Death from a Top Hat Read Free Page B

then he withdrew his arm.
    “This was in the keyhole.” He held up a wrinkled square of blue cloth and stood looking at it a bit uncertainly. I reached over and took it from him. It was the torn quarter of a man’s blue linen handkerchief.
    Tarot meanwhile had gone into action with his picklocks. He tried one, and almost immediately we heard the catch click over. I shoved the cloth into my trouser pocket and stepped forward. Tarot, hand on the knob, was pushing at the door. It gave an inch or so, then stopped as if impeded by some heavy object. Tarot applied his shoulder, and the door moved slowly. He threw his whole weight against it, and we heard something scrape across the floor inside as the door swung inward far enough to allow an entrance. Tarot squeezed in and was silhouetted against a flickering yellowish light.
    “You’d better stay here, Eva,” Watrous advised the woman and disappeared after Tarot. I started in. Madame Rappourt stood, tensely expectant, against the corridor wall, watching. Then she moved after us.
    The others, having gone five or six feet into the room, had rounded the end of a davenport that had blocked the door but now slanted inward, angling away from the wall. They stood motionless, staring toward my left, within the room.
    I jerked my head in that direction.
    The air was misty with smoke. Four ovoid shapes of light that were tall candle flames wavered in the haze. They balanced delicately above the stubby ends of thick, black candles that stood in massive candlesticks of wrought iron. These, with a fifth in which the shortened candle had guttered out, were circularly arranged in the middle of the floor. The darkness, held off by their uncertain gleaming, lay thick around the walls and was heaped up in the corners of the room.
    I saw only this at first. Then Tarot moved forward quickly, deeper into the room. Madame Rappourt behind me made a queer choking sound in her throat. On the bare, polished floor I saw the body of a man. He was clad in pajamas and dressing gown. His puffy, congested lips were drawn back from the jutting teeth in a fixed, distorted grimace; his eyes bulged hideously from their sockets and stared with an unblinking, fish-like intensity at the ceiling; his face, swollen and livid, was contorted into a grotesquely carved mask that bore not the slightest human expression. With difficulty I recognized Cesare Sabbat.
    He lay on his back, symmetrically spread-eagled in the exact center of a large star shape that had been drawn on the floor with chalk, his head, arms, and legs extending out into the points. At the tip of each point stood one of the candles, and around this whole fantastic tableau ran a scribbled border of strange words, also in chalk.
    Tetragrammaton…Tetragrammaton…Tetragrammaton — Ismael…Adonay…Ihua — Come Surgat…Come Surgat…Come Surgat!
    The candle nearest Tarot, which had burned down to its socket, gave a final dancing flicker and went out. The darkness against the walls came closer.

Chapter 3
Suspects in the Dark
Faustus sold himself to the Devil, Slashed his wrist and wrote in blood. Pledged his soul to the Prince of Evil,
    Old Dr. Faustus.
    Bold Dr. Faustus—
    Turned his face from the good.
    George Steele Seymour: Faustus
    T IME STRETCHED ITSELF OUT intolerably while we stood there, staring. The draught from the open door snatched at the candle flames, and the body almost seemed to move as the dark shadows beneath it crawled on the floor. At last Watrous broke the straining silence.
    “Sabbat!”
    His voice now was harsh, cracked, and his hands trembled. No one else spoke.
    I rubbed my palms against my trousers, wiping away the dampness, and glanced quickly around the room. On the left, beyond Sabbat’s feet, a heavy marble fireplace towered, dominating that end of the room. Above it dull gleams of coppery light picked out the raised portions of a great circular plaque and traced a complex design of intersecting circles and unfamiliar