“He didn’t. That’s why he came after me. He couldn’t help himself. Sigrid and Arnold had decided to call me in. Remember where that conversation of theirs took place? In Rappourt’s room when they searched it. Watrous overheard and realized at once that I’d jump at the invitation. The man who knew too much again. That set him back on his heels, hard. He had just put the poison in Rappourt’s capsules — during the night while she slept. And then he discovers that I’ll be at the séance. He can’t call off the murder, even if he could get the capsule back, because then I might expose Rappourt. Watrous, who has never been able to catch her out before himself, now that, he knows she’s a fraud, is afraid of exposure at every turn. He can’t dissuade Sigrid and Arnold, since they naturally think he’s in league with Rappourt. Rappourt must die before I arrive. Can he, at the last moment when Sigrid has no time to warn me, get Rappourt to move the séance ahead? No. It’s already scheduled for just after dark, and she can’t stage her footprints on the ceiling in daylight. Persuading her to skip the séance entirely, is no good either — it would only delay the bitter ending and solve nothing.
“Since my presence is unavoidable, all he can do is try to sidetrack me, reach me before Sigrid does, and get me to agree to meet him at the haunted house so he can control my movements, holding me there until the séance has started and Rappourt is a goner. Sigrid wanted to force my presence on Rappourt. So, to insure my accepting his invitation in preference to hers, he simply offered a better plan — one that might be more productive of results, Rappourt being unaware of my presence. He was clever. His plan not only kept me from the séance until the danger point was passed, but it even put Watrous himself in my company at the time Rappourt was to die. And a damned likely case could be made out for suicide or an overdose because, though she actually took only sugar, she had gone on record as admitting that she dosed herself with poisons before her trances — a fact that Watrous knew better than anyone else, since it was in his own book we found the information! He’d have tucked in the one remaining loose end by using scopolamine rather than cyanide if he hadn’t been rushed. By some strange omission, scopolamine appears to be a poison photographers haven’t yet found a use for!”
I was remembering right there that the infra-red photographic directions Watrous had passed on to me through Merlini. convicted him of knowing enough about photography to have expected to find poisons in Arnold’s darkroom.
“And even though cyanide would be found at Rappourt’s autopsy,” Merlini continued, “just as long as no one could prove, beyond the shadow of a reasonable doubt, that Rappourt was a fraudulent medium, Watrous wouldn’t appear to have a motive for poisoning the woman he hailed as spiritualism’s A-No. 1 exhibit. Look at his position. He hears his prize psychic exhibit admit fraud, admit she’s engineering a con-game — one in which he’s the catspaw. If he says nothing, Rappourt’s disappearance with the swag eventually spills the psychic beans. Watrous’s cherished reputation, the income from his psychic writings, the projected plans for his psychic laboratories all go up in smoke. He’s a laughingstock, the last thing that dandified, pompous little man could have stood. And if the con-game fails, if he does tell Linda or Lamb, or even if he tips off Floyd about the double-cross — expose again! He was between the devil and the deep blue sea, both of them closing in on him fast. Listen to this.” Merlini started the turntable and lowered the sound arm into position near the end of the record.
I heard again the rumbling and, above it, Rappourt’s voice: “I know a man who can duplicate those Hussar relics and supply us with some fake guineas dated 1779 that will get by Lamb. You’ve dived. You can—”
Then a new voice broke in, a smooth oily high-pitched voice — Floyd’s: “Ira wouldn’t fall for it. That’s right up his alley.”
Rappourt: “But he’s so damned anxious to get that salvage apparatus constructed and tested out that I doubt if he’ll stick at a little, justifiable hocus-pocus. Especially since he’s convinced the Hussar is there.”
Floyd: “All right. Put it up to him. Only your suggestion that I merely fake the dive, going down a short way and then bringing the stuff up, won’t do. Lamb’s insisting that he send his own diver.”
Rappourt: “That’s even better. If his own diver brings up positive proof—”
Floyd: “That should cinch it. Okay, I’ll do it. I’ll have to. We’ve got to convince them properly. These séances are getting too risky, anyway. I even think Colonel Fuss-budget is beginning to smell mice. You know, if he ever tumbles to the fact that you’re not on the level.… ”
Rappourt (laughing): “If I can’t fool Watrous, I’ll quit. Besides, we can’t ditch him now. He’s my front. But don’t worry. After that last book of his, he wouldn’t dare expose me — he’d be the laughingstock of two continents. Anyway, if he ever did, I’ve got the perfect stopper. I’d simply top his story with a better. I’d sell my confessions to Hearst, admit all, and accuse him of aiding me.”
Floyd: “You don’t miss much, do you? If I ever find you murdered, I think I’ll know who did it. If he ever tumbled to that—”
Merlini lifted the sound arm. “Which explains why Floyd had to die, too. Or partly. The rest consists in the fact that Watrous held Floyd responsible for Rappourt’s fall from grace. I think, even at the last, he still thought her previous phenomena genuine. He couldn’t believe he had been fooled so thoroughly. Watrous’s motives were revenge and self-defense. It’s a toss-up which was the stronger; together they were irresistible.”
I said, “No wonder he was so anxious for us not to tip Rappourt off that he was suspicious of her. It’s a wonder that didn’t gray his hair.”
“Yes,” Gavigan admitted. “It fits. Watrous was the second ‘vampire’ Svoboda heard come into the room where the body was. The Colonel went to his room at 9:10 and he didn’t meet you until 9:40. He left his room when he saw a light in the haunted house, just as he said, only it was Arnold’s light when he was putting the body there, not Svoboda’s light just before you arrived. He discovered the body, fixed his lighter and thread, and then, when he heard you coming, he retreated back up the path toward the house so you would see him apparently coming from it.”
“And Watrous was the only person within pulling distance of that thread — except possibly Mr. X. The fire was misdirection on the same principle as the business with Grimm’s gun. He was trying to make it appear that someone was busily setting fires and shooting people when he himself was in plain sight, and obviously doing no such thing. Mr. X was eliminated as the string puller because, as an intentional alibi on his part, the fire was nearly worthless; whereas, for Watrous, it was perfect. But he was moving on thin ice when he accused Floyd of having hooked his lighter. We nearly had him then. He’d overheard Brooke report back to Rappourt the clever steps he’d taken to prevent Floyd’s identification, and he thought that diverting suspicion from himself to Floyd was a safe bet. Later when Floyd was found dead, I realized that Watrous had known it before we did!”
“But how did he pull the thread right before your noses without your seeing him? That was a bit of conjuring you didn’t spot at the time, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, but I didn’t know I was watching a trick, not until later when I’d proved that no one but Watrous could have pulled the thread. He had used another common conjuring principle — disguised the action that works the trick as an unsuspicious natural one having some other and quite innocent purpose. Remember the ladder-back chair standing just before the living-room window, the one directly above the cellar window? I didn’t say that the person who had pulled the string was outside the house, only that the string led outside. The string must have led to someone near enough to pull it. Watrous, Harte, myself, and possibly Mr. X, whom I later eliminated, were the only candidates. Remembering that the Colonel, as soon as he entered, had pulled the chair out into the room away from the window, I knew at once that the thread must have been tied to it.”