Death from a Top Hat (14 page)

“I seem to have missed all the excitement,” Duvallo said regretfully, “but where’s Sabbat and just what did happen? My curiosity is about to boil over.”

“I’d rather get your statement first, if you don’t mind.”

“You make it sound ominous, Inspector. But you’re the boss. Only I’d feel more at ease if I knew what I was stepping into.”

“Dave,” Merlini said, coming to life, “what was it Sabbat did that had you guessing? First time I ever heard you admit that.”

Duvallo smiled. “That’s why I never told you about it. I thought maybe I could get on to him first. He had a couple of parlor tricks that were Grade A. The Inspector here is going to think I’m batty if I describe them.”

“I’ll take a chance,” Gavigan said brusquely.

“Okay. You asked for it. I sat up and took notice first when he materialized a first class spook one night that I’m damned sure wasn’t made of the usual cheesecloth and luminous paint. Then once we got into an argument about Home’s levitation phenomena. He got pretty steamed up about my skepticism—his temper was lousy, anyway. Finally, to shut me up, he said he could duplicate anything Home ever did. That was a good-sized mouthful, and he had to back it up. He went through some ritualistic gibberish, and I was beginning to feel sorry for the old boy and his delusions, when I’m damned if he didn’t float right up off the floor a good foot and a half and just hang there. He let me pass my hands under his feet, and in full light too. He stayed there almost a minute and then, his eyes almost popping out with strain, he said in a low whisper, ‘I can’t hold it any longer!’ and he came down with a thump. I didn’t get any sleep for a week trying to dope out that one.”

“And did you?” Gavigan inquired.

Duvallo shook his head slowly, smiling. “Maybe. And if I did, now that Sabbat’s dead, I don’t think I’d broadcast the answer. I’d have an exclusive on it.”

“Then it was a trick and not black magic?” Gavigan asked.

“What do you think?”

The Inspector growled, “Do I have to join the Conjurer’s Club, or whatever it is, and take the 33rd degree before I make any headway on this case?” He scowled at Duvallo. “You didn’t like the man particularly, did you?”

Duvallo’s glance was amused. “That’s what they call a leading question, isn’t it? No. I didn’t. His persecution complex was particularly annoying, and he was as suspicious as—as a detective. Thought people were after his secrets. That’s why those big bolts on the doors.”

“It looks now as if he had some reason to be suspicious, doesn’t it? Who do you know that might have wanted to kill him?”

“Nobody. I didn’t think anyone took him that seriously.”

Gavigan sat down on the edge of the desk and pushed his hat back on his head. “Suppose you give me an account of your movements since last evening, say about this time.”

“Why since last night? When was he killed, anyway?”

“Let’s take my question first, shall we?”

Duvallo shrugged, sat down on the davenport, and then, in a straight, level monotone reported on himself. “I’ve been working night and day since I got back from the road two weeks ago. Getting a new show ready for an opening next month. I was dead tired, and I hit the hay early for a change. I’d worked all night the night before on a new triple-locked coffin escape. I want to see you about it, Merlini. I’m having a little trouble with the—”

Gavigan broke in. “You live alone?” he asked.

“Yes, 36 Van Ness Lane, near Sheridan Square. I was up at nine, worked all morning and until four this afternoon, going out only to eat. A phone call—”

“Just a minute, Dave,” Merlini interrupted. “See anyone you knew when you went out to eat?”

Duvallo’s head jerked round at Merlin. “What—why, yes. The waiters at the lunch stand on the corner know me. But—”

“Go on, Duvallo. A phone call…” Gavigan reminded.

“A phone call caused me to rearrange my plans. I asked Tarot to pick up Watrous and Rappourt and bring them here since I’d have to be late. I had an appointment to see a man about a dog. After that I came on here.”

“Let’s hear about the dog, please,” Gavigan insisted. His tone was polite and pleasant, but stubborn. “It took longer than you expected, didn’t it?”

Duvallo stood up, and now, for the first time, he seemed nervous. He walked back and forth. “Yes, Inspector, it did. And I don’t think I like it much. It seemed funny at the time, and when I come up here and run smack into a murder investigation—it begins to look queer as hell.”

“Mind telling us what you’re talking about?”

“I had a phone call,” Duvallo said slowly, “from someone I don’t know, a Mr. Williams. He’d heard I collected old and rare locks. He said he had a Spanish pin-lock that dated from 1400. He was in town only for the day, and if I’d meet him uptown some place he’d have it along. It sounded like a good buy, so I told him I’d meet him at my office. He said okay and then wanted to know if I’d be alone. I cooled a bit on the proposition when he said that. It sounded like maybe the lock didn’t belong to Mr. Williams at all. But he gave me some more sales talk that made me decide it was worth a look, anyway. I went up there and waited. He didn’t show up, and I was just about to pull out and come over here when he phoned to say he’d been held up and couldn’t get there for another half hour. I waited another—say—!” Duvallo stopped and looked curiously at the Inspector. “Did you send somebody to hunt me up?”

The Inspector said, “I did.”

“Now I know I don’t like Mr. Williams. Just after he called someone knocked on the door. I knew it wasn’t Williams because he hadn’t had time to get there, and there were two of them. Anyway, knowing Mr. Williams wanted peace and solitude, I kept mum like a damned fool and didn’t answer. You may as well get out your handcuffs, Inspector. If Sabbat was killed while I was sitting there on my fanny busily avoiding the best witnesses I could have had, then I am in a spot.”

“How about Williams?” Gavigan asked. “Won’t he testify that he talked to you over the phone?”

“I waited almost an hour and a half after that phone call and he never showed up. I thought it must be somebody’s perverted idea of a practical joke, but it doesn’t look like a joke now. Or am I imagining things?”

“I couldn’t say,” Gavigan answered. “Sabbat was killed early this morning around three. Are you sure you didn’t recognize the voice?”

“No, I never heard it before. But that doesn’t mean much. I know a lot of actors, and if one of them wanted to disguise his voice…” He shrugged.

Gavigan scowled, turned and looked down at the desk where the business card lay face down.

Duvallo regarded the door. “Since this door was smashed in,” he said, “I suppose the kitchen door was locked too. Was it bolted as well?”

Merlini answered. “Yes. And I’d like to know what you think of the setup. The keys to both doors were in the pocket of the bathrobe Sabbat was wearing.”

Duvallo closed the door, tried the bolt a couple of times, and then, leaving it in the locked position, stood back and looked at it. He turned after a moment, and said, “How about the windows?”

“Same thing there. All locked on the inside.”

“Then you’ve got some very good reason for calling it murder and not suicide? Bullet in his head and the gun missing?”

“No, worse than that,” Gavigan said. “He was strangled.”

“He couldn’t have strangled himself?”

“Suicides can do that only by hanging; otherwise they lose consciousness before the job is completed. Sabbat was lying flat on his back on the floor in the middle of that—that pentacle.”

“Hmmm. Let’s take a look at the other door.” Duvallo started for the kitchen and we followed. He looked at the door and, getting down on his knees, ran his fingers along its bottom edge. He shook his head. “You couldn’t throw the bolts from the outside with a string running under the door. Both doors fit too tightly in their jambs. But if the string was looped around a thumbtack or something of the sort in the wall, to attain a sideward pull, it could go out through the keyhole. And the matter of the lock is simple enough. It’s an easy—”

Merlini broke in, “Perhaps, before you go too far with that theory, you’d better know that both keyholes were plugged up from the inside, with quarter pieces of Sabbat’s handkerchief, the remainder of which was, with the keys, in his pocket.”

Duvallo stopped, hand on the bolt. He regarded Merlini closely. “Listen,” he said, “if you really want my help why so secretive? I’d do a lot better if I didn’t get information by installments. What’s the idea?”

Gavigan, I noticed, had brought along the business card and was turning it over in his hand. There was an awkward silence, and then Duvallo threw the bolt over, impatiently.

“Tarot and party,” he asked, “are quite sure no one was hidden in the apartment, someone who might have sneaked out after they broke in?”

“You tell him, Harte,” Merlini said. “You were here.”

“That was the first thing we thought of,” I said, “and we searched the place. Result: zero.”

“How does one get to the roof?”

“There’s a trap in Harte’s apartment,” Gavigan replied.

Duvallo spoke, avoiding my gaze. “How about a rope from the roof and replacing a windowpane after locking the window from outside?”

“Harte’s alibi has been checked. The putty in the panes is all old.”

So he’d checked up on me, had he? I was beginning to think that working all night did have its advantages.

Duvallo looked a bit worried now. He turned to Merlini. “What do you think?” he asked.

But Gavigan cut in, “You’re not licked already, Mr. Duvallo? I understand that your business is squirming out of packing cases that have been nailed shut and dropped in the bay. This should be pie, after that sort of thing.”

“Yeah, I was afraid that was going to be your attitude. Don’t you see what a lovely pickle that puts me in? If I admit I’m stuck, there goes a nice big hole in my reputation. Big headlines in tomorrow’s papers:
Escape King Meets Defeat
. And if I say ‘Sure, I could get out of here like rolling off a log,’ then you’ll immediately figure that’s just what I did. No thanks. Particularly since I slept alone last night and haven’t any witnesses to swear I was in bed when the dirty work was done. If you don’t mind, I think I’ll skip it.”

“If the answer is no, I’ll promise that the reporters won’t hear about it,” Gavigan said. “And if you can show me some way anyone could have gotten out of this room…well, I’d have to have more than just that, before I took your case to a jury. That fair enough?”

Duvallo hesitated, then said quickly, “Okay, I’ll chance it. The answer is no. I couldn’t have gotten out of this room and left it as you found it. Satisfied?”

Gavigan’s face wore a cat-at-the-mousehole expression. He replied softly, “No. I’m not.”

Duvallo’s black eyes gleamed angrily. “And how do I go about proving I
can’t
do something?”

“It might help,” Gavigan said, “if you’d explain this.” The Inspector turned the card so that Duvallo saw its face.

The latter looked at it a long moment before he lifted his eyes to Gavigan’s. “So you did have that something else necessary to take my case to a jury.” His jaw muscles were tight and his voice held a dark undercurrent of anger. “Where did you find it?” The Inspector touched off his cannon cracker.

“It was lying on the floor of the living room. Under Sabbat’s body!”

Duvallo digested that and then said slowly, “It’s that bad, is it?”

“Yes.”

“May I see?” Duvallo held out his hand.

Gavigan drew the card back with an instinctive movement. Duvallo scowled, thrust his hands into his pockets and said, “I won’t touch it.”

The Inspector held it up and Duvallo examined it closely.

“Well?”

“It’s mine, all right,” Duvallo admitted. “But I haven’t the slightest idea how it got where you say you found it. What happens now? Handcuffs and the Black Maria?”

“No, nothing quite so dramatic as that, but I’m afraid you may have to be a house guest at headquarters for a day or so until we get this ironed out.”

Duvallo looked at him a moment; then he took a cigarette from his pocket, tapped it on the back of his hand and put it in his mouth.

“All right,” he said slowly, “I’ll tell you how the murderer got out of this apartment.”

Man has contrived no lock that some other man with the aid of ingenuity cannot pick.

David Duvallo—from an interview in the
New York American,
August 17, 1937

G
AVIGAN BRIGHTENED PERCEPTIBLY, BUT
he said nothing, waiting. Duvallo began speaking rapidly, self-assured once more, his voice colored with condescension as if lecturing a class of not too bright pupils.

“If you remember I said that
I
couldn’t have gotten out of here, leaving the layout as you found it. I didn’t say no one could. Watch!”

Omitting the conjurer’s usual polite request for the loan of a gentleman’s handkerchief, he reached out and deftly flipped the brown-bordered one from the Inspector’s breast pocket He shook it out, and, gripping it in both hands, gave it a quick twist that ripped it in half. Discarding one piece, which he deliberately dropped to the floor, he calmly proceeded to tear the remaining portion again into halves.

“Suppose that I’m the murderer.” He spoke coldly and with obvious sarcasm. “After killing Sabbat, I lock and bolt the living room door, and poke this piece of cloth,” he indicated the torn square in his left hand, “into the keyhole. The keys and the larger piece of handkerchief I put back in Sabbat’s pocket. Then I come out to the kitchen.”

He glanced quickly around the kitchen, and reaching down, pulled a tin wastebasket from under the sink. He rummaged in it, threw out an assortment of waste paper, and finally, straightened up, having fished out a two-foot length of string.

“Anyone got a pencil?” he asked.

I took one from my vest pocket and handed it over.

He folded one of the small squares of cloth in half, and using the point of the pencil punched a hole through both thicknesses of cloth midway along and a quarter of an inch from the folded edge. Threading the string into the punctures, he drew it through until the cloth dangled halfway between the two ends. Gathering both ends in his right hand, he held the device up; his other hand made a waving conjurer’s gesture. He turned, pulled the door open a foot or so, and, kneeling, threaded the two ends of the string together into and through the keyhole. He stood up, holding the ends of the string that were now on the corridor side of the door, and surveyed the Inspector coldly.