Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 33, No. 1, January, 1988

The Way Up to Hades by Edward D. Hoch

My wife Shelly has often claimed that I would go anywhere with Simon Ark, and it’s true that I’ve journeyed with him to exotic places like India and Egypt and Brazil. Still, I used to think there was a limit to my patience with Simon. I would not go anywhere he asked, would I?

“It’s right here in New York, my friend, at Madison Square Garden.”

“Simon, you’re asking me to attend a rock concert with you? Have you lost your mind?”

“Rager claims to summon the Devil during his concerts. There is fire on stage.”

“Believe me, Simon, it’s all part of the act. There are a dozen others just like him, and some a lot better. Why should we waste an evening listening to some punk kid try to burst our eardrums?”

But I went, as Simon must have known I would.

The place was jammed with shouting, stomping teenagers. The few older members of the audience like Simon and myself seemed distinctly out of place, and I noticed one youth drop a hand-rolled cigarette to the floor and grind it underfoot when he noticed us. There was a warm-up act of a hard-rock trio and then after a suitable intermission Rager himself took the stage, appearing through the smoke and sparks of a spectacular electrical display. He danced around the stage while thumping on his electric guitar, looking exactly like the life-sized cutout in the lobby. Frequently during his act he hurled balls of fire at the floor of the stage, reminding me of a magician I’d seen in my youth. Perhaps rock stars like Rager were the magicians of a new generation.

The morning paper had told me all I needed to know about Rager. Born in London twenty-two years ago with the rather prosaic name of Roger Jones, he’d changed it to Rager when he broke away from a rock group three years ago and started recording and touring as a single. Sitting there watching him for the better part of an hour while he held the stage alone — his back-up singers and instrumentalists concealed by a curtain — I began to wonder what all the excitement was about. Then, as the act came to a gratifying conclusion, I noticed Simon Ark lean forward in his seat. Rager dropped his guitar, threw his hands to the heavens, and cried out, “Satan, take me! If there is a Lord of the Underworld, let me be with you this day in Hades!”

Then he vanished in a burst of flames and smoke. The kids went wild.

“I hope you’re satisfied,” I told Simon as we threaded our way toward the exit.

“I would like to go backstage,” he told me.

“Simon, I’m sure no one gets backstage except a few nubile groupies.”

He insisted, but I was right. We got no farther than a dapper young Englishman at the stage door who announced himself as Rager’s personal manager. “Les Fenton’s the name. You got any messages for Rager, they go through me.”

“I need to speak with the young man personally,” Simon Ark persisted.

Fenton looked him over, taking in Simon’s black suit and white hair. “What are you — his grandpa or his preacher?”

“Neither one,” I interjected, offering my card.

Fenton saw the name NEPTUNE BOOKS and shifted his gaze to me. “A publisher? Want to talk about a book? Rager’s autobiography would sell millions of copies.”

“He’s only twenty-two. Has he had that much of a life?”

“You’d be surprised. Look, there’s a reception for Rager tomorrow afternoon at the Mill-brook Manor Hotel in Times Square. Come early, about one o’clock, and we can have lunch first.”

A young woman in a black leather miniskirt and too much makeup appeared in the corridor behind him. “Les, Rager needs you.”

“Be right there.” He shook hands with both of us. “One o’clock at the Millbrook Manor.”

When we were alone I said to Simon, “I have no intention of publishing Rager’s autobiography. We’re an old-line quality house.”

“You can tell him that later. I’d like very much to meet Mr. Rager and this looks like our best opportunity.”

“Simon, he’s just a kid trying to shock other kids. All this business about Satan in his act is so much window-dressing.”

“We shall see,” Simon Ark said.

Millbrook Manor was a hotel chain that had gotten its start in national parks and recreation areas. It kept the name when it expanded into the cities, and even when it built a sixty-story glass and steel luxury hotel with a huge indoor atrium in the heart of Times Square. Neither the name nor the building seemed out of place in a city that sees everything. Somehow it went well with the Marriott Marquis across the street and the two other hotels under construction in the area.

Like the Marriott, the main feature of the atrium was the bank of glass elevators which rose in full view of the lobby, carrying guests to all sixty floors. A few of the elevators even continued on, seemingly through the roof, transporting visitors to the Skytop Restaurant with its magnificent view of the city. That was where the reception for Rager would be held to introduce his latest record album.

“Stay for the reception,” Les Fenton urged Simon and me over lunch the following day. “When you see the sort of important people flocking around Rager, I know you’ll agree the chap is much more than another fad performer.”

We weren’t alone at lunch. Fenton had brought along a stunningly dressed young woman named Clare Goddard who handled Rager’s publicity. She was American rather than British and spoke with a slight southern accent. I wasn’t surprised when she revealed she was from North Carolina. “I’ve been up here five years, but Rager is the first client who’s really excited me. The kids go crazy over him.”

“They’re interested in doing his book,” Fenton told her.

“Wait a minute. I didn’t go that far.” They were ready to sign a contract before we finished lunch. “Actually, it’s my friend Simon here who’s really interested in Rager.”

“It would be a great book,” Clare Goddard insisted, warming to her sales pitch. “And I’m certain he’d help promote it.”

“I understand he’s quite aloof,” Simon said. “Insists on riding alone in his limousine and even in elevators, never waves to fans or signs autographs.”

“They love it,” Fenton replied. “They love that manner of his.”

“At the conclusion of his act, when he calls upon Satan to take him to Hades, has anything unusual ever happened?”

The manager laughed. “What do you expect, some great homed monster to appear and snatch him away? Might not be a bad gimmick, I suppose, but we haven’t done it yet.”

Clare Goddard tapped Fenton on the arm. “I think Mr. Ark is a believer, Les.”

“Hell, no one believes in Satan any more. He’s got even less of a following than God. You think Rager’d be doing that act if he really thought there was a Devil?”

After lunch we all went down to the lobby to meet Rager when he arrived. Actually we went to the floor below the lobby, where the cars pulled in off the street. Les Fenton hurried along the bank of elevators, checking the arrangements for the rock star’s arrival, making certain there were no groupies hidden behind the potted palms. I followed him, noting there were a dozen elevators in all, arranged around a central core. Down here in their closed shafts they appeared perfectly ordinary. It was not until they rose above the lobby level that the glass sides revealed the splendor of the entire atrium with its revolving fountain and full-sized trees. There was even a small waterfall illuminated by colored lights.

Rager arrived alone in his limousine shortly before two thirty. There were police officers to keep back the crowd, and we could only watch from a distance as Fenton and Clare Goddard greeted him. As usual Rager refused to wave or acknowledge his fans. He said a few words to Les Fenton and then followed his manager to the elevator marked SKYTOP EXPRESS. He was wearing the same silver vest with bare arms that had been his on-stage costume the previous night. Obviously he didn’t believe in more formal dress for promotional appearances.

A teenaged girl broke through the police line and ran up to the elevator, but Fenton waved her away. “No autographs,” he said sharply. “Rager doesn’t sign autographs.” Then the elevator doors slid shut as a red arrow pointed upward. Fenton was left waiting for the next car. Even he didn’t get to share an elevator with Rager.

Simon and I took an escalator to the lobby floor directly above and we were in time to see Rager’s glass elevator emerge from below and rise quickly up the entire height of the sixty-story atrium. He stood away from the glass with his back to the elevator door and never moved, refusing to acknowledge the waves from fans clustered in the lobby. “The young man has some ego,” Simon remarked.

“It’s all part of the act.” As the express elevator disappeared through the ceiling of the atrium far above our heads we boarded a local with some hotel guests for the ride to the Skytop Restaurant.

I recognized one of the passengers as the leather-clad young woman we’d observed in the backstage corridor the previous night. “You’re a friend of Rager’s, aren’t you?” I asked her.

I introduced myself and Simon Ark. “We’re to see Rager about a book idea,” I explained, not bothering to tell her the idea was Fenton’s rather than mine.

She warmed up a bit as the elevator stopped to discharge the last of the hotel guests at their floor. “I’m Susan Yantz. I met Rager on his first American tour last year, and I’ve been with him ever since.”

Beneath the layers of makeup I could detect the face of a young woman barely out of her teens. She had the voice of a native New Yorker and she still wore the black leather miniskirt or its twin. “Are you from here?” I asked.

“Yeah. It’s good to be back for a week. We’ve been touring all over the world — Australia, even!”

The elevator came to a stop and we got out at the restaurant. The luncheon crowd was gone, replaced by the invited guests for the record launch. But I saw at once that something was wrong. There was no sign of Rager and television crews seemed confused. One cameraman even aimed at us as we emerged from the elevator.

“Where’s Rager?” a bald man asked, fighting his way through the crowd to Susan Yantz’s side. “Isn’t he with you?”

“No, stupid. You know he always rides alone in elevators. He’s already up here.”

“No, he isn’t.”

“He came up on the express elevator. I saw him get on it myself. Everyone saw him.”

“We were waiting for that elevator. But when the doors opened it was empty, except for one of his fireballs burning a hole in the carpet.”

Simon Ark moved then, pushing past me. “Take me to this elevator at once.”

I followed along. “We’re holding it here until the hotel people can assess the damage,” the bald man told us. “I know it’s a damn foolish stunt—”

“It may not be a stunt,” Simon said.

He opened the elevator door with a key from outside. It was still full of smoke, and a large scorched area was visible just inside the doors where we’d seen Rager standing. “What’s that odd smell?” I asked Simon.

His face was very calm, but his words were thunderous. “I suspect it is the odor of brimstone, my friend. Rager has finally had his wish granted. Satan has taken him to Hades.”

No one else was ready to accept Simon’s assessment of the situation. The bald man, who identified himself as Thomas Robock from the record company, ushered us quickly into a private room. Susan Yantz was left outside. “We don’t need that little tramp,” he muttered. “There’s enough trouble already.”

“We were to meet with Rager,” I said lamely. “His manager, Les Fenton, was arranging it.”

“Where the hell is Fenton?”

“No doubt on his way up from the lobby,” Simon said. “Tell me exactly what happened.”

“Nothing happened,” Thomas Robock said. “We were all waiting here to welcome Rager when he stepped off the elevator. Fenton was holding it downstairs for his arrival. As soon as the light went on showing it was coming up, we got ready. Then the doors slid open and there was no one inside — just one of his damned fireballs.”

Simon Ark nodded. “No chance he could have slipped past you, hidden by the smoke?”

“None. The smoke wasn’t that thick.”

“What about the escape hatch that’s in the top of every elevator?”

“This one has hidden bolts that can be worked from inside or outside the car. But they do have to be opened. These were still tightly closed.”

“There would have been no time for that anyway,” I hastened to point out. “Rager was in full view in that glass elevator all the way up to the sixtieth floor. He was only hidden for the last floor, a matter of a few seconds.”

“The people in the lobby couldn’t see him, up that high.”

“No, but the bank of glass elevators is surrounded by terraces leading to each floor’s guest rooms. Any number of guests might have observed him all the way to the sixtieth floor.”

There was a knock on the door and Les Fenton entered. “Where is he, Robock? What’s happened?”

The recording executive went through his brief story again. “Tell me it’s a publicity stunt, Les. Tell me he’ll turn up any minute.”

“If it’s a publicity stunt, it was done without my knowledge. Find Clare Goddard and get her in here. She’s in charge of publicity.”

She was outside talking with the press, trying to calm them down. She came in shaking her head, looking a bit less cool and collected than when I’d first seen her. “If this is one of Rager’s tricks—”

“You mean you don’t know where he is?”

“Of course I don’t know,” she told Fenton. “If I knew, I’d have him out there with the press this minute. He’s had his fun with this elevator business. I hope he comes to his senses and reappears.”

“There may be no way back from where Rager has gone,” Simon Ark said quietly. They all stared at him. “He called upon Satan to take him, you’ll remember.”

“He did that every night,” Les Fenton scoffed. “It was part of the act. The kids love that weird stuff.”

“If his disappearance was a trick,” I asked, “how was it done?”

“Maybe he was never on the elevator in the first place,” Robock said.

Fenton and Clare Goddard were quick to rule that out. “Fifty people saw him board that elevator, including fans and police guards,” Fenton said.

“And I saw him rising through the lobby myself,” Clare confirmed. “The elevator doesn’t go anywhere but up here. It doesn’t even make a lobby stop. It’s strictly an express for Skytop customers who aren’t staying at the hotel.”

Robock pondered for a moment. Then he said, “This has gone far enough. I’m calling the police.”

A missing persons report in New York City rarely brings out a detective with the rank of lieutenant. But Rager was someone special, and so in a way was Lieutenant Fisk. He was tall, with steel gray hair and a manner that could change from friendly to tenacious in an instant.

“The missing man’s name is Roger Jones?” he asked, making careful notes of everything said.

“Rager is his stage name,” Les Fenton said. “That’s the name everyone knows him by.”

“All right. Roger Jones, alias Rager.”

“It’s not really an alias. The man’s not a criminal.”

“That remains to be seen,” Fisk told them. He glanced over at Simon and me. “Who did you say you were?”

“We came to see Rager about doing a book. I’m the senior editor at Neptune Books, and this is Simon Ark, an author and investigator of unusual phenomena.” I made a point of not mentioning Satanism.

The detective glanced at Simon. “You solved this one yet, Pop?”

Simon started to speak, but I cut him short. “We can show you the elevator where it happened.”

Lieutenant Fisk took the trouble to get down on his knees and examine the scorched carpeting. He even took an evidence envelope from his pocket and scooped some of the remaining ash into it. When he stood up he said, “This looks like some sort of con game to me. Was Rager into you people for any money?”

“It’s no con game,” Robock said. “The young man earns better than a million dollars a year with concerts and record albums.”

“Is that so?” Fisk opened his notebook again. “I’ll want to talk to each of you individually. Let’s start with Miss Goddard here.”

He led her into a private room while Fenton and Robock went out to confront the waiting guests. I was content to enjoy the Manhattan skyline, but Simon had other ideas. He spotted Susan Yantz, Rager’s girlfriend, across the room and headed toward her. I tailed along.

“Any sign of him yet?” Simon asked.

Susan was beginning to look distraught. “I think something bad has happened to him. If it was some sort of stunt he’d have told me in advance.”

“It certainly seems he would have told someone,” Simon agreed, “either yourself or his manager or his publicity agent or his record producer. Tell me, were there any other women in his life?”

“Not since he met me,” she said with the supreme confidence of the young. “He didn’t need anyone else.”

“Did he have any enemies, anyone who threatened him?”

“Not really. He got into a fight in a bar in Australia—”

“But nothing here, in New York?”

“No.”

“Were there ever any unexplained mystical experiences, especially after his nightly shows when he issued his challenge to the Devil?”

Susan Yantz shook her head. “You’re taking that whole Devil thing too seriously. Lots of performers do something like that for a big closing. You know, with lightning bolts and all the—”

She was was cut short in mid-sentence by the sudden appearance of Lieutenant Fisk. He burst from the private room and dashed toward the elevators, with Clare Goddard trailing behind. “What is it?” I asked her.

“Something’s happened downstairs. He just got a call.”

We started toward an open elevator, but Fisk chose the one from which Rager had vanished. “The express is faster,” he told us, jabbing his finger at the bottom button.

Simon and Clare and I managed to crowd in with him before the door closed, but Susan was left behind. “Has Rager reappeared?” Simon asked.

“Maybe,” Fisk told him. “There’s a fire on the lower level, in the parking garage.”

The elevator deposited us in the garage itself, below the street level, and we saw at once that the fire had been confined to a service area close to the ramp. A line of several Dumpsters collected each day’s rubbish from the hotel and were in turn emptied by daily service from a private contractor. Two fire hoses led down the ramp from the street, and the firemen had made short work of the blaze in one of the Dumpsters. Now only a pall of smoke hung in the air.

I was still wondering about the detective’s hurried trip down here when I saw him approach the fire chief. “Lieutenant Fisk. I was upstairs on a related investigation when the precinct relayed your call to me.”

“Here’s what we got, lieutenant. A body in the Dumpster. Pretty badly burned, but it looks like a young Caucasian male.”

“Oh my God!” Clare Goddard gasped at my side. I steadied her with my hand.

A fireman produced a short ladder, and Fisk climbed up to take a look. “We’ll want someone to identify him, if possible.” He glanced across the garage and saw Fenton and Robock coming from the elevators, with Susan close behind.

“We heard there was a body,” Robock began.

“Which one of you can identify him?”

Les Fenton stepped forward, running a tongue over his dry lips. “I can.”

He climbed up on the ladder, took one look and started to retch. “I... I think so. He’s so badly burned I can’t be sure.”

“It’s Rager?” Susan asked.

“I think so,” Fenton repeated.

She let out a low scream that grew in volume. Clare hurried to her side and led her away.

“What do you think now, Simon?” I asked.

“It would seem that Satan gave him a very brief view of Hades, and then tossed him back with the rest of the rubbish.”

It was late in the afternoon, nearly six o’clock, before Lieutenant Fisk got around to questioning Simon and me. “I’m sorry you had to wait so long, but I’ve been busy following up leads,” he told us. The hotel had reclaimed its Skytop Restaurant and the questioning sessions had been transfered to a small meeting room on the third floor. Now, however, the Millbrook Manor seemed to be swarming with uniformed police and detectives. Fisk was no longer alone.

“Has the body been positively identified?” Simon asked.

“It’s Rager, all right. We haven’t completed the fingerprint and dental checks, but Thomas Robock has also identified him, in addition to Fenton. And Susan Yantz has described a small strawberry birthmark on the back of his neck that matches one on the body. If she’s feeling better tomorrow, she’ll view the body, too.”

Fisk’s attitude seemed to have changed completely from the earlier session. What he’d viewed as a publicity stunt had turned into a particularly ugly death. Now he was even willing to admit he knew who Rager was. “With rock stars,” he went on, “the first thought is always that the death could be drug-related in some way. Maybe he was high and set himself on fire. Maybe he had a fight with a dealer over money. We’re looking into everything.”

“At the close of his act he called upon Satan to take him to Hades,” Simon pointed out.

“Yeah, well, that’s more in your line than mine, Mr. Ark. There’s no way I can hang this on Satan, so I’m looking for a more down-to-earth explanation.”

“Have you looked into those fireballs of his?” I asked.

“Yeah. His manager says they’re purchased from a magicians’ supply house. It’s a fast-burning sulfur compound, though Rager was always fooling around with variations for his act. The idea is, it burns fast and goes out quickly, before there’s any danger of the fire spreading.”

“One of them could have ignited in his pocket, though,” I said.

“After he conveniently climbed into that Dumpster?”

Simon Ark stirred restlessly. “You two are concentrating on the death of Rager rather than his disappearance from that elevator. The disappearance is the key to the case. If he was not transported to Hades, what did happen to him?”

The detective turned back to me. He seemed uncomfortable conversing with Simon. “You’re a publisher or editor, or whatever. Are there any books about disappearances from elevators?”

“Not that come to mind. Certainly there have been murders in elevators. Fatal Descent by John Rhode and Carter Dickson is one such novel, and James Yaffe’s first short story, “Department of Impossible Crimes,” is another example. Both use entirely different solutions. Ronald Dahl’s “The Way Up to Heaven” does not have an impossible crime, but in a sense it too is about a murder in an elevator. Cornell Woolrich’s “After Dinner Story” has a murder among several people trapped in an elevator at the bottom of the shaft. Unfortunately none of these fictional situations applies to the present circumstances.”

Lieutenant Fisk shook his head. “A man is seen by several witnesses to enter a glass elevator which takes him up sixty floors and makes no stops on the way. He is observed inside the elevator. Yet when it reaches its destination he has vanished, replaced by a ball of fire. Can such things be, or is everyone in this case lying?”

“The ways of the Devil—” Simon began, but Fisk immediately interrupted.

“Let’s rule out the Devil as a suspect for the moment. He’s beyond my jurisdiction. Any idea why someone might want to kill Rager, assuming it wasn’t drug-related?”

“None,” I said. “But then we never even got to meet the man.”

“We don’t really know Rager, do we?” Fisk fretted. “Maybe if we knew him better this whole thing wouldn’t be so much of a mystery.”

He was finished with us, but as we were about to leave, Thomas Robock came into the room unannounced. “I have to speak with you, lieutenant. It’s about Rager.”

Fisk motioned the bald man to a chair; Robock barely glanced in our direction, and since Fisk didn’t order us out I could see Simon was intent on remaining. “All right, what is it?” the detective asked.

“There’s a great deal of money involved here. I made contract payments to Rager last week, advances on his next album. I believe I may have been swindled.”

“How could Rager swindle you if he’s dead?”

“That’s just the point. Are you certain that body is his?”

“Reasonably certain. His dental records are in England, but Fenton identified him and so did you.”

“I wasn’t that sure. The face was badly burned.”

“The clothing seemed to be his, what was left of it. He had a birthmark in the right place on his neck. Physically the body was the right size.”

“The clothing could have been switched. And you could find someone that age and size any time of the day right over on 42nd Street.”

“Let me get this straight, Mr. Robock. You believe Rager faked his own death as part of a plot to swindle you out of some money?”

“It wouldn’t be the first time such a thing has happened.”

Simon Ark spoke up from the sidelines. “Mr. Robock, does your company carry an insurance policy on the lives of your recording artists?”

“What? Well, yes, on some of the biggest stars. Quite often our projections of sales are based upon the star’s continuing to perform and promote the album. Not everyone is Elvis Presley or the Beatles. If they die or stop performing, they can be quickly forgotten by today’s kids.”

“Did you insure Rager’s life?”

“I think so, yes.”

“For how much?”

“A million dollars,” he said quietly.

“So Rager was worth more to you dead than alive?”

“Hardly. His records had a potential for making five times that much. If I was after the insurance money, would I be sitting here trying to convince you Rager might be still alive?”

“We’ll know soon enough whether it’s him or not,” Fisk promised. “His fingerprints are on file, and Susan Yantz is going to view the body in the morning.”

The disappearance and apparent murder of Rager was all over the TV news that night, and was still good for front-page headlines in the following morning’s papers. Shelly knew of Simon’s interest in the case, but she didn’t ask me too many questions. Perhaps she thought by not talking about it the whole thing — and Simon Ark — would simply go away.

“Will you be home for dinner tonight?” she asked as I was leaving.

“I hope so. Earlier than last night, at least. I’ll call you later.”

I had arranged to meet Simon at police headquarters, where Lieutenant Fisk planned to bring Susan Yantz after she’d viewed the body. Simon said very little while we waited, but as soon as we saw Susan I knew the results. She was red-eyed from crying and Fisk had his arm around her shoulders.

“It’s him,” she said, replying to our unspoken question.

“Come into my office,” Fisk told us.

“What about the fingerprints?” I asked him.

“They match. There’s no doubt.”

Simon had another question. “I saw you take samples of the ash on the elevator floor yesterday. What was it?”

“No bones or anything spectacular, Mr. Ark. Just card-board. Probably the container for the fireball.”

Simon leaned forward in his chair toward Susan Yantz; so close that I think he frightened her. “I have just one further question. This one is for you, Miss Yantz. What vest was Rager wearing when he disappeared?”

She blinked, looking surprised. Whatever question she’d been expecting, this wasn’t it. “Why, his silver one. I remember being surprised when he was dressing for the reception because he’d worn the same outfit on stage the night before.”

“He had many different costumes?”

“Certainly. He usually wore the tight black pants, but the vests were always different. He traveled with a dozen or more.”

“I suspected as much,” Simon said with a gentle nod.

“What has his jacket got to do with any of this?” Fisk demanded.

“Oh, the jacket has everything to do with it. Now I know how Rager vanished from that elevator. Unfortunately, it doesn’t tell me who killed him.”

In typical fashion, Simon refused to give us an explanation, saying only that he could not reveal anything until we had the murderer in hand. Susan Yantz sat through it all with wide eyes, finally bursting out with, “Point him out to me and give me a gun, and I’ll save you the trouble of a trial. Anyone who could burn Rager like that—”

“He was killed before he was burned,” Fisk told her. “The autopsy shows he was strangled.”

“Has the Devil ever been known to strangle people?” I asked Simon.

“Once I solved the elevator mystery, it was clear Satan was no longer involved. However that doesn’t get us any closer to the actual murderer.”

“There’s a lot of pressure on us to wrap this one up quick,” Fisk admitted. “I’ll take any help I can get.”

“Then let us have a reenactment of the crime,” Simon decided. “Perhaps we’ll see something we didn’t notice the first time.”

Lieutenant Fisk reluctantly agreed to the scheme and the principal actors from the previous day were again assembled. There were only four — Susan Yantz, Les Fenton, Thomas Robock and Clare Goddard — and when we were assembled on the ground floor of the hotel, near the bank of elevators, Simon explained his reasoning for this.

“I am about to demonstrate, with Lieutenant Fisk’s kind permission, how it was possible for Rager to vanish from a glass elevator between here and the Skytop Restaurant when the elevator makes no stops on the way. It could only have been done with his cooperation, whether the original idea was his or someone else’s. That is my first point. My second point is that the killer had to know of the plan in advance so he would know where to find Rager and murder him. As was pointed out earlier, you four are the only people in this city he is likely to have told. His girlfriend and traveling companion, his business manager, his publicity director, and the record magnate who was sponsoring the reception he was supposed to attend. He would not have carried out his intended stunt without telling at least one of you.”

“He never said a word to me,” Les Fenton said, and the others joined in agreement.

“I want each of you to take up the position you were in at the time Rager entered the elevator,” Simon instructed.

“I was upstairs waiting for the elevator,” Robock said.

“Then go up there — but take a different elevator, not the express one.”

Lieutenant Fisk was watching it all from the sidelines with two of his officers. He seemed willing to give Simon as much leeway as he needed. “Go up there with Robock,” he told one of the officers. “I want you there when the elevator arrives. Call me on the house phone and tell me what’s happening.”

“I was with him at the elevator,” Fenton said. “Where do I stand? Who’s playing the part of Rager?”

Simon Ark stepped forward. “I am.”

The idea of Simon’s standing in for a twenty-two-year-old rock singer seemed ludicrous to me, but no one laughed. Fenton went to his side, ready to accompany him to the elevator. Susan Yantz announced that she had taken a separate cab to the hotel because of Rager’s quirk of riding alone, and hadn’t quite arrived when Rager boarded his elevator. “Remember?” she reminded Simon and me. “I rode up on the elevator with you.”

“That’s right,” I confirmed.

“I was with Les and Rager,” Clare Goddard said. “We’d come down after lunch to meet him. After Rager went up alone, Les and I followed.”

“Together?” Simon asked.

“No. I believe Les went up first, right after Rager. He had to use a local, of course. They held the elevator up there when Rager wasn’t on it.”

“All right.” Simon pressed the express button. “I will board the elevator. Each of you should behave exactly as you did yesterday, but I want someone to accompany you.” I got the job of riding up with Fenton, while the other officer went up with Clare. Fisk would remain with Susan Yantz.

The express elevator arrived and Simon stepped into its interior alone, giving a little bow like a stage magician entering a magic cabinet. He pressed a button and the doors slid shut, the lighted arrow pointing up.

The house phone rang almost at once and Fisk took the receiver from its wall compartment. “Yes, Mr. Robock. He’s just started up. He should be there soon. I’ll hang on.” He glanced over at me and smiled indulgently. No one really expected Simon Ark to vanish as Rager had done.

The time seemed to drag by. A minute, two minutes. How long did it take an elevator to travel up sixty stories?

“Yes,” Fisk said into the phone. “It’s arrived? What? What are you saying? Where’s Simon Ark?”

I shouldn’t have been surprised but somehow I was. Damned if he hadn’t pulled it off, just like Rager.

Fisk and the others stood there dumbfounded, not knowing what to do next. Then from behind us came a familiar voice. “Are you satisfied now?” It was Simon Ark.

“All right,” Fisk said. “How’d you do it? The elevator makes no stops between here and the Skytop Restaurant, not even in the lobby. You got on here — we all saw you — but the elevator was empty when it arrived. How?”

“Rager’s method can be explained in three simple words. All the rest is mere window-dressing.”

“Three words? Where did he go if he didn’t go up?”

“He went down,” Simon Ark said simply. “Isn’t that right, Mr. Fenton?”

Les Fenton would have made a terrible poker player. I knew Simon was bluffing, and he should have known it, too. But I’m not one to judge the pressures of a murderer’s conscience. Simon’s words broke him down completely, and Fisk was reading him his rights as he got out the handcuffs. Then it was time for Simon’s explanation.

“It’s true that the express elevator only goes to one place, the Skytop Restaurant, when it’s going up. But it also goes to the parking garage on the floor below this. How do I know? Because we took it with Lieutenant Fisk when he was notified of the fire. Remember him saying, ‘The express is faster,’ as he jabbed the button?”

I shook my head in disagreement. “It won’t wash, Simon. The lit arrow above the elevator doors was pointing up.”

“Fenton could have fixed that with a ladder and a screwdriver, which I imagine is what he did. He came here to the hotel several hours early, probably dressed as a workman. He unscrewed the face plate from those indicator lights and rewired them so the up arrow came on whether the elevator was going up or down. It was probably Rager’s idea, but he needed Fenton to carry out the details.”

“No one noticed it?”

“Why would they? The elevator still arrived sooner or later. I’ll admit I checked my theory earlier this morning, before meeting you at police headquarters. It was simple enough for me to duplicate the trick, covering the buttons with my hand so you couldn’t really be sure which one I pushed. I got out of the elevator in the garage and then sent it back upstairs empty, adding only about ten seconds to its trip. Then I took the stairs up to surprise you.”

“You’re forgetting one thing,” I reminded him. “You and I were in the lobby. We actually saw Rager going up inside that glass elevator.”

“Consider the timing, my friend. We watched the elevator doors close on Rager and then took the escalator up to the lobby. His elevator was just coming into view. Certainly an elevator travels much faster than an escalator. That should have told us the elevator had been delayed somehow for several seconds. Rager left the elevator at the garage level and replaced himself with—”

“With what?” Fisk asked.

“—with a lifesized cardboard cutout of himself like the ones in the lobby of Madison Square Garden.”

“He was holding a guitar in those,” I objected.

“The part over his body could be easily covered with black paper or painted out. Both ends of the guitar could be cut away, leaving a color duplicate of Rager alone. He probably hid it under a car parked by the elevator, pulled it out, stood it up in the glass elevator, near the door so its two-dimensional flatness wouldn’t be visible from the lobby, and sent it on its way. He’d coated the back with the fast-burning sulfur compound used in his fireballs. The sulfur was the brimstone odor in the air. A short fuse on the back ignited the cardboard just as it passed from view, and when the doors opened at the Skytop Restaurant only the last of the cardboard was still burning. Again, a test run in the elevator would have told Rager — or Fenton — how long a fuse was needed. They may have tested the burning time of the cardboard as well.”

“When did Fenton kill him?” the detective asked.

“Right after he left the elevator, I imagine. Fenton hurried downstairs, strangled him in the garage, and hid his body in the Dumpster with another fuse that would start the fire later. Once I established what had happened, I pretty much ruled out the two women. The killer had to strangle his victim, a twenty-two-year-old man in good health, carry his body across the garage to the Dumpster, and then hoist it over the edge. Certainly a woman could have done it, but a man seemed far more likely. Robock was upstairs all the time, from the discovery of the empty elevator to the discovery of the body. That left Fenton as the most likely killer, the only one among the suspects with the physical means and the opportunity. It was guesswork, of course, but it paid off.”

Lieutenant Fisk said, “Lucky for you he seems to have cracked. Once you confronted him he just went to pieces.”

“I think you’ll discover the motive lies in the financial manipulation of Rager’s various assets. Robock mentioned advance payments to Rager, but I think you’ll find the payments were actually made to Les Fenton as Rager’s business manager. He may have felt Rager had to die before he and Robock got together and compared notes on the transactions.”

“What about Rager’s jacket?” I asked. “Why was that so important?”

“At the performance the other night we noticed he looked just like the lifesized cutout in the lobby, meaning he was wearing the same costume. Susan told us it was unusual for him to wear that silver vest two days in a row. Why did he wear it yesterday? Because he needed to be dressed like the cutout again, to make the disappearance work. I suppose it was meant as a publicity stunt, but Fenton turned it to his own ends.”

We went away from there then, and Simon and I walked for a time among the crowds in Times Square. “The Devil didn’t take Rager after all,” I said at one point.

But Simon wasn’t ready to admit that. “Perhaps he did, my friend. Perhaps he only works in devious ways. Perhaps he has taken both Rager and Les Fenton. It’s something we shall never know.”