Gun in Cheek (28 page)

Suddenly a large console radio crackles to life. "This is Station WITS broadcasting," a strange, flat voice says. "I trust you have enjoyed the first part of the evening's entertainment. You are listening, ladies and gentlemen, to the voice of your host."

The voice goes on to tell them that they are about to play an amusing intellectual game—a very different game from any they have ever played before, for they "must be tired of gatherings at which you hear only the soft bubbling of elegant effervescence." This game pits the host against the eight guests in an ultimate battle of wits, with the prize being death. "If I should win," the voice of the host tells them, it is my privilege to inform you that you will all be dead—before morning."

The guests are horrified, of course. And even more so when the host informs them that they are trapped in the penthouse, for "retreat constitutes a violation of the rules." The only exit is the door by which they entered and the doors in the patio wall, and all are "charged with electricity sufficient to kill ten men." The host then does a little more philosophizing on the subject of mortality:

"Death has too long been a portentous affair, solemn, sedate and distinctly annoying. With your kind permission I shall introduce to you tonight death in a new guise, amusing, nonchalant and clever; death, in fact, presented as a social divertissement. . . . Choice diversion, carefully planned to amuse the eight most exacting guests in macabre New Orleans. Tonight you shall learn to laugh with death, the bogey man of the ages. . . . [For] death should be flippant, the last snap of the fingers at a bungling stage manager. Death ought to be the playful unicorn forever teasing the edges of life."

After the host signs off, the guests frantically explore the penthouse. The butler and waitresses who served drinks earlier are discovered in the kitchen, unconscious from having drunk drugged wine with their dinner. The voice of the host comes back over the radio, to taunt the guests with comments about each, proving that he knows them well, and with explanations of his cleverness in rigging his little penthouse game. There are high-tension wires strung atop the patio wall, so they can't climb up and signal for help; they can't start a fire to draw attention because the fire-sprinkler system is "provided tonight not with water for the extinguishing of fire, but with lethal gas for the extinguishing of the flame of life"; they can't flood the apartment so that water will drip through the ceiling because the supply has been cut off at the kitchen and bathroom taps; the electrified patio gates can't be battered down with a piece of nonconductive furniture because they are sufficiently strong to withstand any sort of battering ram.

But, the host says, he has also made other preparations to assure them of a pleasant evening: liquor, cigarettes, cigars, and other items have been provided in copious quantities. He mentions the favorite drink of each guest, prompting Peter to say that the host must be "a bartender running berserk." And he announces that Jason Osgood will be the first to die.

When he signs off again, the guests split up to conduct a more intensive search of the penthouse in an attempt to find out where the host is hidden. All except Jason Osgood, that is. Osgood slips back inside the front room and "hisses in a sibilant whisper" at the radio; after which he offers the host three million dollars to spare his, Osgood's, life. No answer from the radio. Osgood then offers to be the host's partner in the murder plot; he'll help kill all the others in exchange for his life. Still no answer. But Osgood is a man possessed; his cowardice drives him to mix eight cocktails, seven of which he laces with the contents of a silver flask the host has told them is prussic acid (should any of them want to commit suicide instead of playing his game). Osgood puts the cocktails on a tray, carries them in to the others. But before any of them can drink, the host's voice warns them not to. And suddenly, without warning, Osgood drops his glass and slumps across a chair, dead.

"I knew it!" Tim almost shouted. "I knew it—when we saw those coffins - - ."

"Coffins?" Margaret repeated. "Tim—what coffins?"

"On the patio," he answered, sinking back into his chair. "Eight coffins."

"Heaven's mercy," whispered Sylvia.

"My friends," said the voice of the host.

"You mad squeaking devil!" cried Tim. .

Margaret covered her face with her hands. "I think I am going to die before he can kill me," she said.

The question of how Jason Osgood was murdered is soon answered by the host. "The flask was prepared to give double assurance of suicide in the event that one of you sought that method of escape. Its grape-topped cap spurts tetraethyl lead through a cleverly constructed hypodermic. The cap fits close, and in the effort to unscrew it he pricked his hand in several places and the pressure sent the poison into his blood." The "cleverly constructed hypodermic" must also have injected instant-acting Novocain, since Osgood did not seem to feel any of the needle pricks. But then, why quibble with genius?

The others, Out of terror, begin to turn on each other and make accusations that this or that person is responsible for Osgood's death—at the same time dragging before the reader all sorts of past indiscretions that (a) make each of them a likely target for homicide, and (b) give each of them a motive for homicide. The host has told them that if he hasn't claimed a second victim by midnight, they will have won the game and will be allowed to go free; so when twelve o'clock comes and they all seem still to be alive, they become jubilant. Then they discover that Margaret, who hasn't spoken for some time, isn't alive. The voice of the host comes over the radio again to tell them how he accomplished her death.

"If you will lift the cushions in the chair occupied by Mrs. Chisholm, you will find hidden just where her head rested a thin black rubber object that looks like a double foot rule, joined with three clasps. This is a receiver connected with this radio by a wire which runs through the leg of the chair and under the floor. When the chair is resting on a particular spot the connection is made. . . . While you were engaged in your entertaining conversation, I whispered into Mrs. Chisholm's ear and what she heard was a secret so terrible that Mrs. Chisholm, weighing it, preferred to die rather than to face the world again; for I told her that in five minutes you would all hear what she was hearing. So she died."

Masterful stuff. Except for the fire-extinguisher ploy of Ennis Willie, can there be any more ingenious method of murder in all of mysterydom?

The voice goes on to reveal what it was he whispered in Margaret's ear that made her heart stop beating: She was a bigamist, by virtue of a first husband whom she had thought dead turning up alive after she had married her current, and very wealthy, spouse. Enough to- make any reputable café-society matron die on the spot, to be sure.

The next victim turns out to be the Irish politician, Tim Slamon. He gets his while sitting in a particular chair that has rococo carving in which is concealed "a little knob at the front of each arm, and another on each of the front legs. These, if pressed with the finger, will release four needles, each capable of injecting into the blood a sufficient quantity of tetraethyl lead to cause quick cessation of life. When the lights clicked off a few moments ago, Mr. Slamon, already under a nervous strain caused by his having received word that his death was imminent, started and gripped the arms of the chair, and with a characteristic convulsive motion curled his legs about the front legs of his chair."

The host goes on to give further evidence of his ingenuity:

Perhaps Miss Sylvia Inglesby will be able to explain why in all her dealings with Mr. Slamon, she was never able to make him overcome the effects of his lowly origin? . . . If Miss Inglesby had taken a little while from her so-called legal practice to outline to Mr. Slamon the elements of good taste, he might still have been among us. . . . How did I know Mr. Slamon would select the chair prepared for him? Because, ladies and gentlemen, that chair was included in the furnishings of this apartment with the purpose of attracting Mr. Slamon's approval. Mr. Slamon, you will observe, had elected to sit in the only chair in the room which is in thoroughly bad taste."

In the face of such an overwhelming indictment against her, Sylvia loses control of herself and tries to flee through the front door. And gets herself electrically fried for her tacky display of panic.

A few minutes later, the lights go out again, slowly, causing darkness to gather "like the creep of shameless abominations." Then there is a pistol shot and the sound of breaking glass. When the lights come back on, Peter and Jean find Hank Abbott slightly wounded and a bullet hole in one of the windows opening onto the penthouse terrace. They also find Dr. Reid dead, shot in the chest. "The bullet that killed Dr. Reid," Peter observes, "was fired from above Hank's head. It took a downward course. The hole in the glass is just above the back of Hank's chair. The bullet came in there, grazed the side of Hank's head, and struck Dr. Reid's heart, which was lower still."

Sound deductive reasoning. But not accurate, as we soon discover.

Peter and Hank go into the bathroom, ostensibly to bandage Hank's wound; instead, Peter knocks Hank down and proceeds to wrap him up mummy-fashion with adhesive tape. When Jean enters, Peter tells her that Hank is the madman. Hank, in turn, says that Peter is the madman, which causes Peter to tell him to "stop your grinning, you ghastly death hound!"

The result of the verbal battle that ensues is that Jean sides with Peter—she has had a yen for him ever since they were kids—and Hank, still mummified and helpless, shrugs and confesses his guilt. He claims to have had cause, real or imagined, to hate every one of his victims and to want each of them dead. "Don't you know who they were, that crew I've mercifully reduced to the elements? The epitome of narrowness, dishonesty and crookedness—in their heyday they've cost New Orleans more in broken hearts and misspent cash than the town can recover from in a decade."

Hank then claims to have swallowed a slow-acting poison while Peter was trussing him up, because he had vowed that he will never meet the hangman. Before he dies, though, he says, he'll willingly dictate a confession that will exonerate Peter and Jean of any complicity in the murders and not incidentally allow them to explain all those corpses scattered around the penthouse. This is his explanation for the mysterious voice of the host:

"Under the name of Roger Calvert—chosen at random from a tombstone—I had taken the suite directly under the penthouse and had placed there the phonographs on which my records were to be played. You who read this may play the records again if you like. You'll find there three microphones in a circle of talking machines. Each machine is controlled by a switch in this penthouse, and will change its own records. One of the microphones is in action. The others are strung for emergency.

". . . Each record [was] designed to follow the other in perfect sequence as the crime developed. For in planning these murders I had a simple task; there was nothing more intricate than arranging the lines in the same fashion that a playwright arranges them."

And this is his explanation for the murder of Dr. Reid:

". . . I turned off the lights and took a pair of target pistols from a recess behind the chair I was occupying, where I had hidden them. In the darkness, with a pistol in each hand, I pointed one at Dr. Reid and the other toward the window behind me, and I fired both at the same time.

"Both pistols were equipped with Maxim silencers. Both had long barrels that smothered the flash. One had an aluminum bullet with a light charge of powder. Synchronizing my touch, I had placed the muzzle of the pistol in my left hand just where the aluminum bullet would graze my temple, and go through the glass of the window behind me.

"Giving the pistols a polish with my handkerchief to take away fingerprints, I dropped them back into their hiding place and turned on the light."

Yet another masterful ploy. But not the last in Hank's repertoire; he has one more, which he attempts to spring when he finishes dictating the confession. "Like a leering mummy in his bandages, rocking with uncontrollable and awful laughter," he tells Peter that he won't sign the paper and what he swallowed was not poison but a dab of talcum powder. And it is Peter who will be dead in thirty seconds, with a confession in his own handwriting in his hand.

This does not happen, however. Jean suddenly knocks Peter's pen to the floor, an act that enrages Hank and requires Peter to subdue him again. The reason for Jean's action is that she tumbled to Hank's final trick an instant before it would have been too late for Peter: Hank, knowing Peter always bites the top of his fountain pen when he's thinking hard, had loaded the pen with enough prussic acid to kill the proverbial horse.

In total defeat now, Hank strikes a bargain with Peter.
 
If Peter will give him the poisoned pen, allowing him therewith to cheat the hangman, he'll tell Peter how to shut off the electrical current on the doors. Peter agrees. And the final curtain comes down as Jean and Peter leave to summon the police and Hank makes a fatal snack of the pen.