Death from a Top Hat by Clayton Rawson Read Free Book Online Page A

Mr. Harte?” His voice was refrigerated, each word a hard, frosty ice cube.
    I rebutted that, addressing myself to Gavigan. “What we’d want, I should think, would be a disinterested expert, one who’s not mixed up in the case.” I was rather pleased with that thrust, especially when I saw Tarot’s scowl.
    “I know the man, Inspector,” he argued, “and I’d advise against it. How do you know he’s not mixed up in it? He knows all these people, and he might very well have a motive—”
    The Inspector was, I think, pretty well fed up with Tarot as a self-appointed amateur detective and with his snooty superior air. His objection bounced off Gavigan’s Irish temperament and boomeranged.
    “I happen to know him myself,” Gavigan said, “and I agree with Harte. If he knows all these people that’s another good reason for having him here.”
    I stood slightly behind the Inspector, and I answered Tarot’s dirty look by pantomiming the business of laughing up my sleeve. Gavigan was still talking.
    “As it happens, I’d already thought of it. Merlini gave some lectures and demonstrations at Police College a couple of years ago explaining the tricks of card sharps and con men. He knows his business. Try and get him on the phone, Malloy.”
    Tarot dismissed the subject and said, “I’ve got to be going, much as I’d like to be here when Duvallo arrives—if he does. I’d like to hear his explanation for that card and to know why he made such a hash of things. It’s really not so hard to fool people, you know—even policemen.”
    “Oh, so?” Gavigan asked coolly.
    “Yes. Watch.”
    He turned his left side toward us and held out his right hand, which was still gloved. He turned it showing back and front. Then, with a swift, deft movement, he seemed to pick from the air a fan of about a dozen playing cards. He transferred them to his left hand and squared them up. His face now wore its professional smile, a disarming one, so apparently good-natured that it sugar-coated any chagrin his audience might feel at this double-crossing of their senses. It was the conventional grin conjurers use to nullify the conceit such an exhibition of superiority implies. But on Tarot’s sardonic countenance it worked a startling transformation. He hardly seemed to be the same person who had been scowling at me so blackly a moment before.
    As we watched he produced another handful of cards in a neat fan, and he repeated the gesture twice more with easy precision until he was holding a full deck. It was a slick performance, marred only by the fact that he did it with his gloves on. This variation, Merlini had once told me, was originated by Cardini, and the number of small fry who have pirated it are merely admitting their own lack of originality. I wondered why Tarot, a top-notch card man in his own right, descended to that sort of thing.
    Gavigan, I saw, was consciously suppressing an openmouthed attitude. I suspected that he was one of those persons who dislike being fooled, whose alibi is always, “Oh, well, of course the stage is riddled with trap doors,” and who get a bit of a jolt when a conjurer for the first time comes right up close, and with no trap doors about, hoodwinks them just the same.
    Tarot came forward, fanned the cards in front of Gavigan, and voiced the conjurer’s stock request, “Take a card, please.”
    The Inspector half hypnotically put forth his hand, and then withdrew it, scowling.
    “For crissake!” he flared. “This is no time for parlor tricks!”
    Tarot shrugged and dropped the cards into his pocket.
    “Sorry!” he said, “I must be going anyhow. I’m late now.” He headed toward the door.
    “Not so fast!” Gavigan said quickly. “I won’t take a card, but I’ll have something else. Those picklocks, please.”
    He held out his hand.
    Tarot stopped, grinned, and bringing out the key ring he tossed them at the Inspector. They jingled and flashed in the light as the latter caught