Death from Nowhere (23 page)

A sergeant of detectives idly touched a prayer wheel and sent it spinning through a dozen revolutions, not knowing that he had sent the mystic formula
Om mani padme hum
winging heavenward and earned himself an infinitesimal advance toward the great void of Nirvana.

Woody Haines should have turned that wheel. He needed Nirvana. He wished heartily he could attain forgetfulness of the story he had to tell. Knowing that Church wouldn't give it a single moment's serious consideration, he had lied the first time he was questioned.

He told the Inspector that he had not gone into the curio room at all, but had opened the door and found Richards' body just a moment before he called out. The Inspector accepted that for the moment, but an hour later he faced Woody again and told him that it was high time he thought up a nice fresh story that was nearer the truth.

“Your fingerprints,” he stated flatly, “are on the
inside
knob of that door. You left the living room to follow Richards. You went in to the room after him. What happened?”

The reporter looked across at Don Diavolo. “You promised me a story,” he said. “I got it. And I'm stuck with it. It's another dithering impossible fairy tale. The Inspector isn't going to believe one single solitary word of it. What do I do about that?”

“You tell me anyway,” Church growled. “All of it. If you do anything else, you'll get shipped down to a cell in the Tombs so fast you won't know—”

“And if I do tell you, I'll go there even faster.” Woody was definitely unhappy. He shrugged helplessly.

“When I ducked out into the hall,” he said, “Richards had disappeared. I knew he hadn't gone up the main stairs because you can see the bottom steps from the living room and I had seen him go on past. There were two or three doors at the rear of the hall. One, I knew, led to the dining room. I tried a couple of the others. One opened on a sun room, another went back to the kitchens. Then, just outside those big double doors I heard someone inside talking. It was Richards' voice. I put my ear against the door and listened.

“It sounded interesting. He was mad and scared and he was saying, ‘
He suspects I took that phone call. I know it. I don't think he recognized me, but when he does he'll take me down town and they'll work over me like they did once before. I won't stand that. You're paying up now and I'm getting out before it's too late.
' Then another voice spoke, a quiet voice. I couldn't make out the words. Then Richards again, ‘
No, it's not enough, not half. You didn't tell me there was murder in it. That comes higher.
'”

Woody stopped and asked, “Inspector, who was Richards?”

“I've just heard from headquarters,” the Inspector said. “They had his prints on file. His name was Parsons. He killed his wife back in '30 and then managed to skip the rap by pleading insanity. He was committed to Matteawan. He was released as cured about a year ago. But get on with it. Richards was talking to the murderer. Who was it?”

Woody shook his head. “I wish I could tell you, Inspector. But I can't. The other voice was too low, just a mumble. It said something else and then … then that was all. It was too quiet in there. I put my hand on the door and pushed it open.”

Woody's audience stared at him, waiting, wondering what he had seen beyond that door. But the reporter hesitated.

Church was impatient. “Well?” he asked grimly.

Woody stared at the Inspector without seeing him. “I pushed the door open,” he said again. “Richards stood there before the Buddha statue. He saw me and he said,
‘Om vajra guru
…” Woody Haines broke off in a confused way, shook his head and said, “No, I mean … That was later. I've seen so many damn fool impossibilities tonight. I don't know whether I'm coming or going. He said—”

Church broke in. “Who else was there with Richards?”

“I was afraid you would ask that,” Haines said. “There wasn't anyone else there. Richards said, ‘What do you want?' and I asked him where his friend was. I figured he was hiding behind one of the exhibition cases. Richards never had a chance to answer. He died then, and — and I backed out and called you.”

Woody had said Church wasn't going to like the story. Church didn't. He had half a dozen objections.

The first one was, “I searched that room immediately. There are no other doors. There was no one there but you and Richards' body! Are you crazy?”

Helplessly Haines said, “Maybe I am.”

Church didn't care for that either. “No.
You're
not going to put up an insanity defense. If you killed that man, I'm going to find out why and I'm going to—”

Diavolo broke it up. “Skip it, Inspector,” he said. “Woody might make a mistake and sock somebody a little too hard, but he wouldn't use a knife. How did he die, Woody? If you saw him stabbed, you should know—”

“I do,” Woody replied slowly. “The knife killed him. There was no one else there. The knife—”

“Do you mean it was thrown and you didn't see who—” Church started.

“It was worse than that, Inspector. No one threw the knife. I heard that Hindu's words, the same ones he used when the poker moved and when he doubled up on us.
Om vajra guru padma siddhi hum!
They echoed in the air — but they didn't come from anywhere. They were just there! And the yellow dagger moved!

“It was lying on the glass top of an exhibition case twenty feet from Richards, behind and to his left. I saw it rise and float in the air!” Woody's voice was strained and tense.

“It pointed toward Richards. It moved toward him, slowly — then faster … faster.…

“When it struck him he threw his arms above his head; his knees gave way; he staggered, and dropped, turning as he fell. I stood there for a moment without moving. I couldn't believe it. Then, outside, I could hear your voice, asking where Richards was. I told you. And that's that. I still don't believe it. You can throw questions at me all night. You won't get anything different.”

The Inspector gave Woody Haines a long cold stare. Then, finally he turned to Don Diavolo. “That's in your department,” he said. “There weren't any mirrors in that room, or wires, or trapdoors. Could anything like that have happened?”

Don, his eyes still on Woody said, “May I see the dagger?”

Church turned to the detective at his elbow. “Get it,” he ordered, “and tell Brophy to search this house from top to bottom.” He faced the others again as the detective went out.

“If Brophy doesn't find anyone hidden in the house, Haines killed Richards. Everyone else has an unbreakable alibi. Even the servants. They were all together in the kitchen. Dr. Bent here was with Miss Allison in her room. Diavolo, Chan and Shivara were in the living room with Brophy. Nicholas Sayre was with me. No one has left this house since it happened. The burglar alarms are in good working order and if anyone as much as touches a window it sounds like a four-alarm fire.”

The detective came back and laid a paper-wrapped object on the desk before the Inspector. The latter carefully folded it. “There aren't any prints on it,” he said.

Don Diavolo bent above it and then his eyes jerked up to meet the Inspector's. “It's the dagger Delaney described, isn't it?” he asked.

Church nodded. “Yeah. The dagger Delaney saw in Room 713. Haines, where were you at two-thirty this afternoon?”

Woody didn't get to answer that just then. Nicholas Sayre was leaning above the knife, staring wide-eyed at the long yellowish blade, at the dark stains that were on it now, at the raised design along the blade that depicted bearded Persian archers and a sacred bull, and at the strange, faint inscription of finely worked characters that ran like a border along the blade's edge.

Sayre stared and his hands trembled. But he said nothing.

The Inspector's voice snapped. “You know something about this knife. What is it?”

Sayre turned without answering toward a globe of the world that stood in one corner of the library. He moved it until the continent of Asia appeared and then ran one excited finger down a median that cut across the Western corner of the red triangular patch that is India.

Sayre started to speak just as Shivara's words cut across the room, apparently calm as ever, but with a strong hint of an underlying excitement that was as deep as Sayre's.

“Tell him,” he said. “But you will be wise not to say too much.
Mos gus yod na khyi so od tung.
”

The Inspector growled. “What was that last? Translate it!”

Shivara bowed and, with a perfectly straight face, said, “Only the pure may advance along the Secret Path.”

Church knew it was a dirty crack and he suspected that Shivara's words had actually meant something far different, but there was not a lot he could do about it. The police stenographer who was transcribing the conversation in his notebook couldn't even get the original statement on paper. He had never traveled any further toward the mystic many-tongued Orient than Hoboken, New Jersey.

Then Sayre spoke, his eyes shining. “Perhaps VanRyn, before he died, did find it after all! Alexander's treasure! Six hundred and fifty million dollars' worth of the spoils from Susa and Persepolis. Art objects whose worth would be beyond price!”

“Treasure!” Church jumped. “Six hundred and fifty million — Say what is this?”

And Sayre, speaking rapidly, with mounting excitement told him. “This dagger is Persian. It dates before 331 B.C. when Alexander routed Darius at the battle of Arbela and marched on to take and loot Babylon, Susa, and Persepolis. He continued on across Turkestan and down into India through the Khyber Pass. Then, in 325, his soldiers balked. They wanted to go home to Macedonia.

“They were laden with the spoils of war and the desert wastes of western India offered no chance to spend it. Alexander finally gave in. He built a fleet and sailed his army down the Indus River. But he had more loot, more gold and precious stones, than he could carry. He buried an incalculable treasure there in Bahawalpur, between the Indus and the Derawar desert. He never returned to claim it.”

The Inspector was skeptical. “That was over two thousand years ago. If nobody found it in all that time how could you expect—”

“No one has tried to get it, Inspector. At first the local ruler didn't dig for it because he feared Alexander's return and vengeance. Even after Alexander's death succeeding rulers hesitated, partly because all the neighboring principalities demanded a cut. A thousand years passed and the great cache lingered only as a memory.

“Then, in 878 A.D. Dira Sidh, Rajah of Uch, camped on the spot after a severe sandstorm. His camels were given salted water so that their thirst the next morning would make them fill up to capacity for a long desert trek. But one of them filled up during the night from a cask of wine instead, got roaring drunk and, kicking around wildly, unearthed a wooden chest filled with gold.

“The Rajah used that gold to build a fortress-mosque of forty bastions that you may see on the banks of the Indus today. And that, mind you, with the contents of but one chest.”

“Why did he stop with one chest? What makes you think he didn't dig up the rest and salt it away?”

“The religion of Bahawalpur,” Sayre explained, “was then, as it is today, Mohammedan, and the illegal presence of that wine was a scandal in the eyes of Allah. The Rajah was convinced that a treasure hunt with such an impious beginning could have no good end. He kept his hands off.

“Then, a highly important saint, Mukdam, known as the Second Adam, insisted on being buried smack over the site of most of the treasure. And, at once, every saintly minded Mohammedan for miles around wanted to be buried just as close to the Second Adam as possible. In India other things are of importance beside gold. That section of the desert is now called the ‘place of a million saints.' To a Mohammedan it would be flying in the face of Providence to disturb that saintly stratum of bones.”

The Inspector sniffed. “A two-thousand-year-old treasure with a curse on it! Why in the name of Allah can't I get a nice restful murder once in a while instead of pipe-dreams like this?”

“There was an ancient prophecy,” Sayre added, that said the gold would be dug up ‘when men shall fly in the air and the desert sands shall shake with the thunder of chariots pulled without horses, or camels, or bullocks.' The Imperial Airways mailplanes and the Uch-Derawar bus have fulfilled that prophecy.

“His Highness, the Nawab, Maharajah of Bahawalpur, cautiously tested the fulfillment of the prophecy and the potency of the curse in 1938 by allowing one of his subjects to try his luck. He let the man dig for a month, and then, since no lightning struck and no sudden death resulted, the Nawab decided to excavate on his own and in a big way. A Calcutta syndicate was formed and tractors and steam shovels were shipped up the Indus.” Sayre stopped.

“Well,” Church asked. “What happened? I suppose the curse started working about then?”

“Two boatloads of excavating machinery started out. Neither reached Bahawalpur. What happened to them, no one knows.”
14

Church poured himself a glass of water from the carafe on the desk. He took a long swallow, as if listening to Sayre's long lecture had made his own throat dry. He pointed at the dagger. “And you think this is part of Alexander's treasure, that VanRyn found six hundred and fifty million dollars worth of gold kicking around in the state of Bahawhateveritis?”

Nicholas Sayre hesitated, glanced once across at Shivara and then said, “I don't know. But if he did, it's motive enough for more than one murder.”

“Yes,” Church nodded. “I'll agree on that. Whether or not there is any such treasure, if someone thinks there is, that would be a motive.” He eyed Woody. “I suppose you knew about this?”