Death from Nowhere (18 page)

Diavolo's deduction was verified. Woody was on the phone inside of two minutes.

“This is Don, Woody,” the magician said rapidly. “I've been gazing into my crystal ball and I just got a glimpse of the homicide squad, the Hotel Winfield and a body. What goes on down there?”

Woody's voice came back. “Your crystal needs polishing a bit. It must be dusty. Church and the boys are here all right — up in Room 713. And there's lots of blood, but they can't seem to find the body!”

11
This vanish is one that many readers will remember having seen. It was used by Bela Lugosi in the stage version of “Dracula” and is the invention of Guy Jarrett.

C
HAPTER
V

The Man Twice Dead

T
HE
Hotel Winfield's Room 713 bore a strong resemblance to Times Square on a New Year's Eve. Jammed into it was a small army of uniformed men, plain clothes men, and laboratory experts who poked, peered, pried and probed. They were grim, thorough, hot and disgruntled.

In addition to the lack of a corpse, there was also a discouraging scarcity of clues.

The fingerprint man, for instance, had labored mightily and found just three measly fingerprints, all of which had been traced to the maid who had cleaned the room the day before. This was, of course, a clue of sorts, but an annoyingly negative one. It meant that the man who had eaten from the dishes on the nearby table had either (a) worn gloves while he ate — a fairly unlikely procedure — or (b) someone had carefully wiped off each of the knives, forks, spoons, glasses and plates that he must have touched.

This last theory, though hardly helpful, at least indicated that whatever it was that had happened in that room could certainly be classed as dirty work.

The bullet that had been found and the blood that had soaked the carpet on the floor might just possibly have been the result of accident, but Inspector Church knew very well that a total absence of fingerprints could seldom, if ever, be classed as accidental.

The Inspector stood now in the center of this whirlpool of official activity, watching his harried assistants with a glum eye and prodding them every now and then with an impatient order.

He was a bulky, broad shouldered man with a clipped gray mustache, a square-cut determined jaw, and an explosive forcefulness that usually threw off blue sparks like a spinning dynamo. Usually, but not just now.

Church was tired. Daily life was a conspiracy aimed directly at his head. The Commissioner had been riding him for the last two weeks about a particularly exasperating series of bodies that had been fished, with monotonous regularity, out of the East River. The matter of identification alone had swamped his department with an overtime schedule of routine tracing and checking that sent an unceasing flood of reports sweeping across the Inspector's desk like a great tidal wave.

And now, to top it off, here was the mystery of Room 713 to rear its ugly head.

The fact that the nearly complete absence of clues would not add any long detailed reports to the stream that already inundated his office was not calculated to make the Inspector any happier. The fact that Don Diavolo was somehow concerned in the mess made him boil. If his tone of voice didn't give off the usual bright electric sparks it did something even worse: It seethed and bubbled like a white hot pool of fresh volcanic lava.

That was why, when Don Diavolo arrived, the Inspector did not greet him with any show of enthusiasm. Instead, as the magician was ushered in by one of the cops who was on duty in the corridor, Church's greeting consisted simply of a scowl — one that was filled so near the brim with suspicion that the slightest jar would have sent its acid contents dripping over the edge to fall and burn smoking holes in the carpet.

Don noted this attitude and a small ominous voice inside him whispered with malevolent glee, “There's trouble ahead!” Don agreed without any argument that it looked like it.

Woody Haines, who had hitched on when Diavolo came through the lobby, also saw the Inspector's expression and decided that his reporter's nose smelled a story.

That pleasant aroma did not, however, last long. The Inspector glared at J. Woodford Haines and threw a frostbitten order at one of his men.

“Sergeant,” he said, “take that reporter by the seat of his pants and drop him down the elevator shaft. And don't listen to any of his double talk.”

Woody, as the Sergeant closed in on him, protested. “Inspector, what did I ever do to you that you should treat me this way? The free publicity I've given you in my column, figured at the regular advertising space rates would pay our stockholders such large dividends that—”

But Church didn't even listen and the sergeant, advancing like a thirty-ton armored tank, made Woody retreat on all fronts until he found himself, a moment later, in an elevator that dropped at top speed toward the main floor.

The first question Church served across the net at Don was:

“Where is Brady?”

Diavolo shrugged. “I don't know. Down at Fox Street maybe. I didn't wait for him, and you hung up on me before I could tell you that I wouldn't need an escort.”

This answer didn't make the Inspector feel any more sociable. His second question went straight to the point without any preliminary monkeying around.

“Where were you at two-fifteen?”

“Two-fifteen
P
.
M
. today?” Don asked.

Church grunted something that sounded like, “Yes.”

“Two-fifteen,” Diavolo said slowly. “You know, Inspector, you can ask the most embarrassing questions. I don't know how you do it.”

“Get to the point,” Church snapped. “Where were you?”

“I was at home. Karl and I were down in the basement cutting off a young lady's head. I'm afraid that's not the best alibi in the world, but—”

Church, not knowing how near the truth that was, merely took a firm hold on his temper and growled, “Stop trying to be funny — and answer me!”

“I'm not trying to be funny,” Don said calmly. “And I'm telling you. We were cutting off Pat's head with Karl's latest model, rubber-cushioned action, floating-control, automatic-safety guillotine. It's something like sawing a woman in two, only quicker. It—”

Church snorted slightly. “Ummmpf. Another trick! And a couple of witnesses who'll say anything you want them to. Okay. We'll skip it for the moment. Were you still cutting her throat at two-thirty?”

Don thought a moment. “No. We'd finished. I don't suppose by any chance you've got any witnesses who heard a phone ringing in this room at just that time, have you?”

“And just how,” Church snapped, “did you happen to know that?”

“I didn't,” Don replied. “I just hoped you might. I was on the other end of that phone call and I can produce four witnesses. So if you're harboring any nasty-minded theory that I was here in this room at that time, you can forget it and start thinking up a new one. Why all these suspicious questions anyway? And why me in particular?”

“That's what I want to know,” Church returned. “Why did you phone this room when you did?”

“Chan took a call while I was out. The message—”

“What time was that?”

“Around one, I think. A Mr. Alexander asked for me and, when informed that I wasn't in, told Chan to have me call him back and gave this number. The first time I called I didn't get an answer. The next time I got you.”

“And who is Mr. Alexander?” Church held his breath after asking that one. Because once he found that out, maybe.…

But the Inspector's hopes were doomed. “That,” Don said, “is why I came running up here. I was hoping that you could tell me.”

Inspector Church gritted his teeth. “No. I won't take that. Some guy you don't know phoned and asked you to call him back. The next thing that happens is murder. Can't you see how silly you sound?”

“Yes,” Don agreed politely. “I see your point, but I'm afraid that's the story I'm going to be stuck with. All I can add is that he spoke to Chan in an Indian dialect, that his first name is Ted, and that he admitted having just arrived this morning from India.”

The Inspector's eyes grew round. “You hear that, Schultz?” he demanded. “This morning from India. Get on it. Check boats, busses, trains, planes and anything else you can think of.” He turned back to the magician. “And you still insist that you don't know any Ted Alexander, any Theodore G. Alexander from India, or maybe Chicago?”

“Theodore G. — Chicago?” Don asked. “Oh, I see. The hotel register. No, Inspector, it's a total blank. Did you get any sort of a description from the desk clerk.”

Church nodded. “About five foot eight, maybe a hundred and fifty pounds, brown hair, dark, tanned complexion, brown eyes, good looking, white linen suit, panama.”

Diavolo hesitated slightly. That description bothered him. He heard the words echoing in his mind, and a hunch that had been growing within him grew still larger — a hunch that was quite impossible.

Aloud he said, “That description could fit a lot of people. Not very illuminating. I wonder if I could see his signature on the register? The name could be phony but if the man did know me, as he seemed to, I might recognize the handwriting.”

Church pointed at a detective. “Get it,” he ordered.

Don's eyes had been taking in the details of the room, particularly the large dark stain on the carpet by the door, the heavy water carafe on the floor, and the bullet hole in the wall across the room. Now, before Church could get under way with another string of queries, he asked, “What makes you so sure it's murder? If you haven't got a body, how do you know—”

The Inspector didn't answer that question but another man soon did. Diavolo was interrupted by a cop who put his head in at the door and announced, “The doc says Delaney can talk now. Do you—”

“I do,” Church said, his eyes lighting up. “Let's have him.”

The cop vanished and a moment later brought in a weary, rather wobbly gentleman who was wearing what, at first glance, appeared to be a turban. He was not an Oriental, however, but Irish; and his headgear was constructed of hospital gauze and adhesive tape. It exuded a strong odor of antiseptic.

As the man lowered himself somewhat gingerly into a chair, Church said, “You're the house detective here, Delaney?”

Delaney started to nod, and then decided, considering what was going on inside his head at the moment, that he had better use some other method of communication. He said, “Yes,” not very loud.

Church said. “At about two-fifteen a woman in Room 720 reported that she had heard what she thought might be a revolver shot originating somewhere on this floor. You investigated, put your head in to Room 713 and got yourself knocked silly.

“Later, when you woke up for a few minutes you managed to get to the phone and report that you'd found a dead man. Then you dropped off to sleep again.

“It might interest you to know that there wasn't any dead man when we got here, that there is a lot of blood and a bullet hole in the wall. But the bullet didn't go through anybody. What's the rest of it?”

Delaney, in a worried way, said, “Well, there
was
a body when I first came in. It was gone when I woke up enough to crawl to the phone. If it isn't here now, the guy that conked me must have taken it when he lammed.”

Church was a shade sarcastic. “Under his coat maybe? It's broad daylight and there aren't any witnesses who noticed any bodies being carted away. Get on with it.”

“This dame that phoned down to the desk,” Delaney said. “She's an old gal who jitters. Last time she hollered for a detective it was to chase a June bug out of her room. June bugs must be awful dumb, because anything that would sneak in at
her
window at one A.M.—

“Never mind the alibis,” Church cut in impatiently. “I get it. That's why it took you so long to get up here?”

“Yes. I didn't hurry much because I figured it was more bugs or maybe that pet poodle of hers had slipped and gone down the drain or something. She had her door locked when I got here and a dresser pulled over in front of it. I think she was hiding under the bed.

“She didn't know what room the noise had come from. But she knew what a gunshot sounded like because her first husband, Charley, used to hunt rabbits a lot before that last time when he started out to clean a loaded gun, and—”

Church broke in explosively, “Listen,” he sputtered, “Do you think you could maybe tell me about the crack you got on the head, or do I have to hear about her second husband and how he died from ptomaine poisoning after an Elk's clam bake the year Taft was elected! I've been investigating this mess for the last hour. I've heard her story. I've heard all about her husbands. I want
your
story, dammit!”