Death out of Thin Air (3 page)

Diavolo's eyes studied the new inscription on the paper. Without looking up he said. “That's Woody. Let him in.”

Chan crossed to the door and swung it inward. J. Haywood Haines came in. He was known to his friends as “Woody” and to most of Broadway as the reporter whose
Behind the Scenes
column in the New York
Press
usually had the lowdown on inside stories.

He nodded gaily at Chan, sailed his fifteen dollar pearl-gray hat across to the divan and announced:

“Don Diavolo, I want you to meet the star deducer of the New York Homicide Department, Inspector Church.”

Don Diavolo, squatting on his heels by the body, the girl's open purse at his side, was remembering the time his parachute had nearly failed to open. He felt that way now.

Inspector Church never acknowledged that introduction. He was too busy staring at the body. He was, to put it, mildly, pop-eyed.

Then he said, “Oh, I see. You're rehearsing.”

Diavolo stood up, palming the slip of paper. “I only wish I were, Inspector,” he said calmly. “
You
couldn't have dropped in at a better time.”

He really meant worse time, but he thought he'd better not admit it. He knew why the Inspector was there. Woody was helping to arrange a jail break publicity stunt and he had brought the Inspector along to discuss it. Fate had apparently decided that now was a good time for them to arrive. Don didn't agree with her.

Church stepped nearer the girl, got a look at her white face and barked, “Haines! Get a doctor. You” — he pointed at Chan — “phone headquarters!”

Then he knelt beside the body, touched it and saw the marks on her neck. He sent a sudden lightning scowl at Diavolo and from the side of his mouth said, “Never mind the doc, Woody. The medical examiner can take care of this one.”

Church looked at Diavolo a moment. “Well,” he growled then. “Out with it! What happened?”

Don groaned inwardly. This was going to be anything but a cinch. When the Inspector heard the story he had to tell, Hell was going to pop.

It did. It not only popped — it exploded with seventeen different kinds of colored fire and a detonation that was heard at Centre Street. Within thirty seconds, police cars were converging on the Manhattan Music Hall from all directions.

Inspector Church had to believe some of the story — he had a dead body before him to prove it. But when Don mentioned the bat, Church made a half move as if to phone Bellevue's psychiatric department and report the capture of an escaped lunatic.

“Somebody is bats, right enough,” he growled. “You say that you and Chan here were all alone. Nobody else came in and no one left.” He snorted again, “Except for a bat. Maybe you want me to arrest the bat for murder?”

“Murder?” Haines asked, startled. The events of the past few minutes had shaken even his reporter's aplomb. And the memory of a certain cablegram he had received from London two months before didn't add anything to his peace of mind.

“Yes,” Church said. “Murder. Poison, I think. She—”

A bright gleam on the floor caught his eye and he knelt and picked up a gold-cased lipstick pencil. He started to rise again, but stopped, glimpsing something beneath the edge of the girl's silver-fox cape. His hand lifted the edge of the cape and drew it aside.

His eyebrows went up abruptly, and just as quickly flattened into a frown. His right hand moved quickly inside his coat toward a shoulder holster. It came out holding a thirty-eight automatic.

For the second time within twenty minutes, Chan Chandara Manchu found himself on the wrong end of a gun that meant business.

“All right,” Church said flatly. “You just stay where you are. Woody, frisk him. And you might look up his sleeve for a knife. These Orientals …”

Diavolo cut in. “Aren't you being a bit hasty, Inspector? There's no reason to—” He stepped forward.

“Oh, no?
You
stay put. I've had all the hocus-pocus from you I want. This case is solved right now!”

Woody Haines and Diavolo leaned together above the body and stared at what the Inspector had found beneath the cape.

There, on the floor, in scarlet — not blood as Diavolo thought at first, but lipstick — were four letters of the alphabet, scrawled in hasty, wavering strokes that matched the handwriting on the paper Don had concealed.

The letters spelled the single word: “
Chan!
”

The Maharajah (Don Diavolo to you)

Woody

Mickey

Pat Collins (we think)

Inspector Church

Karl

C
HAPTER
IV

The Man is Quicker than the Eye

D
IAVOLO
objected strongly. “Look here, Inspector,” he argued. “Chan wasn't in the room alone with her for more than a minute.”

Church wasn't impressed. He still held the gun on Chan. “So what?” he asked. “I could poison half a dozen people in less time than that. Are you trying to tell me he didn't do it?”

Diavolo's answer was positive. “I am. Exactly that.”

“But there was no one in here with the girl except the two of you. What are you doing? Confessing you did it?” The Inspector's gun swerved slightly toward Don.

“No. I didn't do it. I never saw the girl before.”

“Then who do you want me to think did, for the gossake?” Church asked. “And don't mention bats!”

Diavolo made a nonchalant, somewhat absent-minded gesture with his empty hand and produced from the thin air at his fingertips, a lighted cigarette — a long Cuban one. He puffed at it thoughtfully a moment. Then he said. “There was someone — or something — else in this room.”

Woody Haines sat on the divan staring with an odd look at Diavolo. But he said nothing.

Inspector Church growled, “Okay. There was someone else here. All right. You're the magician who thinks he'd like to escape from the Tombs. You tell me yourself that only three people know how that door unlocks — yourself, Chan and a guy named Hartz. If this other person that was here went out by the door Hartz must be it.”

Diavolo shook his head. “No, Karl didn't do it. You wouldn't say that if you knew him, Inspector.”

“I'll decide what he did or didn't do for myself, but as long as you don't want it to be him — and you do want me to believe someone else was here, suppose you tell me how he got out.”

Diavolo indicated the open window. “That was closed when Chan and I came in,” he said. “It was open when we found the girl. He must have both come and gone that way.”

“In what?” Church demanded, “A balloon?”

Don shrugged and, going to the window, looked out again. “That's the trouble. It's five stories up and there's hardly foothold for a fly. He'd have to be an acrobat Alpine climber who didn't care a damn. I think perhaps I could manage it — I climbed a building that was nearly this bad for a movie once — but we had nets.”

“If
I
had a net now,” Church said scornfully, “I'd give it to you and you could go chase some butterflies! So she was killed by a movie stunt-man, was she? A human-fly who climbs straight up the sides of buildings!”

Behind them a voice said, “That's right, Inspector, I saw him!”

Diavolo, Chan, Woody, and especially Inspector Church all whirled toward the voice. Patricia Collins, the Princess who had vanished with the elephant, stood just within the door. She came toward them, her graceful figure dressed now in the black, brief costume that she wore through the remainder of the Scarlet Wizard's act.

Inspector Church roared — like Niagara Falls! “How the blue blazes did you get through that door!” He turned to Don angrily. “
So!
A lot of people can work the trick lock, can they?”

Patricia said, “You left the door ajar yourself, Inspector — when Don opened it for you and you sent for Jerry.”

Woody Haines who had jumped from the divan as she entered took her arm. “Pat,” he asked quickly. “What did you see?”