The Mammoth Book of Locked-Room Mysteries And Impossible Crimes

NO WAY OUT by Michael Collins

Michael Collins is the best known alias of prolific American mystery writer Dennis Lynds (b.1924). He has written books as William Arden, Mark Sadler, and John Crowe. He also also written stories featuring such famous detectives as The Shadow, Nick Carter and Charlie Chan. But most people will know him for his books featuring the one-armed private eye Dan Fortune who first appeared in Act of Fear (1967). Collins has also written at least one locked-room mystery with Dan Fortune, “No One Likes to Be Played for a Sucker” (EQMM, July 1969). In addition to the following story, Collins also wrote “The Bizarre Case Expert” (EQMM, June 1970, as William Arden), about a murder in a room under constant observation.

Next to wine, women, and whisky, Slot-Machine Kelly’s favourite kick was reading those real puzzle-type mysteries. You know, the kind where the victim gets his on top of a flagpole and they can’t find the weapon because it was an icicle and melted away.

“There was this one I liked special,” Slot-Machine said to Joe Harris. “Guy was knocked off in an attic room. The guy was alone; there was a cop right outside the door; and another cop was down in the street watching the one window. The guy got shot twice – once from far, once from real close. Oh, yes – and there were powder burns on him. The cops got into the room in one second flat, and there was no one there except the stiff. How about that baby?”

“I’m crazy with suspense,” Joe said as he mopped the bar with his specially dirty rag.

“Simple,” Slot explained. “The killer shot from another attic across the street; that was the first shot. Then he tossed the gun across, through the window, and it hit the floor. It had a hair trigger, and it just happened to hit the victim again!”

“You’re kidding,” Joe said. “You mean someone wants you to believe odds like that?”

“It’s possible,” Slot said.

“So’s snow in July,” Joe said. “The guy who wrote that one drinks cheaper booze than you do.”

“Don’t just promise, pour,” Slot-Machine said.

Slot-Machine liked these wild stories because things like that never happened in his world. When he got a murder it was 99 per cent sure to be something about as exotic as a drunk belting his broad with a beer bottle in front of forty-two talkative witnesses at high noon.

“Did you know that 90 per cent of all murders are committed by guys with criminal records?” Slot went on informatively. “The victim usually has a record, too, and they usually know each other. A lot of them take place in bars. It’s near midnight, and both guys are swinging on the gargle.”

“And the bartender gets hauled in for serving whisky to drunks,” Joe said.

“Life is dull,” Slot sighed.

Which was why this time Slot-Machine Kelly was not even aware that he had a puzzler until it happened. Things like this just didn’t happen in Slot-Machine’s world. When they did there had to be a logical explanation and a reason. In the real world a man has to figure the odds and forget about guns with improbable hair triggers. Only no matter how you sliced it, there was no reason for the guard to be dead, no way the rubies could have been stolen, and no way out of that tenth-storey room. It was 100 per cent impossible. But it had happened.

It all started with the usual routine. Mr Jason Moomer, of Moomer, Moomer & McNamara, Jewel Merchants, came to Slot’s dusty office one bright morning with a job offer. The morning was bright, but Slot-Machine wasn’t. He was nursing a fine hangover from a bottle of Lafite-Rothschild ’53 he had found in Nussbaum’s Liquor Store. The price had been right, and Slot had killed the bottle happily over a plebeian steak.

“It was the brandy afterward,” Slot explained to Moomer. “Speak soft; my skull’s wide open.”

“For this job you stay sober,” Moomer said.

“Don’t ask for miracles,” Slot said.

“You did a good job for us before,” Moomer said. “My partners think you’re not reliable, but I vouched for you.”

“You’re a brave man,” Slot said.

“You know the setup,” Moomer said. “We’re displaying the rubies in a suite at the North American Hotel. They’re on display all day for three days, and they’re locked in the safe at night. Twenty-four-hour watch on all doors, at the safe, with the jewels when they’re out. We’re hiring three shifts of Burns guards, five men to a shift to cover the three doors, the safe, and the elevators, just in case. We’re hiring a private detective to work with each shift, to keep his eyes and ears open.”

“You got more protection than a South American dictator,” Slot-Machine said.

“There are five rubies, a matched set. They’re worth perhaps a quarter of a million dollars.”

“Maybe you need the Army,” Slot-Machine said.

“You’ll change shifts each day,” Moomer went on. “I’m hiring Ed Green and Manny Lewis for the other shifts. You’ll all wear uniforms, so you’ll look like ordinary guards.”

“A tight setup,” Slot said.

Slot-Machine disliked regular work, and he particularly disliked uniformed-guard work. But, as usual, his bank account looked like a tip for a hashhouse waitress, and Joe’s current employer was already beginning to count the shots in the Irish-whisky bottle every time Slot appeared in Joe’s bar.

“You got a deal,” Slot said. “I have a little free time. You’re lucky.”

“Well,” Moomer said, “if you’re so busy, you won’t need any money in advance.”

“You’re dreaming again,” Slot said.

Moomer grinned, paid $50 in advance, and left. Slot counted the money four times. He sighed unhappily. It always came out to $50. He hated clients who could count. At least, he decided, it would be easy work except for the wear and tear on his feet.

He was wrong. Before it was over, he had a dead man, five missing rubies, a very unfriendly Jason Moomer, a suspicious Captain Gazzo, and a room from which there was no way out except for a bird.

For two days all the trouble Slot-Machine had was tired feet. The suite in the North American was crowded with ruby-lovers, and jewellery dealers who loved only money, for the whole two days. The uniformed guards, and the three private detectives, earned their pay.

During the day the guard at the elevator checked credentials. Slot-Machine knew that this was necessary, but it was not a very valuable precaution. Moomer, Moomer & McNamara wanted to see their rubies sold, and almost anyone could get an invitation.

There were three doors to the suite. Two were locked on both sides, but a uniformed guard was stationed at each door anyway, as an additional security measure. The third door was the only entrance and exit to the suite. The Burns man there kept his pistol in plain sight. There was no need for guards on the windows. The suite was ten floors up without a fire escape.

The fifth Burns guard stood like an eagle-eyed statue right behind the display case. It would have taken an invisible man with wings to steal the rubies during the day. Which did not stop the Messrs. Moomer and McNamara from prowling like frightened hyenas.

“If you see anything suspicious, get to the alarm fast,” Jason Moomer explained to the guard at the display case. “The alarm is wired into the case itself, but there’s the extra switch just in case.”

“You’re in charge of your shift, Kelly,” Maximilian Moomer said. “Just stay sober!”

Old Maximilian did not like Slot-Machine. That came from the fee Slot had charged for finding a stolen diamond tiara a few years ago. Maximilian was a skinflint, and he had always suspected Slot of stealing the tiara and returning it for the handsome fee. Slot hadn’t, but he had thought it a good idea.

“Bringing in detectives is ridiculous anyway,” Maximilian Moomer said. “The uniformed guards are enough.”

“I think we should have had the showing in our own strong room,” Angus McNamara said. The tall Scotsman seemed the most nervous of the three owners.

But nothing happened for the first two days, and at night everything was quiet. The Burns men remained on guard at all the doors; the elevator remained under watch; and the man inside the suite camped in front of the safe.

Day or night, Slot-Machine Kelly, Ed Green, and Manny Lewis kept a roving eye on everything as they wandered through the rooms and halls in their uniforms. The detectives could not be told from the other Burns guards. For two days Slot-Machine cat-footed through the four rooms, eyeing the rubies and the guests and sneaking some of the free liquor when no one was looking. The only incident occurred on the second day when Slot was off duty.

Ed Green was on duty at the time. It happened just as the dayshift was going off. The swingshift guards had taken their stations, and Ed Green was talking to Manny Lewis outside the room, when the alarm went off like a scared air-raid siren.

People started to mill and shout. Manny Lewis ran to check the other doors. Ed Green and the uniformed guards poured into the main room and surrounded the display case. The guard at the case already had his gun out.

“What is it!” Green had snapped.

A very nervous and embarrassed young woman stood near the alarm switch. “I turned it,” she said. “I’m sorry. I thought it was for the waiter.”

Green swore angrily, and the Moomer brothers insisted that the attractive offender be taken to the police. The young woman did not seem to mind too much. She checked out nice and clean; she was the legitimate secretary of a small merchant named Julius Honder.

“The dame was just curious,” Green said to Slot-Machine. “At least we got sort of a drill.’

The guard system had worked fine. No one on the doors had left his post, and the Moomers and McNamara seemed happier. The final precaution, the electronic scanner that was set up to cover the elevators during the day and the single exit from the lobby of the hotel at night, was working perfectly.

“It’s a vacation with pay,” Slot told Joe before he went on duty on the third day. “A cockroach couldn’t get into that room, and a germ couldn’t get out.”

It happened on the third day.

Slot-Machine had the lobster shift on the third day – midnight to eight o’clock in the weary morning. He had stopped for a couple of quick whiskies at Joe’s tavern, and when he arrived he had to hurry into his uniform. The five Burns men of his shift were ready and waiting.

Ed Green greeted Slot-Machine. After the shift had been changed and Slot’s men were in their places at the locked doors and in front of the safe, Green and Slot had a cigarette just outside the main door to the suite. The Burns men of Green’s shift relaxed in the hallway.

The two shots exploded the silence a second or two before the alarm went off.

The shots were inside the suite. The alarm clanged like a wounded elephant.

“Come on!” Green shouted.

The Burns guards poured into the suite. They all rushed into the room where the safe was.

“Stay alert!” Slot snapped to his Burns man who was on the front door.

He watched his man pull his gun and stand alert, and then he hurried inside the suite and into the room where the safe was. The first thing he saw was the open safe. The second thing he saw was the body of the guard lying in front of the safe with Ed Green bending over it.

“Twice, right through the heart!” Green said.

“Search the place!” Slot snapped. “Tear it apart.”

Slot-Machine and Green checked the safe. It was clean as a whistle. It had been neatly and expertly burned open. The torch was still on the floor. The safe was a small one, and it had not taken much burning.

Ed Green called the police. Slot-Machine called the Burns men on the single night exit from the hotel downstairs, and told them to start the scanner and let no one out of the hotel without checking them. By this time all the Burns guards had torn the apartment apart and had found nothing at all.

By the time Captain Gazzo of Homicide arrived, in company with Sergeant Jonas and Lieutenant Mingo of Safe and Loft, the Moomers and McNamara were also there. Maximilian Moomer was almost hysterical.

“Search them all! Search Kelly! No one could have gotten in or out of this room!” Maximilian wailed.

“He’s got a point,” Captain Gazzo said to Slot-Machine.

“Green and I were together,” Slot said.

“I wouldn’t trust Green too far, either,” Sergeant Jonas said.

Lieutenant Mingo had finished his examination of the suite. Now he broke in on the hysterical owners of the rubies.

“Here it is, Captain. Safe was torched – an easy job. All windows are locked inside. A caterpillar couldn’t have come up or down those walls outside anyway. The torch is still here. We searched all the guards, nothing on them. The Burns men on the doors never left their posts.”

Gazzo turned to the Burns man who had remained at the front door of the suite the whole time.

“No one came out?”

“No, sir,” the Burns man said. “I never budged. The guy at the elevators never moved, and no one came out except Green, Kelly, and the other guards.”

“In other words,” Gazzo said. “No one went in, no one came out. Only – we’ve got a dead man and we don’t have five rubies worth a quarter of a million in real cold money.”

In the room everyone looked at everyone else. The Moomers and McNamara were ready to cry like babies.

It was an hour later, and Gazzo and Mingo had been over and over the situation fifty times with Slot-Machine Kelly and Ed Green. The morgue wagon had come, and the white-suited attendants were packing the body in its final basket.

“The Burns boys from my shift want to go home,” Green said. “We’ve searched every part of them except their appendix.”

“OK,” Gazzo said. “But you’d better check them through that scanner downstairs, just in case.”

“That’s some machine,” Lieutenant Mingo said admiringly. “You just dab the rubies with a little radioactive material, and the scanner spots them forty feet away.”

“It also spots radium watch dials and false teeth,” Gazzo pointed out. “Let’s get back to our little puzzle, OK? First, how did anyone get into the room?”

Everyone looked blank. Slot-Machine rubbed the stump of his missing arm. It was an old habit he had when he was thinking.

“It’s impossible,” Slot-Machine said, “so there has to be an answer. Look at the odds. It’s a million to one against the guy being invisible. It’s two million to one against him having wings. It’s a couple of hundred to one against that guard having shot himself.”

“Very funny, Kelly,” Gazzo said.

“Wait,” Slot-Machine said. “I’m serious. We got to rule out science fiction, weird tales, and magic. So how did he get into the room past all of Green’s guards? Be simple. There’s only one way – he was already in the room.”

“Kelly’s shootin’ the vein again,” Jonas said.

Even the morgue attendants turned to look at Slot-Machine. They had the body by head and feet, and they paused with it in mid-air, their mouths open. Gazzo looked disgusted. But Ed Green and Lieutenant Mingo did not.

“He’s right,” Ed Green said. “We never searched, never thought of it.”

“It’s not an uncommon MO,” Lieutenant Mingo agreed. “Now that I think of it, the suite is full of closets piled with junk. It wouldn’t have been hard as long as the guy knew the guards didn’t search.’

Captain Gazzo morosely watched the morgue attendants close their basket and carry it out. The captain did not seem very pleased about the whole matter.

“Which means the joint was cased,” Gazzo said. “OK, it figures. Our ghost has to be a pro. He got in by hiding here for about five hours. Now, how did he get out?”

“Yeah,” Sergeant Jonas said. “You guys didn’t search the place because a snake couldn’t have sneaked out of this suite.”

“You had twelve guards around and in the suite, damn it,” Gazzo said. “Twelve! A worm couldn’t have crawled out!”

Slot-Machine seemed to be watching something very interesting in the centre of the far wall. His one good hand was busily rubbing away at the stump of his left arm. Now he began to talk without taking his eyes away from the blank wall.

“Let’s talk it out,” Slot said. “He didn’t fly out, he didn’t crawl out, he didn’t dig out, he…”

“Trap door?” Sergeant Jonas said.

Lieutenant Mingo shook his head.

“First thing I checked. The floors are solid. Checked the rooms below, too,” Mingo added.

“Secret doors in the walls?” Gazzo suggested.

“Hell, Captain,” Ed Green said, “we know a little about our work. We went over the walls with a microscope.”

Slot rubbed his stump and nodded. “Keep it up; we’re ruling out. Look, the guy was a pro; he was in the room; he had to have his plan to get out. It had to be workable. It had to be simple.”

“Maybe he’s still inside the room,” Green said.

“Negative,” Mingo replied. “I combed the place.”

“What do we have?” Slot-Machine said. “He’s in here, and there are eleven guards outside and one inside with him. He shoots the guard, torches the safe, and… Hold on! That’s not right. He burned that safe fast, but not fast enough to do it between the time of the shots and all of us busting in.

“So he must have torched the safe first – then shot the guard and set off the alarm! He couldn’t have torched the safe with the guard still awake, so it follows that he must have knocked the guard out. But why did he kill the guard later? He knew the shots would bring us running. He must have wanted the shots to bring us in just when it happened. Why did he pull the job at the exact moment when there were twelve guards instead of six? He timed it for the shift change.”

There was a long silence in the room. Sergeant Jonas looked blank. Ed Green was obviously trying to think. Mingo shook his head. Only Gazzo seemed to see what Slot-Machine was seeing on the blank wall.

“No one came out,” Gazzo said softly. “There was no way out. Only a killer got out with five rubies. So, like Kelly says, we rule out magic, and somehow a guy walked out.”

Gazzo turned to the Burns guard who had been on the main door.

“Do you know all the guards who work with you?” Gazzo asked.

“Sure, Captain,” the Burns man said. “Well, I mean, I know most of them to look at. I know the boys in my shift, and-”

“Yeah,” Gazzo cut him short. “There it is. So damned simple. He just walked out in the confusion. Right, Kelly? He was probably behind the front door waiting. He probably even helped search the suite with all of you. He was just…”

“Wearing a Burns uniform,” Slot-Machine said. “He simply mingled in with us. That’s why he timed it for two shifts to be here. He mingled with us, and walked out through the front door.”

The swearing in the room would have done credit to a Foreign Legion barrack. Everyone began to move at once. Mingo called in to alert the Safe and Loft Squad to start watching all fences in the city. Ed Green went to check with the guard on the elevator. Jonas called downstairs to the single exit door. Gazzo just swore. Ed Green came back.

“Burns man on the elevator says he did see a Burns man go for the stairs,” Green said. “God, he was lucky! How could he know we wouldn’t search him? I mean, we searched all the guards mighty quick. He couldn’t be sure he could get away so fast. He took a hell of a risk.”

Sergeant Jonas hung up the telephone in anger.

“Green’s shift of Burns men passed out twenty minutes ago,” Jonas said, “and they were all clean. That scanner didn’t find anything on them.”

“How many men?” Gazzo said.

“Six,” Jonas said.

Gazzo cursed. “He’s out!”

“But the rubies aren’t,” Green said. “He must have stashed them somewhere inside. That means he plans to come back for them.”

Slot-Machine shook his head. “I don’t know. He planned this mighty careful. We could have searched him right here in the room like Green says.”

“All right, genius,” Gazzo said. “You’ve figured how he got into the suite and how he got out. Now tell us how he plans to get the stones out if he didn’t stash them. No one’s gone out of this hotel since it happened except through that front door where the scanner is.”

“He just had to know about the scanner,” Slot-Machine said. “This was a foolproof plan. So he must have figured a way around that scanner.”

“Great,” Gazzo said. “Only, no one got out of here without being checked.”

Slot-Machine stood up suddenly.

“One person did! Gazzo, come on!”

Slot-Machine led them all from the suite in a fast dash for the first elevator.

The night was dark on the city. The streets were bare and cold in the night. Traffic moved in small tight groups down Sixth Avenue as the lights changed. The late night revellers staggered their weary way home. In the all-night delicatessens the clerks yawned behind their counters.

In Gazzo’s unmarked car the five sat alert and waiting. Gazzo swore softly, and Ed Green smoked hard on his cigarette. Slot-Machine leaned forward tensely and watched the car-exit below the towering glass and steel of the North American Hotel. Suddenly Slot leaned over and touched Jonas, who was behind the wheel.

The morgue wagon came out from under the hotel and turned left down Sixth Avenue. Jonas eased the car away from the curb and followed the morgue wagon.

They drove down Sixth Avenue, turned across town toward the west, and the morgue wagon moved steadily on its way a half a block away. The silent procession turned again on Ninth Avenue and continued on downtown toward the morgue.

Suddenly, as the morgue wagon slowed at a traffic light, the back door of the wagon opened. A man jumped out. The man hit the pavement, stumbled, and then began to run fast toward the west.

The man wore the uniform of a Burns guard.

The morgue wagon continued on its grim journey. Jonas swung the police car in a squealing turn and gunned the motor down the side street. The running man was forty feet ahead. Jonas roared after him. The man heard the motor, looked back, and then dashed toward a fence. In a flash he was over the fence, and gone.

Slot-Machine and Gazzo were out of the police car before Jonas had brought it to a halt. Mingo and Green were close behind them. Slot-Machine was the first of the three over the fence with a powerful pull of his single arm.

The man in the Burns uniform was scrambling over a second fence just ahead.

The chase went on down the rows of back yards and fences in the silent darkness of the night. At each fence Slot-Machine gained on the uniformed runner. As he went over the last fence before a looming dark building ended the row of back yards, the uniformed man turned and shot.

Slot-Machine ducked but didn’t stop. He went over the last fence in a mad leap and dive. Another shot hit just below him, and wood splinters cut his cheek. In the next second, Slot-Machine was on the uniformed man who was trying frantically to get off one more shot.

The man in uniform never made it. Slot-Machine drove him back against the brick wall of the building with the force of his rush. His pivoting body slammed into the wall, his gun went flying, and he came off the wall like a rebounding cue ball on a lively pool table.

Slot’s one good hand caught the uniformed man across the throat. He collapsed with a single choking squawk like the dying gurgle of a beheaded chicken.

By the time Gazzo, Green, and Mingo had caught up with Slot and his victim, Slot was holding the rubies in his hand. In the beam of light from Mingo’s flashlight, the deep red stones shone like wet blood.

Slot-Machine handed the pistol to Gazzo.

“This’ll be the murder weapon,” he said. “It’s a regulation Burns pistol; he was a meticulous type.”

Mingo was bending over the supine man, who had not even begun to wake up. The lieutenant looked up at Gazzo and shook his head.

“No one I recognize,” Mingo said. “Chances are, he’s not a known jewel thief.”

“That figures,” Slot said. “I think you’ll find his name is Julius Honder, a legitimate jewel merchant.”

“Why Honder?” Ed Green said.

“He had to have cased the job,” Slot said. “He knew we’d all go running into the suite. Remember that woman? The one who thought the alarm was a waiter’s button? She was Honder’s secretary. I expect we’ll find her waiting at Honder’s office for the boss to bring home the loot.”

From the dark, Sergeant Jonas came up. The Homicide sergeant looked down at the sleeping killer and thief.

“So he made another change,” Jonas said, “and played one of the morgue boys?”

Slot-Machine shook his head.

“Too risky,” Slot-Machine said. “Gazzo said no one had gotten out of the building through the front door. You don’t take a stiff out the front way, right? He knew that. The stiff went out through the basement. What tipped me was what I said myself- why did he kill the guard after he’d opened the safe and got the stones? To get us into the room, I said.

“Only the alarm alone would have done that. There had to be another reason. All at once it came to me. He killed the guard just to have a way of hiding the stones on the body and getting them out!”

They all looked down at the uniformed man who was just beginning to groan as he came awake. There was a certain admiration in the eyes of the police.

“He knew we wouldn’t search the dead man until you got him to the morgue,” Slot-Machine said. “So he had to get the stones from the body before it reached the slab. It was quite simple. He just hid in the wagon. Who would think to look for him there?”

Later, in the tavern where Joe Harris was working, Ed Green leaned on the bar beside Slot-Machine Kelly and bought Slot a fourth expensive Irish whisky. Green was still admiring Slot.

“You just got to think logical,” Slot-Machine explained. “Figure the odds. Miracles are out, so there has to be a simple explanation. The more complicated it looks in real life, the simpler it has to be when you figure it out.”

“You make it sound easy,” Green said. “Have another shot.”

“Twist his arm,” Joe said as he poured. “The thinker. So it turned out it was Julius Honder, right?”

“Yeah,” Slot said as he tasted his Irish whisky happily. “He needed cash. Too bad he needed a corpse. He’ll fry crisp as bacon.”