The Shattered Raven (6 page)

There was a round of applause through the ballroom and Barney, at a loss for words, stepped forward to grasp the black and white porcelain statuette. It was a bit smaller than the Edgar and a bit more stylised, a long-beaked raven that sat sleepily on its perch, eyeing the assembled guests. Its tail feathers hung down over the white base, and on its front were the words “MWA Special Award.” Barney grasped it tightly and stepped to the microphone, pivoting it a bit so he could speak directly into it.

“I certainly appreciate this honour. I hope I can continue to work for the group because I feel there’s much that needs to be accomplished. As we said in those words written long ago, when MWA began,
Crime does not pay
—
enough
! It’s our job to see that it pays a little more, to lift the standards in the field, and the income for the authors in the field. I’ve tried to do what I can and I will continue to.” He raised the Raven above his head. “Thanks very much.”

The applause rose again as Barney stepped back from the microphone. When it died, he came forward to begin the main part of the evening.

“And now, to start off, our awards for the best book jackets of the past year.”

Once begun, the awards went quickly. Up above, the spotlight shifted now and then to pick up those who were winning. There were still a few people moving from table to table, although most of them had settled down. Barney saw a bearded man he didn’t know near the back of the ballroom.

Before the last awards, there was a necessary pause. The Reader’s Award, given occasionally to some celebrity known to be an avid mystery reader, was to go to Ross Craigthorn. Barney had located his table earlier and now he signalled him to come up.

“Now, ladies and gentlemen, we are going to give our award for Reader of the Year. As you know, this award is usually in the form of a blunt instrument, or some mysterious weapon. We’ve given a number of things in the past. This year we have here” (he leaned over to pick it up) “a large club, such as was used by cavemen in the past. We don’t promise that it is too authentic, but it might be of good use for knocking some reticent politicians over the head. Now, without further ado, I present this award to a man we all know, a man who interrupts our dinners every night with the news of the world and, occasionally, with the news of the mystery world, Mr. Ross Craigthorn of Amalgamated Broadcasting.”

Now the applause rose higher than it had during the entire evening. Craigthorn was a big name. People knew and respected him, and it was something of a coup to get him to the MWA dinner. He rose—tall, handsome, the dignified face and voice they all knew from the television screen.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the mystery world,” he began, “I deem it a special honour to be here tonight. As you know, I have occasionally mentioned, at the close of my nightly show, a mystery or suspense yarn that particularly intrigued, baffled, and delighted me. I’ve done it because I like mysteries. I’ve liked mysteries all my life.” He tilted the microphone a bit, speaking directly into it. “I feel that they serve a purpose, perhaps a purpose beyond entertainment, in this world. I do not at all go along with those who fear that they are corrupting our youth. I suppose, though, you might say they corrupted me in a very special way.”

He paused and cleared his throat, looking around the room as if trying to pick out someone. At one of the up-front tables Skinny Simon stirred restlessly and drank from his water glass.

“I’m going to tell you something now that I’ve never told anyone before in my life. Something that is unknown to the television audience, although I hardly expect it will remain a secret after I reveal it here tonight. I’m going to tell you about two boys, or young men, if you will, alone in the world of some twenty-two years ago. You remember that time—it was soon after the war. A lot of people were mixed up. I was among them. We were both among them.

“It was my friend who got me interested in mystery reading, really. He was a great fan of Graham Greene, and this, if you will remember, was the period just after the publication of Greene’s most noteworthy entertainments. He got me reading these books and his tales of suspense and intrigue and crime were the gateway for me to the world of mystery.

“I want to tell you about my friend—about me—and about what we did one summer day back in 1947…”

And then it happened, before Barney’s startled eyes.

He had reached over to retrieve the Raven, which he’d set among the other awards not yet claimed. He was clutching it, half-turning back toward Ross Craigthorn, when the roar of a gunshot filled the room. He saw the flame leap. He saw it come, it seemed, from the microphone itself, saw it tear into Ross Craigthorn’s face and hurl him backward on the raised dais.

Craigthorn staggered, blood already coming from his face and mouth—began, to twist, falling against the table. Then he went down, hitting the floor hard. Women were screaming. Men were running toward the platform. The room was in chaos.

Barney Hamet bent over, trying to do something, anything. Betty was at his side; trembling.

“Betty, call an ambulance!” he shouted. “Call someone! Quickly!”

“What happened? What happened?”

“Call someone!”

Then he realised that Susan Veldt was also there, pushing through the others, getting to him. “Is he alive?”

For answer, Ross Craigthorn lifted his hand, tried to speak, but only blood came from his mouth where the bullet had entered. His eyes glazed, and in one last desperate lunging effort, he tore at the Raven statuette in Barney Hamet’s hand—tore it free and shattered it on the floor of the podium.

Barney tried to speak to him. “Ross! Who did it? What …?”

But there was only more blood, and the life that had remained dribbled fearfully away. The eyes continued to glaze and suddenly were staring at the ceiling. His body lurched, then was still.

Ross Craigthorn had lived for less than one minute after the bullet tore into his mouth. Now he was dead.

Somewhere in the room, before three hundred mystery writers and editors, a murderer had struck unseen.

The police came—a brusque detective named George, along with photographers and fingerprint experts and all the others. They came and examined the body and listened to the witness and took down names and photographed angles and got approximately nowhere.

It was Barney who remembered the microphone and, examining it, noticed what he had seen without noticing earlier—the slim metal tube that was wired to the side of the mike. It was a tube about six inches long, with an empty cartridge inside, and from its back ran two thin copper wires that disappeared into the podium itself. Barney followed the wires down and found a small transistorised unit of some sort inside. He didn’t know exactly what it was, but one of the detectives identified it at once.

“Part of one of these two-way citizens’ radios. It’s a receiving unit actually, set to receive a radio signal.”

“A radio signal?” Barney repeated.

By now they were examining the tube and the cartridge. Detective George grunted. “Order the entire thing removed to the back room for further study before being taken to headquarters.”

“What do you make of it?” Barney asked.

“Never saw anything like it in my life,” the detective told him. He was a big man, with wild hair and a rumpled business suit He didn’t look like a detective, but then he didn’t really look like anything else, either.

“This part is just a tube, like they use in zip guns. Basically, the thing is an electrified, radio-controlled zip gun. The cartridge … I’d guess it to be a .38—was placed down at the end of this little tube. Some wires were run, and tiny holes drilled right through the cartridge to connect the wires directly with the powder charge. A gap was left between them, enough gap for a spark. When the radio receiving unit was activated, the spark jumped across these terminals, set off the powder charge and propelled the bullet up the tube and out Very inaccurate, of course. It wouldn’t be good at more than five or ten feet, but that’s all the distance needed to kill a man here. Naturally he had his face toward the microphone. In this instance he had his mouth right in front of it while he was talking.”

“But … what does it mean? Who set the thing off?” Barney asked.

The detective sighed. “Someone with a unit like this in his possession. It could be hidden in a woman’s purse, in a suitcoat pocket, carried almost in the palm of a hand. It would be set to transmit a single signal. When a button was pressed, or a knob turned, it sent its signal and fired the bullet. A very ingenious device, and fairly simple to build.”

Barney could still not quite comprehend. “How close would the man have to be to do this?”

“I would guess a few hundred yards. Certainly anyone in this ballroom could have done it.”

“Can you search them?”

But already that seemed hopeless. The guests were scattered. There were some women in the ladies room, sobbing and hysterical. There was plenty of opportunity for the killer to dispose of his incriminating electronic gear before the police arrived.

“I want the names of everyone here,” Detective George said.

“Easy.” Barney handed him a list. “There they are. Exactly 303 of them. All you’ll need after that are the waiters. I don’t know if there was a hotel banquet manager here or not. We had a photographer, too. You’d better get his name.”

“Right.”

Barney wandered off as if in a daze. Max Winters came running up to him. “This is terrible! Terrible, Barney!”

“You’re telling me! I can imagine the headlines tomorrow.” He fumbled for a cigarette. “By the way, Max, you would have been the big winner tonight. Congratulations of a sort, I guess.”

Max gave a sardonic laugh. “Thanks. I’ll pick up my Edgar.”

Susan Veldt was there too, and Barney saw rather than comprehended the notebook full of quickly-jotted shorthand that she’d been taking down.

“Barney … What are you going to do?”

“What do you mean?”

“Do they know who did it? Do they know anything at all?”

“They know nothing—except that it was a cleverly-planned crime. A bullet inside a tube, set off by a radio signal from somewhere in this room. All the killer had to do was walk in here this afternoon and tape it to the microphone, and probably nobody noticed him. Or if they did, they didn’t pay any attention to him. He just put the receiving unit inside the rostrum, attached the wires, and left. The whole thing would take maybe two minutes at the most—probably less. Sure, the wires were visible. The tube was visible. But who was to notice? The only person that would probably have thought it was suspicious would have been an engineer or a loudspeaker expert. Even Craigthorn wouldn’t have noticed—they use boom mikes on television. I looked at the thing myself, probably saw it, and never paid any attention to it. You see a couple of extra wires—even a tube attached to the microphone—and you don’t think anything of it. Some sort of crazy new electronic gear.”

“It’s awful, Barney!”

“Murder always is.”

“Let’s go somewhere for coffee.”

“I’ve got to see the directors. All hell’s going to break out around MWA headquarters. Thanks much, but I’ll take a raincheque.”

“All right,” she said.

“I’ll call you tomorrow.”

He latched onto Max Winters and then hurried on in search of the others. He knew it was going to be a long night. “Betty, who else is here among the directors? See who you can round up.”

“Right. I’ll do the best I can.”

Dick McMullen, the agent, came up to him then. “Barney, is there anything I can do?”

“No. Just stand by. That’s what I’m telling everybody. It’s a hell of a night. I’ve got to get the directors together and decide what we’re going to do.”

T
HOUGH THE NEXT MORNING
was Saturday, Susan Veldt was at the offices of
Manhattan
before nine o’clock. She was not surprised to find Arthur Rowe already there, working over proofs for next week’s issue. With a weekly magazine that had to make a news-stand appearance every Wednesday and reach the printers on Sunday, a great deal of last-minute work was done on Saturday. She knew that Arthur Rowe worked every Saturday, often far into the night, correcting proofs, juggling articles, to fit, and generally giving each issue the slick appearance that made it all look so easy.

“How are you?” she asked, pausing at the door of his office.

“Sue! My God, Sue! Come in here and tell me all about it! What happened? What happened there? Where were you? How close were you to it? Did you see him get shot? Tell me all about it!”

She picked out her favourite chair, a comfortable leather-covered one, with brass-studded nails she could run her fingers over. Often the sessions in Arthur Rowe’s office lasted for hours, and it gave her something to do. This morning, though, she was eager to talk. The night before had been an experience, not just because it was the first time she’d ever seen anyone murdered, but because, happening where it did in the midst of all those celebrities, it had taken on the aspects of a thunderbolt. It was as if she had seen an act of God. A bullet fired without any hand on a trigger.

She ran quickly over the night’s events, recounting them in detail, as Rowe made occasional notes on his pad. He chomped so tightly on the pipe that she thought he might bite it through. Finally he took it from his mouth and placed it in the overflowing ashtray.

“Sue, we’ve got something here I We’ve got something damn big! And I’m not going to let it get away from us. There are murders every day in Manhattan, but this murder is going to make our magazine.”

“What do you mean, Chief?”

“This is what I mean! We have Ross Craigthorn, one of the most popular, best-known television personalities in the country, murdered in sight of three hundred people. And those people were not just anybody. Those people were mystery writers, mystery editors, agents. It’s their job to tantalise the public with the solving of crimes—to create detectives, and murderers, and all the rest. Don’t you see? What will happen now? Will the Mystery Writers of America band together to solve this murder in their midst? And if they do, or if they don’t, we’ve got a story either way. Just think of it …
MWA helpless before murder at awards dinner.
Or
MWA sets out
t
o capture killer on its own.
Either they find him, or they don’t. And either way, we’ve got the story of the year! You can write it as satire, or black comedy, or any way you want—but we’ve got a great story!”