Death out of Thin Air (8 page)

When they scrambled up, cursing, and the dick had recovered his flash, the Indian Rajah was gone.

They could hear his footsteps beyond the wall, running madly toward the house. The officer's whistle shrilled.

“Quick, Dan! Give me a lift. Then cut him off in front!”

The detective went over the wall just as the house door slammed.

He caught up with the Rajah in the living room. The Indian was bending above a girl who lay in a chair. There were two small red marks on her throat. Another man, an elderly person with white hair and glasses, lay on the floor. As the detective came bursting in with drawn gun, this man rolled over on his side and slowly started to sit up.

This tableau gave the dick such a jolt he stared, mouth open, and did not realize that the Rajah had picked up the phone until he heard the clicking of the dial.

“Drop that!” he commanded then. “I've got you covered.”

But the man at the phone paid no attention to him other than to say, “Go soakyourhead. I'm getting a doctor…. Hello, Dr. Graf's office? I'm speaking for Don Diavolo. It's a hurry call. Get the doctor here right away!”

The detective didn't go soak his head, but he did put it out through the front door and call for reinforcements. The house had evidently been surrounded. Detectives poured in from all quarters.

Fifteen minutes later, while Dr. Graf was working over Pat, and Karl was telling his story, Inspector Church arrived. He blew in with all the force of a tornado.

He eyed the party. The detective that had tried to capture Don stepped forward to report, but Church pointed at the Maharajah and roared.

“Who the hell is
that?
”

Don, noticing that Graf's efforts were having success and that Pat was coming to slowly, began to feel better. He turned to Church and bowed ironically.

“The Maharajah of Vdai-Loo,” he said with a grave face.

Church blinked at him. “Oh yeah?” The Inspector wasn't used to meeting Indian princes at a moment's notice and his skepticism was pardonable.

Don frowned at him severely. His voice had an Antarctic chill and the stiff-backed English accent of the Hindu who has been educated at Oxford. “The manners of the American police are distinctly reprehensible. I shall report this behavior to your superiors.”

That had Church stopped. All he could do was repeat himself. “Oh yeah?” he said again.

As Church turned his back on the Maharajah, Don allowed himself half a grin.

But the grin didn't last. When Church heard that the haughty gentleman from the East had been apprehended scaling the wall outside, he gave the Maharajah a hard look and ordered, “Lieutenant, phone the British consul. Check up on this Maha-whatsis. I'll bet a sacred white elephant he's phoney as they come.”

The lieutenant dialed the phone.

C
HAPTER
IX

The Jewels with Wings

T
HE
Inspector watched the Maharajah light a gold-tipped cigarette and stroll unconcernedly to the bookcases across the room. He dropped his match into an ashtray there and leaned nonchalantly back against the wall, his hands in his pockets.

Then the Inspector made a mistake. He turned to listen to the Lieutenant at the phone. When that gentleman had discovered that the consul had never heard of any Maharajah of Vdai-Loo, Church whirled on his heel to face the impostor.

But where the Maharajah had been, there was now nothing at all — nothing but a long curl of smoke that floated upward from the cigarette lying on the ashtray's edge.

Church exploded like a dynamite bomb.

Twenty minutes later, when the detonation had subsided, four detectives had been demoted for not keeping their eyes open, and the Maharajah was still missing. Church was giving orders to have the walls torn apart in a search for trapdoors when Karl objected.

“You try that,” he said, “and Don Diavolo's lawyers will pop up with a suit for damages so fast you'll think
they
came in through a trapdoor!”

Karl was ordinarily a meek person but the Inspector's order to tear into the walls in which he had carefully and laboriously installed a number of delicately operating, secret mechanisms made him boil.

Church backed water a bit at this and turned his attention to Pat who was by now nearly recovered, though her eyelids still drooped heavily with a strange fatigue.

“What's wrong with her, Doc?” he asked.

“I wish I knew for sure,” Dr. Graf replied. “She's been doped and she shows symptoms similar to that of a hypnotic trance.”

“What about those marks on her neck? If you try to tell me a bat made
them
too, I'll—”

“I wouldn't know about bats,” Graf said. “I've never seen one of their bites. I'm more inclined to believe the marks are those of a hypodermic needle. The dope was probably injected intravenously. What I don't understand is how the injection could be made if Miss Collins resisted. It's not something you can do handily if the patients object.”

Pat's eyes struggled open. “I'll tell you that, Dr. Graf,” she said weakly. “The Bat put his hands around my throat and pressed, with his fingers, behind my ears. I lost consciousness at once.”

Church looked at the doctor. “Yes,” the latter said, “that's possible. There are two nerve centers there, which, if pressed upon properly, will cause unconsciousness to supervene.”

The Inspector turned to Pat. “Are you still telling me that this guy looked like a bat?”

“Yes, Inspector,” she said defiantly. “I certainly am.” She shivered.

“And you are sure you saw him before you were doped, not afterward?”

Pat nodded. “Karl saw him too.”

“I know. And Karl was knocked out. You could both be dreaming.”

“The
same
dream, Inspector?” Pat objected.

“Dammit, I don't know,” Church growled. This bat story was beginning to get him. He'd heard it too often by now. He still didn't believe it, but there were so many witnesses he had to take some account of it. He spoke to Graf again.

“You said dope. Sure it couldn't have been something like — well, nicotine for instance?”

“Nicotine, Inspector?” Graf looked surprised. “I
know
it couldn't have been nicotine. Injected into the veins, nicotine would kill instantly. It's a poison second only to hydrocyanic acid in its rapid action. Miss Collins wouldn't be talking to you now if it had been nicotine.” He paused a moment. “What makes you ask
that?
”

Church scowled. “Because a girl who was murdered this afternoon and who had those same marks on her neck probably died from nicotine poisoning. At least that's the medical examiner's best guess, though he doesn't think he can ever prove it.”

Graf nodded. “He's got a job on his hands. Nicotine is an alkaloid. Proving its presence in the body tissues, even in known cases, is often so difficult as to be impossible.”

“Yeah,” Church said disgustedly. “Don't I know it! When I need you most, you doctors are about as helpful as — as blank cartridges.”

Church turned to Pat and poured forth a barrage of questions. A good many of them Pat couldn't answer because she didn't know the answers, and Church didn't like most of the answers she did give. He also didn't like the mysterious way Dr. Graf disappeared!

The doctor was there one minute, replacing his stethoscope and other instruments in his little black bag. The next minute he was gone. The detectives on guard at the door swore they hadn't seen him leave.

The Inspector glowered at Pat. “Diavolo is behind this,” he insisted. “But if he thinks he can make
me
vanish. he's got another think coming.”

Karl grinned though his head still ached. “We'll go right to work on that, Inspector,” she said. “Would you prefer to vanish gradually or all at once?”

The Inspector snorted. “If I get that magician, I'll vanish him completely and for good! I've got the gadget that will do it, too. An electric chair!”

Don Diavolo, behind the mirror in the house next door, didn't hear that crack. He was busy talking to Dr. Graf.

“I heard what you said about the hypnotic symptoms and the dope,” Don said, “and I've got a hunch. Could the stuff that was injected have been the Truth Drug?”

“Scopolamine?” Graf replied lifting an eyebrow. “You do read minds then, don't you? That's what
I've
been wondering myself. I hadn't suggested it to the Inspector yet because I couldn't be at all sure. But none of the symptoms contradict the theory. I'll go that far.”

“Thanks, doctor. That's all I wanted to know.”

He picked up a phone, dialed the number of the New York
Press
and talked to Woody Haines. “Thanks, old boy,” he said. “You do a swell vanish. I might be able to use you in the act…. No, of course not, nary a word about the flea powder …”

Then, in a low voice that Graf could not hear, Diavolo gave Woody rapid orders. He also heard from Woody for the first time about the De Kolta cable from London.

He put the phone down, frowning, and turned as Mickey, who had escaped the detectives through the concealed door in the garage, came into the room — a greatly changed Mickey, wearing the flowing robes and the concealing veil of an Indian Maharanee.

Her eyes above the veil smiled and she said, “Thy servant is ready, oh master.” She held out a .32 automatic. “But I won't move a step unless you take this.”

Diavolo waved it aside. “Thy counsel is as wisdom from the lips of Buddha, oh pearl of Heaven. I'm heeled already, Mike. Let's go!”

“How,” Dr. Graf asked, “do you expect to get out of here? The street out front looks as if a police and detective convention was being held there. So does the alleyway in back.”

“I know,” Don said, “but when you can't go forward or backward the thing to do is go sideways. Confucius or somebody probably said that. We're going up and then sideways. The houses on this street are all joined together and they have nice flat roofs. We'll come down to the street a block away and there'll be a cab waiting for us.”

He took up the phone and arranged for that. “You're coming with us, too, doctor. I don't want the police force to see you walking out of the Reverend's parish house. One of them might be bright enough to add two and two and get four.”

Don's plan worked without a hitch. The Maharajah, his Maharanee and the doctor reached the taxi with no more adventures on the way. Karl, who had slipped out during the Inspector's most recent explosion, found them there. Dr. Graf left them after wishing them good luck.

“If you need me,” he said, “just say so. And don't let anyone jab you with any hypo needles filled with scopolamine. A magician who couldn't tell anything but the truth would be out of a job! And you might watch out for nicotine too. I couldn't reach you in time to do any good if I was more than ten feet away!”

The cab moved smoothly away from the curb and rolled uptown.

After Don had given him his secret sailing orders, Karl left the taxi at Sixtieth and Park. Don and Mickey continued on Park a dozen blocks or so. They got out of the taxi before the Saylor mansion and once more found themselves completely surrounded by cops.

But, strangely enough, this set of law officers was not interested in the Maharajah. They weren't even interested in murder. They were members of the Safe and Loft Squad and for the last three hours had been investigating a burglary. They had heard nothing of a wanted East Indian potentate.

Furthermore, the burglary was one that was giving them all the food for thought they could stomach — and then some. They had their hands full-all six of them.

Five hundred thousand dollars worth of jewels, including the famous
Star of Persia
diamond, was missing from the wall safe in the Saylor bedroom. Mrs. Saylor swore that the combination of the safe had been changed no longer than a week ago, and that only two people in the world knew it — herself and her husband. Ogden Saylor swore exactly the same thing.

Yet there was no evidence whatsoever that the safe had been opened since she had locked the jewels in it on the previous night. Tonight she had simply spun the dial, opened the safe, and found it empty.

Quite empty indeed, without any qualifications at all.

Jewel thieves refer to jewels, particularly diamonds as “ice.” But if these jewels had really been ordinary ice and if they had melted within the safe, they would at least have left a puddle of water.

These jewels — diamonds at that, which are as little given to melting away as anything you can find — had nevertheless, apparently done just that! A half million dollars worth of them had melted away without leaving the slightest trace!

The detectives had so far found only one thing — a few small scratches in the brickwork of the wall on the
outside
of a third story bedroom window.

C
HAPTER
X

The Puzzle of the Penthouse

M
RS
. O
GDEN
S
AYLOR
was an enormously wealthy woman who had never in her life done anything more strenuous than lift a Manhattan or step into her gold-crested Cadillac and say, “Home, James.” Her favorite recreation was dithering. She dithered now. And for once she really had something to get excited about. The loss of five hundred thousand dollars was no joke even to her.

The captain of detectives who had had to listen to her ravings for the past few hours nodded wearily as he made ready to leave.

“We'll do our best, Mrs. Saylor,” he said. “But I can't promise you anything at all — considering the information you've given us. I'll make my report to the commissioner. I think it's very likely that he'll want to see you himself.”

Mrs. Saylor could see his point. The mysterious manner of the theft had her dumbfounded, too. But she didn't like the hint in the captain's words that he hadn't been told the whole truth and nothing but the truth. “The Commissioner,” she insisted frigidly. “will hear exactly what you have heard. Those jewels were put in that safe last night. I locked it myself. No one but my husband and myself knew that combination. Tonight, when I opened it, the safe was empty.”