Death From a Top Hat

Chapter 18 The Invisible Man

From somewhere far away the irritable clamor of a bell came and beat at me with a steady insistent demand. I reached out, groping for the alarm clock, and found, where the night table always stood — emptiness. Turtle-like I pushed my head out from under the covers and tentatively opened one eye. Gray morning light came in through a window that was in the wrong wall. And then, at last, the bell still ringing, I remembered where I was.

I threw back the covers and let the cold air wake me. Forcing myself from the bed, I went to the window, threw it wide and leaned out. The Inspector’s shiny Lincoln waited at the curb, and below me the Inspector himself leaned on the bell push, whistling a flat but cheerful tune.

“Morning, Inspector!” I growled. “You’re disturbing the peace, did you know?”

He took his thumb from the bell and looked up. “It’s about time,” he said, grinning. “I thought the battery was going to give up before you did. Do something drastic to that long-legged friend of yours, and then come down here and let me in.”

I pulled the window down and got going. In the hall I thumped on Merlini’s door, hailing, “Shake a leg, sailor. Company calling. The Inspect—”

Under my knocking the door swung inward, and I saw the bed. At the sight of the thing that sat there on the counterpane, I stood for a long instant stock still. Propped awkwardly against the pillows was the body of a midget with a grotesquely large head. From under the bulgy mass of crimson hair, fixed glassy eyes stared at me, motionless, and on the mouth a flat, dead smile had hardened.

Then I saw that it was a ventriloquist’s dummy, a snub-nosed little imp with painted freckles. There was a white envelope in the small wooden hand, and across its face, scrawled large, I saw my name. I ripped it open and read the note, pencilled in a jagged, nearly impossible script.

As we left the house I noticed that Gavigan slipped into his pocket the thin red-covered book from Merlini’s shelves which he had been reading as he waited. I knew then whence sprang the Inspector’s cheery whistling mood. I had only gotten a glimpse of the title, but that was enough. Its author was Arthur W. Prince and its title, The Whole Art of Ventriloquism.

Malloy, Grimm, and Brady were waiting on the steps of No. 36. They looked sleepy.

Gavigan asked, “Have you seen Merlini?”

Malloy shook his head. “No. Duvallo was here a few minutes ago. Said he wanted a clean shirt. We shooed him off. Shannon was still on his tail.”

He held the door open for us as we went in. We were halfway down the hall when it happened.

There were two voices, rising faintly in angry excited tones, and they came from inside the living room. Suddenly these words, shouted, stood out above the rest:

“And the police will never know!”

Grimm’s “What the hell!” was explosive.

We covered the remaining ten feet at nearly the speed of light. The door, which had been replaced on its hinges, was closed. Gavigan kicked it open, and the four of us crowded violently in, stopped and stood looking — at each other. There was no one else to look at. The voices had ceased; the room was empty.

Gavigan repeated Grimm’s actions of the night before. He sailed comet-like toward the study with Malloy at his heels, gun in hand. Grimm, his jaw sagging, seemed incapable of movement.

Gavigan disappeared; Malloy stopped in the doorway. Then, almost at once, they returned. There was an angry bewilderment on the Inspector’s face, and the line of his jaw was rigid.

“Not a soul,” he said. “And this time the window’s closed, just as I left it—”

He stopped, watching the thin thread of blue smoke that rose tenuously from an ash receiver standing on the floor by an empty armchair. It came from a lighted cigarette, long and new, that lay balanced there.

Grimm whispered, half sincere, “The place is haunted!”

As if in verification of that statement, an irregular ghostly tapping began, coming from the dark corner near the study door. We strained our eyes looking and saw something white that moved in the shadow. Malloy’s gun pointed. We stepped forward. On a small single-legged table such as magicians use was a portable typewriter that seemed to be endowed with a life of its own. As we watched the keys jerked spasmodically, the type bars swung up, and the space bar danced. We closed in, uncertainly.

There was a sheet of paper in the roll, across which, above the ribbon, words were forming.

“Dear Inspector: You not only can’t believe all you see… ” We heard the bell and saw the carriage slide suddenly from left to right, double spacing as it did so. Other words clicked into being, letter by letter. “… but you mustn’t believe everything you can’t see. Very truly yours, THE INVISIBLE MAN.”

“Merlini!” Gavigan exclaimed. “But where—”

Suddenly all the keys on the keyboard jumped convulsively; there was a vague, swishy movement within the typewriter and a low, hissing, snake-like sound. Gavigan bent over, eyeing the machine warily. Then he lifted it quickly and peered under it, at nothing. Turning, he carried it to the light of the window where we examined it gingerly, to no effect.

Grimm, looking nervously behind him, suddenly pointed and pushed out one startled word, “Look!”

We wheeled. Gavigan almost dropped the typewriter on my foot. Merlini was sitting in the big armchair, smiling impishly and blowing smoke rings.

“Dammit!” Gavigan thundered. “I’ve had all the parlor magic I can stomach!” He dropped the typewriter back on to its table with a crash. “Here’s where you do some fast, furious, and fancy explaining. How did you get in here? How did you disappear, and how did you get back? And don’t give me any song and dance about invisibility! I won’t—”

Merlini stood up. He dropped his cigarette into the ash receiver, not bothering to vanish it, and spoke rapidly. “In the literature of Psychical Research you will find some mention of a phenomenon known as Bilocation. Watrous mentions it, for one. It is defined as the presence of an individual in two different places at one and the same time. It is one of the rarer psychic manifestations. What few recorded cases there are lack any proper sort of authenticity — with one exception — and that, though occurring under rigid test conditions, was patently a trick. Duvallo called it The Mystery of the Yogi. He performed it before an audience of newspapermen in this room two years ago, just after his return from India, and it netted him a whole scrapbook of clippings.

“He had a couple of the reporters go out and buy several padlocks and a hasp. They fixed those on the inside of the door leading to the hall. You can still see the screw holes in the woodwork. The padlocks were locked and the keys held by the reports. Duvallo sat in this chair and dished out some high-powered pseudo-Yogi patter. He began by demonstrating the system of breath control and apparently slid off into a deep trance. With his customary flair for showmanship, he had a doctor standing by who poked a stethoscope at his chest every few minutes, kept a constant hand on his pulse, and exhibited a properly grave countenance. The reporters were naturally skeptical, but Duvallo got fairly respectful attention because they knew that he usually came through with something that rated page one. He held that trance for a good ten minutes, heating up suspense.

“Then finally the phone rang, and one of the reporters answered it. He heard Duvallo’s voice, saying that he was at La Rumba, three blocks away. At the suggestion of the voice in the phone, several other reporters listened and were each given an earful. Their credulity balked a bit, and there were a few impolite snickers. One of them suggested to the voice that he hang up, and wait to be called back. They tried that, but the same voice answered. When they started to stall, the voice hung up. Then Duvallo rolled his eyes and, breathing heavily, began to come out of his coma.

“They immediately accused him of having employed a double, and began to razz him. ‘Wait a minute, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘It’s not quite over. Look out the front window.’ Several of them did, and in a minute or so they all had their noses glued to the pane. A man was running down the street through the snow. As he came under the light from the window, he was, to all appearances, Duvallo. Everyone whirled, started for the door, and stopped. Duvallo had vanished. He was no longer in the room.

“They began on the padlocks. While they were unlocking them, someone knocked on the door. When they got it open, in walked Duvallo, big as you please, grinning and shaking the snow from his overcoat. He handed over a menu card, bearing the orchestra leader’s and the headwaiter’s signatures, with the hour and date. When they checked later they got a further shock. It had been celebrity night and Duvallo had been called on to stand and take a bow. So there were plenty of witnesses at both ends.”

“Do you call that explaining things?” Gavigan protested.

“Yes. The reporters, of course, were right the first time. Duvallo did use a double, an actor who could imitate his voice. I would suspect Tarot. He was almost exactly the same build and height, and had features similar enough in general appearance so that properly applied make-up would do the trick, except before close friends. The bang-up finale, however, left Duvall’s audience so goggle-eyed that they forgot their ‘double’ theory, and when they tried to find some other explanation… there wasn’t any. Common principle in conjuring.”

“And Duvallo got out of this room the way you did just now, after giving your little imitation of two people scrapping?”

“Yes. Harte’s theory, trite as it was, is correct. This room does have a secret exit; and it’s a honey. I figured that out when I read the account of Duvallo’s stunt and saw the pictures in the papers. I’ve always suspected where it was, but, even so, it took me nearly fifteen minutes to find it.”

“Stop bragging and get on with it.” Gavigan was impatient.

Merlini walked back to the chair and squatted in the seat, Oriental fashion, legs tucked under. He braced his elbows on the chair arms. The fingers of his right hand pressed lightly on the under side of the arm where it curved over and the seat of the chair fell away, noiselessly. Merlini’s legs dropped down into a dark hole, swinging. He found a foothold, took a step downward, and, as he ducked his head, the chair seat swung smoothly and silently back into place. The whole operation had taken less than five seconds.

“Regular Jack-in-the-Box, isn’t he?” Grimm said, blinking.

The chair seat dropped again, and Merlini’s voice said, “Come on down.” There was a click, and light came up from the opening.

Merlini was standing on a stepladder arrangement, the steps of which were covered with sound-absorbing black felt. Gavigan said, “Brady, you stay up here and keep your eyes open.”

Merlini went on, “When the reporters dashed for the window, Duvallo simply dropped through here and… ”

“When I looked the cellar over last night,” Gavigan said, “this end of it seemed to be full of boxes and packing cases.”

“Camouflage. They go clear to the ceiling, and this is behind them.”

Following Malloy, I climbed down the ladder and found myself in a small room less than ten feet in depth. The light came from a bare electric bulb in the ceiling. There was a work-table along one end wall, heaped with a queer miscellany of odds and ends. I saw a tambourine, several slates, a headless, undressed ventriloquist’s dummy, a scattered pile of paper flowers, a rumpled quantity of cheesecloth. Hanging from hooks on the wall were several theatrical costumes, among them a pair of completely black all-over tights with a peculiar all-enveloping hood. Two black gloves lay on the floor near a dusty jawless papier-mâché skull that had rolled into one corner.

“Behind the scenes with a spirit medium,” Merlini observed. “Dave puts on a mean séance, as you might guess from these props.” He pointed at the left-hand wall. “There’s the door. Duvallo, in working his Yogi Mystery, dashed through there and up the stairs, met his assistant in the hall, and took the snow-covered overcoat and the menu card. The latter came down here and lay doggo until the party was over.”

“But there’s no door on the other side,” Malloy said.

“It opens into one of the packing cases and you leave through the hinged side of that.”

“He was cutting it pretty fine, wasn’t he?” Gavigan asked, frowning. “Suppose the reporters opened the door upstairs too soon?”

“That’s why the padlocks on the door. They were not to keep Duvallo in the room, as everyone was led to suppose, but to keep the reporters in. In many tricks the very precautions that are taken to guarantee absence of trickery are what make it possible.”

“Are all your magic tricks figured as closely at that?” Gavigan asked, somewhat incredulously.

“And then some,” Merlini replied. “A magician can’t take many chances, because when a trick doesn’t come off — well, it’s like that dream where you suddenly find yourself addressing the Woman’s Club — minus clothes.”

“I wonder,” Gavigan said, “who else besides Duvallo and Tarot knew of this place. It doesn’t seem… ”

Malloy was nosing around the worktable. “Hey,” he broke in, excitedly, “here’s the insides of another trick.” He had pulled the pile of cheesecloth to one side and disclosed a typewriter, identical with that upstairs.

“Yes,” Merlini said, “the spirit typewriter. Duvallo has always claimed that it’s the original one on which Madame Blavatsky’s posthumously written memoirs were typed, but that was probably ballyhoo.[11] While I was typing, all the keys of this machine were connected with the keys of the one above by strands of this, strong, black fishline. It’s a rather complicated setup, but it works. The strings ran up through that hole in the ceiling and through the single hollow leg of the table. Each string went over the arm of the proper key and came back, down to this hook.” He pointed to a hook in the wall, near which hung a large pair of shears.

“When I had finished, I gathered the strings just above the typewriter in one hand, cut them at the other end close to the hook, pulled in rapidly, drew them over the arms of the keys upstairs and back down. There’s some sound up at the other end which you many have heard, since I couldn’t be there to cover it with patter. The hole in the table top has a spring-hinged cover that folds into place when the typewriter is lifted for examination.”

“It’s all done with trap doors and threads so far. I suppose the mirrors come next,” Grimm observed.

Gavigan, who had been in a brown study with the door closed, came out of it and said, “Maybe I’m dumb, Merlini, but I don’t see it. It might help a lot to know that Grimm’s vanishing murderer escaped down this rabbit hole, but there’s still the snow that surrounded the house, and even if he bid until after we left, early this morning—”

“Take a deep breath, Inspector,” Merlini said, “and don’t throw anything when you hear what comes next. This all had to be looked into anyway. You, Harte, can take that woebegone expression off your face, because I’m going to put your detective yarn back on its feet. The murderer didn’t leave by this route. That door is locked on the inside!”

Gavigan grunted and, stepping forward, yanked savagely at the door knob. “I don’t see any key,” he said. “How do you know it wasn’t locked from the other side?”

“Because it doesn’t lock from the other side. There’s neither doorknob nor keyhole. All the lock is in here. And, furthermore, the murderer couldn’t have been hiding here until the coast was clear up above. I took a look before I came down the first time, and there was a nice, smooth, undisturbed layer of dust on the floor and on those felt-covered steps where, as you can see, our footprints show all too plainly.”

Gavigan said nothing for a moment, staring at Merlini. Then he turned and started up the ladder. Two steps up he stopped and looked back.

“I wish,” he said vehemently, “that instead of trying to make this investigation jump through hoops, you’d make yourself useful. Come on up here. We’ve wasted enough time.”

As the Inspector’s legs disappeared through the trap, Merlini said softly:

“I wonder?”