Death out of Thin Air (19 page)

“Madame Lamotte accused Cagliostro of having stolen the necklace, and he and his wife were jugged too. At the trial, his alibis looked good and he was released. Lamotte was imprisoned in the Saltpêtrière from which she later escaped and made her way to London.

“If Belmont has that necklace, then our invisible man is certainly out after big game. There are over five hundred diamonds in it — many big ones.”

Karl scowled. “I smell mice,” he said. “I'd like to know how long Belmont had had the necklace and why I've never seen any mention of its sale in the papers. The sale of a thing like that would make news.”

“Collectors,” Don replied, “are odd fish. Sometimes they spend thousands of dollars on an item and want it kept a secret. Some of them are fanatic enough to pay fancy prices for pictures that have been stolen from great museums — pictures that they know they'll have to keep out of sight, under lock and key. Don't ask me why.”

“Whether it's the real necklace or not,” Pat said, “Belmont must have something valuable if he's willing to pay you $10,000 to keep it from being stolen.”

“Yes.” Don looked thoughtfully at his lighted cigarette, placed it in one hand, and squeezed it slowly into nothing. “Of course he may only
think
he's got the real thing.” Don stood up. “But there's nothing we can do until the Invisible Man keeps his first appointment at eleven tomorrow. I'm going to bed and sleep on it. You see that this place is well locked up tonight, Karl. The Invisible Man, since he left that note in my dressing room tonight, must know we've got a finger in the pie.”

Pat, Chan and Diavolo went upstairs to bed. Karl Hartz made his rounds and saw that all his burglar alarms were in good operating order. “Though I don't know what good these'll do,” he grumbled somewhat uneasily to himself, “if the Invisible Man's already come in.”

Something touched lightly against Karl's ankle and he jumped a good three feet. Two yellowish, slitted green eyes stared up at him from the darkness. Karl's first startled thought was that it was the invisible man and that he was an almond-eyed Chinese midget.

Then Karl said, “Blast!” and reached down to pick up the Diavolo household' s
poltergeist
, Satan, a large black cat. Karl put him outside the back door and then sought his own bed.

C
HAPTER
V

Siva The Destroyer

A
T
nine next morning the traffic cops at 55th Street and Fifth Avenue began having their troubles. Traffic started to tangle and the sidewalk in front of the Museum of Indian Art on 55th just off the Avenue began to collect a crowd.

At ten o'clock several riot cars arrived. The north side of the street was roped off and cleared of everyone except Inspector Church, a couple of dozen detectives and a platoon of uniformed cops. Even the newspaper photographers and reporters were unceremoniously told to “get on the other side of the street and stay there, dammit!” They growled, but obeyed, joining their colleagues, the newsreel cameramen, whose sound trucks were lined up along the opposite curb.

Inspector Church stationed a solid line of cops across the entrance to the museum and sent others to the roof. He stood in the Museum doorway and scowled across at the newsreel men who were busily aiming their cameras at the crowd, the Museum, and the Inspector. One of them shouted, “Action, please. Give us a smile, Inspector.”

Church gave him instead a dirty look. “If that blank-blank note writer really is invisible, what the blazing fury do those guys think they are going to get a picture of?”

“An inspector of police having a fit, maybe,” a laughing voice said, close by Church's side. “Better watch your language, Inspector. You'll have the Hays office on your neck.”

“You!” Church whirled. “What are
you
doing here? How did you get past my men?”

Don Diavolo grinned. “I didn't, Inspector,” he answered. “I've been here for some time. Chan introduced me to the curator, an old friend of his, and I've been inside looking over the layout.”

Church turned to a detective nearby, “Brophy,” he commanded. “Go and see if that statue is still there. If
this
guy's been nosing around it….”

Brophy departed hastily, looking worried. Church said, “I'm watching you.”

“You can search me, Inspector,” Don returned. “And you won't find any seven foot, four-armed bronze statues on my person. Say, you don't suppose that is why the Invisible Man gave you notice that he was going to snitch a statue of Siva the Destroyer, do you?”

“I don't suppose that is why …? I don't suppose
what
is why?” The Inspector was upset.

“Well Siva is four-armed; and forewarned is also fore-armed!”

Don Diavolo's tact this fine morning was negligible. Inspector Church was in no mood for puns and he said as much in elaborate and colorful terms. His words glowed as if they had been lettered across the sky in neon tubing. Then he ordered, “Schultz and Gianelli. You two keep your eyes on this monkey. He doesn't leave here until I say so, and he doesn't go into the room where that accursed statue is on any account. Got that?”

They said, “Yessir!” simultaneously.

Inspector Church turned on his heel and went into the building. The curator, a lean, dark-skinned little man, Mr. I. J. Kamasutra, smiled politely at him, but it did no good. Church growled irritably and went on into the Court of the Gods.

The walls of this room were covered with ancient and priceless hangings whose intricate patterns told, in esoteric symbols, the story of the prophet Buddha, and pictured the many strangely shaped forms of the angels and demons of the Brahman hierarchy.

The Inspector, who hated magic and all things unexplainable was here surrounded by just that on every side. Demon masks, their faces twisted with an inhuman ferocity, leered down at him, while several lesser statues of five-headed devils and hybrid elephant gods watched him suspiciously from the dark corners of the room.

“Get some light in this place,” he commanded.

Two of the half dozen detectives who stood around the great bronze statue in the center of the room hurried out and returned with an extension cord and a portable light. They set it up and turned its 200-watt glare full on the posturing figure of Siva the Destroyer.

Lying prostrate on a heavy lotus pedestal was the small kicking figure of a dwarf whose back supported the right foot of the mighty Siva figure that balanced above, majestically, gracefully, caught by the sculptor in the midst of the symbolical movement of the Dance of Siva — graceful and yet, with his wide spread four arms, monstrous. The dark gold-green of the old bronze shone dully in the harsh white light.

Church glowered at the statue. “What the devil would anyone want with that pipe-dream? Now I know I'm dealing with a crackpot.” He reached out, touched its metal surface experimentally, and shook his head. “Anybody'd need a derrick, a gang of expert piano movers, and a truck to lift that.”

Church lifted his arm and looked at his wrist watch. The hands stood at five minutes to eleven.

Don Diavolo, standing at ease just outside the single doorway, his guards on either side of him, asked, “Well, Inspector?”

Church looked at him. “You make me nervous,” he said. “Shultz, take him into the curator's office and put him on ice. I don't think anything is going to happen, but if it does, I don't want him around. But I want to know where he is.”

Inspector Church, as it turned out, was right on both counts. Nothing happened; yet it did. And that came about in this way.

On the other side of 55th Street, directly opposite the Museum, there was a shop whose window bore the words:
Nathan Ziegler, Ltd.
, lettered in a conservative, dignified gold-leaf. Mr. Ziegler didn't bother to inform the passerby what sort of a shop it was. The man in the street wasn't a customer of his, and everyone who might conceivably be a prospective client knew about Mr. Ziegler.

They all knew that he was one of the three really important art dealers on this side of the Atlantic. They knew that if they wanted an El Greco or a jeweled medieval reliquary Ziegler, if anyone, could get it if it was to be had at all. They also knew that Ziegler was an art expert whose opinion of the authenticity of an artistic rarity had seldom been questioned.

At the moment when the Inspector looked at his watch, Nathan Ziegler stood at the door of his shop, his back stooped in its characteristic attitude, his small dark eyes peering out at the densely packed, waiting crowd along the street.

By his side another man stood, a dark-complexioned, straight-backed man whose blue eyes were quick and bright behind the pince-nez with its broad black ribbon. He wore a fashionably tailored overcoat over sedately correct morning clothes. He pointed toward the show window. “That Medici goblet and the T'ang vases are in danger. If the crowd should push too heavily against your window….”

Ziegler saw the risk. He motioned quickly to the two clerks who were nearby also watching the scene outside. “Clear the window out, quickly.” Then he turned to his companion. “It is preposterous. Some publicity stunt, I suppose. It would take more than one man, invisible or not, to remove the Siva statue from that museum, even though it were quite unguarded. Do you care to look at more of the miniatures, Mr. Gates? It is nearly eleven and since you have so little time….”

Gates shook his head. “Not just yet.” He gestured toward the crowd outside that had now grown silent and intent, all eyes on the museum doorway. “This interests me greatly. You know, I'm not so sure that it is a hoax. There was something about the way those letters were written that sounded devilishly serious. I half believe that somehow, in spite of that crowd and those policemen, the note writer, invisible or not, may get what he is after.”

“But what would he do with that statue if he did get it?” Ziegler asked.

Gates shook his head. “That's the mystery. That is what makes the whole affair so intriguing.”

Behind the two men, in the rear of the shop, a clock began to strike the hour. Nathan Ziegler, who had never been more completely wrong in his life, said, “Nothing will happen.”

As the last stroke died away, the crowd outside stirred uneasily. They watched intently now, hoping for some incident that would give them an indication of what was going on inside the museum. But the closely formed line of patrolmen at attention before the doorway remained stolid and immovable.

Ten minutes later the scene was still the same. Gates looked at his watch. “Perhaps you are right, Mr. Ziegler. Either the Invisible Man is late or it is a hoax of some sort. Shall we look at the miniatures again? I would like to see the documents certifying the authenticity of that Coswell portrait of the Prince Regent.”

Ziegler led the way back through the little rear door into the display room. He started toward the great safe on the left whose door was partly ajar as Ziegler had left it. Gates who had gone across to a display case along the rear wall suddenly exclaimed, “Ziegler! This Caxton
Book of the Hours!
My copy has an earlier date, and you have this listed as his earliest piece of liturgical printing.”

Ziegler turned immediately and went to join Gates. “No.” he said, obviously perturbed by Gates' statement. “That couldn't be true. It is a very well authenticated fact that William Caxton—”

Footsteps crossed the floor behind the two men.

“Mr. Gates?” a voice asked.

Gates turned. “Yes?”

A Western Union special messenger held out a pad and pencil. “Sign here, please.” When Gates had done so, he handed over an envelope, took the tip Gates gave him and walked quickly out.

Gates ripped the message open. “From my New York office,” he said. “I told them I was going to stop here.” He read quickly and then frowned. “I must return to the office before catching that noon plane. I shall have to leave immediately.”

He stuffed the message in his pocket, crossed the room and quickly gathered up his hat, cane and gloves. “Send me photostats of the Coswell documents,” he said. “If they are satisfactory, I shall send you a check for the portrait.” He stooped to lift the large pigskin travelling case by the door.

“Wait,” Ziegler said. “Let my clerk help you with that. Butterfield! Come and carry Mr. Gates' bag out for him. If you can force your way through that crowd, you should be able to get a cab on Fifth Avenue.”

“Thank you,” Gates said as the clerk came in. “I shall see you again when I am in town. If you should locate another of the Florentine pamphlets, let me know immediately. Goodbye.”

Ziegler saw him to the door, and, after watching the still expectant crowd for a few moments, returned to the display room and started to return the miniatures he had laid out for inspection to their places within the safe.

At that moment, Don Diavolo, standing in the window of the curator's office, was looking down upon the upturned faces of the crowd. Woody Haines, below, who had been watching that window like a hawk ever since Don had appeared in it, saw him shake his head. Quickly Woody slipped away and headed for a phone.

That was how Woody, for once in his life, missed the excitement. Just at the moment when he was telling a rewrite man that the Invisible Man had failed to keep his promise, things began happening on 55th Street.

The first thing was the clerk who ran white-faced from Nathan Ziegler's shop, pushed through the crowd and hurried, as if Siva the Destroyer was at his heels, across toward the Museum. Four cops jumped on him at once. The newsreel cameramen's long faces brightened and their cameras swung into action.

The crowd saw the clerk gesturing frantically. They saw a detective leave the group around him and dash into the Museum.

A moment later Inspector Church, at the head of a running squad of men emerged, gathered the clerk in passing, and charged across the street like a football backfield going over for the final touchdown. They ploughed through the waiting mob and vanished into the little shop. Reporters converging on the scene of activity piled up against the shop's doors like a wave against a breakwater. More cops arrived and began pushing the crowd back.