Death from Nowhere (2 page)

“What's all the excitement about?” Horseshoe asked. “You can get the illusion back, can't you?”

“Sure,” Karl said glumly. “It's probably on its way now. But in the meantime Hagenbaugh has had a draughtsman make working drawings. He'll shoot those to the Outdoor Amusement Supply House which he owns and they'll make up half a dozen of the illusions for what he would have paid me for one. And they'll probably list it in their next catalog too.”

“But you've got it patented, haven't you?” Horseshoe asked.

“No.” Don indicated the Crystal Water Casket. “Look at that,” he said. “Suppose I patented it. Know what would happen? Any newspaper reporter or magazine writer who wanted to write an exposé could send his ten cents to the patent department and get himself a complete description of the secret. Magic doesn't get patented because, it if did, it wouldn't stay mysterious.” He turned to Karl. “I've been in this workshop too long. I need exercise and I'm spoiling for a good scrap. I'm going down and pick one with Hagenbaugh.”

He started for the elevator, an angry glint in his eye.

Karl said, “That won't do any good.”

“I know,” Don threw back, “but I'm going to enjoy it.”

“Then I'm coming,” Karl insisted, starting after him.

Don stopped. He shook his head.

“Oh no, you aren't. You need sleep and there's still a good twenty-four hours of final adjustment work on that escape. It's got to be ready for last-minute rehearsals Sunday and packed to go Sunday night. I can't afford to have you step into any left hooks at a time like this. You go get some sleep. Those are orders.”

“And how,” Karl inquired, “can a show go on if the star performer picks up a black eye or a cracked rib? Hagenbaugh'll probably holler, ‘Hey, Rube' and his whole office force will land on you.”

But Don didn't answer. The elevator had whisked him up out of sight before Karl had half finished. Chan and Horseshoe brought it down again and followed after him.

“At your age,” The Horseshoe Kid called after Don who had gone on to the second floor to wash up, “you should know better. R.J. spent twenty years on circus and carnie grift. A two-way store's the only kind he knows how to run. He could always get more return out of a lousy creeper than any lucky boy I ever met. Back in '32 on the old Anneman show he took three grand off a chump out in Beaver Falls, Pa. Then he put him on the send for another five G's. The mark ‘borrowed' that from his firm hoping to use it to win back his original stake. He took a ten-year rap for embezzlement. When you do business with R. J. you should know enough to look for the gaff.”

Chan Chandar Manchu's classical Oxford education had its weak points. It failed him now, completely. “Two-way store?” he murmured in a perplexed tone. “Creeper? Gaff?”

“A gambling concession, my boy,” Horseshoe explained, “is a store — a store that sells excitement. But that's all. When the store's gaffed, it's fixed so you can't win. A two-way store works both ways, gaffed and fair, in case the operator might have to take a chance and be on the up and up for a few plays when the fuzz is in the tip.
1
A creeper is a gaffed spindle — the old arrow game. So simple it doesn't look as if it could be gimmicked, but it can always stop on the numbers that'll do the most damage to the chumps — unless, of course, the operator is letting the sticks make a play for the come on. Understand?”
2

Chan's slanted eyes blinked. “Every now and then light of understanding penetrates dimly. Especially when you remember to speak English language.”

Don Diavolo came down the stairs two at a time, grabbed his hat and took a squint out the front window at the dick who still loitered across the street. He threw a puzzled look at The Horseshoe Kid.

“I seem to remember that face,” he said. “I think he's from Inspector Church's office. And that would seem to indicate nothing less than murder.”

“Don't look at me,” the Kid responded. “Mother always told me never to do anything the homicide squad would get excited about. I've always remembered that.”

“So have I,” Don said. “Oh well, maybe it's the old maid with the chow that lives next door. Are you coming? I'm going up and bite Hagenbaugh.”

Horseshoe shook his head. “Uh-uh. I'm not
that
hungry.” He looked at Chan. “But I am thirsty. I'll stay long enough for one of those East Indian what-you-ma-callems that Chan serves up and then, if the cops have run off after you, I'll cop a lam. I don't like the neighborhood around here. My rheumatism tells me that hell of some sort is going to pop.”

“Okay then,” Don said. “See you later. With R.J.'s scalp — what there is of it.”

Outwardly, Don was his usual lighthearted, carefree self. But the way he slammed the door behind him indicated that inwardly he was madder than a hive of wet hornets. As he hurried down the steps he was mentally trying to compose a few sentences whose edges would be sharp enough to penetrate the thick hide of R.J. Hagenbaugh.

He might not have hurried so fast, however, could he have foreseen that the situation into which he was plunging was going to prove even more difficult of escape than the Double Crystal Water Casket itself — and far more dangerous.

But Don Diavolo could hardly have suspected that then. Another ten minutes was to elapse before something more deadly than words had penetrated quite thoroughly into the circus owner's thick hide — something whose edge was very sharp indeed.

1
Fuzz in the tip: Police authorities in the crowd.

2
Letting the sticks make a play for the come on: Letting the stooges in the crowd win so the suckers can see how easy it is.

C
HAPTER
II

Murder Unlocks a Door

T
HE
dick across the street didn't seem to be the least interested in Don's appearance. If anything he looked more bored than ever. But Diavolo did notice that as the man lit a cigarette the two men down at the corner moved simultaneously from their position and disappeared.

“Teamwork,” Don said to himself. “Now I wonder just what sort of a rat Inspector Church thinks it is he smells.”

Don got a cab from the stand on the Square and noticed, as he pulled away from the curb, that another taxi half a block away did the same. Don was confident that he could shake his followers if he wanted — a vanish of that sort should be child's play for a competent magician — but at this point he saw no particular reason to do so. As soon as he had finished with Hagenbaugh, he'd tackle Inspector Church and find out what this curiosity concerning his movements meant.

It was exactly four forty-five when Diavolo's cab drew up before the Emperor Theater Building in Times Square. Just as he stepped out R.J. Hagenbaugh died thirty-four stories above.

The magician paid off his driver and went into the lobby. He waited there for a moment just inside the doors. The two detectives hurried in, saw him, then stopped abruptly and pretended to scrutinize the bulletin board; Don approached them and said:

“Just in case you lose me in the elevators I'm on my way to the thirty-fourth floor, offices of Whitetops, Inc. That's quite all right. Don't mention it.” He grinned and walked away.

The two dicks pretended to look as if they didn't get it, but their acting wasn't anything to write home about. The expressions on their faces were what is commonly known as sheepish. They were just flustered enough that they almost did miss making the same elevator that Don took.

“And the next stop after this one,” Don grinned at them, “is going to be police headquarters. Maybe we could all go in the same cab. My treat and it would save the city a taxi fare.”

They gave him blank stares.

“No?” Don shrugged. “Well you can't report that I didn't try to cooperate.” He gave up trying to be sociable and then after a moment chuckled and recited:

“I have two little shadows

That go in and out with me;

But what can be the use of them

Is more than I can see!”

This was too much. One of the dicks turned to the other and said, “Maybe he's an advertising stunt.”

The second nodded, “Or a loony.” He turned to the elevator operator, “The Pennsylvania Petroleum Refining Company is on thirty-four, isn't it?”

Don answered before the operator had a chance. “That's right. But the name's been changed. It's the High Test Banana Oil Company now. You boys should be able to do business with them.”

One of the dicks gave up. “Listen, wise guy,” he growled. “I've a good notion to take you in right now.”

The elevator operator said, “Thirty-four.”

Don stepped out. “Oh,” he said turning. “Then maybe you'll need these.” He held out two police revolvers and a pair of handcuffs.

The detectives stared, then grabbed at their property. But before they could grab at him, Don Diavolo moved lithely across the corridor and vanished through a door whose glass panel bore the letters:
Whitetops, Inc. R.J. Hagenbaugh Shows.

The detectives stood there for a moment boiling like a couple of forgotten teakettles. They even spouted steam — steam in the shape of words so inflammable that they can't be printed here because the postal authorities won't accept incendiary matter for mailing.

Finally one of them said something usable. “We could take him in on a pocket-picking charge, Sam.”

“Oh yeah?” Sam growled. “Church is going to be sore enough that Diavolo caught wise we were trailing him. What do you think he'll do if we admit we were frisked? I'm going to phone in for instructions and get somebody to take over. The magician won't do anything he shouldn't as long as he knows we're on deck.” Sam gave the down button an angry poke.

His companion scowled doubtfully at the door through which Diavolo had gone. “I wish I was sure of that, Sam,” he said. “I've got a hunch he's up to something right now.”

“Sure. So have I. But we can't barge in there without something better'n hunches. And chewing the rag out here isn't doing anybody any good. Come on. You watch the elevators and the fire-stairs from the lobby while I phone. Maybe Church can get some of the other boys up here before he shows again.”

R.J. Hagenbaugh's anteroom beyond the door was, except for the circus posters and autographed photos of performers that lined the walls, like a thousand other offices. A low partition cut the room in half. On one side of it were several chairs for visitors and on the other, filing cabinets, a desk, phone, typewriter, an inner door marked
Private
, and Miss Isabelle Skinner.

Miss Skinner was pounding angrily on her typewriter. Clark Gable, Chester Morris, Robert Taylor, and Rudolph Valentino's ghost could have walked into the room at that moment and she would have snapped at all of them. R.J. Hagenbaugh was bad enough to work for at any time; today he had been completely impossible.

That telegram from Lakewego an hour ago had been the last straw.

COPS HIT SHOW WITH ATTACHMENT FOR FIVE GRAND CAN BEAT IT IN COURT BUT MUST POST BOND GAVE CHIEF BUTTERFIELD AFTERNOON GATE RECEIPTS BUT NEED ANOTHER FIVE HUNDRED. DOC WHIPPLE JAILED AS SECURITY — LILLIAN POWERS

Lillian Powers was part owner of the Hagenbaugh Powers circus and Doc Whipple was the legal adjuster and Hagenbaugh's representative in the latter's absence. The wire, Miss Skinner knew, meant that the Lakewego chief of police, unsatisfied for some reason with his usual cut of graft, had let someone plaster an attachment on the show. It was an obvious shakedown, and a humdinger.

R.J. wouldn't have stood for that ordinarily. He'd have rolled up his sleeves, gone to work with the efficiency of long experience, and cooked up a neat double-reverse play of some sort that would have left Chief Butterfield gasping, scared green that he'd lose his job, and excruciatingly apologetic.

But this time, strangely enough, Hagenbaugh did nothing of the sort. He hit the ceiling, true enough, and he erupted with some words that even Miss Skinner who thought she knew them all by this time had never heard before. But the telegram he had dictated, once Blondie had deleted the words she knew Western Union wouldn't send anyway, wasn't like him at all.

BANKS CLOSED TAKE BALANCE FROM NIGHT GATE WHAT MAKES WHIPPLE THINK HE IS A FIXER — HAGENBAUGH

Miss Skinner didn't get it. Something had been eating her boss for a week or so now. He had growled and snarled constantly at whoever happened to be within growling and snarling distance. Most of the time that had been Miss Skinner. And now she found herself doing the same to anyone unlucky enough to put his head in at the door.

That was one reason that Don Diavolo had a little difficulty in crashing Hagenbaugh's office. He sailed his hat into a nearby chair, gave the girl a cheerful grin and said, “Hello, beautiful. Tell your boss I'm here. He's expecting me. If he isn't, the old walrus is not as bright as he gives out. And don't tell me he isn't in or I'll turn you into a rabbit. I can smell that cigar of his from here.”