Death From a Top Hat

Chapter 24 Rolang

Hidden away on the top floor of one of the elderly buildings surrounding Times Square is a door that bears this inscription: THE MAGIC SHOP, Miracles for Sale, A. Merlini, Prop. Behind that door is a queer sort of shop, a shop that is somehow all at once gay, festive, bizarre, spectacular, weird, showy, and comfortable. There are the usual glass-topped counters, shelves rising high on one wall, and a cash register; but there the usual ceases. A white rabbit hops about on the floor and the merchandise is a strangely incongruous assortment of cards, thimbles, silk handkerchiefs, tripod-legged tables, billiard balls, slates, ribbons, flowers, alarm clocks, crystal gazing balls, red and gold cabinets and boxes, bird cages, fish, bowls, a half dozen toothy papier-mâché skulls, and several hundred books. The right-hand wall, from above a comfortable divan that stands against it, upward to the ceiling is covered with framed and autographed photos of magicians, and grinning foolishly down from the top row of shelves is a brightly painted set of Punch and Judy figures.

Inspector Gavigan and I were sitting on the divan the morning after Duvallo’s arrest. Merlini leaned on the counter scratching the head of Dr. Faustus, an enormous black cat who stretched luxuriously on the glass.

“How’s Hunter?” Merlini asked.

Hunter was the casualty of the night before.

“It was damned close,” Gavigan answered, “but the report this morning was that he’d pull through.”

“And what happened at headquarters after the fireworks last night? Duvallo talk?”

“Yes, once he knew it was no go, he talked plenty. Oddly, too. He’d get so enthused at times that he’s forget he had come a cropper, and he almost boasted of the way he’d fooled us.”

“He would; he’s an egomaniac. That’s also why he’s such a good magician. I’ve a little theory — I don’t discuss it with my customers — that conjuring as a hobby appeals most to people with inferiority complexes. And the more they over-compensate the better magicians they make. Even the display of parlor tricks at a party imparts a glow of superiority, quite false of course, but not all of us realize that. Duvallo didn’t. He fooled himself thinking he was smart enough to deceive the police. And when a magician starts fooling himself, he’s on the skids.”

“Yes,” Gavigan agreed, “that’s criminal psychology. Most of them think they’re too smart. And I noticed how Duvallo took Miss Barclay for granted, not being able to understand how anything in skirts could resist him. She was down at headquarters last night, and, though pretty cut up about it, I don’t think it’s anything she won’t get over shortly. She had suspected him all along, which explains some of her actions.”

Merlini nodded. “Professionally, though,” he went on, “Duvallo’s egotism was a decided asset. It gave him a devil-may-care air of confidence and bravado that impresses an audience.”

“I wonder how long it’ll stay with him. That statement I got last night is going to hang him unless some simple-minded jury-falls for the extenuating circumstances he’ll probably plead and lets him off with life.”

“Oh, then you know the motive? I’m interested. I think I could hazard a good guess, though I haven’t had time to dig up any corroborative details. I’d intended to look through the daily papers for the last week of May 1935.”

“You’d have wasted your time,” Gavigan said. “But I’ll trade you that information for some of the things you know that Duvallo didn’t. In fact, there’s a lot of answers I want.”

“And what about me?” I protested. “You’re both bursting with information, and I’m about to explode. Come on, talk.”

Merlini leaned over and picked the rabbit from the floor. He rang up “No Sale” on the cash register, took a carrot from the drawer, and held it before the twinkly nose of the bunny.

“Breakfast, Peter,” he said. And then, to the Inspector: “We’d better enlighten Ross before he plunges us into another murder case, one that neither of us will be in a position to investigate. Which answer do you want first?”

“I’d like to know how that bullet trick was stage-managed last night. Realizing that the murderer was on the stage and up to funny business when he loaded the gun, what the hell made you think Jones wouldn’t be killed, and why wasn’t he?”

“Duvallo was the only one who took a chance, Inspector. We had the cards stacked, and dealt him four of a kind — all jokers. Captain Storm, who rates tops as a trick shot, had instructions to aim a foot to the left of Jones’ head.”

“I though so! You were responsible for Jones’ disappearance last night!”

Merlini nodded, “Guilty. Yesterday afternoon at Duvallo’s I sneaked this note to him.” Merlini handed over a folded scrap of paper. It read: You and I may be able to trap the murderer, if you’ll sit tight and follow directions. Agree to anything I say about your act tonight, and, when you leave here, shake the detective who’ll be on your tail, and wait for me at The Shop.

“He had planned his usual ventriloquism for the show, but I changed that when I announced that he was going to do Chung Ling Soo’s famous trick.[14] Your query about the hall light told Duvallo that the radio gimmick had been uncovered, and he didn’t like my hypnotic plan a little bit. Things were getting warm. The Bullet Trick was a made-to-order chance for him to have his neck. But it was made-to-order more than he knew. He put on that scholarly committeeman disguise in his dressing room, and went out into the auditorium during the intermission ready to volunteer during Jones’ act. Backstage he passed as just another of the many performers’ relatives that were milling around. Judy almost threw a monkey wrench in my little trap, when, not knowing what was up, she went backstage once to look for Duvallo and couldn’t find him. I was afraid she’d raise a hue and cry, but luckily she was still giving him the benefit of the doubt. It’s always hard to believe one of your best friends is a murderer.”

“There’s one thing I want straightened out right now,” I said. “How could Duvallo agree to let himself be hypnotized? Wouldn’t that have let the cat out of the bag?”

“No,” Merlini explained, “being a hypnotist himself, he was confident that he could fake it, even though it meant fooling Brainard. It’s not an easy thing to do, but he could have gotten away with it if anyone could. His colossal self-confidence has pulled him out of some pretty tight spots. That time in Milwaukee when his Buried Alive stunt went wrong, he—”

“Then Jones was the absent-minded suspect who had forgotten something vital?”

“Yeah,” the Inspector replied, “if Merlini’s psychoanalyst friend had hypnotized Jones, Duvallo knew we’d find out that—”

“Hold it, Inspector,” Merlini broke in. “If you’re going to let Ross in on the pay-off, don’t begin with your climax. Build up to it.”

I reached over the counter and picked up one of the heavy glass spheres that were labeled “Finest Crystal Gazing Globes. Specially Priced. $6.50.” I hefted it menacingly.

Gavigan said, “All right, you take it. And while you’re at it, I want to know how you doped it. I still don’t see what the tip-off was. You weren’t even there yet when Tarot—”

“There you go again,” Merlini objected. He served Peter Rabbit another carrot. “Let’s begin at the beginning, with Sabbat’s murder. The main problem there was one of escape. The Inspector wouldn’t have Surgat, and both of you thoroughly snowed under my davenport suggestion with obviously valid objections. And, anyway, I’d found no traces under the davenport, as I’d previously admitted. There was nothing left except Duvallo’s hanky-panky with the string.”

“Damn!” I said heartily. I know enough never to believe a magician and, in spite of all his protestations to the contrary, I’d half expected him to come through at the last with a nice new escape for that apartment. “But if Duvallo’s explanation is correct,” I went on, “the murderer had to be in the apartment to throw that bolt sometime between our breaking in and the arrival of the police. Duvallo doesn’t qualify.”

“Take it easy, Ross. Forget Duvallo for a moment. Just assume that the murderer must have been there, and put yourself in his place. Suppose you were the murderer and had yet to finish off your monkey business with the kitchen door. First, you’d go over there supplied with a couple of witnesses. Secondly, you’d not welcome any unpredictable elements in your little act, and when neighbor Harte from across the hall put in his two cents’ worth you’d not be pleased. And you would certainly object to his phoning the cops before you had even broken into the place. Furthermore, you’d try to keep yourself in command of the situation, directing and controlling the actions of others, and, most important of all, you’d damn well see to it that you, and you only, were the first person into that kitchen. Right?”

“It sounds swell. But it was Tarot who did all those things!”

Merlini smiled mysteriously. “And you gave him a couple of nasty moments. Your announcement that you had already called the police, for instance. They might burst in at any moment, and he hadn’t even started for the kitchen. He went into action at once. He suggested that the murderer might still be lurking about, and, to emphasize the danger, and to provide a good reason for his being the only one to go look, he pulled out that gun and waved it about. Then, you rushed in where angels wouldn’t have poked their noses. He had to think fast and shunt you off into the bedroom. All those things were highly indicative. Tarot was the only suspect of the lot who acted at every turn as if he wanted to get that kitchen door.”

“And with his alibi he couldn’t possibly have been the murderer,” I said, wondering where the hell this was taking us.

“But, as far as we knew at that time, he might have been the murderer’s accomplice. It looked very much, in fact, as if he and the murderer were trying to frame Duvallo. There were all those heavy-handed clues cocked and aimed at Duvallo, the business card, his picklocks, and the fact that the crime seemed to call for an escape artist.”

“Yeah,” Gavigan put in, “I thought that, too, until Tarot began acting up, not leaving his fingerprints, vanishing from that taxi, having Sabbat’s gun, giving the wrong address, and all that. It didn’t make sense. When you’re trying to frame someone it’s customary to try and keep your own skirts clean. But I never thought—”

“And then,” Merlini interposed hastily, “the apple cart was up-dumped properly. Duvallo walked in, nice as you please, and two things happened that were as subtly suspicious as all the evidence against him was overly obvious. The business card turned out to implicate not Duvallo, but Tarot. That was bad. As long as it pointed at Duvallo, his position was relatively sound, but when it about-faced and we discovered it had been pointing at Tarot all along, Duvallo was in dutch.”

“Do you have your own private brand of logic?” I objected. “Take those paradoxical jumps a bit slower, please. I’m falling off.”

Merlini scratched the rabbit’s ears. “The card was planted, of course. Gavigan told Duvallo as much, and he was dead right. If it was not planted and was a straight-forward clue, we’d have had to assume that the man it implicated, Duvallo, was a sixteen-carat bungling idiot. But the crime itself gave the lie to that.

“The only question was, did the murderer plant the card in order to throw suspicion on Duvallo, or did Duvallo plant it in order to give the appearance of being framed by some murderer not himself? Duvallo wanted us to think he was being framed, and that phony, phony phone-call from a mysterious Mr. Williams was for the same purpose. Duvallo got a jolt when Gavigan surprised him by going straight to the truth. He hadn’t given the cops credit for that much penetration.”

“He’d probably read too many detective stories,” Gavigan muttered.

“Not only that,” Merlini went on, “but he suspected the police might be so obtuse that they wouldn’t deduce that he was being framed. He was performing that most dangerous trick, murder, and he became over-cautious. He used a card which had Tarot’s erased writing on it — a card, by the way, which he could have filed away for future use as easily as Tarot might have done. The erasure was fairly obvious, and if the police hadn’t seen it, he’d have pointed it out. That was where he made his mistake. As soon as I realized that the card had never really implicated him, I was sure he had planted it. If anyone else had wanted to implicate Tarot they’d have left Tarot’s calling card, not Duvallo’s. There would be no reason for a delayed action clue.”

The Inspector said, “You don’t mean to tell me, Merlini, that you knew Duvallo was guilty because of any highfalutin’ complicated reasoning like that?”

“No, but it made me good and suspicious. Besides, the business card was only a subtle error in reasoning alongside the glaring blunder that followed. He tried to prove, without damaging his professional reputation, that he couldn’t possibly have gotten out of that apartment. What sent me into a tail spin was the fact that he did exactly that. He did prove that he couldn’t have been the one to bolt the kitchen door, and at the same time he admitted that he was the murderer!”

“He did what!” Gavigan was startled.

“He gave himself away completely. He explained far too much. More than he should have known. He borrowed the Inspector’s handkerchief to use in demonstrating how the key-holes might have been plugged up, and he put the pencil marks on it before he had been told that any were found on Sabbat’s handkerchief!”[15]

The Inspector stared, his blue eyes popping. Then he growled, “Damn!”

“But,” I wanted to know, “why the pencil marks anyway? If the murderer had only poked the cloth into the keyholes with the eraser end of the pencil, he wouldn’t have needed to switch the handkerchief later. The bolting of the door wasn’t really necessary; it was locked. The murderer wouldn’t have needed to come back, or send an assistant at all. Sounds screwy to me.”

“Sure, it would. You’re a simple and more direct person than Duvallo. He’s a magician and his wiles are devious. He’s in love with mystery, and a Grade A impossibility wasn’t good enough for him. He had to make it a super-production — and it boomeranged. He began with a sound original idea. He’d commit two murders, make it clear to the dumbest nitwit of a cop that they were — that they must have been — committed by the same person, and then he’d be prepared with an unshakable alibi for one of them. You might commit a whole series of crimes using that technique; just be sure that your one alibi is strong enough. His was. It consisted in being with the police when Tarot was murdered. He should have left it at that, but he didn’t; he tried to cook up an alibi for Sabbat’s murder too. He over-elaborated. The pencil marks made the switching of the torn handkerchief necessary, and that proved that the murderer must have come back to the apartment during a time when it seemed fairly obvious that Duvallo had not been present.”

“I don’t follow that,” I said. “If you two have jugged the right man, if Duvallo is the murderer, then the pencil marks prove, not that the murderer came back, but that he had an assistant, Tarot. But that doesn’t… I don’t see—”

“And at that point,” Merlini continued, “neither did I. If those two were in cahoots, why in the name of sanity did Tarot accuse Duvallo and vice versa? That certainly didn’t look like teamwork. And they couldn’t both be double-crossing each other. A murderer and his accomplice usually prefer hanging together to hanging separately. One line of reasoning said that they must be colleagues in crime, and another equally valid chain of logic said the exact opposite. The logical snarl that left us in was as bad as any rope-tie Duvallo ever escaped from. And then,” Merlini flung his hands wide, fingers spread, “the whole set piece exploded right in my face with a loud Whoosh! The incomprehensible Tarot is killed, and his body is surrounded on all sides by evidence — the method of murder, Sabbat’s dressing-gown cord, Dr. Dee’s crystal, the Grimorium page, the very position of the body — evidence which could only mean that there was but one killer. And at the time of Tarot’s death Duvallo was in plain sight talking to us, busily curving the suspicion back toward Tarot! Even if we supposed that he had really learned the neatest trick of the Tibetan week — being in two places at once — and had admitted that his astral double killed Tarot in order to remove a double-crossing accomplice, we should still have to explain Tarot’s damnably inconsistent actions. On top of all that, Tarot dead presented us with a new puzzler — his disguise. Each new discovery was a setback. Our retrograde motion was a sight to behold. In spite of his giveaway blunder, the Great Duvallo drew further ahead of the bloodhounds every minute.”

“Merlini,” Gavigan kibitzed, “stop blowing up toy balloons so they’ll make a big bust when your devastating logic starts to pop ’em.”

“But, Inspector,” Merlini argued, “they weren’t toy balloons at the time; they were more like stone walls. You’ll have to admit that.”

I broke in peevishly, “You’re forgetting that I don’t know the answers. Get on with it. I’m a nervous wreck.”

Merlini went on calmly: “I’d had a quick peek behind the scenes, a passing glimpse of the rabbits hiding in the hat, and still he fooled me. The mystery got progressively deeper until finally we resolved one impossibility. We found the gimmicked radio, and we knew that the murder had taken place earlier — apparently a half hour earlier — sometime between Tarot’s arrival and the beginning of the snowfall. We knew then why there were no footprints in the snow. But did that help any? The murder took place in Duvallo’s own rooms; he had by far the best opportunity to hocus that radio; and I was sure that, not expecting the snow, he’d left that ladder against the open window so that we’d think someone had gone down it — someone not an escape artist. But his alibi was as ironclad as ever. A half hour before, at ten o’clock, he had already arrived at Sabbat’s and placed himself where there could be no doubt of his presence, right under our noses.”

“And then Jones turned out to be the guy who started the radio,” Gavigan added disgustedly.

“Yes, he looked like off-stage assistant number two, only he was the wrong man for the part. Not being a complete idiot, he wouldn’t go down there at Duvallo’s request and poke that light button, knowing that his ventriloquial ability would put him smack on the spot. But I felt morally certain that somehow, in spite of Space and Time, Duvallo had managed to strangle Tarot. So I asked myself this: could Duvallo have made Jones stop in and flick that light switch at precisely the proper moment, without Jones realizing that he was acting in any way except of his own free will and by chance? Put that way, I saw it. The answer could be yes.”

Merlini grinned maliciously, looked at Gavigan and said, “Ross, here, is going to sit right up on his hind legs and howl that it’s too shilling-shockerish, that it’s too trite and whiskered a device to go well in the story he’s itching to write. My answer to that is: why, those criticisms being true, didn’t he tumble to it? We talked about the method enough, both during the investigation and now, just a few minutes ago.”

I tried, not very successfully, to cover my chagrin with nonchalance. “I’ll be damned! Duvallo hypnotized him!”

“Exactly.” Merlini chuckled. “That’s the only thing that could have happened other than a ridiculously impossible coincidence. Duvallo persuaded Jones to try a hypnotic experiment, and, during the trance, double-crossed him. He gave Jones a post-hypnotic command to show up and turn on that light at 10:30 sharp, and then told him that on awakening he’d not remember having been hypnotized at all. That’s what the absent-minded suspect forgot, and that’s what Duvallo knew that another spot of hypnosis would uncover. Duvallo admit that, Inspector?”

“Yes. I thought for a minute he was coked up when he confessed that. But then I remembered something I’d read in Sodermann and O’Connell’s book.[16] They mention a case in which two young men hypnotized a girl, raped her, and then, through suggestion, compelled her to forget what had happened. If that’s possible, then I guess Duvallo could have made Jones push a light switch.”

“Go on,” I prodded. “How do you get over the next hurdle? You’ve still got to get Tarot killed.”

Merlini got down off the counter and put the rabbit in his pen on the floor. “I know,” he said. “That’s what gave me the jitters. Somewhere along the line Duvallo had pulled a fast one. The murders were tricks, and he was a magician. If my pet theory of deduction was true, we must have slipped up somewhere along the line; we hadn’t caught the tell-tale manoeuver when the rabbit was loaded into the hat. I’d caught him out over those pencil marks, and that something I didn’t find that I wasn’t looking for at Tarot’s apartment held intriguing possibilities, but it was all too vague and uncertain. I needed something more conclusive. So I had Ross write down in full detail what had gone before, what I had until then only heard verbally. It worked. The clue was there, and suddenly all the trap doors and the secret springs were laid bare. Duvallo’s house of cards fell, flat as yesterday’s uncapped seltzer water. But since the evidence still wouldn’t be sure-fire

with a jury, and I wasn’t certain that you’d accept it, I set the Bullet Trick trap.”

Merlini had that half dollar out again, and as it twinkled in his hands, I saw that he’d worked out a new one. He balanced the coin on the tips of his fingers and slapped it into the palm of his left hand, which he shut tightly. Gesturing cabalistically at the closed fist, he slowly opened it, and in pretended amazement poured out change for the half dollar — a quarter, a dime, two nickels, and five pennies.

The Inspector carefully took no notice. “Was it something I saw, too?” he asked appehensively.

“Yes, I’m afraid so. It was a common enough action, ordinarily quite innocent, but this time it was positively pregnant with possibilities. Harte’s report said — and he mentioned it twice—Tarot pushed back his cuff and glanced at a silver wrist watch.”[17]

I saw comprehension creeping over the Inspector’s face, but I didn’t feel any yet on my own.

Merlini turned and pulled down a book from the shelves. “Harte doesn’t get it, Inspector. Do you mind, now that it’s all over and the culprit has been apprehended, if I help him out with just one last spot of witchcraft?”

I had never expected to see Inspector Gavigan smile at the mention of that subject, but he did now. “I haven’t figured out any way of stopping you, Merlini, short of assault and battery.”

“I see no objection to that,” I said acidly.

Merlini grinned and ignored me. “We’ve had occasion,” he said, riffling through the book and finding a turned down corner, “to mention this work before. It is Madame David-Neel’s Magic and Mystery in Tibet. There’s a description here titled ‘Rolang, the corpse who dances.’ ” He read quickly:

“And,” he added, closing the book, “Duvallo failed to control the body of Tarot after he had awakened it!”

“What the blue blazing hell!” I thought, and scowling said, “If you’re all very good boys and girls tomorrow I’ll tell you all about how Uncle Wiggley outwitted the Skillery Sealery Alligator and the nasty, bad old Werewolf. Boo! And nuts!”

“Go ahead, laugh, but that’s what happened. It’s the only way to untie all the water-soaked knots that snarled up that alibi list. We couldn’t escape the dilemma by assuming two murderers — two people working as one — because of the evidence. But there wasn’t anything to prevent the assumption that one person had worked as two. Duvallo killed Tarot and then brought him back to life. Our not so triumphant ngagspa had two accomplices; Jones, who wasn’t aware of it, and Tarot, who was dead.”

“My God, a zombie!” I groaned.

“Exactly.” Merlini had put aside the book and was playing with three walnut shells and a pea that lay on the counter. “Duvallo impersonated Tarot. And I don’t understand why you didn’t see it, Ross. You know that impersonation, like hypnotism and secret exits, is, in a detective novel, as hackneyed as all get out. When the gentle reader notices in Chapter Two that Lady Van Wigglebottom was a shining light in her high school dramatic society, you know immediately that she’s going to turn out to be the mysterious stranger with the red beard who was seen putting a white powder in the soup. But this time there wasn’t just one amateur actor in the case, they were all actors, most of them professionals. That was the one thing that they all really had in common. Impersonation was written all over the case. Gavigan thought of it once when what was supposed to be Tarot’s voice didn’t sound right in the Xanadu broadcast, and, for a moment, he had truth by the tail. He shouted that someone must have been impersonating Tarot. Later, when Tarot vanished, the cab driver impersonated him for a block or two; and, finally, I told you that Tarot had impersonated Duvallo in the Mystery of the Yogi. It could work just as well the other way about. And Duvallo was the only person who could possibly have played the part of Tarot![18] All the others were too short or too fat, too old or too young, the wrong sex, or they had appeared simultaneously with Tarot. But compare the descriptions of the two men in the resume Harte wrote for me. They are alike in all the fundamental essentials of build, general facial structure, same color eyes, and hair. Their differences lay in those superficialities of voice and dress that are the things most easily noticed in a dimly lit room, and the easiest to imitate.”

“You mean to say that we never saw Tarot alive at all?” I asked.

Merlini nodded. “We decided that Tarot couldn’t have been killed any earlier than ten o’clock because that seemed to be the earliest hour at which he could have arrived at Duvallo’s. We were wrong. He had arrived, had been admitted and killed by Duvallo almost four hours earlier. Duvallo brought him back to life for Watrous, Rappourt, and the rest of you by impersonating him and in doing so literally managed to be in two places at once. It was while I was telling you about Tarot’s impersonation of Duvallo in the Yogi-in-two-places-at-once trick that I first tumbled to it. Gradually it dawned on me that here was a hypothesis that explained away all our difficulties.”

He checked the points off on his fingers. “One: It offered Duvallo a way of being present at Sabbat’s to throw that bolt and switch the handkerchief in the keyhole himself. Two: It would explain why Tarot avoided being fingerprinted and never removed his gloves even when doing card tricks — he couldn’t go around leaving Duvallo’s fingerprints. Three: It would explain why Tarot, who ordinarily went out of his way to get publicity, when he left Sabbat’s covered his face with his arms and bowled photographers over right and left. Four: It gave a reason for the pennies in the light sockets — the less light during the impersonation the better. And to see Duvallo as himself. Point number five concerned—”

“Wait a minute,” I cut in. “During the time ‘Tarot’ was on the scene Duvallo said he was alone in his booking office waiting for Williams, but he heard the detectives come and knock on the door. How do you explain that?”

Gavigan answered, “That’s easy. As Tarot, he heard me order the men to go there.”

“And that,” Merlini added, “was the only thing that made his ‘waiting alone in the office’ story even faintly plausible. Point number five concerns the towel with the cold cream on it that was found at Tarot’s. Tarot wouldn’t have smeared a towel with cold cream putting on that sun-tan disguise, but Duvallo would have done just that removing his Tarot disguise. Six, was the mysterious suitcase which had been cached in the lockers in Grand Central. That could have held Duvallo’s own clothes, which he would need when he discarded those of Tarot. Seven: The impersonation would explain why Tarot had given a false home address — Duvallo wouldn’t have wanted the place cluttered up with cops before he’d had a chance to get there, accomplish his Tarot-to-Duvallo metamorphosis and leave Tarot’s clothes strewn about the bedroom. Point eight made me pretty sure I had something. The impersonation would answer that whopper of a question I kept insisting on why had Tarot escaped Janssen with a vanish that was as fancy as a birthday cake instead of using more ordinary bread-and-butter methods? The taxi-vanish, as worked, sent Janssen off on a wild goose chase and not only gave Duvallo time to make his change but with any sort of luck, time to get back to Sabbat’s and report to us as himself before Tarot was listed as missing. If we hadn’t penetrated that inspired bit of conjuring we would have been out on the end of a long, long limb. We would have been sure that Duvallo and Tarot were present and accounted for simultaneously, Duvallo at Sabbat’s and Tarot in the taxi. And finally, point nine. I had felt all along that Tarot acted as if he expected to be killed and knew he wouldn’t have to answer for his tall stories and mysteriously suspicious actions.”

The Inspector said, “You had all that under your hat and you were afraid to present the impersonation theory?”

“There wasn’t any really concrete evidence for a prosecuting attorney to get his teeth into, nothing so far but nice, neat speculation. And I couldn’t quite believe it myself until Ross convinced me with his written resume. He turned up three more things that pointed to impersonation. Ten: I discovered that Tarot had receded modestly into the background and become suddenly and unnaturally quiet as soon as the LaClaires, who knew the real Tarot, came on the scene. And eleven: he had hurriedly left Sabbat’s as soon as he heard I was on my way for the same reason.”

Merlini placed the pea on the counter, covered it with a walnut shell, and put his hand over that. He smiled, removed his hand, and, strangely enough, the pea was still there — but the walnut shell had perversely vanished into some limbo of prestidigitation.

“Point twelve,” he went on, “consisted in another lamentable boner by the Great Duvallo. When I read in Harte’s account that Tarot had worn a silver wrist watch, I remembered that Tarot had bribed the cab driver with a gold watch and chain. Odd assortment of timepieces for the impeccably attired Tarot to be caught out in. Added to this was the fact that no wrist watch was ever found, either on Tarot’s body or in his apartment, and the fact that Duvallo wore one. Might not Duvallo have dressed himself in Tarot’s clothes, gold watch and all, and forgotten to remove his own wrist watch? Like glasses, one is apt to forget that they class as wearing apparel.

“Twelve points, plus one, the unlucky thirteenth, that something I wasn’t looking for at Tarot’s apartment which I didn’t find… ”

“The medicine cabinet!” I exclaimed suddenly, and Gavigan, startled, eyed me like a suspicious psychiatrist. “So that’s what was so odd — Tarot was stocked with flesh-colored sticking plaster, but no adhesive tape!”

Merlini grinned. “Yes, Duvallo was caught out there too. He’d tried to make it too good again. The adhesive wasn’t really essential, though it did serve two purposes. It helped his disguise as Tarot, and, later, it distracted anyone’s suspicion that strangulation had changed Tarot rather too much. Same principle the conjurer uses when he has you initial the card you’ve selected. He nicked Tarot’s face just after death, applied adhesive, and then, dressing in Tarot’s clothes, put a similar strip of adhesive on his own face, but with no cut under it.”

“And what we thought was Tarot’s disguise,” I said excitedly, “was made necessary because Duvallo, having taken his clothes, couldn’t very well leave Tarot in his underwear at Van Ness Lane, and later leave the evening dress for us to find at 50th Street. It would not only have indicated that someone else must have worn his evening dress, but it would have left us with the odd picture of Tarot, the Beau Brummel of Broadway, travelling crosstown on a cold winter’s day clad only in his unmentionables. So Duvallo dressed Eugene in an old suit of his own (minus laundry marks) glasses, and a mustache to suggest a disguise and offer a reason why the immaculately tailored Tarot should be caught dead in a suit of old clothes. Then he smashed the lamp, put Dr. Dee’s crystal in Tarot’s pocket and the Grimorium page under the body, left the floor lamp burning, Sabbat’s dressing-gown cord around Tarot’s neck, the ladder at the window with the intervening study door left open, and all the radiators turned for the body’s rigor being so far advanced — and then he fared forth to gather up Watrous and Rappourt, and finish the kitchen door sequence. Sabbat, I suspect, hadn’t invited Watrous and Rappourt over at all; that was Duvallo’s doing. The gun he swiped when he strangled Sabbat the night before; Jones had already been given his hypnotic instructions, and the radio was set. But how did he entice Tarot into his parlor? Something as simple as inviting him over for tea, I suppose?”

“Not quite,” Gavigan said. “It was a lot surer than that. It has to do with the motive. You said you could make a guess, Merlini. Let’s hear it.”

“The $100,000. It was blackmail after all. I said that none of our suspects were wealthy enough to pay out that much hush money, and as I said it I was hit, all of a heap, with the realization that Duvallo could get it if he wanted to. With his knowledge of locks and how to overcome them, it would be pie… ”

“It evidently was,” Gavigan admitted. “On May 10, 1936, one hundred thousand smackers in cold cash disappeared as neatly as if it had melted from the vaults of the American Consolidated Oil and Petroleum Company. May 10th was a Sunday. The money was there Saturday night, and it wasn’t there Monday morning. There was absolutely no trace of forced entry, and six locked doors, plus the door to the vault itself, stood between that money and anyone from the outside. The officials of the company were half crazy; the treasurer slid right off into a nervous collapse. I checked all this last night with Inspector Barnes, who had charge of the investigation. Figuring it must have been an inside job, the officials pulled some wires so that Barnes got orders to keep the whole thing a deep dark secret — none of the papers carried a line. The employees were given a royal going over; they even tried the lie detector and caught two or three small-fry grafters with their pants down. But information about the missing 100 grand? Not a thing! An investigator for the insurance company took a job with the company and worked there almost six months before he gave it up, knowing exactly as much as he did when he started. Duvallo was doing his full evening show at the Majestic in Chicago that week-end. He took a plane after his Saturday night show, came here, did his burgling early Sunday morning, handed the dough over to Tarot and Sabbat, and flew back in time to give a radio talk that evening over WGN. A couple of weeks later when all seemed safe and quiet Tarot and Sabbat made their bank deposits.”

Merlini nodded, smiling. “There’s another little sample of Dave’s attention to detail, Inspector. I remember that broadcast. He gave his usual lecture exposing the tricks of con men and crooked gamblers. It was called The Right Way To Do Wrong.”

“He knew his subject,” Gavigan said. “He got himself into hot water first by pulling the same stunt before, in Paris in ’30. That was before he made such a rep for himself and he was stony broke. He cleaned out a back safe there one night, but he had to tangle with the night watchman on the way out. The watchman inconsiderately tumbled down a flight of stairs and fractured his skull. That story did make the papers, and Tarot and Sabbat, who were both in that neck of the woods at the time, put two and two together, particularly after he paid back loans they’d both made him. Tarot and Sabbat sneaked into his rooms one night and found the cash he hadn’t dared bank. He had to split with them, and they had him cold. Two years ago Sabbat, his money spent, returned from Europe, hunted up Tarot, and they started to work on Duvallo again. They told him he’d have to do a return engagement of his burglary act. They had him by the short hairs; he had a reputation now that he didn’t want to lose. One slip off the straight and narrow, one hint that he’d been engaged in burglary, would properly sink his professional career as an escape artist. Forced to quiet them, he got the dough, and he took what he thought was enough to keep ’em good and quiet from then on. But Sabbat promptly went off on an orgy of rare book and curio buying and Tarot’s sleight of hand was no match for that of the boys in Wall Street. In the last few weeks Sabbat, particularly, had to have more; and Tarot wasn’t averse to the idea. At least, if Duvallo was going to get more, he might as well have his cut. They put it up to him just after he got back from the road. Duvallo stalled, told them they’d had plenty and they could go to hell. But Sabbat got nasty and threatened to tell Miss Barclay. That tore it. And Duvallo realized now that Sabbat was just bats enough so that he couldn’t be trusted, even after getting more money, to keep his mouth shut. There was nothing else for it but murder — and it had to be both of them. He sat up nights trying to figure out a safe and sane method. Then, at Miss Barclay’s one evening he read one of Tarot’s Crime Doesn’t Pay scripts which she had brought home to work on. The irony of Tarot’s furnishing his murderer with an alibi didn’t escape him either. He saw that argumentative ‘the police will never know’ bit of dialogue, and he had his radio idea. I’ve seen the script, and some of the dialogue Grimm didn’t catch was even more appropriate. From there on the rest of the trickery was all in the day’s work for a magician. Tarot came running over to see him that afternoon because Duvallo said he had got the money and was ready to pay off.”

Merlini took a cocktail shaker from one of the shelves behind him, removed its price tag, showed us that it was empty, and promptly poured out three Martinis.

“And that,” he said, “is that.”

“Oh, no, it isn’t,” I objected. “What was that whispering huddle you went into with Duvallo yesterday afternoon in the study? I saw you looking at that clothesline pulley and heard you mention the tree, and I was sure you had figured a seventh method of escape from that place.”

Merlini grinned. “I had. For Duvallo’s benefit. But I didn’t know I’d misdirected you, too. I suggested that the murderer might have re-installed the clothesline — the usual endless affair running around pulleys between the window and the tree — and asked him if he thought the murderer might not have grasped the clothesline and coasted, like on of those old-time department store cash boxes, out across the yard and into the tree. He could have then cut the line, pulled it after him, and dropped over the wall into the next yard, and away. Duvallo jumped at the idea. It was a good substitute for the ladder theory he had meant us to adopt and which the snow had queered. And it left him thinking that I didn’t suspect him at all. I had to put him at ease on that, or he might not have thought it worth while to eliminate Jones. Satisfied, Ross?”

“Then Judy of the scarlet tresses,” I said, “was just a red herring, and the LaClaires — say, why did they have to show up at Sabbat’s when they did, anyway? Got an answer for that?”

“Yes,” Gavigan said, “I spent an hour or so this morning collecting loose ends, and I talked to her. She’d tried to reach Sabbat by phone several times with no luck and had begun to worry. It occurred to her that maybe the night before she’d flown off the handle a bit too soon when she had pounded on his door and cussed him out. Perhaps something had happened to him. She left that Tudor City cocktail party ahead of Alfred, and he trailed her, catching up just as she came in the front door. They had a bit of a scrap downstairs, and he followed her up. He says he intended to tell them both where to get off. When they found Sabbat dead, Zelma realized the sounds she’d heard inside the night before must have been made by the murderer and that she had exactly no alibi. And Alfred immediately suspected her and hinted as much to us.”

“What about Rappourt and Watrous?” I asked. “Are they on the up and up, or not? Is she medium or fraud? And wasn’t there something more behind that fake faint she pulled when you started questioning her, Merlini?”

“Yes, I’m glad you asked that. She’d had a good hard jolt when she saw who the corpse was, and she got another when she found me nosing around, hand in glove with the cops. Svoboda was her maiden name, and she knew that if I recognized her you would, in checking back, discover her connection with Sabbat. The trance was for the purpose of stalling my questions and getting herself some time out to plan a course. She realized that unless she side-stepped me she was in a tough spot. As for her mediumship, I’ve had a look at her act. I’m going to do that soon somehow.”[19]

“And what about the pentacle invoking Surgat and that levitation in full light that Duvallo told us about? More of his fancy embroidery — or was it?”

“That,” Merlini said in his best ghost story voice, “is something we can never know. What strange secrets of the mystic occult, what recondite mysteries of Gnostic science Sabbat had explored, we cannot—”

“Applesauce,” Gavigan snorted. “Tarot — I mean Duvallo — lied. Duvallo drew that pentacle on the floor just to thicken the mystery, gladden the hearts of city editors, and annoy the police. As for Sabbat floating in midair — Duvallo thought he was so damned clever he could make murder give off a byproduct. He had a new levitation illusion planned for his act. He knew he could pretend he was heir to an occult method of Sabbat’s and could broadcast the story to the reporters without anyone being able to disprove it this side of the Styx. He figured that a couple of fancy impossible murders like these would splash across every front page in the country and carry his picture with it — the policeman’s little friend, the conjurer who had explained to the dim-witted cops how the unknown murderer must have escaped from Sabbat’s apartment. And — well, does all that classify as A No. 1 publicity, or doesn’t it?”

“It does,” Merlini admitted. “And if Jones had been killed on the stage last night, and if Duvallo had, according to plan, successfully stepped off into the wings and shucked his committeeman disguise, to reappear immediately as himself, the triple murder would have been climaxed by the most dramatic vanishing-man stunt of them all. It would have been a city editor’s dream, and Duvallo would have been able to sell standing room eight weeks in advance.”

“Yeah,” Gavigan said, “he didn’t miss any tricks, did he?”

“No, but a couple of them misfired.” Merlini lit a cigarette and, turning, began to make some adjustment in the strings of a marionette that hung on the wall. Over his shoulder he said, “By the way, Inspector, did you take the precautions I advised?”

“Yes,” Gavigan answered. “He’s in the tightest cell we’ve got. Doc Hesse stripped him stark naked and examined him thoroughly. No picklocks in his mouth, hair, on the soles of his feet, or in any of the body orifices. We kept his clothes and gave him others. There’s a light outside his cell door that burns nights and day, and two guards on duty every minute. He escaped from the Tombs once, but in the face of conditions like those.”

“That sounds pretty thorough, but just the same I’d keep a sharp eye out. He’s as slippery as — uh oh! I forgot!”

Merlini snapped his fingers with a sharp click. He wheeled to face Gavigan and the cigarette, hanging forgotten from his lips, bobbed as he spoke.

“Houdini, when he was about to get a particularly stiff going over, used to conceal his picklock by a method he’d learned from the old-time carnival freaks, the men who ate frogs and poisons, who swallowed glass and stones. He swallowed the picklock and regurgitated it when needed. Mediums have also been known to conceal and produce fake ectoplasm in the same—”

“Hand me that phone!” Inspector Gavigan ordered in a thunderous voice. “I’ll get an X-Ray outfit down there and—”

Rapidly, furiously, he dialed Spring 7-3100.

The weather outside was mild. Through the room’s one window, raised two or three inches, came a sound that always sends a tingle of excitement stirring with me. Mingled with the cough and rattle of the traffic that swirled about Times Square, but rising on a higher pitch, I heard the long drawn cry of newsboys.

“Extry! Extry! Uhx-treee!”