Wicked Spirits, page 26
‘Pick it up yourself!’
This could have resulted in a draw, for neither of the leviathans would have dared to bend over in close quarters. Mme Olympe looked around for something to throw at Banner’s head when Leslie rushed up. At once her demeanour became more spiritual and she purred.
Gant plucked the offending cloak from the floor to hang it in the clothes closet. He took this opportunity to search the garment, for hidden pockets and smuggler’s hemlines. There was nothing.
Everybody trooped into the sitting room, Mme Olyrmpe joggling on open-toed sandals. As Suzanne continued to play more music—Peter and the Wolf—she appealed to Gant with her eyes to start taking some of the hot air out of Mme Olympe. Banner intercepted the glance.
But he waited till he had accepted one of the miniature brandy snifters that Leslie was passing around on a tray. Augustly he saluted everybody and then sipped.
Mme Olympe had lowered herself into a chair sturdy enough to hold her. Banner stationed himself opposite her. He said: ‘I heard about that demonstration you gave these people. It was mighty thin.’ He propped up one big fiddle-sized tennis shoe. ‘About as much ectoplasm emanates from you as there is in my big toe!’
Mme Olympe nearly choked on her brandy.
Leslie started forward. ‘Jasmine might have been in that room. We smelled the perfume she used to use.’
Banner looked sour. ‘Mme Olympe gave you a sniff from a concealed atomizer.’
Leslie’s knuckles were white on the tabletop. ‘Jasmine wrote her name on the ceiling!’
Banner made disagreeable chewing sounds. ‘Mme Olympe wrote it! How—when she didn’t get outta her chair? She had a red crayon stuck on the end of a reaching rod!’
‘But Jasmine’s earring!’ cried Leslie. The earring that landed in the middle of the table!’
Quizzically Banner raised his blacklead eyebrows. ‘Telekinesis? You’ll notice that rapport is always done with small objects. I’ve never heard yet of a medium who’s done it with a grand pianna. Mme Olympe has an electrically controlled rotating wall-panel that lobs small objects like those earrings out into the room!’
Leslie still looked doubtful. ‘How do you explain that it was one of the earrings that was buried with Jasmine? I had them especially made for her!’
‘Duplicated somehow, said Banner with a wave of the hand. He looked at Suzanne and waggled his thumb at Mme Olympe. ‘Take her into one of the bedrooms and fan her.’
Suzanne’s eyes popped. ‘Fan her?’
‘Search her. I think you’ll do a good job.’
In her chair Mme Olympe’s blubbery face had been growing brick red, her hands were clutching like long crusty talons, and she was puffing with hostility. As she struggled to her feet, helped by Suzanne, she choked: ‘Doubters! You won’t doubt me after tonight! I’ll be the greatest medium that ever lived!’
She and Suzanne lurched out of the room.
Waiting, Leslie paced back and forth, worriedly smoking a cigarette. Gant sat, only half listening to the music, trying to keep his wits sharp for whatever might happen next. Banner was humming along with the record in the manner of a man who is completely tone deaf.
Yet his eyes were restless, not missing anything.
Suzanne came back. ‘Al I found out,’ she reported, ‘is that she needs a new girdle.’
Mme Olympe trailed in, smoothing her bolster stomach. She sneered: ‘Satisfied, dearie?’
Comical as she is, thought Gant, there’s something sinister about her.
Mme Olympe resumed her chair. ‘Turn off that phonograph,’ she ordered. Find seats, everybody.’
Leslie and Suzanne took places near each other. Gant sat back gingerly. It was ready to begin.
Banner lugged a chair around to the doorway. Anyone trying to get out of the room and to the rest of the apartment through the foyer would first have to stumble over him. From where he was he could also keep an eye on the French door that he’d bolted.
‘The lights,’ said Mme Olympe in a graveyard voice.
Banner was nearest the electric switch on the wall. He clicked it off.
Opalescent moonlight flooded the terrace outside and spilled in through the partly open French door. The five people sat beyond the patch of light, in the darkness. They weren’t in the conventional circle and nobody held hands. Except, thought Gant, Leslie might possibly be holding Suzanne’s, but for another reason.
The scent of mignonette floated in on the warm night air. Somebody fidgeted. Gant’s dollar watch ticked loudly. After a while Mme Olympe began to make sounds that were suspiciously like snoring.
Gant’s own eyelids felt heavy. He was drowsy. He yawned silently once. Sitting, doing nothing in the dark. This was pure foolishness, he thought.
And then he saw it.
A shadow moved on the terrace. It rippled across the curtains on the French window, making goblin shapes. It came slowly, slowly, and paused in the doorway.
It was a woman, moonlight on her blonde hair, dressed in something flowing and diaphanous.
My God! thought Gant. This could be the real thing! I might be all wrong!
There was a stirring in the room and a hoarse croak. Leslie’s voice. ‘Jasmine! Jasmine!’
Gant could smell the jasmine fragrance now, coming in to overpower the mignonette. He was frozen in his chair, watching with opiated fascination every move of the almost transparent figure in the terrace doorway. She seemed to be turning her head as if seeking somebody.
‘Nobody move!’ snapped Mme Olympe’s voice. She wasn’t asleep after all.
The figure stood there silhouetted, wavering, fluttering small hands, summoning up the power to communicate.
A small reedy voice pitched upward toward the ceiling. ‘I was pushed! I was pushed!’
Banner’s voice barked: ‘Who pushed you?’
The figure struggled with itself, hesitated, then stepped back, pulling the French door closed with her. Her moving shape flickered on the curtains.
For several long pulsebeats the room remained in stunned silence, then noise erupted. In spite of Mme Olympe’s warning not to move, Gant bounded out of his chair. He winced as he banged his shin against an invisible coffee table. Before he could reach the French door he had to wrestle a fat unwieldy body out of the way. If it was Mme Olympe, she must have moved with great speed.
Then the darkness vanished as Banner turned on the lights.
Gant glanced briefly around, orienting himself. Everyone was standing. Leslie and Suzanne were together, looking bewildered. Mme Olympe was in a half crouch by her chair. Banner was lumbering forward, ready to take charge.
It was he who yanked open the French door and led the scramble out onto the terrace. Mme Olympe was the last to waddle out of the sitting room.
Banner floundered among the wrought iron table and chairs.
‘She’s gone!’ breathed Suzanne.
That was true. The terrace was empty. As empty as it had been when they first searched it.
Buffaloed, Banner looked up and around. Nothing. He trotted to the 14-inch wide terrace wall and peered down that abysmal drop to the avenue. Only a fly could have climbed up or down that.
‘Look here!’ said Gant with excitement. He was pointing to one of the massive cement flowerboxes a few feet away. The violets growing there had been freshly crushed and some of the earth was disturbed.
Banner bent closer. Clearly imprinted in the soil was the impression of a small naked foot, the toe-marks facing the very edge.
Banner said huskily: ‘The next step outward would be twenty storeys down!’
‘Or over there!’ rasped Leslie.
He was standing tensely, looking across the broad avenue to a similar penthouse terrace opposite.
They all looked. On the distant terrace a female form in a diaphanous drape waved her arm sadly at them. She fluttered in and out through the shadows and vanished inside through a dark doorway.
‘By the great eternal!’ gasped Banner. ‘She made it!’
‘You’ll believe me now!’ wheezed Mme Olympe. She seemed completely done in.
Awe was in their faces. Scepticism crept back in Banner. He wheeled toward Gant. ‘Barney, nip across the street and see who’s in the other penthouse! I’ll hold things here!’
Gant turned and ran out.
A weird giggle bubbled out of Mme Olympe’s bloated body. ‘He won’t find anybody there. You saw the miracle. You saw it with your own eyes.’
She staggered back inside. Then she collapsed in the middle of the sitting room rug.
Suzanne and Leslie hurried in to help her, Suzanne reaching her first.
Banner, more calmly and leisurely, advanced behind them, stumbling heavily.
‘Brandy,’ said Suzanne. ‘She’s passed out.’
Leslie held a snifter under the prostrate medium’s veined nose. Quite suddenly Mme Olympe opened her eyes, tilted the glass, and drank greedily. ‘You didn’t obey me,’ she muttered. ‘You broke into my trance. The shock might have killed me,’
With difficulty they lifted her into a chair and gave her more brandy to nurse.
The phone in the sitting room begin to ring. Banner reached out and grabbed it up. ‘Yass? Banner!’
This’s Barney. I’m in the apartment across the street.
‘Any trouble getting in?’
‘No. The door was open, inviting like. There’s nobody here.’
Banner turned away from the phone for an instant to glower at Mme Olympe. ‘Anything else?’
‘I have found a few interesting things.’
‘Like what, frinstance?’
You’ll see yourself when you come over.’
‘Stick there, Barney. I’ll see you later.’ He hung up and turned to the others. ‘The séance is over. Everybody better go home.’
Mme Olympe whined. ‘I’ll never make it back to my hotel alone. I’m bushed.’
‘Mebbe you’ll take her,’ suggested Banner to Suzanne.
‘No,’ said Suzanne, ‘not me.’ She looked rebellious.
‘I could,’ said Leslie.
‘I want you to stay with me,’ retorted Banner. ‘Lemme see.’ He prowled around the room, once going out into the foyer to check the locked French door. Still bolted.
Suzanne was preparing to leave when the apartment door opened and closed. Banner peered along the hall to see who was coming in.
‘Liz,’ said Leslie with a sigh of relief.
Liz Chamberlin, the maid, was one of those timid-looking women. She had a monkey face, drab brown hair, and lead-coloured circles under her eyes. Dressed in a mousy suit, she wore tall-heeled pumps in an effort to increase her height to average. She stared at them with a perpetual worried expression.
‘Thank heaven you’re here, Liz,’ said Leslie. ‘We need someone to help Mme Olympe.’
Liz gave him a befuddled nod.
‘Good night,’ said Suzanne, brushing past.
‘Nighty-night,’ said Banner. ‘I’ll be getting in touch with you. Sweet dreams.’
Suzanne closed the door loudly on her way out.
Banner turned to the maid, who was fussing around Mme Olympe. ‘How long’ve you worked here, Lizzie?’
‘She—’ began Leslie.
‘Let her answer,’ said Banner sternly.
‘I was hired by Mrs Leslie about a month before she—er—died.’
‘So you were her maid.’
‘In a way, yes.’
‘Did you sleep in then? I noticed a maid’s room.’
‘Yes, I did sleep in. But I didn’t think that it was quite—er—proper to remain alone with Mr Leslie. So after the funeral I got a room outside.’
‘Were you here the night Jasmine fell off the terrace?’
‘No, sir.’ She swallowed. ‘I went to a movie.’
Banner gave her a ferocious look and she cringed. If you work here only in the daytime, why’d you return tonight?’
She glanced helplessly around. ‘Only because I heard there’d be a séance, sir. The apartment would need a little tidying up afterwards. l’d rather do it tonight then let it go till morning.’
Banner muttered: ‘Things could do with a little tidying up. Okeh, Lizzie. Will you see that Mme Olympe gets to beddie-bye all right?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Good gal.’
Mme Olympe leaned heavily on the frail maid as they went up the hall, got the long cloak fitted on the medium’s beefy shoulders, and went out.
‘That leaves us, Leslie,’ said Banner impatiently. ‘Let’s go. I’m rearin’ to find out what’s across the street.’
Jamming his Panama on his shaggy head, he went downstairs in the self-service elevator with Leslie.
The avenue was quiet. They marched out through the entranceway toward the kerb.
‘Look out!’ screamed Leslie.
Banner instinctively bunched forward.
Something heavy hurtled down from above, jarring the ground when it hit, cracking the sidewalk. Thick chunks of smashed cement shot through the air, whizzing past Banner.
‘Missed us by yards!’ he grunted and swore.
Scattered on the dented sidewalk, its soil spread wide and thin, was one of the massive flowerboxes from the terrace wall!
‘Somebody up there tried to kill us!’ panted Leslie.
Banner was bracing himself at the curb, wiping cold sweat from his face. ‘But there’s nobody up there!’ he said in a hollow voice.
Leslie looked pale but determined. ‘I’m going back to see!’
‘I’m right with you!’
They sped up in the elevator. They hurried through the apartment to the terrace, not missing anything on the way. There was a lonesome gap in the evenly spaced flowerboxes on the wall.
But there was nobody in the whole apartment.
Strain showed on Leslie’s face when they went down again. Banner was frowning and silent. He had to admit it was a narrow squeak.
They remained silent until they entered the other penthouse. Gant was nervously waiting for them.
Banner made an attempt at humour. ‘Ketch any spooks, Barney?
‘No,’ said Gant. ‘Smell anything?’
Banner sniffed the air. ‘Yass,’ he growled, ‘Jasmine’s been here all right. What else?’
‘In here. I haven’t touched it.’
The apartment was neat and furnished as if someone were living in it. A woman. In one bedroom Gant pointed to the floor. On it lay a black and white cameo earring with pearls.
Leslie sucked in his breath. ‘That’s the second one of the pair I gave Jasmine!’
Banner stooped over with a fat man’s grunt and picked it up. ‘She’s a little careless with ’em,’ he said sourly.
‘She used to drop them often when she was alive,’ explained Leslie. ‘Her ears weren’t pierced.’
Banner slipped the earring into his pocket. ‘But this doesn’t mean—’
Gant had pulled out a dresser drawer. He lifted up a pink silk nightgown. ‘This has been worn,’ he said. ‘And look at these other things. There’re labels on some of them. Size nine.’
‘That was Jasmine’s size,’ whispered Leslie.
Banner looked gloomy. ‘Sweet Marguerite! Are you trying to talk yourselves into it? Mme Olympe materialized Jasmine and then had her ghost hop from one roof to another, twenty stories up! Is that it? Use your head, Barney. Find out from the renting agent who’s been paying for this joint!’
‘I did,’ said Gant. ‘Had a little trouble reaching him. He’s been notified to call back.’
Banner shuffled around, angry. ‘That big fat fraud’s trying to gull us with a lotta talk about astral bodies and levitation and—’
He was cut short by the ringing of the phone.
He jumped at it and snatched it up. ‘Hallo? … Who? The renting agent? This’s the party in the penthouse. I wanna know—Whuzzat? Huh? … Yeah, I got it …’
He put down the phone slowly and turned. That blows my fuse,’ he snarled. ‘This place was taken on a six months’ lease last December. The person who paid the rent was Mrs Jasmine Leslie!’
Banner and Gant dawdled out into the warm night, ‘Since I can’t explain it,’ said Banner, ‘I’m almost ready to believe it myself. There’re only three ways off that terrace, up, down, or straight across. Wal, we’d stationed a cop on the penthouse roof as a precautionary measure before we went into Leslie’s tonight. The cop says nobody or nothing used the roof for a Peter Pan flying apparatus. So that’s out. Nobody ever went down the face of the building either. It’s a sheer drop. That leaves straight across.’
Gant shook his head. ‘There was nothing like a tight wire stretched across the avenue. I looked.’
‘I looked too. It would’ve been a hellova stunt for even a pro wire-walker. So,’ he finished with a windy sigh, ‘if seeing’s believing—’
They were on the street in front of Leslie’s apartment house again. A porter had swept up the smashed flowerbox and the soil. Banner inquired about the sweepings. He was told that everything was in a refuse barrel in the alley.
Banner went blundering into the alley, fumbling a flashlight out of his junk-filled pocket. Reaching the refuse barrel, he peered down into it, lifting up some of the pieces of the shattered flowerbox and looking.
‘That’s interesting,’ he mumbled. ‘Mighty interesting.’ He dropped the cement shards into the barrel again, switched off the flashlight, and let a puzzled Gant trail him out into the street once more.
‘What was that?’ asked Gant.
Banner looked absently at him. ‘Where’s Mme Olympe staying, Barney?’
‘Plaza Hotel.’
‘Let’s go visiting.’
Mme Olympe was her old bouncy self again. She invited them into her large room with a double bed. On the table was the Pernod bottle and a huge Provolone cheese. She helped herself to a long Russian cigarette, offering the box to the two men. Gant liked to experiment, so he accepted one, which he regretted. Banner shook his head and jabbed one of his corona cigars into his mouth to gnaw on it.
Mme Olympe landed heavily in a damask upholstered armchair with a foam rubber pillow. ‘Sit down,’ she said. She was obviously pleased with herself.
Gant sat on the edge of the bed. Banner headed for a rocking chair. He stopped short when he saw a big black tomcat curled up on it.
