Free Death from a Top Hat by Clayton Rawson Page B

question.”
    “Why not? Did it have any occult significance I didn’t get?”
    “I’ll know that when we get an answer either from Watrous or the others who attended the séance. My main purpose in asking was to see if she’d recognize me.”
    “If that song and dance was because she recognized you, then your effect on the ladies is damned devastating. Explain yourself.”
    Merlini snapped open a cigarette case and held it toward the Inspector. “You may have noticed that I moved upstage when she came on and stuck my nose in a book. I’ve met the lady before. She’s changed a good bit, and I wasn’t quite certain until she spoke. But I couldn’t mistake that voice. In 1915 she was in London, and her name was Svoboda.”
    “During the war, eh? I suppose she did a rushing ouija board business then?”
    “Not ouija boards, Inspector. She’s more original than that. But she did evoke quite a few spirits of the war dead for their relatives. She’s obviously not English, and the Military Intelligence Department began eyeing her suspiciously. I was playing the Palladium, and a member of the department asked me to check up on her for them. They thought her séances might be a clearing house for spy information, foreign agents attending and going home to decode her spirit messages. ‘Heaven is just too lovely. Having wonderful time. Wish you were here. Love. Cecil’ meaning ‘Convoy embarks Liverpool Friday. Midnight,’ That sort of thing.”
    “Svoboda the Secret Agent,” I said, “sounds like a dime novel.”
    “That’s what I thought,” Merlini answered. “If she was a spy, you would hardly expect her to go asking for investigation with a name like that. But the M.I.D. was taking no chances.”
    “Well,” Gavigan asked, “what about it? Is that what she was doing?”
    “I don’t know. My presence on several of the London Psychical Society’s investigating committees had given me rather more notoriety among mediums than I’d suspected. I wore a pair of dark glasses and was introduced as a blind man, but I should have taken more pains with the disguise. She recognized me, and the séance was a complete frost. All very ordinary and nothing startling enough to require either supernatural or fraudulent aid. So she may have been a spy, or she may merely have been hostile to conjurers. I never did find out. On the way back to the hotel that night I managed to be one of the few persons in London on whom the Zeppelins successfully dropped a bomb. I got a splinter in my arm that terminated my engagement, and I sailed for home the first boat out.”
    “I’ll check London on that,” Gavigan said. “What about these séances she’s giving now?”
    “I don’t know. I’d have to see one. Watrous brought her over here just recently, and she’s not given any public performances as yet. But if she is fraudulent and has Watrous fooled, she’s got something good. He’s nobody’s fool, even though he does talk like it at times. Trouble is, he wants to find genuine phenomena, and that unconscious bias is his weak point. He’s never bit on anything obvious though, and the few mediums to whom he has given his okay are still bones of contention.”
    “Well, just now it’s a case of does he get my okay. O’Connor! Send Colonel Watrous in here.”
    The Colonel’s entrance was excited and angry. He waved his hands. Meeting the Inspector’s unsympathetic stare, he drew himself up, adjusted his pince-nez more firmly on his bulgy nose, and cleared his throat with a prefatory rumble.
    “Where is Madame Rappourt?” he blurted. “What have you done to her? Why are you…I’ll have you know…”
    “Pull up, Colonel,” Gavigan ordered. “I’ll have you know something. This is a murder case, and since I happen to be in charge I’ll ask the questions. You answer ’em. Madame Rappourt gave us some answers and now it’s your turn. You were at the séance last night?”
    The Colonel’s carbonated sputtering