A Century of Great Suspense Stories

Interpol: The Case of the Modern Medusa Edward D. Hoch

Edward D. Hoch is a marvel among mystery writers, a man who has made his living during the past three decades from working nearly entirely in the short story. He has published nearly 850 crime, mystery, and suspense tales, many of them in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, where he has been a very familiar author since the mid-1970s. He has served as the past president of Mystery Writers of America, and was the winner of its 2001 Grand Master award and its Edgar award for best short story of 1968. He has also edited distinguished anthologies, collections and even found time to write a novel or two. He has been Guest of Honor at the annual Bouchercon mystery convention and received its Anthony Award for best short story. In 2001 he will receive the convention’s Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2000, he received The Eye, the life achievement award of the Private Eye Writers of America. In everything he does, he is the soul of graciousness, intelligence, and wit. He resides in Rochester, New York, with his wife, Patricia.

She was too beautiful to make a convincing Medusa, even with the terrible wig and its writhing plastic serpents. Gazing at herself in the mirror, Gretchen could only wonder at the chain of events that had caused Dolliman to hire her in the first place. Then the buzzer sounded and it was time to make her entrance.

She rose through a trap door in the floor, effectively masked by a cloud of chemically produced mist. As the mist cleared enough for the audience to see her, there were the usual startled exclamations. Then Toby, playing the part of Perseus, came forward with his sword and shield to slay her. It wasn’t exactly according to mythology, but it seemed to please the audience of tourists.

As Toby lifted his sword to strike, her mind was on other things. She was remembering the charter flights to the Far East, the parties and the fun. But most of all she was remembering the gold. It was a great deal to give up, but she’d made her decision.

Toby, following the script they’d played a hundred times before, pushed her down into the swirling mists and grabbed the dummy head of Medusa that was hidden there. The sight of the bloody head always brought a gasp from the crowd, and this day was no exception. Gretchen felt for the trap door and opened it. While the crowd applauded and Toby took his bows, she made her way down the ladder to the lower level.

That was where they found her, an hour later. She was crumpled at the foot of the ladder, her Medusa wig a few feet away. Her throat had been cut with a savage blow, as if by a sword.

The advertisement, in the Paris edition of the English-language Herald-Tribune, read simply: New Medusa wanted for Mythology Fair. Apply Box X-45.

Laura Charme read it twice and asked, “Sebastian, what’s a Mythology Fair?”

Turned around in his chair, Sebastian Blue replied, “An interesting question. The Secretary-General would like an answer, too. A Swiss citizen named Otto Dolliman started it in Geneva about two years ago. On the surface it’s merely a tourist attraction, but it might be a bit more underneath.”

They were in Sebastian’s office on the top floor of Interpol headquarters in Saint-Cloud, a suburb of Paris. It was the sort of day when the girls in the translating department ignored the calendar and wore their summer dresses one last time. Laura had started out in the translating department herself, before the Secretary-General teamed her with Sebastian, a middle-aged Englishman formerly of Scotland Yard, and set them to investigating airline crimes around the globe.

“What happened to the old Medusa?” she asked Sebastian.

“She was a West German airline stewardess named Gretchen Spengler. It seems she was murdered two weeks ago.”

“Oh, great, and I’ll bet I’m supposed to take her place! I’ve been through this sort of thing before!”

Sebastian smiled across the desk at her. “Blame the Secretary-General. It was his idea. Seems Miss Spengler was believed to be a key link in a gold-smuggling operation which in turn is part of the world-wide narcotics network.”

“You’d better explain that to me,” Laura said, tossing her long reddish-blonde hair. “Especially if I’m supposed to take her place at this Mythology Fair.”

“It seems that a good deal of Mob money — skimmed off the receipts of gambling casinos — finds its way into Swiss banks. It’s used to make purchases on the international gold market, and the gold in turn is smuggled from Switzerland to the Far East, where it’s then used to buy morphine base and raw opium for the making of heroin. The heroin is then smuggled into the United States, completing the world-wide circle.”

“And how was Gretchen Spengler smuggling the gold?”

“Interpol’s suspicion is that it traveled in the large metal food containers along with the hot meals for the passengers. Such a hiding place would need the cooperation of a stewardess, of course, so the gold wouldn’t be accidentally discovered. Gretchen worked at Otto Dolliman’s Mythology Fair in Geneva during her spare time, between flights, and Interpol believes Dolliman or someone else connected with the Fair recruited her for the gold smuggling. Chances are she was murdered because we were getting too close to her.”

Laura nodded. “I can imagine how they’ll welcome me if they discover I work for Interpol. And what are you going to be doing while I’m shaking my serpents?”

“I won’t be far away,” Sebastian promised. “I never am, you know.”

Geneva is a city of contrasts — small in size even by Swiss standards, yet still an important world crossroads and headquarters for a half-dozen specialized agencies of the United Nations, plus the International Red Cross and the World Council of Churches. The bustle at the airport reflected this cosmopolitan atmosphere, and Laura Charme was all but swallowed up in a delegation of arriving ministers.

Finally she fought her way to a taxi and gave the address of the Mythology Fair. “I take a great many tourists there,” the driver informed her, speaking French. “Are you with a tour?”

“No. I’m looking for a job.”

His eyes met hers in the mirror. “French?”

“French-English. Why do you ask?”

“I just wondered. The other girl was German.”

“What happened to her?”

The driver shrugged. “She was killed. Such a shame — she was a lovely girl. Like you.”

“Who killed her?”

“The police don’t know. Some madman, certainly.”

He was silent then, until at last he deposited her in front of a large old house overlooking Lake Geneva. Much of the front yard had been paved over and marked off for parking, and a big green tour bus sat empty near the entrance. Laura paid the driver and went up the steps to the open door.

The first person she saw was a gray-haired woman of slender build who seemed to be selling tickets. “Four francs, please,” she said in French.

“I answered the advertisement for a new Medusa. I was told to come here for an interview.”

“Oh, you must be Laura Charme. Very well, come this way.” The woman led her past the ticket table and down a long corridor past framed portraits of various mythic heroes. She recognized Zeus and Jason and even the winged horse, Pegasus, but was stumped when it came to the women.

The gray-haired woman turned to her and said, in belated introduction, “I’m Helen Dolliman. My husband owns this.” She gestured with her hand to include, apparently, the house and entire countryside.

“It’s a beautiful place,” Laura said. “I do hope I’ll be able to work here.”

The woman smiled slightly. “Otto liked the picture you sent. And it’s difficult to get just the girl we want. I think you’ll get the job.” She paused before a closed door of heavy oak. “This is his office.”

She knocked once and opened the door. The room itself was quite small, with only a single window covered by heavy wire mesh. The furnishings, too, were small and ordinary. But what set the room apart at once was the eight-foot-tall statue of King Neptune that completely dominated the far wall, crowding even the desk behind which a thin-haired middle-aged man was working.

“Otto,” his wife announced, “this is Miss Charme, from Paris.”

The man put down his pen and looked up, smiling. His face was drawn and his skin chalky-white, but the smile helped. “Ah, so good of you to come all this distance, Miss Charme! I do think you’ll make a perfect Medusa.”

“Thank you, I guess.” Her eyes left his face and returned to the statue.

“You’re admiring my Neptune.”

“It’s certainly... large.”

He got up and stood beside it. “This is one of a series of the Roman gods, sculptured in the style of Michelangelo’s Moses by the Italian Compoli in the last century. The trident that Neptune holds is very real, and quite sharp.”

He lifted it from the statue’s grasp and held it out to Laura. She saw the three spear-points aimed at her stomach and shuddered inwardly. “Very nice,” she managed as he returned the weapon to its resting place with Neptune. “But tell me, just what is the Mythology Fair?”

“It is an exhibit, my dear girl — a live-action exhibit, if you will. All the gods and heroes and demons of myth are represented here — Greek, Roman, even Norse and Oriental. Our workrooms and dressing rooms are on the lower level. This level and the one above are open to the public for a small admission charge. They view paintings and statues representing the figures of myth — but more than that, they are entertained by live-action tableaux of famous scenes from mythology. Thus we have Ulysses returning to slay the suitors, the wooden horse at the walls of Troy, Perseus slaying Medusa, Cupid and Psyche, King Midas, Venus and Adonis, the labors of Hercules, and many others.”

“Quite a bit of violence in some of those.”

Otto Dolliman shrugged. “The public buys violence. And if some of our goddesses show a bit of bosom, the public buys that, too.”

“I was wondering how someone like me could land the job of Medusa. I always thought she was quite ugly.”

“It was the snakes in her hair that turned men to stone, my dear girl. And we will furnish those.” He reached into the bottom drawer of his desk and produced a dark wig with a dozen plastic serpents hanging from it. As he held it out to Laura, the snakes began to move, seeming to take on a life of their own. Laura gasped and jumped back.

“They’re alive!” she screeched.

“Not really,” Mrs. Dolliman said, stepping forward to take the wig from her husband’s hand. “We have little magnets in the snakes’ heads, positioned so that the heads repel one another. They produce some quite realistic effects at times. See?”

Laura took a deep breath and accepted the wig. It seemed to fit her head well, though the weight of the magnetized serpents was uncomfortably heavy. “How long do I have to wear this thing?” she asked.

“Not more than a few minutes at a time,” Dolliman assured her. “You come up through a trap door, hidden by some chemical mist, and Toby kills you with his sword. You fall back into the mist clouds, Toby reaches down, and holds a fake papier-mâché head aloft for the spectators to gasp at. I know it isn’t exactly according to the myth — Medusa was asleep at the time of her death, for one thing — but the public enjoys it this way.”

“Who’s Toby?”

“What?”

“Who’s Toby?” Laura repeated. “This fellow with the sword.”

“Toby Merchant,” Dolliman explained. “He’s English, a nice fellow, really. He plays Perseus, and quite well, too. Come on, you might as well meet him.”

Laura followed Otto and his wife out of the office and down the corridor to a wing of the great house. They passed a group of tourists, probably from the green bus out front, being guided through the place by a handsome young man, dressed in a black blazer, who bowed slightly as they passed.

“That’s Frederick, one of our guides,” Helen Dolliman explained. “With the guides and the actors, and a few workmen, we employ a staff of thirty-four people here. Of course many of the actors in the tableaux work only part time, between other jobs.”

They paused before one stage, standing behind a dozen or so customers before a curtained stage. As the curtains parted Laura saw a bare-chested man who seemed to have the legs and body of a horse. She could tell it was a fake, but a clever one. “The centaur,” Dolliman said. “Very popular with the tours. Ah, here is Toby.”

A muscular young man about Laura’s age, with shaggy black hair and a beard, came through a service door in the wall. He smiled at Laura, looking her up and down. “Would this be my new Medusa?”

“We have just hired her,” Dolliman confirmed. “Laura Charme, meet Toby Marchant.”

“A pleasure,” she replied, accepting his hand. “But tell me, what have you been doing for a Medusa all these weeks?”

Toby Marchant shook his head sadly. “Venus has been filling in, but it’s not the same. She has to run back and forth between the two stages. But she was doing it while Gretchen was flying, so she was the logical one to fill in.” He glanced at Dolliman and brought his hand out from behind his back, revealing a paper bag. “Speaking of Gretchen—”

“Yes,” Dolliman asked.

Toby opened the bag reluctantly and brought out the head of a young girl, covered with blood. Laura took one look and screamed.

Helen Dolliman motioned her to silence, glancing around to see who had heard the outburst. “It’s only the papier-mâché head we told you about,” she explained quickly. “You’ll have to learn to control yourself better!”

“What is this place — a chamber of horrors?” Laura asked.

“No, no,” Toby said, embarrassed and trying to calm her. “I shouldn’t have pulled it out like that. It’s just that the head was made to look like Gretchen and now she’s dead. We can’t use Venus’ head. We’ll need a new one made for Laura here, or the illusion will be ruined.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Dolliman assured him. “Give me the bag.”

Laura took a deep breath. “The taxi driver told me Gretchen was murdered. Did the police find her killer?”

“Not yet,” Toby admitted. “But it must have been some sex fiend with one of the tours. Apparently he slipped downstairs and was waiting when she came through the trap door. I was right above her, but I never heard a thing.”

“Toby was busy taking bows,” Helen Dolliman snorted. “He wouldn’t have heard a thing.”

They went downstairs, showing Laura the dressing room that would be hers, the ladder leading to the trap door, the stage where she’d be beheaded five or six times daily, depending on the crowds. “Think you can do it?” Toby asked at the conclusion of a quick run-through.

“Sure,” Laura said bravely. “Why not?”

A tall redhead wearing too much makeup came by, glancing up at the stage. “Better close that. Another bus just pulled up.”

“This is our Venus and part-time Medusa,” Toby said, making introductions. “Hilda Aarons.”

Hilda grunted something meant to be a greeting and sauntered off. Laura was rapidly deciding that the Mythology Fair wasn’t the friendliest place to work.

Sebastian Blue arrived two days after Laura started her chores as Medusa. He came with a group of touring Italians, but managed to separate himself from them, wandering off by himself down one of the side corridors.

“Can I help you?” a pleasant young man in a black blazer asked.

“Just looking around,” Sebastian told him.

“I’m Frederick Braun, one of the tour guides. If you’ve become separated from your group I’d be glad to show you around.”

Sebastian thought his blond good looks were strongly Germanic. He was a Hitler Youth, born thirty years too late. “I was looking for the director. I believe his name is Dolliman.”

“Certainly. Right this way.”

Otto Dolliman greeted Sebastian with a limp handshake and said, “No complaints, I hope.”

“Not exactly. I represent the International Criminal Police Organization in Paris.”

If possible, Dolliman’s face grew even whiter. “Interpol? Is it about that girl’s murder?”

“Yes, it is,” Sebastian admitted. “We’ve had her under limited surveillance in connection with some gold-smuggling activities.”

“Gretchen a gold smuggler? I can’t believe that!”

“Nevertheless it seems to have been true. Didn’t it ever strike you as strange that she continued working as an airline stewardess even after you hired her for your Mythology Fair?”

“Not at all, Mr. Blue. Both positions were essentially part-time. She worked charter flights and nonscheduled trips to the Far East mainly. And of course the bulk of her work here was during the vacation season and on weekends.”

“Have you replaced her in the Fair?”

Dolliman nodded. “I hired a French girl just the other day. It’s almost time for the next performance. Would you like to see it?”

“Very much.”

Sebastian followed him down a hallway to the exhibit proper, where a string of little stages featured recreations of the more spectacular events of mythology. After watching a bearded Zeus hurl a cardboard thunderbolt, they moved on to the Medusa exhibit.

“That’s Toby Marchant. He plays Perseus,” Dolliman explained. The young man in a brief toga carried a sword and shield in proper Medusa-slaying tradition. He moved carefully through the artificial mist that rose from unseen pipes and acted out his search for the serpent-headed monster. Presently she appeared through the mist, up from the trap door. Sebastian thought Laura looked especially lovely in her brief costume. The snakes in her hair writhed with some realism, but otherwise she was hardly a convincing monster.

Toby Marchant, holding the shield protectively in front of him, swung out wildly with his sword. It was obvious he came nowhere near her, but Laura fell back into the mist with a convincing gasp. Toby reached down and lifted a bloody head for the spectators to gasp at.

“It was after this that Gretchen was killed,” Dolliman explained in a whisper. “She slipped down through the trap door, and somebody was waiting at the foot of the ladder. Hilda found her about an hour later.”

“Is it possible that Toby might have actually killed her in full view of the spectators?”

Dolliman shook his head. “The police have been all through this. The throat wound would have killed her almost instantly. She could never have gone through that trap door and down the ladder. Besides, the people would have seen it. There’d have been blood on the stage. She bled a great deal. Besides, his sword is a fake.”

“That mist could have washed the blood away.”

“No. Whoever killed her, it wasn’t Toby. It was someone waiting for her below.”

“The police report says the weapon was probably a sword.”

“Unfortunately there are nearly fifty swords of various shapes and sizes on the premises. Some are fakes, like Toby’s, but some are the real thing.”

“I’d like to speak to your new Medusa if I could,” Sebastian said.

“Certainly. I’ll call her.”

After a few moments Laura appeared, devoid of snakes and wearing a robe over her Medusa costume. Sebastian motioned her down the corridor, where they could talk in privacy. “How’s it going?”

“Terrible,” she confessed. “I’ve had to do that silly stunt five times a day. Yesterday when I came through the trap door that guide, Frederick, was waiting down below to grab my leg. I thought for a minute I was going to be the next victim.”

“Oh?”

“He seems fairly harmless, though. I chased him away and he went. How much longer do I have to be here?”

“Till we find out something. Has anyone approached you about smuggling gold?”

She shook her head. “And I even mentioned over breakfast yesterday that I’d once been an airline stewardess. I think the gold smugglers have switched to a different gimmick, but I don’t know what it is.”

They’d almost reached Otto Dolliman’s office, and suddenly Toby Marchant hurried out. “Have you seen Otto?” he asked Laura. “He’s not in his office and I can’t find him anywhere.”

“We left him not five minutes ago, down by the tableaux.”

“Thanks,” Toby said, and hurried off in that direction.

“He seemed quite excited,” Sebastian remarked.

“He usually is,” Laura said. “But he’s a good sort.”

They paused by the open door of Dolliman’s office, and he asked, “Do you think Dolliman is the gold smuggler? Is there any way all this could be going on without his knowledge?”

“It seems unlikely,” she admitted. “But if he’s behind it, would he kill Gretchen right on the premises and risk all the bad publicity?”

“These days bad publicity can be good publicity. I’ll wager the crowds have picked up since the killing.”

At that moment Otto Dolliman himself came into view, hurrying along the corridor. “Excuse me,” he said. “I have to place an important call.”

Toby came along behind him and seemed about to follow him into the office, but Dolliman slammed the big oak door. Toby glanced at Sebastian and Laura, shrugged, and went on his way.

“Now what was that all about?” Laura wondered aloud.

“It’s your job to find out, my dear,” Sebastian reminded her.

They were just moving away from the closed office door when they heard a sound from inside. It was like a gasp, followed by the beginning of a scream.

“What’s that?” Laura asked.

“Come on, something’s happening in there!” Sebastian reached the office door and opened it.

Otto Dolliman was sprawled in the center of the little office, his eyes open and staring at the ceiling. The trident from King Neptune’s statue had been driven into his stomach. There was little doubt that he was dead.

“My God, Sebastian!” Laura gasped.

He’d drawn the gun from his belt holster. “Stay here in the doorway,” he cautioned. “Whoever killed him must be still in the room.”

His eyes went from the partly open window with its wire-mesh grille to the cluttered desk and the statue of Neptune beside it. Then he stepped carefully back and peered behind the door, but there was no one.

The room was empty except for Otto Dolliman’s body...

“The thing is impossible,” Sebastian Blue said later, after the police had come again to the Mythology Fair with their cameras and their questions. “We were outside that door all the time and no one entered or left. The killer might have been hiding behind the desk when Dolliman entered the room, but how did he get out?”

“The window?”

He walked over to examine it again, but he knew no one could have left that way. Though the window itself had been raised a few inches, the wire-mesh grille was firmly bolted in place and intact. Sebastian could barely fit two fingers through the openings. The window faced the back lawn, with a cobblestone walk about five feet below. Obviously the grille was to keep out thieves.

“Nothing here,” Sebastian decided. “It’s an impossible crime — a locked room, except that the room wasn’t actually locked.”

“You must have had those at Scotland Yard all the time.”

“Only in books, my dear.” He frowned at the floor where the body had rested, then looked up at the mocking statue of Neptune.

“An arrow could pass through this grillework,” Laura remarked, still studying the window. “And they use arrows in the Ulysses skit.”

“But he wasn’t killed with an arrow,” Sebastian reminded her. “He was killed with a trident, and it was right here in the room with him.” He’d examined the weapon at some length before the police took it away, and had found nothing except a slight scratch along its shaft. There were no fingerprints, which ruled out the remote possibility of suicide.

“A device of some sort,” she suggested next. “An infernal machine rigged up to kill him as soon as he entered the office.”

“A giant rubber band?” Sebastian said with a dry chuckle. “But he was in there for a few minutes before the murderer struck, remember? And besides, what happened to this machine of yours? There’s no trace of it now.”

“A secret passage? We know there are trap doors in the floors around here.”

“The police went over every square inch. No, it’s nothing like that.”

“Then how was it done?”

Sebastian was staring up at Neptune’s placid face. “Unless that statue came alive long enough to kill him, I don’t see any solution.” He turned and headed for the door. “But one person I intend to speak to is Toby Marchant.”

They found Toby talking with Frederick and Hilda and some of the others in a downstairs dressing room. While Laura still tried to keep up the pretense that Sebastian Blue had merely been questioning her, he turned his attention to Toby, calling him aside.

“All right, Toby, it’s time to quit playing games. Two people are dead now, and with Dolliman gone chances are you’ll be out of a job anyway. What do you know about this?”

“Nothing, I swear!”

“But you were looking for Dolliman just before he was killed. You told him something that sent him hurrying to his office to make a phone call.”

Toby Marchant hesitated. “Yes,” he said finally. “I suppose I’ll have to tell you about that, Mr. Blue. You see, I came across some information regarding Gretchen’s death — information I thought he should know.”

“And now he’s dead, so should I know it.”

Another hesitation. “It’s about Hilda Aarons. I caught her going through some of Gretchen’s things, apparently looking for something.”

Sebastian glanced past his shoulder toward the tall redhead. She was watching them intently. “And you told Otto Dolliman about this?”

Toby nodded. “He asked us to watch out for anything suspicious. What I told him about Hilda seemed to confirm some information he already had. He said he had to make a phone call at once.”

“But not to the police, apparently. He walked right by me and went into his office.”

“He may not have trusted an outsider. Sometimes he acted as if he trusted only his wife.”

“Have you seen Helen Dolliman recently?” Sebastian asked. He’d had only a few words with her before the police arrived.

“She’s probably up in her room. Second floor, the far wing.”

Sebastian found Helen Dolliman alone in her room, busy packing a single suitcase. Her eyes were red, as if from tears.

“You’re leaving?”

“Do I have anything to stay here for?” she countered. “The police will shut us down now. And even if they don’t, I have no intention of spending another night in the same house with a double murderer. He killed Otto and I’m probably next on his list.”

“Do you have any idea why your husband was murdered?”

The little woman swept a wisp of hair from her eyes. “I suppose for the same reason the girl was.”

“Which was?”

“The gold.”

“Yes, the gold. What do you know about it?”

“About a year ago Otto caught a man with some small gold bars. He fired him on the spot, but we’ve always suspected there were others involved.”

“Gretchen Spengler?”

“Yes. Before she died she told Otto she was getting out of it.”

“Toby says he caught Hilda Aarons going through Gretchen’s things after she was killed. He told Otto about it.”

She nodded. “My husband discussed it with me. We were going to fire Hilda.”

“Might that have caused her to kill him?”

“It might have, if she’s a desperate person.”

“Apparently he was trying to call someone about it just before he was killed.”

“Perhaps,” she said with a shrug, subsiding into a sort of willing acceptance.

He could see there was no more to be learned from her. He excused himself and went back down in search of Laura.

She was talking with Frederick Braun at the foot of the stairs, but the blond tour guide excused himself as Sebastian approached. “What was all that?”

“He’s still after me,” she said with a shrug. “I really think he’s a frustrated Pan, speaking in mythological terms.”

Sebastian frowned at the young man’s retreating back, watching him go out the rear door of the house. Then he said, “We’re going to have to move fast. Helen Dolliman is preparing to close the place and leave. Once everybody scatters we’ll never get to the bottom of this thing.”

“How can we get to the bottom of it anyway, Sebastian? We’ve got two murders, one of them an impossibility.”

“But we’ve got a lead, too. Gretchen was killed and the smuggling by aircraft apparently ended. Yet the murderer has stayed on here at the Mythology Fair. We know that because he killed Dolliman, too. I reject for the moment the idea of two independent killers. So what have we? The gold smugglers still at work, but not using aircraft. They have found a new route for their gold, and we must find it, too.”

“Let me work on it,” Laura Charme said. Staring at an approaching group of tourists, she suddenly got an idea.

Night came early at this time of year, with the evening sun vanishing behind the distant Alps by a little after six. One of the tour groups was still inside the big house when Laura slipped out the rear door and moved around the cobblestone walk past the window to Dolliman’s office. She came out at the far end of the paved parking area, near the single green tour bus that still waited there.

If the Mythology Fair was really closing down, she knew the smuggler should have to move fast to dispose of any remaining gold. And if she’d guessed right about these tour buses, she might see something very interesting as darkness fell.

She’d been standing in the shadows for about twenty minutes when the bus driver appeared from the corner of the building, carrying something heavy in both hands. He paused by the side of the vehicle and opened one of the luggage compartments. But he wasn’t stowing luggage. Instead he seemed to be lifting up a portion of the compartment floor, shifting baggage out of the way.

Laura stepped quickly from the shadows and moved up behind him. “What do you have there?” she asked.

The man whirled at the sound of her voice. He cursed softly and grabbed an iron bar that was holding open the luggage compartment door. As the door slammed shut she saw him coming at her with the bar, raising it high overhead. She dipped, butting him in the stomach, and grabbed his wrist for a quick judo topple that sent him into the bushes by the house.

As he tried to untangle himself and catch his breath, she ripped the wrapper from the object he’d been carrying. Even in the near-darkness she could see the glint of gold.

Then she heard footsteps, and another man rounded the corner of the building. It was Toby Marchant. She rose to her feet and hurried to meet him. “Toby, that bus driver had a bar of gold. He was trying to hide it beneath the luggage compartment.”

“What’s this?” He hurried over to the bushes with her.

“Toby, I’ll keep him here. You go find that Englishman, Sebastian Blue.”

Toby turned partly away from her as the bus driver struggled to his feet. “Oh, I don’t think we need Blue.”

“Of course we need him! He’s from Interpol, and so am I.”

“That’s interesting to know,” Toby said. “But I already suspected it.” He turned back toward her and now she saw the gun in his hand. “Don’t make a sound, my dear, or you’ll end up the way Gretchen and Otto did.”

“I—”

“Tie her up, Gunter,” he told the driver. “And gag her. We’ll stow her in the luggage compartment and take her along for security.”

Laura felt rough hands yank her wrists behind her. Then, suddenly, the parking area was flooded with light from overhead. Toby whirled and fired a shot without aiming. There was an answering shot as the bus driver dropped her wrists and started to run. He staggered and went down hard.

“Drop the gun, Toby,” Sebastian called out from beyond the spotlights. “We want you alive.”

Toby Marchant hesitated, weighing his chances, and then let the gun fall from his fingers.

It was some time later before Laura could get all the facts out of Sebastian Blue. They were driving back to the airport, after Toby Marchant had been turned over to the local police and the bus driver rushed to the hospital.

“How did you manage to get there in the nick of time?” she asked him. “I didn’t tell you of my suspicions about the tour buses.”

“No, but you didn’t have to. I had my own suspicions of Toby, and I was watching him. I saw him meet the driver and get the gold bar from its hiding place. When I saw him point the gun at you, I switched on the overhead lights and then the shooting started. Luckily for us both, Toby had no idea how many guns were against him, so he chose to surrender.”

“But how did you know Toby was involved in the smuggling?”

“I didn’t, but I was pretty sure he’d committed both murders, which made him the most likely candidate.”

“He killed Otto Dolliman in that locked room? But how?”

“There’s only one way it could have been done, ruling out secret passages and invisible men. Remember that scratch along the shaft of the trident? Toby entered the office prior to Dolliman’s arrival, removed the trident from the statue of Neptune, and thrust the shaft of it through the wire grating on the window. Remember, the window itself was open a few inches. Thus, the pronged head of the trident was inside the office, but the shaft was sticking out the window.

“Toby then got Otto to enter the office on some pretext — probably telling him to phone for urgent supplies of some sort — left the house, walked around the cobblestone path just outside, and positioned himself at the window. Perhaps Dolliman saw the trident sticking through the grillework and walked over to investigate. Or perhaps Toby called him to the window, pretending to find it like that. In either event, as Dolliman reached the window, Toby drove the trident into his stomach, killing him. He then pushed the shaft all the way through the wire grillework, so the trident remained in Dolliman’s body and made it appear that the killer must have been in the room with him.”

“But why did he want to kill him in a locked room?”

“He didn’t. He was just setting up an alibi for himself, since we saw him leave Dolliman alive. He couldn’t foresee that we’d remain outside the door and hear Dolliman’s dying gasps. You see, once I figured out the method, Toby had to be the killer. We’d seen him come out of that office ourselves. And the killer had to be in the office prior to the killing to push the trident through the screen. He couldn’t have it sticking out the window for long, risking discovery, so he had to lure Dolliman back to his office.

“That was where Toby made his big mistake. When we surprised him coming out of the office, he had to act as if he was frantically seeking Dolliman to tell him something. Later, when I asked what it was all about, he had to come up with a good lie. He said he’d told Dolliman he caught Hilda going through Gretchen’s things. I suspect that was true, and that it involved your friend Frederick, the guide, but — Helen Dolliman later told me her husband had discussed the matter with her.”

“Which meant,” Laura said, “he must have told Dolliman about it much earlier.”

“Exactly. Early enough for Dolliman to discuss it with his wife. And if Toby lied about the reason for luring Dolliman to his office, it figured that he also prepared the trident and killed him with it.”

“What about Gretchen?”

“She wanted out of the gold smuggling, so he had to kill her — she knew too much. I suppose Dolliman was suspicious that Toby killed her, so Dolliman had to die, too. Either that, or Dolliman discovered that Toby was now using the tour buses to smuggle the gold out of Switzerland.”

“But I thought we decided Toby couldn’t have done it because he was still on stage when Gretchen went through the trap door to her death. Don’t tell me we have another impossible crime?”

Sebastian shook his head. “Not really. Our mistake was in jumping to the conclusion that the killer was waiting for her. Actually, Toby went downstairs after the act was over and killed her then. I suppose he swung the sword at her in jest, just as he did on stage, only this time it was for real. She wouldn’t even have screamed when she saw it coming at her.”

“How awful!”

“But what about you? How did you tumble to the fact the tour buses were being used?”

Laura shrugged. “Partly intuition, I suppose. We figured the gold was still leaving the country, and not by plane. It just seemed a likely method. Tour buses cross boundary lines all the time, and they’re not usually searched too carefully.”

They came in sight of the airport and Sebastian said, “I imagine Paris will look good to you after this. Or did you enjoy playing Medusa?”

She grinned and held up the wig with its writhing snakes. “I brought it along as a souvenir. Just so we’ll know the whole thing wasn’t a myth.”