Death From a Top Hat

Chapter 23 The Most Dangerous Trick

The Guest Night programs of the Society of American Magicians are presented in the twenty-fourth-floor auditorium of the McAlpin Hotel on Broadway at 34th Street. As I entered the main-floor lobby I found the Inspector, with Captain Malloy, Grimm, and half a dozen detectives gathered near the door.

“Something brewing?” I asked.

“Looks like it,” Gavigan said. “Merlini phoned H.Q. a while ago and told me to have all the exits from the twenty-fourth floor covered during the show. Then he announced — as off-handedly as he could manage — that he’d found Jones, and hung up. I called him back and he simply let the phone ring.”

The Inspector turned to the others. “You boys have your orders. Go to it, and keep your eyes open. Come on, Harte.”

I followed him across the lobby into the hotel manager’s office. Gavigan introduced himself and said, “I want you to issue orders to the elevator operators that, once the S.A.M. show upstairs has started tonight, no car is to stop for any reason whatsoever at the twenty-fourth floor, except at my order.”

Having completely upset that gentleman’s peace of mind, we left.

“Looks as if we were going to be properly marooned for the rest of the evening,” I commented. “More of Merlini’s recommendations?”

“Yes,” Gavigan said gloomily.

We stepped from the elevator into the twenty-fourth-floor lobby, a T-shaped corridor, with elevators lining both sides of the downstroke. The right arm of the T held the checkroom, and at its end, an exit led to the roof. The left-hand corridor stopped at the large door, now closed, of a banquet room. Directly before us, opposite the elevators, was the auditorium door and before it a small table where an S.A.M. officer stood taking tickets.

The lobby was crowded, and from the animated buzz of conversation that filled the air my ears several times filtered out the word Tarot. To many of these people, I realized, the murders were headline news that had come close and touched them.

I noticed again what had struck me on a previous reportorial visit. With the exception of one or two men that had overdue haircuts, all looked about as mysterious as — well, as Gavigan did. And yet, I knew that among them were many famous exponents of the wand, master of the innocent face and the deceptive hand. There were, too, the amateurs, whose skill in some specialty often equalled that of their professional colleagues — professors, jewelers, brokers, florists, mailmen, doctors, lawyers, newspaper cartoonists — who at night turned to wizardry and deception. Sprinkled here and there were perhaps a dozen or so decorative blondes, those glamorous and indestructible ladies whose bodies are nightly severed from their heads, pierced with swords, divided into halves with a crosscut saw, and burned alive.

Merlini stood near the ticket taker’s table, talking to Colonel Watrous. Standing very still beside him was a woman wearing dark glasses — Madame Rappourt. Aha, I thought, she’s shy among the conjurers.

Merlini saw us as we started toward them, and with a warning shake of his head, he quickly steered Rappourt and Watrous through the door into the auditorium. After several moments he hurried out again and took us under his wing.

“What’s the idea of that?” Gavigan wanted to know.

“I want your presence as little noticed as possible. You wouldn’t wear a disguise.” Merlini winked at me.

Gavigan made a sour face. “When I get a case that necessitates my dressing up like the House of David, I’ll resign.”

“Always so forthright and direct,” Merlini said. “A little deception is sometimes a good thing, Inspector, and it’s lots of fun. But perhaps we’d better go in. I’ve saved seats down front and the hocus-pocus is about to begin. Are your minions in their proper places?”

“Yes, but I’d enjoy myself a lot more if I knew… ”

“That’s what you think. Besides, there’d be no dramatic suspense, no climax.”

“Hang your suspense, Merlini!” Gavigan began, but Merlini shut him off by introducing us, as we passed, to two card kings, a sword swallower, and the Man with the X-Ray Eyes.

Merlini had three seats reserved on the center aisle in the sixth row. Watrous and Rappourt, I noticed, were sitting two rows further forward on the other side of the aisle, and in the end seat of our own row, near the wall, I saw Judy Barclay.

I glanced at my program, and Gavigan scowled at his.

“Merlini,” Gavignan said sharply, “Is Jones backstage?”

“Yes, but you sit right where you are. Before the evening is over you can have at him all you want. But not now.”

The auditorium lights faded. Al Baker stepped from between the curtains carrying Dennis, a harsh and utterly irrepressible ventriloquist’s dummy, who interrupted violently every time Al tried to speak. Dennis finally M.C.’d the show, introducing Joseffy’s act as a masterpiece of skullduggery.

The skull — Cagliostro’s, so Joseffy said — rested on a glass plate held by a committee from the audience and indicated, with a gruesome clicking of its white teeth, the names of cards surreptitiously chosen by the audience.

Gavigan’s disgruntled comment was, “Maybe I should ask him who our murderer is.”

John Mulholland caused a rosebush to grow from nothing and mysteriously blossom. Bernard Zufall instantly memorized a list of fifty words supplied by the audience and repeated them forwards, backwards, and then singly as they were called for by number.

Dennis then introduced the LaClaires and challenged Zelma to read his mind. Dressed in white and blindfolded with a black bandage, she was apparently in constant communication with Alfred, who silently went up and down the aisles, glancing at the various objects held up for his examination, which she immediately described, and listening to whispered questions, which she answered. The act was well done, faster paced than most, and it finished with a clairvoyant climax that consisted in Zelma’s addition, sight unseen, of several six-digit figures written my members of the audience on a slate.

Duvallo’s act took some time to set. We could hear the thump of heavy apparatus being moved into position as Al Baker, before the curtain, put one over on Dennis. The latter pooh-poohed Duvallo’s skill, boasting that he could do as well. Mr. Baker, taking him at his word, produced a miniature strait jacket, laced the dummy in, tied a handkerchief securely over his protesting mouth, and commented, “That’s the best gag of the evening, if I do say it myself.”

When the curtain went up on Duvallo’s act, I saw the Inspector sit up and take notice. I dropped my cigarette on the floor and ground it out nervously with my heel. Was it coming now? Would we get a hint of the way in which someone had escaped from those two apartments? I looked about quickly. Judy, the Colonel, and Madame Rappourt were all present and accounted for.

On the stage I saw a great box whose sides were large rectangles of heavy plate glass, bound along the edges with steel bands. A fire hose from off stage was rapidly filling the box with water. Duvallo’s offering was obviously going to be the escape from the Chinese Water Torture Cell, a creation of Harry Houdini’s, and the secret of which was lost with his death. Duvallo had successfully re-discovered, if not the same, then an equally efficacious method of release. An assistant hoisted a smaller steel box with an open top and a steel-barred front up and into the water. Duvallo, stripped to bathing trunks, came on, and the separate top of the glass box, a heavy metal affair having two leg holes in it after the fashion of the Puritan stocks, was locked securely about his ankles. With block and tackle this was raised high, and then lowered over the box. Duvallo, hanging head down, was completely immersed in the water. Several large padlocks were quickly placed, locking the box and its top together, the keys being thrown into the audience. A concealing canopy was drawn around the Torture Cell and the assistant stood outside peering in through a slit in the curtains, holding a fire axe in readiness should anything go wrong.

For three minutes the audience, sensing the danger that was on the stage before them, sat very still, tensely searching the assistant’s face for some clue to what he saw. Then, at a sign from him the piano player stopped in mid-bar, and the curtains were flung wide. Duvallo, last seen upside down and smiling through thick plate glass, steel bars, and water, was sitting outside the box on the stage floor. He dripped water and was breathing heavily, drawing in the air with great gulps. The box remained inscrutably locked and was shy of being filled with water only by the amount his body had displaced. The applause of the audience expressed relief.

As the curtains closed, Merlini rose and excused himself to go and prepare for his own act. The audience got up to take a stretch and wandered about, smoking and chatting. Gavigan and myself went to the lobby and walked to the end of the corridor where he rapped lightly with his knuckles on the banquet hall door. It opened a crack and Malloy peered out.

“We’re bored stiff, Inspector,” he whispered. “Anything doing yet?”

“No, but sit tight. Merlini acts confident as hell.”

“Doesn’t he always?” Malloy asked and closed the door. As we came back, I noticed a man standing before the elevators, trying hard not to look like a detective. He paid no attention to us, nor Gavigan to him. The Inspector repeated his knock on the door leading to the roof, and got an answering reply. I recognized Brady’s voice. I asked, “What about exits from backstage?”

“There aren’t any except for the two doors on either side of the stage that lead from the dressing rooms directly into the auditorium. And I’ve got a couple of men backstage, anyway. Merlini had me place them everywhere, short of behind the woodwork.”

We slid back into our seats again, just as the lights dimmed. I saw Gavigan glance anxiously at the still empty chair where Judy had previously sat.

Merlini stepped on to a stage that was bare of everything except two or three small spindly-legged tables. He announced that, in his opinion, it was high time someone revived Joseph Hartz’s great trick Le Chapeau du Diable, neglected since that conjurer’s death in 1903. Borrowing a collapsible opera hat from a member of the stock exchange in the fifth row, he proceeded calmly and with smiling deliberation to produce from its empty interior the following objects in order named: a bushel or two of large silk handkerchiefs, six bottles of champagne and a dozen goblets, enough playing cards to fill three hats, an electric table lamp whose bulb burned brightly with some infernal energy of its own, a canary complete with cage, and a large goldfish bowl brimming with water and fish.[13] And finally, as he returned the hat to its owner in the audience, it collapsed with a snap, disclosing the inevitable rabbit.

Inspector Gavigan sat back in his chair, one finger tapping impatiently on his knee. Whatever he had expected had not happened. Had something misfired, or was it still to come? There were two acts yet which might have possibilities, Jones’ and Ching’s.

I’m afraid I didn’t pay much attention to Max Holden’s dextrous shadowgraphy. Instead, I watched Judy’s vacant chair and eyed Watrous, who was whispering excitedly to Madame Rappourt as she sat stolidly behind her dark glasses, possibly watching the performance, but giving every impression that, except for her body, she was lost in some other world. That woman’s dead-pan attitude got on my nerves.

Under cover of Dennis’ boisterous kibitzing, Merlini slipped back and took his seat again.

“Won’t Jones’ ventriloquial act be a bit flat after this Dennis kid?” Gavigan asked him.

“He’s doing something else tonight. Keep your eyes open.”

I didn’t like the way he said that, and a cold shiver coasted down my spine. So — now it was coming.

When the curtains parted the audience were still smiling over Dennis’ final remarks. But when they saw the bare, black-draped stage and the solemn, strangely pale expression on Jones’ face as he walked out and stood motionless near the footlights waiting for quiet, something stilled them.

He began quietly, in a soft, flat voice that accentuated the dramatic import of what he said.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this evening I shall present one of the most famous feats in all magic — and yet one that is rarely seen. It has been attempted by but few performers, for the very excellent reason that its presentation must always be absolutely perfect. Make just one mistake — as almost all its performers have eventually done — and it’s your last. It is the most dangerous trick in magic.”

His speech was somewhat stilted, as if memorized, and, as he paused, something of his nervousness passed across the footlights into the audience. There was a stiffening of attention, a hushed absence of those rustling, stirring noises that indicate lack of interest.

“Captain Carl Storm, formerly of the United States Army,” Jones continued, “is here tonight at my invitation. Will you please step up, Captain?”

From as aisle seat on the other side of the auditorium, a man in uniform rose and made his way toward the stage. Under his arm he carried several implements that had, in their smooth, machined lines, an efficient, deadly look. The polite applause was hesitant, apprehensive.

“I requested the Captain to bring with him from his collection three army rifles which he was instructed to choose at random. Did you do that, Captain?” The man nodded.

A mumbled undercurrent of excitement wavered through the audience, many of whom apparently guessed what was to come.

Jones faced the footlights. “I would also like to have several gentlemen from the audience form a committee to assist me on the stage. Particularly those who may have some knowledge of firearms, though anyone at all is quite welcome to volunteer. Perhaps I should add that whatever danger exists does so for myself only an can in no way touch anyone else.”

Before any ordinary audience Jones would most certainly have made this request prior to any hint of danger or any display of armaments. But volunteer assistants come easily enough from an audience of magicians and their friends. There was a slight hesitation; then, almost at once, several persons rose from different parts of the auditorium. In a moment or two Jones had to hold up his hand indicating that that was enough. There were five men on the stage besides himself and the Captain.

Two of them I recognized immediately. One was a detective I had seen outside with Gavigan before the show, the other was Dr. Hesse. Then, as I watched them line up under Jones’ direction on the left side of the stage, a man in evening dress, the last to go forward, turned, and I saw that it was Watrous. I looked about quickly. Gavigan, bent forward, and scowling heavily at the stage, obscured my view; I couldn’t see Madame Rappourt. Judy was still missing. Duvallo, Ching, and the LaClaires were, I supposed, still backstage.

Jones spoke again. “Captain Storm, will you tell the audience if, since you chose those rifles, I have had any chance to examine or handle them.”

The Captain shook his head and answered in a parade-ground voice, “This is the first time you have even seen them.”

“You brought ammunition?”

The Captain placed the rifles on a table and drew a box of cartridges from his coat pocket. At Jones’ suggestion he slit the box open and poured the bullets in a heap on the table.

Jones, keeping some distance from the table, motioned to the committeemen. “Will you kindly step over and examine the bullets. When you are quite satisfied that they are genuine, will you select two and stand them on end, at the edge of the table away from the others.”

When this had been done, he asked, “Does someone have a pocketknife?”

The man whom I recognized as a detective produced one and offered it.

Jones indicated the selected bullets. “Will you choose one of those,” he said, “and scratch your initials on the nose of the bullet and on the case.”

As the man did this, Gavigan curled a few words from the side of his mouth at Merlini. “You would think up something like this, dammit. I’ve a good notion to break it up right now.”

“Easy, Inspector,” Merlini whispered. “We’re going to get a nibble.”

Jones spoke to Watrous and Dr. Hesse. “Will you gentlemen please select one of those guns.”

They did so, examing each and agreeing on one.

“Who, beside the Captain, knows how to load this gun. You, sir?”

He looked at the fifth committeeman, a shy professorial looking man who wore thick lensed glasses and a short Vandyke. He stepped hesitantly from the background, and in a low voice that barely got across the footlights, said, “Yes. I think I can.”

“Will you take the gun then and load it with the bullet that is left, there on the table.”

As he did so, Jones picked up a white dinner plate from the table and placed it in a metal holder at the right and rear of the stage.

“Captain Storm, will you please take the gun and fire at the plate.”

The Captain nodded, took the gun and raised it. I saw a woman in front of me put her fingers to her ears. The gun cracked and the plate dropped, a shower of small pieces that rattled on the floor.

An odd sort of sound rose from the audience as more than one person gasped involuntarily and caught at his breath.

Jones held the tension steady. He quickly took the marked bullet and held it in turn before each committeeman, asking that the initialling he noted. He passed the bullet to the man who had loaded before, and as Captain Storm held out the gun, the latter threw back the breech, ejecting the spent shell. As he loaded the gun again, Jones turned his back, walked across stage to where the plate had been and faced his audience.

“The trick I am about to present, is, of course, the Great Bullet Catching Feat.”

His voice was strained, with a tight piano-wire vibrance in it that sang. Was he acting, building up his effect, or was he scared to death? I couldn’t tell.

“Ready, Captain?” Storm nodded.

“Then you will aim the gun, which everyone has seen loaded with a freely selected and marked bullet—at my face. When you fire I shall try to catch the bullet between my teeth. Can you score a bull’s-eye the first time, Captain?” The man nodded slowly. “If you say so.” Somewhere a woman giggled, the loose foolish sound that precedes hysteria. Jones was putting on a good act.

I saw Judy come through the door from backstage and make her way through the dark back to her seat.

“I must have complete quiet, please,” Jones cautioned. “Everything — my life, perhaps — depends upon the Captain’s aim.” He wiped his forehead with a handkerchief, then faced the Captain and stood stiffly, like a store-window dummy, his movements jerky and mechanical.

“I shall call, ‘Ready — Aim’—and, when I drop this handkerchief, you will fire. Is that clear?”

Captain Storm nodded almost imperceptibly and frowned. The handkerchief dropped — but stopped short. Jones still held an end of it. That drew another gasp from the audience. Jones, arms rigidly at his side, appeared not to have heard. He pulled his chin up and said: “Ready!”

The Captain half raised the rifle. Merlini, oddly, settled back somewhat in his chair, a queer half smile on his mouth. Gavigan had one hand in his coat pocket, his arm flexed, ready. Judy moved slightly and glanced toward us, her eyes dark and large. “Aim!”

The gun snapped to the Captain’s shoulder, one sharp, clean movement in a blurred slow-motion film. A cold high light glinted brightly down the long barrel that pointed steadily at Jones.

The silence was complete, breathless, and the chalky faces of the committeemen were like a row of white holes in the dark backdrop. Watrous shifted on his feet uneasily. There were damp high lights on Jones’ sharp, tight face.

At last, after what seemed an interminable pose, the tableau moved. Jones’ fingers jerked wide, convulsively and the white blur of handkerchief fell slowly, almost floating, to the floor. It touched the stage and the rifle cracked! The report still rang in my ears; Jones fell backwards, and slowly swung halfway around, his body twisting above the knees. His legs gave loosely like a marionette’s and he slumped forward to the floor on his face. And was still. A faint halation of dust rose upward around him. For a brief second no one moved, no sound came. Then instantly the place was in an uproar. “Come on, Inspector,” Merlini cried, but Gavigan was halfway up the aisle, running. In the back of my head some automatic adding machine foolishly did a sum. Where there had been five committeemen, there were now but four!

Simultaneously a heavy voice from off stage at the left shouted, “Oh, no you don’t!” Then I heard the sound that accompanies a smashing impact of fist against bone.

The missing committeeman tumbled backward from the wings on to the stage. Detective Janssen, whose voice I had recognized, jumped out after him, plunging forward in a flying tackle to wrap himself about the falling man’s knees; they went down together. The uproar became pandemonium.

“He tried to sneak off into the wings,” Janssen yelled at Gavigan as the latter vaulted the footlights.

Merlini, climbing up, said, “Grab him, Inspector. That’s your murderer!”

With that, a movement on the opposite side of the stage caught instant attention.

The still body of Jones rolled over — and sat up! The audience stood and stared.

My hands that were gripping the chairback before me started slowly to relax. It was all over now; there was no need for that tight, strained feeling or for the pounding of my pulse — and then, as the Inspector drew out a pair of brightly glittering handcuffs, the murderer’s foot swung up and caught him in the groin. With almost the same movement he swung a haymaker against Janssen’s jaw and, leaping forward, threw himself into the air across the footlights. He landed, falling to his knees and, without rising, pivoted. There was a revolver in his hand.

Gavigan’s was out too, but he didn’t use it. The man’s voice came, hard, rasping, with a deadly sincerity.

“If anyone moves, I’ll fire into the crowd. I’m going out, and, if you try to stop me, someone’ll get hurt. I mean it! Clear that aisle!”

He started sideways down the aisle, watching over his shoulder, his gun moving at the crowd. The people before him fell away; a path straight to the door opened magically. Halfway back, a woman gave a small yelp and fainted, falling across the aisle. He stepped over her and went on, his gun waving from side to side menacingly, the tendons of his jaw standing out in hard ridges.

I saw Janssen half raise his gun. Gavigan knocked his arm down and ordered loudly, “Let him go! Everyone keep your seats!”

As the man reached the doorway, he turned and backed into it “Thanks, Inspector — and good-bye.”

He was through it, and the door closed after him. There was a thump from outside as of a table overturned.

Gavigan cried, “Quiet, everybody, and sit still. The exits are all guarded and the elevators aren’t—”

“Crack!”

The report of a gun came from the lobby outside. Gavigan and the two detectives were suddenly running down the aisle. I slipped out of my seat as Merlini went past, and followed. In spite of the Inspector’s command, the spectators were milling desperately amid a welter of overturned chairs.

The Inspector threw himself at the door, pushing it open against the table that lay there. Outside, the detective I had seen before the elevators lay on the floor with a dark wet-shaped stain on the carpet beside him. From doors at either end of the lobby the other detectives came with drawn guns. But I saw no sign of any murderer.

“Where’d he go?” Gavigan shouted frantically.

“Who?” Malloy asked. Brady, from the other door, shook his head blankly.

Gavigan looked at the coatroom as a girl’s white face came up above the edge of the half door.

“Did you see him?”

She nodded dumbly, he mouth working. “I — yes — I saw him come out — and shoot… and I ducked. I don’t know… ”

The Inspector didn’t listen to the rest. He turned about once, completely, surveying the empty lobby, the bare lobby that held no hiding place at all.

I’ll never forget the blank astonishment on his face and the empty teetering in the pit of my own stomach. The murderer had done it again! He had vanished into thin air, from a room whose exits all were guarded!

Merlini, after one quick look, bent over the fallen man and then, straightening, glanced at the elevator indicators. He took two long strides and yanked a hand phone from the box in the wall.

“Starter!” he shouted, “Starter! Police speaking. Quick! Number Two car. Start it back to floor twenty-three at once. Don’t let it stop! And for God’s sake don’t let it go above twenty-three!”

The dial hand moved on—6, 5, 4… However between 3 and 2 it stopped, hung briefly and began to reverse.

“That does it!” Merlini cried, “Quick, Inspector. At each side of the door and have your guns ready. He plays rough.”

We flattened ourselves against the wall. Someone pulled the fallen man out of line, and the damp smear streaked the floor.

Merlini was talking fast and low. “I don’t smell any brimstone, so there’s only one place he could have gone. The top of that car. He must have found it parked at twenty-two or three and jumped to its top, intending to get off at the second floor when it arrived at the first.”

The dial hand moved on… 21… 22… 23…

Merlini inserted the end of a pencil into the small, round hole in the center of the sliding doors. He levered upward and the doors moved half an inch. Gavigan got his fingers in the opening and pulled the doors wide, staying flat behind them.

“All right,” he said grimly. “Throw out that gun!”

His words fell into silence, and then, finally, the brittle tension in the air shattered and a voice came, calm as always, but tired and flat, empty of the old cocksureness.

“Pick up the marbles, Inspector, you win.”

A revolver flashed dully, turning as it fell, and bumped across the carpet. A pair of glasses and a false Vandyke followed.

Then, his greasy hands raised, a sagging weary expression on his lean gray face, the shy committeeman who had loaded the rifle, David Duvallo, stepped out into the light.