Death out of Thin Air (12 page)

Diavolo looked across at him. “The Magic Drum has spoken! It accuses Count Draco of being responsible for the theft of the Saylor jewels!”

He paused just a moment for the dramatic effect and then he made a mysterious pass above the drumhead. “The datura seed production was kindergarten conjuring, Mr. Saylor. Look! When Don Diavolo really rolls up his sleeves and goes to work….”

Slowly he lifted the drum from the floor. Beneath it, sparkling in a white blaze of light were the Saylor diamonds. The beauty of the great
Star of Persia
caught and held the attention of the watchers — even Don was fascinated by its scintillant brilliance.

The Count's voice, desperate and hard, drew their attention. “Don Diavolo, the magician, is clever — but not nearly clever enough!”

Count Draco was standing on his feet before the chair in which he had been tied! And they all saw suddenly how the writing on the wall phenomena had occurred.

The chair-arms were still tied tightly to the Count's forearms. But they were no longer attached to the chair! The dowels which projected from their ends were fitted with small metal catches that had held them previously in place, but which the Count, by pressure on some hidden spring, had released.

It was the trick that Diavolo had suspected — the same ingeniously simple, and completely practical stunt that he had caught Mme. Palladini doing in her famous Paris séances.”
¹⁰

But what was more important at that moment than the revelation of the faked chair, was the inescapable fact that Count Draco's right hand held a blue-steel automatic which pointed directly at Don Diavolo with a deadly fixity of purpose!

C
HAPTER
XIV

Double Fire

C
ALMLY
Don Diavolo picked a lighted cigarette from nothingness and blew a smoke ring. He didn't feel as nonchalant as he looked, but he figured that it would be less than intelligent to let Count Draco know that. He was wishing he had the gun he'd given Woody.

Count Draco watched them all grimly, with the intentness of a hunting falcon. He snarled at Don, “One more funny, tricky move like that out of you and it will be your last.”

“You've already made the tricky move that is going to be your last,” Diavolo snapped. “Count Draco, ladies and gentlemen, is full of tricks — get-rich-quick tricks. He's greedy and impatient. He has expensive tastes. He wants a lot of money all at once.”

“So he concocted a pretty little scheme — a characteristically ingenious scheme — of getting that money from wealthy women — women who, perhaps because of the loss of someone near to them — have an interest in communication with the dead.”

They all stared at Draco. Chandler said, “Then he killed—”

“I've heard enough of this!” Draco cut in. “Don Diavolo has some fancy guesses up his sleeve, but he can't prove a thing.”

“That's what you think, Count,” Don replied. “You see, I know the secret of the Bat. You have several flying foxes in your cages in the next room. You also have a different sort of a Flying Fox in the apartment below this one, an ex-circus trapeze artist — a man who also used to bill himself as The Human Fly.”

“Wearing a bat mask from your collection — one like those used by the witchdoctors of the Malay States — he has been climbing one floor, from the room downstairs up to this window, and coming in to play the part of Gilles de Rais. You're smarter than a lot of mediums, Count. I congratulate you. You coached him in speaking Old French. So many mediums make the illiterate mistake of evoking personages like Napoleon and Cleopatra and getting their messages in English!”

Diavolo talked rapidly, stalling for time, but the Count had had enough. He stopped Don and said, “Diavolo and his assistant will stay here with me. The rest of you go into the kitchen. Quickly, and no false moves!”

The Saylors, Chandler and Inez LaValle obeyed, and they obeyed very carefully. The Count's manner was too menacing, the angry grip of his hand on his gun too tight, to give them any illusions about what he would do the second one of them stepped out of line. His face showed plainly that he was desperate and would as soon shoot as not.

The Count locked the door behind them. “As for you, Diavolo,” he said, “You know too much — and yet not enough. You should have known better than to stick your long nose into my business.”

“Sorry, Count,” Diavolo said. “I couldn't help myself. The police think that it was I who killed Marie VanReyd.”

“VanReyd.” Draco really started at that. “So you know that, too?”

Diavolo nodded. “Yes, I know that too. And I suspect more. I think that you and Marie VanReyd murdered her husband Charles — on the mountain climb. You caused him to fall. What were you after — his wife and his money?”

Draco smiled crookedly, “There's no reason you shouldn't know that. You'll only take the information to your grave. And dead men do not speak — even through mediums!”

Diavolo felt the shiver down his back. This madman, talking before Mickey as he was, must be intending to kill her too! Something would have to be done — and soon! Diavolo tried to edge, without being noticed, toward the low table on his right.

“Yes,” the Count went on. “I killed Charles VanReyd. Marie did not help me, but she knew what I was doing. We thought that she would inherit his fortune. But after he was dead we found that his father willed the money to Charles in such a way that no one else could ever touch it. In the event of Charles's death, it was to go to charity.”

“Marie and I went to my impoverished family estate in Austria where we stayed until last year. Then, when the Nazis came, we lost everything.

“I decided to squeeze what I needed out of a few of these scatterbrained rich women who take up Yogi and consult with Swamis and mediums. Marie and I put on a good act together.”

Draco's face, dark and angry, grew more contorted as he talked. “But I won't be cheated of the profits this time! Fox and I leave the country tonight. And we take the Saylor jewels! I would lock you two with the others so that I'd have time to get away, but I am not quite as simple as all that, my dear Diavolo.

“A magician who can escape, as I have had the privilege of seeing you do, from a Water Torture Cell and from sealed coffins, wouldn't be stopped long by the poor lock and bolt on my kitchen door. I prefer to take no chances of that sort.”

“My assistant,” Diavolo said, pointing at Mickey and taking another furtive sideward step, “knows nothing of the secrets of locks. You could safely put her with the others, Count.”

Draco shook his head. “No. I do not believe you. I have seen her work with you on the stage. My risk would be too great. She must know a great deal about your magic — and about locks.”

The Count raised his gun, steadying it on Diavolo. The table toward which Don had been trying to move was still ten feet away. “That tears it,” Don thought, “I'll never make it.”

And then the Count was too clever. “Would you prefer the window or the gun?” he asked.

Don felt hope leap again within him. “The window,” he said quickly. “I hate to oblige you because, if we jump, our deaths might be made to look accidental giving you an out. But I have always detested firearms.”

Draco smiled. “The window is more certain,” he said. “With the bullet, you never know. You might live in agony for days.

Don Diavolo walked toward the window. Down inside, he too was smiling now, but he concealed it. The table he wanted to reach was close beside the window. Don reached the window and opened it, the Count's gun steady on him all the time. Then he turned with his back toward the sheer drop, thirty stories of blackness with the hard, unyielding cement below.

Now he let the smile appear on his lips as he said, “I'd like to make one last magic pass — just for luck.”

He made it. His hand drew a circle in the air. And the lights in the room blinked out, instantly.

Draco cursed and, hearing Diavolo's laugh in the dark, fired at it. The red gush of flame from his gun streaked forth and lit the room enough to show the Count that where Diavolo had stood now there was nothing!

But the Count was only puzzled for an instant. Don's body came at him from the dark in a flying tackle.

Draco's gun spurted flame once more as Diavolo's expert jiu jitsu twist sent him flying. His body crashed heavily against the wall of the room. For a moment all was quiet.

“That fixes him,” Diavolo said. “Mickey, put your head out into the corridor and call Woody. He's waiting downstairs. Woody was on the other end of that wrong phone call that came tonight. When the Count hung up, Woody didn't.

“As soon as the séance started I took the receiver off the hook again and Woody could hear what was going on in here. When it looked as if the Bat was due I gave Woody the high sign by tapping lightly on the receiver — it makes quite a sound at the other end. He got into the Bat's apartment downstairs and waited for him.
¹¹

“When Mr. Flying Fox climbed down out of this room, Woody was waiting. It was he who found the jewels down there and brought them up to me.”

“I get it,” Mickey said. “He was the telegram messenger who'd lost his way. And after he'd slipped the jewels in through the door, you sneaked them under the drum when you laid it on the floor. But I don't understand the magic pass that put out the lights. I've never seen you do that one before.” As Mickey said this, she drew the bolt and opened the corridor door. “Woody!” she called. “Okay. Come on up.”

Don retrieved the Count's gun and then, in the Count's pocket discovered the flashlight, covered with green cellophane, that had made the eerie séance light. He took off the cellophane and turned the flash on the lamp that stood on the table by the window.

“It's a new one,” he said. “I'll have to write it up for
The Sphinx
¹²
and call it
Lights Out.
Only I'll have to figure out some method of making a mystic pass that will bring the lights back on again. The way it is now, I have to put in a new fuse. I was expecting trouble as soon as I'd met Count Draco so I prepared for it.” Diavolo picked up the lamp, showed Mickey that the bulb had been removed, and then turned it bottom up. A copper penny fell from the light socket.

“After I'd turned the ceiling lights off at the wall switch,” Don continued, “I removed the bulb from this table lamp and balanced the penny on the edge of the socket. Then, when I made my magic pass, I also jarred the table slightly with my knee. The penny dropped into the socket and the fuse blew.”

Don turned toward the door as the footsteps outside came closer and a figure stepped through into the room. “Good work, Woody,” he said. “I hope you gave the Bat—”

“No,” a harsh voice answered. “You've got it the wrong way around.
Drop that gun!
”

With his first words a strong beam of light shot out, bathing Diavolo and Mickey in its radiance. By its reflected light Don saw that it was not Woody who stood there but the Bat himself!

He still wore the dark cloak, but the bat mask was gone. Fox's face was there instead. His hand projected out into the light of the flash to show the gun he held.

“Did you hear me, wise guy?” he growled. “I said drop that gun, now!”

Don saw his trigger finger begin to tighten. Don shrugged, and his hand made a tossing movement of surrender. As Fox heard the metallic thud and rattle on the floor, his small eyes glinted.

“
I
don't make mistakes like the Count,” he said. “I don't give smart guys like you a chance to gab — and stall. You're taking your last bow right now and there won't be no curtain call this time!”

Fox raised his gun until he saw the sights center on the magician's chest.

Flame once more streaked across the darkness of the room. Mickey screamed. From the fallen body a slow stream of blood oozed out on the carpet into the light of the flash.