approved. “But you don’t explain how Tarot managed to pick a taxi at random from the Grand Central stand and get an accomplice for a driver. Asking a lot of coincidence, isn’t it?”

“I suppose so,” Merlini admitted, “but that’s not too important. I only know that’s how it must have been done. I hope coincidence doesn’t enter; it’s less artistic. What did the driver say?”

Gavigan seemed pleased at having a chance to explain something. “Tarot is going to be a slippery customer to deal with. He must have done some damned fast thinking, because the whole thing seems to have been impromptu. The driver had never set eyes on Tarot before. But he had heard of him; he has a couple of kids that soak up Tarot’s radio program every night. Tarot handed him a line about being trailed by some dame’s husband. He gave the driver fifty bucks, and his gold watch and chain as security that he wouldn’t make off with the cab. Ten bucks would have done it. The driver says that because he was such a hot-shot celebrity it never occurred to him that they were being followed by the police. Not until he couldn’t shake the other cab, even through the red lights. Then he got his wind up.”

“Why did he trek clear over into the Bronx?”

“Tarot told him that after ditching the husband he should leave the hat, cape, and suitcase at 5416 Mercer Avenue. Janssen checked that and it’s a skating rink! The Great Tarot is going to have to do some high, wide, and fancy explaining when I get my hands on him. After dishing out a nice neat alibi, he queers the whole act with this flum-gummery. What’s he up to that’s more important than that nation-wide broadcast, why did he avoid being fingerprinted, and where the hell is he?”

“You’ve left out a question, Inspector,” Merlini said, “and it might be more important than all the others put together.”

“Yes?”

“Why,” Merlini went on, “did the Great Tarot vanish at all? Why, if he merely wanted to avoid the police, didn’t he simply lose Janssen? There are lots of methods that are a lot simpler, surer, and much less expensive. Why take all the chances anything so spectacular necessitated? It’s a knockout of a publicity getter, but, judging from the way he treated the news photographers outside, it looks as if, for once, that’s just what he didn’t want. Which is queer too, because ordinarily he can’t get enough of it. That’s why he affects that opera cloak. It’s his trademark.”

“If it wasn’t for the corpse we’ve got,” Gavigan said acidly, “I’d say the whole dithering mess was some press agent’s brainstorm.”

“Why,” Merlini suggested, “don’t you send someone over to Tarot’s hotel to take a peek at his rooms? He was in evening clothes and hatless, and I’d expect him to do something about it. His hotel is only a few blocks from where he disappeared.”

“What do you mean, a few blocks?” Gavigan almost shouted. “He gave an address on 121st Street.”

“I wouldn’t know about that,” Merlini said, “but he lives and always has lived at the Barclay Arms, 250 West 50th Street.”

The Inspector pounced on the phone and stabbed angrily at the dial with his forefinger.

Merlini turned to me. “Ross, do you think that suitcase was empty when Tarot picked it up at Grand Central?”

“I’ll give you odds that it wasn’t,” I said.

“No sale. Inspector, how about getting that suitcase over here where we can take a look at it?”

“Janssen said he was sending it,” Gavigan growled.

“Good.”

“He might,” I suggested brightly, “have had a spare opera cape in it.”

Gavigan spoke across the phone. “That smells. If he had an extra hat and cape planted, it means he expected to be tailed and intended all along to perform that fancy vanish. In that case, why didn’t he make previous arrangements with a taxi driver and avoid taking chances with that obviously impromptu irate-husband story?”

I couldn’t think of a good answer to that, so I shut up.

Over the phone Gavigan gave Tarot’s address as supplied by Merlini and commanded that someone be sent there at once. When he had hung up, he looked toward the door, put two fingers in his mouth, and whistled a long, shrill note.