Death from Nowhere (21 page)

“Ten thousand dollars,” Don said, “is not too great a price if Mr. Sayre's description of your powers is accurate.” Don reached and took a lighted cigarette from thin air at his fingertips.

Shivara's smile remained undisturbed. His black eyes glinted with amusement.

“A few of your occidental imitations of magic are fairly clever,” he said evenly. “But they never rise above expert juggling. One day the complacent Western World may learn that there is a greater force than all the whirring dynamos that move its great machines.

“Your gross material science will find that it has traveled the wrong path, and will at last discover that secrets do exist which may not he plumbed with the slide rule nor trapped within the test tube. Knowledge of that force and the means of using it have been preserved in Tibet, since the days before Atlantis sank beneath the sea, by the Masters of the Great White Lodge.”

“And that force,” Sayre asked, is—”

“Gompa,” Shivara answered. “The limitless power of thought. The adept who has trained himself in Padmasambhava' six stages of the mystic Path knows that concentration of the mind can accomplish all things. The Universe is but a mirage which exists in the mind, springs from it, and sinks into it.
Om vajra guru padma siddhi hum!
”
13

Don Diavolo, with an absent-minded gesture took another lighted cigarette from midair, passed it to Woody. and then like a fencer testing the strength of his adversary, tried one preliminary thrust.

“I've never taken Padmasambhava's advanced course in ‘How to Win Friends and Concentrate Heavily,'” he said, “but I sometimes have mystic hunches. That little stunt of yours of telling us who we really were wasn't half bad. I can sometimes do something like it myself. I think I could tell you, Mr. Shivara, where you were at — well say 2:30
P.M.
this afternoon. Of course, it's just a psychic hunch and
my
magic is only a poor imitation—”

There was a frown in the Hindu's eyes and though his smile was still there on the narrow face it suddenly seemed tighter. “Yes?” he said curiously.

“You were in a hotel on 35th Street. There is a
W
in the name of the hotel and I get a dim picture of a room on the seventh floor. The rest is vague and indistinct.”

Shivara hesitated just perceptibly and then turned to Nicholas Sayre. “Is Mr. Diavolo's strange power of clairvoyance accurate?”

Sayre shook his head. “It will have to improve greatly, I'm afraid. At 2:30 this afternoon Mr. Shivara and I were here looking over my collection of Bodhisatva paintings.”

Don Diavolo's poker face showed no signs of disappointment. His eyes were on his cigarette which rose mysteriously from his left hand and floated slowly up through space to his right.

“It's a good trick,” he said, “when it works. Perhaps I should practice it more.”

But what he thought was, “My boy, if you really can project an astral double it isn't going to do
that
alibi a lot of good!”

12
His well known textbook “The Mind and Its Mechanism” (Edmund Kressy & Sons, New York, 1938) is a standard authority in its field.

13
“Hail, the powerful magician and miracle worker, Padma!”

C
HAPTER
VIII

Evil in Two Places

D
inner was an uneasy, tense affair.

Mr. Shivara's low but insistently penetrating voice was like a dark mist that closed in about the others and shut off all normal conversation.

He addressed himself to Sayre, outlining the weird and intricate beliefs of something called the
Karma-mimansa
doctrine. Dr. Bent and Judith Allison, after one attempt at changing the subject, fell silent, frowned at their plates, and ate little.

Chan listened attentively and Don whispered to him once: “What about it? Is that sales talk the real thing? Just when I begin to get the drift he drops into Sanskrit or Tibetan and loses me.”

“So far,” the boy replied, “Chan unable to catch Mr. Shivara in error. All patter seems to be A-Number One McCoy. Very interesting.”

Woody, who caught Chan's answer, put in: “Not to the readers of the New York
Press
it isn't. I don't think we've got the type for some of those Tibetan words anyway. What about this story you promised me, Don?”

“Sit tight,” Don promised. “You'll get it.”

Woody did.

Once the party had returned to the living room where after-dinner coffee was served, things began to happen. Woody got a story that set him back on his heels and made his hair curl — a story that he wasn't at all sure he wanted to write. He was afraid the city editor would take one look at it and then ask when he'd begun to use an opium pipe.

Sayre started it by mentioning the fact that his collection contained several of the magic
phurbas
which the Tibetan sorcerers use in their rituals.

“I have heard,” he said, “that these knives can often be animated from a distance and made to kill an enemy when the sorcerer is nowhere near, without arousing any suspicion that he is responsible.”

Shivara smiled his superior smile again and nodded. “Once again,” he said, “simply an instance of directed concentration. All thought is energy. The adept can concentrate so completely as to project this force any distance.

“He can control its emanations and focus them on the
phurba
until the knife becomes charged with the thought-force and is able to move and perform whatever actions the directing
ngagspa
wills. This is true of any inanimate object. That brass poker by the fireplace for instance.
Om vajra guru padma siddhi hum!
”

Shivara pointed and as his gaze fastened on the object his eyes grew round and strained with effort.

“The poker will fall — now!”

Don Diavolo saw the poker tremble, move outward, and drop. He heard the brassy clang that rang from the stone hearth.

Shivara's voice came again, low and throbbing, as if from a great distance. “The poker moves across the hearth, slowly, then faster — faster —
faster.…
”

Like some strange rigid snake the poker obeyed, sliding across the stones and out on to the carpet — straight toward Don Diavolo! Except for the Hindu's hypnotic, commanding voice there was no other vestige of sound in the room.

Then Shivara clapped once, closed his eyes and rubbed a hand heavily across his forehead as if in pain. The poker had stopped with its end touching Don's foot.

Diavolo asked, “May I examine it?”

Shivara, his eyes still closed, nodded. “You may. And you will find no strings or wires.”

Don picked it up and gave it a rapid, expert scrutiny. “No,” he said. “There are none — now.”

And that made Shivara angry. For the first time, his precise cold little smile vanished. His eyes flashed.

“No,” he said, “you do not believe. I did not expect you would. Your Western eyes are clouded with the doctrine that all effects have physical causes. You cannot conceive that mind is infinitely more powerful than matter, that mind is matter, that mind is all.

“Your unbelief is of no interest to me and yet I will show one other thing — something that even you will admit could not have been done with wires and mirrors. I shall project for you a
tulpa
, a phantom image of myself!

“In the words of the Dalai Lama himself: ‘A Bodhisatva may, through the power generated in a state of perfect concentration of mind, show a phantom of himself in thousands of millions of worlds. He may create not only human forms, but any form he chooses, even those of inanimate objects such as hills, enclosures, houses, forests.…'
Om vajra guru padma siddhi hum!
”

The Hindu stood before them, his back to the tall fire-place that towered above, his slender body in its faultless evening dress, straight and still. Above his dark face the white turban gleamed as if with a dim luminosity of its own.

And then, after a moment, a similar glow appeared in the air beside him. At first, faint and nebulous, it gradually grew stronger and as it began to take shape, the outlines of a face appeared slowly beneath it. Dim, wavering and transparent, but growing stronger …

Shivara's voice droned on, speaking words that no one heard, words that formed a mystic curtain in the background of their minds …

The hazy outline of the phantom shape steadied and grew sharp like an image coming into focus on the ground glass of a camera. Its transparency receded until the watchers could no longer see through to the gray stones of the fireplace beyond.

There, now,
two
Shivaras stood before them an arm's breadth apart. Once more the watchers saw the calm, cold smile — two calm, cold, evil smiles on two identical faces!

The thought-form, if that is what it was, took a step forward while Shivara remained in his place. Then another step, the white eyes glittering in the dark Oriental face.

Judith Allison put one hand to her mouth and screamed.

And, in that instant, with another forward step half completed, the phantom vanished!

Don Diavolo heard a door slam and then he heard a deep voice thunder, “
What's going on here?
”

He turned in his chair and saw a scowling familiar figure striding toward them from the hall. Behind him the white face of the butler peered and announced somewhat belatedly, “Inspector Church of the New York Police Department!”

No one paid much attention to the Inspector's question. He looked at the girl and at Dr. Bent who held her hand and leaned over her solicitously. He started to ask his question again. “What is going—”

Then he saw Mr. Shivara.

The Inspector came to a dead stop, his eyes narrowed, and the expression that grew on his face was one of a cat who has just sighted a nice fat mouse.

But his pleased grin died a quick death. His eyes saw Chan, and then, moving rapidly, took in Woody and Don. His jaw dropped.

“You!” he roared, stabbing a thick forefinger at the magician. “I thought I told you I wouldn't stand for any amateur detect—” The Inspector stopped short as another thought occurred to him.

He began a new tack. “How did you get out of Fox Street without my knowing it? I was to be told the minute you put your nose outside that house. I gave orders that — well, answer me, dammit!”

“Sure,” Don said pleasantly. “As soon as I see a place where I can get a word in edgeways. Do I understand that you had some of your men watching me?”

“You know blamed well I did! How did you get past them?”

“Inspector,” Diavolo said innocently. “Why is it you always prefer to believe the worst? If you had me watched, and got no report when we left, the boys must have fallen asleep on the job. Sad state of affairs I admit, but why blame me? I believe I did see a man named O'Hearn puttering around in my garden earlier this evening. But he wasn't there when we left. I don't see that I'm responsible for—”

Church said, “Grrr!” and then, “What are you — and Haines and Chan — doing here?”

Don looked across at his host. Sayre said, “I invited them, Inspector. I didn't invite you. What are
you
doing here?”

Church looked at him coldly. “You're Mr. Nicholas Sayre?”

The millionaire nodded.

Church looked at Sayre, at Judith Allison, the doctor, and the Hindu. Then he lighted his bomb and dropped it among them. “I'm investigating a murder. I came here to ask some questions about the victim.” He took a step toward Shivara. “I think I'll begin with you.”

Sayre's eyes widened. Dr. Conrad Bent stood up very straight and still. Judith Allison's hands tightened on the arms of her chair. Mr. Shivara returned the Inspector's cold gaze with the puzzled lift of one eyebrow. His brown face was otherwise as devoid of expression as a blank sheet of paper.

Church's voice was curt and official. “Your name?”

The Hindu looked at him for a moment, then said, “And what do I have to do with your murder investigation?”

Nicholas Sayre started forward. “Inspector, this is ridiculous. Do you know who I am?”

Church didn't take his eyes off the Hindu. “Yes. I know. You're a millionaire. And you know the D.A., the police commissioner, and maybe all nine of the Supreme Court judges. You can phone them if you like. It won't do you any good. I'm going to have my answers just the same.”

Nicholas Sayre turned to the butler who still stood at the door. “Get Richards down here at once!” The butler vanished.

Church asked his question of Shivara once more. “What is your name?”

The Hindu smiled and told him. “Rimpoche Tsong Gungaram Siddahshivara, the Nawazi Kahn of Rajgarh.”

Church blinked rapidly, felt the control of the situation slipping from his grasp, and made another mistake. “Address?” he said icily.