Quests of Simon Ark (27 page)

“They were always very close. They’re French, raised in Paris by a French father and an American mother. They moved here before the war and Lyle and I were married for about twenty years. I was not as wealthy then, but I was generous to them both. After the divorce they went away, and now they’re back. Since Lyle’s death a few weeks ago Eric has taken an apartment in Greenwich Village.”

“How did you acquire your wealth?” Simon asked her. “If you have no objection to my curiosity.”

“Not at all. I imagine Hopkins has told you already anyway. I have had a great many friends over the years and as they died their money has come to me.”

“Through your powers as a witch?”

“If you will.” Before she could say more, Marie entered with the tea on a silver tray. The old woman fell silent while we were served, and I took the opportunity to study Marie herself. She was a classic dark-haired beauty, with pale skin that made a vivid contrast to the blood-red lipstick she wore. “That will be all,” Maud Slumber told her when tea had been served, and our conversation did not resume until the maid had retreated to the kitchen.

“Is she French too?” Simon asked.

“Marie? Yes. I watch my words around her. Lyle recommended her to me when my former maid left last year and I’ve always had a nagging suspicion she was sent to spy for him.”

“But Lyle is dead now,” Simon reminded her.

“His brother Eric is alive. Sometimes I think they’re more alike than twins.”

“Which is why you’ve put a hex on him as well?”

“I’m an old lady and witchcraft is a hobby to me. Perhaps Lyle would have died anyway. His time had come.”

“Then you’re not threatening Eric?”

“What gave you that idea?”

“Your attorney.”

“He talks too—” The lobby buzzer interrupted her. “Marie, see who that is!” she called.

The maid reappeared to answer the buzzer and listened to the crackling intercom. “It’s Doctor Langstrom, madam.”

“Oh, have him come up,” she said. Then, to Simon: “I’m sorry, but my doctor is here. Perhaps we can talk again sometime—about a mutual acquaintance.”

Simon lifted himself to his feet. “And who might that be?”

“Why, Satan, of course.”

From the kitchen came the sound of shattering glass. I made a move toward the closed door through which Marie had just disappeared. She came back through it, her chalk-white face without expression. “I’m deeply sorry, madam,” she said. “I broke one of the water glasses.”

Doctor Langstrom arrived before Maud Slumber could vent whatever anger she might have about the broken glass. Once the doctor was admitted she dismissed the maid and introduced us. Langstrom, a tall slender man with grey hair and a mustache, extended a bony hand. “Simon Ark. I’ve heard your name—aren’t you lecturing up at my alma mater this week?”

They fell into a brief, friendly conversation while I edged toward the door. Presently Simon lumbered along after me.

“Interesting,” he said when we were in the elevator.

“Who—Maud Slumber or the doctor?”

“Neither one,” he replied enigmatically. “The maid.”

“You mean she broke the glass when Satan was mentioned.”

“It would seem she’d be accustomed to her mistress’s behavior.”

We were leaving the building by way of the revolving door, having passed the uniformed security man, when Simon’s attention was attracted by a bald man with thick glasses who was approaching the building with a purposeful stride.

“Pardon me, sir,” Simon said, intercepting him on the sidewalk. “Would you happen to be Mr. Eric Caser?”

“Yes,” the man replied. “Do we know one another?” He spoke with a decided French accent.

“We have never met,” Simon replied, “but I came here because of you—and your brother.”

“My brother is dead.”

“I know that. An attorney, Gregory Hopkins, believes your life may be in danger too.”

“From that witch’s hex?” Caser snorted. “I have my own amulet against hexes.” He started to push past us.

“Don’t try to see her now,” Simon warned.

Eric Caser turned to stare at him. “The thing which killed my brother will not harm me,” he said. He entered the revolving door and started through.

“How did you know that was Eric Caser?” I asked Simon, but before he could answer something strange happened.

Caser, pushing through the revolving door, had somehow become stuck.

We heard him cry, or mutter in anger, and try to force the glass door inward. But something had jammed it, and even as we went to help from outside the security guard was walking toward it from the lobby.

Something seemed to frighten Caser and he turned away from the guard toward us, trying to push his way out again. When he saw it was useless he pounded on the glass, sheer panic washing over his face.

“Don’t break the glass!” Simon shouted, perhaps remembering how Caser’s brother had died. “Don’t panic! We’ll have you free in a minute!”

But then a shudder seemed to run through the imprisoned man’s body. He clawed at his breast pocket and pulled out a black marking pen.

And as we watched, helpless, he printed a single jagged word on the glass in front of his face.

Then, his mouth working soundlessly, he dropped the pen and slid into a heap inside the jammed revolving door. The word he had printed on the glass was
MARIE.

“He’s dead,” Simon said when the security guard had finally freed the jammed door. Then he told the man, “Phone upstairs to the Slumber apartment and get Dr. Langstrom down here.”

“What killed him?” I asked.

“I don’t know. It could have been his heart. He’s no youngster.”

I was staring at the glass of the revolving door and the word Caser had left there. “He didn’t think it was his heart, Simon. He thought he was being murdered. He left us a dying message naming his killer.”

But Simon ignored that for the moment. Dr. Langstrom had come down in answer to the summons and was kneeling beside the body. He tore open Caser’s shirt and listened to his heart. “This man is dead,” he confirmed.

“Do you know him, Doctor?” Simon asked.

“I’ve never seen him before, at least to my knowledge. Who is he?”

“Eric Caser, the brother of Maud Slumber’s former husband.”

“He was coming to see her?”

“I assume so.”

Langstrom loosened more of Caser’s clothes and tried to pump a spark of life into him but without success. An ambulance and police car arrived on the scene. As the body was being taken away I noticed the security guard fussing with the revolving door and polishing the glass. “What happened to the word that was written there?” I asked him.

He looked blank. “What word? I didn’t notice any word—just some dirty smudges.” He was a dark-haired man in his thirties who looked as if he might have been a boxer once.

“What’s your name?”

“Vic Tannet. What’s it to you?”

“Are you employed by the building management?”

“Of course. Do you think I do this for my health?”

“What seems to be the trouble?” Simon asked, coming over to join us.

“He wiped off the word Caser wrote,” I said.

“No matter. We saw what it said.”

“But—”

“The police are treating it as a natural death. There’s no reason yet for us to treat it any differently.” He took my arm and led me away.

“You mean you believe this business of a witch’s hex?” I said. “You believe those glass doors imprisoned and killed him somehow?”

“I believe he died before our eyes, trapped in the door with no living thing anywhere near him. He couldn’t have been murdered, therefore his death must have been from natural causes.”

And that’s what we told Greg Hopkins later that afternoon, seated in his office overlooking Wall Street. At first he couldn’t believe our words, but then he asked for a detailed account of our meeting with Maud Slumber and our later encounter with Eric Caser.

“How did you know it was Caser?” he asked Simon.

“You showed me a picture of his brother Lyle. And Maud Slumber made the remark that they were more alike than twins. When I saw a man so closely resembling the photograph approaching the building I made the simple deduction it was Eric.”

“Eric dead! I still can’t believe they could both go like that. Maybe the old woman is a witch after all.”

“There are other possibilities,” Simon remarked. “Coincidence, for one. But what can you tell me about Dr. Langstrom?”

The attorney shrugged. “He’s an old friend of Maud’s. A widower, getting along in years himself but still active. In addition to his own small practice he does a bit of research for the government. Some business with electric eels.”

“And Marie, Miss Slumber’s French maid?” Simon asked.

“I don’t know anything about her. Maud mentioned her once recently, said she was seeing some man Maud didn’t approve of, but that’s all I know. I’ve only seen her once or twice when I called at the apartment.”

Simon nodded, almost as if this was the answer he’d expected. “I’m sorry we couldn’t have been of more help to you. We simply arrived too late.”

“Too late?” Hopkins repeated, not understanding. “But I thought you were there when he died.”

“Perhaps Eric Caser started to die a long time ago, when Maud Slumber first put her hex on him.”

“Then you believe in witchcraft?”

“I believe in Maud Slumber. It may not be the same thing.”

The following morning I was visited by Detective Sergeant Anthony Banto. He entered casually after my secretary announced him and glanced around at the framed cover art from some of our bestselling paperbacks. “First time I’ve ever been in a publishing company. Neptune Books, eh? My son reads a lot of them. You print ’em here in the building?”

“No, over in New Jersey. This is just the editorial and sales office.”

“Interesting business, I suppose.”

“You’ve come about the death I witnessed yesterday?”

“Yeah.” He took out his notebook and thumbed through the pages. “Eric Caser. That the fellow?”

“That’s him.”

“Tell me what happened. You were there with another man. Simon Ark?”

“That’s right.” I went over the previous day’s events once more, leaving out the part about Maud Slumber’s hex. “Do you have the autopsy report yet?”

He scratched his ear and nodded. “That’s why I’m here.”

“Was it a heart attack?”

“No. He was poisoned.”

“Poisoned!” I almost came out of my chair. “A slow-acting poison that just happened to kill him while he was stuck in the revolving door?”

Sergeant Banto shook his head, ignoring my sarcasm. “No, actually the medical examiner says it was a form of cyanide that would have caused death within less than a minute. It was apparently injected by a hypodermic needle into the victim’s left arm.”

“That’s impossible,” I insisted. “Simon Ark and I witnessed the whole thing. No one came near the man. He was trapped in this revolving door and no one was near him.”

“What about after he was freed?”

“He was already dead then.” I remembered the doctor and the security guard. “Even if he wasn’t, Simon and I were there all the time. No one could have injected him without our seeing it.”

The detective shook his head. “Well, he sure didn’t commit suicide. No hypo was found on the body.”

“His hands were in plain view all the time,” I agreed. “He was writing on the glass with a marking pen.”

“Writing?”

“I mentioned it earlier. He wrote the word Marie.”

“As he was dying?”

“Yes. He seemed unable to speak and his strength was fading fast—he died in less than a minute.”

“Was anyone named Marie on the scene?”

“No,” I said. I told him about Maud Slumber’s maid.

“But you have no reason to believe this was the Marie he meant, or even that he was trying to indicate the name of his killer?”

“No, but in detective stories a dying message is usually—”

“This isn’t a detective story, sir. There was a movie when I was a kid—before your time, I guess—about a man who died saying the word Rosebud. Turned out at the end it wasn’t the name of a person at all—just a sled he’d had as a kid. See what I mean about dying messages?”

“Citizen Kane,”
I remarked. “It wasn’t before my time.”

“But you get my point?”

“Yes.”

“So think about it. Who could have injected this man Caser with the poison?”

I thought about it. “No one.”

“You’re sure?”

“No one,” I repeated. “He couldn’t have died that way.”

“But he did. Unless you’re willing to believe in the supernatural.”

“Who said anything about the supernatural?” I asked.

“I should have told you I interviewed Simon Ark just before coming here. He seems to believe a supernatural explanation is possible. He said something about witchcraft.”

“
Oh
.”

“I’ll be getting back to you,” Banto said, rising.

As he was going out the door I asked, “Do you believe in witchcraft, Sergeant?”

He looked back and smiled. “Oh, no. Not me.”

I telephoned Simon as soon as Banto had left and described my conversation with him. “My talk with him was quite similar,” he said.

“How could Caser have been injected with poison in front of our eyes?” I asked.

“It’s an interesting problem,” Simon admitted. “Are you coming up to hear me speak tonight?”

“Of course.” The evening session was a public portion of the university’s workshop and Simon would be delivering a brief, popularized version of his student lectures.

“I’m leading off the program at eight.”

“I’ll be there.”

I’d heard him speak many times before, but this evening Simon delivered his concept of magic in the Middle Ages with a new verve that seemed to hypnotize the young audience. Watching his gestures, listening to his words, I could almost believe his occasional claim that he’d been there when the Inquisition burned its witches, when Gilles de Rais rode with Joan and the horned god danced beneath the winter moon.

Afterward I sought him out at the rear of the podium. “You really outdid yourself tonight, Simon,” I said.

But he wanted nothing of my compliments. “Come here, my friend. A most unusual visitor is waiting for me backstage.”