The Dime Museum Murders (6 page)

A
thick white cloth was spread over the center of the murdered man's
desk. We could see the outlines of a squat, lumpy object beneath it.
Murray motioned to an officer standing to the side. “Carter,
mind showing our guests the, uh, device?"

With
an anxious expression, the young officer stepped to the desk and
gingerly pinched the edges of the cloth. Cautiously, as though a
sleeping snake might be coiled underneath, he lifted the cloth and
eased it to one side. Harry sprang forward. "
Le
Fantôme\"
he
cried, thrusting his chin forward across the desk. “Do you see
it, Dash? It's magnificent!"

The
object was a small wooden figure, perhaps twelve inches high, draped
in a Chinese silk kimono. It sat cross-legged on a square wooden
pedestal, gazing intently at five ivory tiles at its feet, each
bearing the image of a green dragon. In one hand, the figure held a
tiny flute; the other clutched at the folds of its robe. A black,
braided pigtail ran down the figure's back, and its face was painted
with Kabuki markings.

"I
would not have believed that it still existed," Harry said.
"Look at the articulation of the joints! See the pinpoint
mechanism of the jaw hinge?"

At
the front of the pedestal was a set of small lacquered doors.
Extending his index finger, Harry poked at the tiny latch. A
uniformed officer moved forward to stop him, but Lieutenant Murray
waved him off. Harry flicked the latch and the doors swung outward to
expose an array of ancient cogwheels and drive bands.

"Astonishing!"
he declared. "Look at the gears! They are made of—of—"
He leaned in close and sniffed at the workings. "Yes! The gears
are made of cork! And the shafts, they are hollow bamboo! How
extraordinary that they should have survived all this time. And see
the weights and counterweights? They are nothing more than tiny bags
of silk, each one filled with sand. The craftsman who created this
device can only have been a genius! It is even more beautiful than I
imagined!"

"I'm
glad you think so," said Lieutenant Murray. "But can you
tell us what it is?"

"It's
an automaton," Harry said, keeping his eyes fixed on the small
figure. "One of the most exquisite ever made."

"An
automaton," Lieutenant Murray said. "A little doll that
moves and does tricks. Like a child's toy. We knew that much. And
it's supposed to be worth a fortune because it's from the collection
of some French guy with
the
same name as you. That's one reason we called
you."

Harry
straightened and set his mouth in a tight line. "Dash," he
said, "perhaps you'd better enlighten them about the 'French
guy.'"

The
lieutenant folded his arms. "Just tell me about automatons,"
he said to me. "I've never seen one before tonight. What are
they? What do they do?"

There
must have been a dozen people in the room— police officers,
medical workers, and a small knot of people in evening dress who
appeared to be the dead man's dinner guests. All of them stopped what
they were doing to listen to me. I was momentarily stage-struck.
"Well," I began. "Urn, let me see ..."

"Begin
with Jacob Philadelphia," Harry said. "Well," I said
again, "there was a magician named Jacob Philadelphia who was
active in the eighteenth century, and he—"

"Born
in 1734," my brother said. "Thank you, Harry, that was very
illuminating. This magician liked to display automatons—or
automata, if you will. Little clockwork figures like this one. These
figures, which resembled ordinary dolls, could move and perform in
amazingly lifelike ways. At the magician's command, they did tricks
for the audience. One changed water into wine; another gave answers
to mathematical problems. Sometimes these figures were designed to
look like animals. There was a very famous peacock that strutted
around the stage, spread its feathers, and even gave a nice little
screech."

I
paused and surveyed the room. People appeared to be listening, so I
continued. "Bear in mind, many of the people who came to see
these devices had never seen a mechanical device more sophisticated
than a clock. So
a
little doll that could play cards, or a monkey that could smoke
cigarettes, would have seemed quite miraculous. Jacob Philadelphia
made a good living with his automatons, and they didn't require a
whole lot of effort from him. He basically turned a key, set the
machines going, and collected his money."

I
glanced around again to take the crowd's pulse. There was a
regal-looking lady sitting on one of the Chesterfields who kept
nodding and smiling, as though giving encouragement to a clumsy piano
student. I took a deep breath. "Sometimes these devices weren't
all they seemed," I continued. "There was a German magician
named Herr Alexander who had a magic bell. You asked it a
question—for instance: 'What's two plus two?'—and the
bell would chime out the answer. Samuel Morse, the inventor of the
telegraph, came to believe that Alexander had devised some new
telegraphic system. Actually, the bell was rung by a bird hidden
inside the workings."

This
drew an appreciative smile from the Chesterfield, so I persevered.
"Then there was the Kempelen Chess Player, from Austria. It
looked like a much larger version of our friend here," I pointed
at the device on the desk, "but it had Turkish robes and a
turban. There was a chess board on top of the gear cabinet, and the
figure sat behind it. At the turn of a key the figure not only pushed
its own chess pieces across the board, but also moved its head to
follow the play of opponents. Benjamin Franklin played it twice—and
lost. Edgar Allen Poe was so impressed that he wrote a long article
trying to explain how it worked. Poe guessed wrong on some of the
finer points, but his basic theory was correct—a human chess
player, hidden inside the cabinet, controlled the movements."

Lieutenant
Murray looked at his watch. "This is all very edifying, young
man, but we have a body decomposing here, and I'd really like—"

"You
must forgive my brother," Harry said, breaking in. "Sometimes
he forgets himself." He turned to me as if reprimanding a
schoolboy. "Dash, tell them about
the
Frenchman."

I
shrugged. "Jean Eugene Robert-Houdin was a
French
magician—"

"Born
in 1805," said Harry. "—born in 1805—who
started out as a clock maker. ,He was a genius with mechanical
apparatus, and his effects made use of electricity and modern
innovations in a way no one had ever seen before. At the time,
magicians tended to wear long Merlin robes and conical hats, as
though they were sorcerers of some kind. Robert-Houdin appeared in
normal dress clothes, and presented himself as a man of science,
rather than superstition. Over the course of his career he amassed an
enormous collection of automatons. He was fascinated by them and
studied their workings to help create his own mysteries."

I
could see Lieutenant Murray's eyes glazing over, so I tried a
different tack. "Imagine if Thomas Edison had a big warehouse
and he gathered up historical inventions like Alexander Graham Bell's
telephone and Samuel Morse's telegraph. The objects would be
important and valuable for their own sake, but all the more so
because Edison had taken inspiration from them. That's what
Robert-Houdin's collection was like, and that's why people are so
fascinated by it."

Lieutenant
Murray glanced at the little Japanese figure on the dead man's desk.
"So where is this collection now?"

"That's
just it. It's supposed to have been destroyed. Near the end of his
life, Robert-Houdin's workshop burned down. It's believed that the
entire collection was lost."

"Or
so they say," Harry added. “There were rumors at the time
that the fire had been set by a jealous rival, who stole the
collection and set the fire to cover his tracks. Any time an
automaton turns up that's known to have belonged to Robert-Houdin, it
sends up those rumors all over again."

"And
this one belonged to him?" Murray asked. "Absolutely,"
said Harry. "It's called
Le
Fantôme.
One
of Robert-Houdin's jewels.
Le
Fantôme
in
French means—"

"The
phantom," Murray said, bending over the little figure. "Strange
thing to call it. It looks Oriental to me. Japanese."

"But
Robert-Houdin was French." "Ah. And was he a relation of
yours, Mr. Houdini?" Harry bristled at the suggestion. "He
was perhaps the greatest charlatan in all of—''

"No
relation," I said, quickly. It had been a touchy point for some
little while. Robert-Houdin had, in fact, been my brother's boyhood
idol, ever since the fateful day when a copy of the Frenchman's
memoirs fell into Harry's hands. But as he got older, and his ego
reached its maturity, he came to regret having chosen his stage name
to appear "like Houdin." In time he would write a book
about Robert-Houdin intended to expose the Frenchman as "a mere
pretender, a man who waxed great on the brainwork of others, a
mechanician who had boldly filched the inventions of the master
craftsmen among his predecessors." These sorts of things
mattered very deeply to Harry, if not to anyone else.

"Tell
me something," Lieutenant Murray continued. "Are these
things really so valuable? If this French guy's collection still
exists, what would it be worth today?"

Harry
considered for a moment. "Possibly as much
as
ten or twelve thousand dollars." A respectful silence fell over
the room. "Perhaps that was the motivation for his murder,"
Harry
said.

Lieutenant
Murray looked at Harry with amused delight. "1 don't know, Mr.
Houdini. If I were the murderer, it would seem a waste of effort to
kill Mr. Wintour over the phantom doll here, and then leave it behind
wnen I made my escape."

My
curiosity got the better of me. "How was he killed, Lieutenant?"

"That's
why I asked you here. He was killed with
this.
With the doll."

Harry's
eyes widened. "Killed with
Le
Fantôme!
How
is it possible?"

"Somebody
hit him over the head with it?" I asked. "No, the doll
itself—I'll get the doc to explain. Dr.
Peterson?"

A
short, stocky man with an impressive mane of white hair had been
busying himself near the white hospital screens, jotting notes with a
gold pencil in a leather notebook. He turned toward us and withdrew a
folded handkerchief from his breast pocket. "He was killed with
this," he said, unfolding the white cloth.

"With
a handkerchief?" Harry asked.

"Look
closer," Peterson said.

"It's
nothing. A splinter."

"A
splinter tipped with poison, unless I'm very much mistaken. I took it
from the dead man's neck."

"How
did it get there?"

Lieutenant
Murray gestured at
Le
Fantôme.
"That
thing."

"I'm
not sure I get you," I said. "It plays the flute. It
doesn't kill people."

The
detective shook his head. "That thing in its hand is a blow gun,
not a flute."

I
looked at Harry. He nodded.

"The
way we figure it," Murray continued, "Mr. Wintour had
locked himself into his study to have a look at his latest
acquisition. While he was poking around, the gears suddenly started
cranking and it raised the blow gun to its lips and shot a poison
dart into his neck."

Harry
opened his mouth to speak, but then closed it again, apparently lost
in thought. Slowly, he circled the desk, examining the automaton from
all sides. Then he peered behind the hospital screens to have another
look at the unfortunate Mr. Wintour. Emerging again, he dropped to
his knees and began a minute examination of the Oriental rag.
Occasionally he issued a soft grant of surprise or satisfaction, but
gave no other clue as to what he might be doing.