Murder Impossible Page 13

  'When do you want to do this?'

  'Right now.'

  Tapp studied Chisholm speculatively. 'Chisel—remember how we used to call you that?—when we were kids a lot of the others had contempt for me because I wouldn't take chances. I've done pretty well in life because of caution. But don't be misled: I will take a risk. I'll take this one.'

  Chisholm smiled broadly, but this time his smile had a Mephistophelian look. 'Fine. Shall we begin?'

  Tapp held out his wrist silently and they compared watches.

  'Fifteen minutes from the time you close the door,' said Chisholm.

  Tapp went out. As he pushed the door shut, he called through the narrowing crack, 'Not that I think you have a snowball's chance, Chisel.'

  The door had scarcely closed before Chisholm was examining the mirror on the long wall with minute attention. He would have to proceed as though it were a two way mirror, with only a thin layer of silver. He doubted that this was true, but he could not ignore the possibility. Finally he located what he was looking for: a circular loop in the border decoration on the glass. The glass within the loop looked subtly different.

  His smile grew even more diabolical. He quickly stripped the convention badge from his left lapel and pasted it over the circle in the glass.

  He then turned swiftly to the cases, taking out his key ring. Before he started to use it, he took a pair of thin rubber gloves from another pocket and put them on. Then, at a pace only a little slower than a walk, he went from case to case and opened the locks, which he had studied while looking at the documents the second time.

  When he lifted all the lids, he laughed at the thought of nine alarms ringing simultaneously in Tapp's ears, or nine position lights flashing at one time in Tapp's face. He then went from case to case and reached inside each. All his movements were swift. Most of them were intended as pure misdirection.

  Finally he had what he wanted. Now all he had to do was to make sure—doubly sure—that he was not being observed. To provide a cloak, he removed his jacket and slipped it over his shoulders backward, with the back of the jacket hanging in front of him and concealing his hands. His fingers made several rapid movements beneath the protection of the jacket. Then he suddenly reversed the process and put the coat back in its normal position.

  He looked at his watch. Only eight minutes had passed.

  For the remainder of the time Chisholm lounged against the door¬frame singing slightly ribald songs in a clear, but not overloud, voice.

  Precisely at the end of fifteen minutes, first one, then the other of the door locks was opened. The door itself, which was covered with a paneling of steel, swung back.

  As Tapp stepped in, his glance already darting around the room, Chisholm clapped him lightly on the back.

  'I hope you brought the cheque with you, Don.'

  Tapp half turned, and Chisholm felt a hard object bore into his ribs. He looked down. Tapp had shoved a pistol into his side.

  'I have the cheque, Chisel, but you're going to earn it—if you get it at all. Step back.'

  Chisholm obeyed.

  'Now, go over there to the opposite wall and sit on the floor by that first case. Fine. Extend your arms so that one is on either side of the leg of the case. Very good.'

  Chisholm, from his position on the floor, saw Tapp take a pair of handcuffs from his pocket. Warily, the shorter man approached him.

  'Wrists out, Chisel. Good.'

  Tapp leaned over and snapped the cuffs on Chisholm's wrists. The tall diabolical looking man had not ceased to smile.

  'A lot of trouble, Don, just to find out what I did take. A lot of trouble to keep me from confusing you even more while you look. But I'll be glad to tell you without all this melodrama.'

  'Just be quiet, Chisel,' Tapp said calmly. 'If you aren't, I'll slug you with the butt of this gun.'

  'Violence wasn't in our agreement, Don.'

  'You were not completely honest with me, Chisel. After you put all your misdirections into action, the hunch I'd had about you came out into the open. I remembered your hobby when you were a boy. I made one phone call to a local convention delegate I happen to know, and he told me you still practice your hobby. You're still an amateur magician, aren't you, Chisel?'

  Chisholm shrugged. 'I do a little routine to catch the buyer's atten¬tion, then I work it into a sales talk for our products. It often helps.'

  'Spare me,' Tapp muttered, peering into cases. His face darkened. 'You lied to me, Chisel. You said you would take only one document. I count three of them: the Garfield letter we read, the Seward I mentioned, and the Button Gwinnett.'

  'I didn't lie,' Chisholm replied calmly. 'Figure it out for your¬self.'

  'Misdirection again.' Tapp turned and stared at him, but it was clear that his thoughts were elsewhere. In a moment he turned back to the cabinets and carefully lifted the velvet in the bottom of each. He found nothing.

  He stood in thought for a few more minutes.

  'The Garfield and the Alexander Graham Bell are the same size, and so are the Seward and the Lincoln. The Button Gwinnett doesn't match any, but it is smaller . . .'

  Once more he went from case to case, this time lifting each of the remaining documents. When he had finished, he was smiling. He had found two of the missing papers carefully placed beneath others of the same size. He restored the Garfield and Seward documents to their proper cases.

  'That leaves only the Button Gwinnett, Chisel. But this was what you had in mind all along. It's obvious. And if you're worth your salt as a magician, its hiding place won't be obvious. So let's eliminate the commonplace.'

  Tapp went over the cases carefully, first lifting out all the documents, then each piece of velvet. When he had replaced everything, he closed and locked the cases. Then he dropped to his knees and inspected the under sides of the cabinets.

  He found nothing.

  He walked to each end of the room in turn and reached up to the tiny air passages. The mesh in both was still firmly in place, and he could not budge it at either opening.

  Then his eye caught the mirror.

  'Oh, and another thing—' He walked to the mirror and stripped off the convention tag. 'You're a sharp fellow, Robert.'

  Chisholm laughed. 'Was my guess right? Closed circuit TV? Did I cover the lens?'

  'You put a patch on its eye, I must admit.'

  'No two way mirror?'

  'I considered it, but with several receivers on the TV, I can be at any one of several places in the house. A two way mirror would only restrict me.'

  He walked over and stood in front of Chisholm. 'Two possibilities still remain. One is that you might have slipped it into my own pocket at the door. So I'll check that out now.'

  He searched through all his pockets, but found nothing which had not been in them before.

  He now stopped and unlocked the handcuffs, but made no move to take them from Chisholm's wrist.

  'Drop the cuffs there, get up, and go to that corner,' he said, motioning with the gun to the bare corner furthest away from the door.

  Chisholm obeyed. When he had moved, Tapp inspected the area where the magician had been sitting. 'All right. Now take off your clothes—one garment at a time—and throw them over to me.'

  Chisholm complied, beginning with his coat jacket, until he stood completely stripped.

  Tapp went over each item minutely, crushing cloth carefully, listening for the crackle of paper, inspecting shoes for false heels and soles and the belt for a secret compartment. From Chisholm's trousers he extracted a handkerchief and an ordinary key ring. In the pockets of the coat jacket he found a larger collection. The inside breast pocket yielded a wallet and two used envelopes with jottings on the back. The outside pockets contained the unusual key ring, the rubber gloves, a nearly full packet of cigarettes, a crumpled cigarette packet, a ballpoint pen, and a rubber band.

  Tapp examined all these things with intense concentration. In the wallet he found money, a driver's license,
a miscellany of credit and identification cards, and a small receipt for the purchase of a shirt at a local department store. He searched for a hidden compartment in the wallet, but found none. He then shook the cigarettes from the pack, but neither the pack itself nor the individual cigarettes was the least out of the ordinary. Replacing them, he then smoothed out the crumpled pack. Several items inside it he dumped on the top of one of the cases: a twist of cellophane; two wadded bits of brownish, waxy looking paper; a fragment of wrapper from a roll of peppermints; and part of a burned match. He snorted and swept this trash back into its container.

  He drew in his breath with an angry hiss. 'All right, Chisel, let's look .yow over. Turn round. Raise your arms. All right, now sit down on the floor and raise your feet.'

  'Nothing on the soles of my feet except dust from the floor. You should clean this place oftener,' said Chisholm, leaning back on his arms.

  Tapp's only answer was a growl. 'Have you checked the ceiling?' Chisholm asked. Tapp looked up involuntarily. The ceiling was bare. 'See, you wouldn't have thought of that, would you?' Chisholm mocked.

  Tapp leaned against one of the cabinets and aimed the pistol at Chisholm's midriff.

  'Chisel, playtime is over. I want that Button Gwinnett back.'

  'Or else, eh? You forget a number of things. We haven't yet established whether the paper is in this room or out of it. We haven't exchanged your cheque for $50,000 for the stolen document. I haven't even put my clothes back on. And, incidentally, I give you my word: the missing paper isn't in my clothing.'

  Tapp tossed the clothing to Chisholm. 'It doesn't matter. You're going to tell me where that piece of paper is.'

  Chisholm began to dress. 'How do you propose to make me tell? Shoot me? On the grounds that I broke into your house to steal? A respected businessman like me—steal? If you killed me, then you'd never find your paper. If you only wounded me, I'd refuse to talk. So where are we, old friend?'

  Tapp said grimly, 'This bet of yours is just a stall. Once you get out of this room you'll take off with the signature to certain other collectors I could name. Why else won't you admit who told you about my collection. Only a handful of people know about it.'

  Chisholm was tempted to yield on this point and reveal to Tapp that it was the district manager of Tapp's own insurance company who had mentioned the collection to him in strict confidence. Had he not wished to show even the slightest sign of weakness, he would have told this.

  'The whole thing was strictly honourable,' Chisholm said. 'This stunt was my own idea.'

  'And my idea,' said Tapp heavily, 'is to lock you in here without food and water until you return the paper. When you finally get out, I could always claim that I thought you had left the house and had locked you in without knowing.'

  Chisholm shook his head. 'I had more respect for you, Don. If you did that, you'd either have to leave the other documents with me— and risk my destroying them—or take them out and have their absence disprove your story.'

  Inwardly, Chisholm was beginning to have qualms. If Tapp should abandon reason in favour of a collector's passion, as he seemed about to do, anything might happen. The best course was an immediate distraction.

  'How do you know,' he said challengingly, 'that the paper isn't already outside the room?' Tapp snorted. 'Impossible!'

  'Is it, now? There is a small trick I often do at dinner gatherings which depends entirely on the victim's being too close to me to see what my hands are really doing. I move a handkerchief from hand to hand near the victim's face, then throw it over his shoulder when my hand is too close for him to see exacdy what I've done.'

  Tapp said warily, 'But at no time were you outside this room.'

  'I didn't have to be.' Suddenly Tapp understood. 'You mean when I came in!' He moved back and reached behind him to open the door. 'Stay where you are.' He stepped out and pushed the door shut again.

  Chisholm waited tensely.

  The door opened to a pencil wide crack. 'There's nothing out here, Chisel.'

  Chisholm answered evenly. 'I didn't say there was. But if you'll use the brains I've always given you credit for, you'll realize that I don't want to steal your precious piece of paper. If I had, why make the bet? Let me out of here and give me the $50,000 cheque for the hospital, and I'll tell you where the Button Gwinnett signature is.'

  A silence followed his words. Seconds dragged by. Minutes.

  Finally Tapp spoke. 'You swear that this will end here? That you won't even tell anyone about this incident? I used to think your word could be relied on, Chisel.'

  'I'll swear on anything you name.'

  'That won't be necessary.' The door opened wide. 'Now, where is it?'

  Chisholm smiled and shook his head. 'First, the $50,000 cheque.'

  Tapp eyed him shrewdly. 'I don't know that the paper is out of the room. I don't owe you anything unless it is outside, and you're still inside. But you agreed to tell me where it is.'

  Chisholm kept smiling. 'I'll swear again, if you like. The paper is outside the room, according to the conditions of our bet.'

  Tapp studied him. 'Very well, come up to my den and I'll give you the cheque. You have my word I'll keep my part of the bargain. Now—where is that paper?'

  Chisholm stepped to Tapp's side and clapped him affectionately on the back. Then he held out his right hand.

  'Here.'

  As Tapp all but snatched the document from him, Chisholm fished in his own jacket pocket. He took out the crumpled cigarette pack, opened it, and shook out the contents.

  'Remember the convention badge I stuck over your TV camera lens? Such badges are only strips of cardboard coated on the back with a permanently tacky adhesive—the way surgical adhesive tape is coated. From the cigarette pack he took the two scraps of brownish, waxy paper. 'That gave me the idea. It's easy to obtain tape with such an adhesive on both front and back. This brown paper protects the adhesive until it's peeled off, making the tape ready for use. In this case I kept a small bit of such tape in my pocket, removed the Button Gwinnett signature from the cabinet, exposed the adhesive on one side of the tape, and stuck the Button Gwinnett to that exposed side. Then I made the other side of the tape ready and palmed the whole thing.'

  Chisholm repeated an earlier gesture. A look of comprehension spread over Tapp's face.

  'When you came into the room at the end of the fifteen minutes,' Chisholm explained, 'I simply put the Button Gwinnett paper in the one place you couldn't see—on your back!'

  JOHN LUTZ

  It's a Dog's Life

  If you're a mystery writer, budding or well established, watch out for John Lutz. You may think you've carved out a piece of turf that's peculiarly your own and where you can't be challenged. Don't believe it. Here's a writer whose versatility is a watchword and whose regular standard is that of excellence.

  Perhaps you specialize in offbeat thrillers? Lutz can do them. Take Bonegrinder—only his third book but already with the hallmark of a master of suspense as he pits Sheriff Billy Wintone against the unseen, perhaps unseeable, Bigfoot monster that prays relentlessly on a rural community. Or there's The Shadow Man, the eponymous, multipersonalitied Martin Karpp who, despite being under close guard, seems to have the ability to project one of his personae beyond his prison walls to carry out a series of brutal murders.

  Then again, you may earn your bread-and-butter writing PI novels. Many do—and John Lutz is one of them. Even better (or worse, if you're the opposition) he doesn't have just one series, he has two. The longer running features Nudger (six books so far), a sensitive man with a dyspeptic stomach. His speciality is the retaking of children taken out of state in custody cases, but Nudger is frankly not the world's most successful detective. Much more on the ball is Lutz's second PI, Fred Carver (four books), an excop with a gimpy leg, invalided out of the Orlando, FL, force and inclined to a more aggressive line.

  And if you write police procedural—well, there's Lutz again. Only two so far (and one of thos
e coauthored with Bill Pronzini) but the later one, Shadowtown, came out as recently as 1988, and all the evidence is that once John Lutz gets his teeth into something he keeps on chewing.

  Fine, I hear you say (a faint note of desperation in your voice), I'll switch to short stories. Forget it. Lutz has been there, done it all, bought the T-shirt! Or, more accurately, about ISO different T-shirts. So what is there left? Impossible Crime. That has to be it. But no—for here, before your very eyes (no pun intended) Lutz sets a neat little Impossible problem . . . which has an equally neat solution.

  ROBERT ADEY

  Sam growled beside me, as if he didn't like the looks of the rambling mansion beyond the car's windshield. The place didn't seem particularly forbidding to me, maybe because there was a fee involved in our coming here.

  I pulled my Beetle into the circular drive and stopped in the shadow of one of the house's many gables. Parked on the other side of the driveway was a plain grey sedan I recognized and wasn't at all surprised to see. As I held the door open for Sam, I glanced at the miles of wooded hills surrounding the house and wondered how much of them the Creel family owned.

  I rang the bell. A butler opened the door six inches and peered down an aristocratic nose at me. 'Milo Morgan to see Vincent Creel,' I said.

  The nose dipped a few degrees as the butler took in Sam's low, squat frame. 'Come in, sir. But the, er . . .' 'Mr. Creel hired both of us,' I said.

  Lieutenant Jack Redaway, whose unmarked police car was parked outside, was in a large Victorian room talking to the Creel family. Vincent Creel shook my hand and introduced me to the other family members. There was tall and elegant Robert, short and muscular James, short and almost as muscular Millicent. Like Vincent Creel, who was silver haired, urbane, and very rich, they were all the brothers and sister of homicide victim Carl Creel.

  It had been Carl Creel who had replenished the family coffers with his bestselling book on how to survive the ravages of inflation. The Creel family, struggling along on dwindling wealth from the oil dealings of their forebears, had no further financial problems after a big movie studio bought the rights to Carl Creel's book and made it into a successful comedy.