Death from a Top Hat (15 page)

“I will now go out and close the door. If you gentlemen will watch the little piece of cloth closely—” His voice mimicked the parlor magician. As he began to shut the door after him, Gavigan spoke sharply:

“Not so fast!”

The Inspector looked at Malloy, and jerked his head toward the hall. Malloy sidled out, and the door closed after them.

Duvallo’s voice penetrated the door, calm, didactic. “Using a duplicate key, picklock, or what have you—I could do it with a paper clip myself—I lock the door. And then—”

The string drew itself and the quarter handkerchief up and into the keyhole. The cloth jerked spasmodically once or twice as it was pulled tightly in.

“Now, by pulling one end only,” Duvallo’s voice went on, “I can remove the string completely…and that’s that!”

We heard their footsteps go up the hall, and, re-entering the apartment through the living room, they returned to where we waited in the kitchen.

Gavigan didn’t appear overly impressed. “And the bolt?” he asked.

“Can’t some member of the class finish the demonstration?” Duvallo grinned maliciously. His eyes questioned Merlini.

“I wouldn’t want to steal your thunder, Dave,” said Merlini. “You tell him.”

“The murderer left the door just as you see it, Inspector. Since the discovery of the body and before the arrival of the police, someone got out here and finished the job by throwing the bolt!” Duvallo reached over and pushed it home.

“Tarot, Watrous, Rappourt, the LaClaires, and yourself, Harte,” Merlini said quietly. “How many of them qualify?”

“Tarot came out here,” I answered, “when he and I searched the place. Watrous did when he got the glass of water for Rappourt. Mrs. LaClaire was in the bathroom for some time, and might possibly have made a side trip in here, unnoticed. Alfred took her to the bathroom, but came back immediately. I’d rule him out. Neither Rappourt nor myself came in here at all.”

Gavigan squinted critically at Merlini. “You’re not satisfied with this hocus-pocus, are you?”

“It’s not bad…so far,” he replied.

“Yeah, so far,” Gavigan grunted. “But that’s not far enough. The pieces of cloth we found in the keyholes, if you remember, had no holes poked in them.”

“How about a needle and some strong thread? A woman might have done it that way,” Duvallo suggested. “The holes wouldn’t be so obvious.”

“I said there were
no
holes.” The Inspector’s voice was metallic, precise. “But there were very obvious indelible pencil marks, showing that the cloth must have been pushed, not pulled, into the keyholes. You said yourself that the piece in the living-room door was pushed in. Both pieces present an identical appearance.”

Duvallo grinned impishly. He reached out and pulled at the protruding ends of the cloth he had pulled into the keyhole, jerking it out.

“Like this?” he said, handing it to the Inspector.

Gavigan spread it out. Malloy and myself leaned nearer. Somehow the piece of cloth had undergone a startling transformation. The holes we had seen Duvallo punch in the cloth and through which he had threaded the string were not there. But there were pencil marks, like the ones on the torn pieces of Sabbat’s handkerchief, except that they were not indelible.

We examined it with varying expressions of astonishment, all except Merlini who, not having bothered to look, was still leaning comfortably against the door jamb. “Dave’s got a nice neat little theory there, Inspector,” he said.

“I can see that.” Gavigan reached down and picked up the half of his handkerchief that Duvallo had dropped on the floor. Then he held out his hand. “That other quarter piece, please.”

Duvallo smiled, and held up his right hand. On its palm was a second crumpled square of brown-bordered handkerchief. He tipped it into the Inspector’s hand. Here, in this piece were the missing holes!

“This is the piece you pulled into the keyhole with the string,” Gavigan stated. “Just now, when you jerked it out and handed it to me, you switched it by sleight of hand for this other that has the pencil marks.”

“Sure. And I added the pencil marks when Malloy and I were out in the hall. The murderer switched pieces too. He left half of Sabbat’s hanky in Sabbat’s pocket, one quarter in the living-room door keyhole, and the other quarter he took away with him. This keyhole was filled with a piece from some other handkerchief, and was drawn in as I showed you. When he came into the kitchen tonight to throw the bolt he replaced his own handkerchief with Sabbat’s, poking it in with a pencil. And there you are.”

The Inspector seemed a bit appalled at such minutely planned deception, and somewhat incredulous. Noting it, Merlini said, “That’s peanuts for a magician, Inspector. Sometime I’ll explain for you the inner workings of a good trick, and show you with what infinitesimal details a conjurer will concern himself. That, in itself, is the whole secret of a number of tricks; the audience overlooks a possible explanation, because they don’t think the performer would go to all that trouble for a mere trick. But he does—and if the trick is murder—”

“When it’s murder we can expect anything,” Gavigan exclaimed, “and that seems to be what we’re getting.”

Malloy suddenly came out of his retirement and fired a brusque question at Duvallo. “Well, which one of them did it? You act as if you had a pretty good idea—”

In the living room the telephone whirred brightly. Before it had had time to repeat its summons, Gavigan was lifting the receiver. The rest of us moved after him.

“Hello,” he said. “…Yes, this is Mr. Sabbat’s residence. I’ll call him.” He cupped a hand over the mouthpiece and blurted at Malloy, “Trace this call. Hurry!”

Malloy raced for the phone in my apartment.

Gavigan stalled a bit, then turned again to the phone. “Mr. Sabbat can’t come to the phone at the moment. Who is calling, please?…Ching what?…How do you spell it?…
Ching Wong Fu!
”

Merlini edged in quickly. “Let me take it, Inspector. Before he hangs up.”

Inspector Gavigan, a really incredulous look on his face now, handed over the receiver and slid out of the way. I heard him mutter disconsolately, “That’s all this case needed. A Chinese menace!”

Merlini said, “Hello, Ching. Merlini speaking. Where are you?…Good. Listen. Get a cab and shoot over here right away. It’s important. I’ll tell you later. Hurry!” He hung up.

“That was Donald MacNeil. Ching Wong Fu is his stage name. I don’t think he can resist the lack of information I gave him. He’ll be along.”

“Wonder why he was calling Sabbat?” Duvallo mused. “I didn’t know they knew each other.”

Merlini said, “I met Sabbat through him, ten years or more ago. They knew each other quite well then.”

Malloy came back. “No luck. He hung up too soon.”

Merlini sauntered over to the davenport and picked up a flashlight which one of the detectives had left there. “Ching said he was calling from his home. Apartment hotel on 23rd Street. Number 233, I think.” Merlini snapped the flashlight on and off a couple of times, experimentally.

From the radio against the far wall a bored voice was repeating mechanically, “Calling car 42. Calling car 42. Go to 110th Street and Lennox Avenue. Code 13. Go to 110th Street and Lennox Avenue. Code…” I turned a dial in my head, tuning him out.

Duvallo sat on the desk’s edge and lit a cigarette. The Inspector, facing him, said matter-of-factly, “Captain Malloy asked you a question. What’s the answer?”

Duvallo looked around for an ash tray, found one near him on the desk top, and carefully placed his match in it. “Do you understand, now,” he asked, “why I couldn’t have gotten out of this apartment, though someone else could?”

The Inspector was cautious. “Yes. It doesn’t look as if you could have gotten out using the method you demonstrated. But you don’t get a clean bill of health until I’m quite sure that’s the only method.” He was holding Duvallo’s card in his right hand, and he tapped one edge slowly against the knuckles of his left.

“Then I won’t worry. That happens to be up my alley, and I can tell you that there is no other…unless Merlini—” He peered inquisitively across toward the davenport where Merlini sat playing thoughtfully with the flashlight.

Merlini said, “You should know, Dave.”

“I think I do. It’s the Inspector who seems uncertain. And because I’m sure there’s only that way, I know that either Tarot, Watrous, or Zelma must have committed the murder. They are the only ones who could have left this room as found. Which of them did it, I wouldn’t know. But you should be able to carry on from there, Inspector.”

“You’re damn sure of yourself all the time, aren’t you?” Gavigan asked.

“We’re discussing my specialty, aren’t we? Why shouldn’t…oh! So that’s it.” He frowned at Gavigan and I had the feeling that a good seismograph might have detected a tremor in his self-assurance. “Say, do I have to look guilty to make you realize I’m not, like the innocent but jittery suspects in a detective story? I could, I suppose, only it rather looks as if someone has been aiming to save me the trouble.”

“Or else you’ve been trying to make it look as if someone had.”

“Oh, it’s heads you win and tails I lose, is it? I get it in the neck either because I did do it or because I’ve arranged to make it look as if I was being framed. I suppose I left that business card of mine lying where you found it for that reason. Come, Inspector. I can think of safer ways for a murderer to avoid suspicion.”

“Yeah, so could I,” Gavigan said. “But if I was an escape artist and had committed a crime that called for an escape artist, I might think it was a good idea.”

Duvallo smiled grimly. “When I do commit murder I won’t make it look as if an escape artist must have done it! Or do I look that dumb? And what’s more, I wouldn’t leave my card lying around in hopes that the cops would deduce it was planted by someone else. I didn’t suspect, until now, that they were that smart.” There was a thick icing of sarcasm on that last crack.

Gavigan came right back at him. “Maybe you didn’t realize that they were clever enough to see that a clue as obvious as that one must have been planted. And a clue that’s obviously planted, that’s meant to look planted, could only be left by the person whom it implicates.”

Gavigan was in rare form. That was the Fourth of July sparkler sort of logic I should have expected from Merlini. I was dazzled a bit, but it seemed to sound all right.

Duvallo made a helpless gesture with his shoulders. “Merlini,” he asked, “what is the matter with this man? Why is he so keen on having my head? He suggests the card was planted and then says that’s the reason I planted it. I don’t—Hell! It’s about time I got my lawyer.” He reached for the phone. “I’m allowed one call before you jug me, I think.”

“Hold it, Dave,” Merlini’s voice came. “That may not be necessary just yet.” Merlini had pulled the rolled up rug to one side and was lying flat on his stomach, head and shoulders out of sight beneath the davenport. He backed out, sat up, and snapped off the flash light. Rising, he said, “I think the Inspector may have something there, at that. If he only knew just what. May I have that card for a moment?”

He reached for it and Gavigan let it go uncertainly. “What,” he said, “were you looking for under that davenport, Merlini?”

“Something I didn’t find. You haven’t looked this card over for fingerprints yet, have you?”

“Haven’t had time. The laboratory will have a go at it later. But they won’t find any.” The Inspector eyed the davenport with a puzzled frown.

“Suppose we take a look now.” Merlini went toward Sabbat’s worktable behind the screen in the corner.

“Hey, not so fast!” Gavigan hurried after him. “What do you think you’re up to?”

Merlini surveyed the bottles that lined several shelves against the wall. He took one down and removed the stopper. The label read “Iodine Crystals.”

“I read a magazine article the other day called
G-Man Methods
. It explained all the latest techniques for bringing out fingerprints. Here, light this bunsen burner.” He shook some of the flaky black lumps from the bottle into a beaker. Gavigan scratched a match. “You go slow,” he said. “Hot iodine fumes work fast, and it’s damned easy to get too much.”

“I’ll let you boss the operation, but I want to do it. I’m a confirmed putterer, and playing at chemistry is one of my pet brands of puttering.” He placed the card in the beaker, blank side up and so that it leaned across the bottom at a forty-five degree angle directly over the crystals. He covered the beaker with a flat dish and held it above the flame.

“Why are you so concerned over my doing it wrong, Inspector? I thought you didn’t expect to find any prints.”

“I don’t, but just the same I wouldn’t be surprised at anything in this case.”

“I would,” Merlini replied. “I’d be surprised to find fingerprints. But there may be something else. The card has a glossy surface, and when I first examined it the light struck it at such an angle that a dull rubbed-looking spot was plainly visible on its back. As if something had been written there and erased. You wouldn’t know, would you, Dave?”

Duvallo, who with myself had edged close to watch Merlini’s alchemical fiddling, shook his head slowly. “No,” he said.

The card had begun to take on a faint sepia tinge, and now I could see a faint purplish glow hovering above the crystals. The coloration on the card increased, and then two darker smudgy areas began to show. One that was a long streak across the center of the card and the other a round blob near one corner.

“Look at that!” Merlini exclaimed, “There is a fingerprint, after all. We were both wrong!”

The corner spot came up stronger and showed definite whorls and loops. Then, in the midst of the other brownish smudge, I could begin to make out the faint, brownish ghosts of lines, smeared and blurry. Gavigan’s nose was close to the glass. He began to spell. “Q-U-E-E…
Quee of words
…whatever that…There’s an N and what looks like it might be an S.
Queen of Swords!
What in hell does that mean? Duvallo? Recognize the handwriting?”

Merlini quickly took the beaker from over the flame, removed the cover, and retrieved the card.