Obelists Fly High Read online

  OBELISTS FLY HIGH

  DOVER MYSTERY CLASSICS

  OBELISTS FLY HIGH

  C. Daly King

  DOVER PUBLICATIONS, INC.

  Mineola, New York

  Bibliographical Note

  This Dover edition, first published in 1986 and reissued in 2015, is an unabridged, unaltered republication of the work originally published by William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd., London, 1935.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  King, C. Daly, 1895–1963.

  Obelists fly high / C. Daly King.

  p. cm.

  Summary: In a mystery that ranks with the best of Ellery Queen and Agatha Christie, shots are fired at a policeman aboard an aircraft on which a murder has already occurred. Will the officer survive, and will anyone emerge from the now-plummeting plane? With its intricate plot and “locked room” scenario, this masterpiece of detective fiction was hailed by The New York Times as “a very thrilling story.”—Provided by publisher.

  eISBN-13: 978-0-486-80297-8

  I. Title.

  PS3521.I51402 2015

  813’.52—dc23

  2014034666

  Manufactured in the United States by Courier Corporation

  25036902 2015

  www.doverpublications.com

  For Muriel and Fred–whose previous cries of anguish have purchased this easy one.

  CONTENTS

  EPILOGUE

  PART I PREPARATION

  PART II OPERATION

  PART III TITILLATION

  PART IV CEREBRATION

  PART V EXPLANATION

  PROLOGUE

  THE CLUE FINDER

  List of Characters importantly involved

  AMOS CUTTER, M.D. A famous surgeon.

  FONDA MANN One of his nieces.

  ISA MANN Another.

  HOOD TINKHAM His assistant.

  DR GESELL At the College of Physicians and Surgeons.

  HUGH L. CRAVEN A literary man.

  PROF. ISADOR DIDENOT A professional philosopher.

  THE REVEREND MANLY BELLOWES A successful clergyman.

  DR L. REES PONS An integrative psychologist.

  MICHAEL LORD Captain, New York Police Department.

  MARJORIE GAVIN Stewardess.

  ‘HAPPY’ LANNINGS Senior pilot.

  HAROLD E. LOVETT Junior pilot.

  Diagrams

  IPlan of Transport ’Plane

  IISchedule of Reported Movements

  IIISchedule of Actual Movements

  OBELISTS FLY HIGH

  Epilogue

  7600 FEET

  Pong! Pong! The two shots came in quick succession; they sounded hollowly in the metal cabin forming the central section of the ’plane’s fuselage. Captain Lord spun a quarter-turn around in the narrow aisle, grasped at the back of the seat beside him. Irrelevantly he was wondering which of the shots had hit him, the first or the second.

  It seemed a long time before he heard the clatter of his own automatic as it fell uselessly to the flooring. Bungled, the whole case irretrievably bungled! His right shoulder was curiously numb, the entire arm and hand without sensation. No pain; must have been hit through the shoulder, though.

  He was swaying – or else the ’plane was swaying. No control over his knees ... So he had found the criminal – his solution was right. Pretty late in the day for the right solution, with the criminal firing up the cabin from the aft partition, shielded by the pretty, little plump stewardess. Her body, grasped fiercely around the waist and held where it would receive any answering bullets, was large enough to cover every vulnerable spot except the right side of the head. She was kicking, fighting vainly against muscles stronger than her own. The neat whipcord of her uniform was crushed in folds between her body and the encircling arm, and her short skirt, dragged upward on one side by the struggle, revealed a brief but shapely leg, the gartered top of sheer hose and a line of rumpled lingerie above an inch of white skin.

  Right hand out of it, gun on floor, no knee control – part of Lord’s mind was busy working out that problem. He must get the gun in his left hand, and he couldn’t bend over to find it because of those unmanageable knees.

  Pong! What was that for? No one in the cabin was armed except the detective and his weapon had fallen. Why fire again? Was the criminal out to do more damage? The tinkle of glass in the cockpit door answered the question. Pong! Pong! Two more shots into the cockpit. Of course! The pilots were armed, and the criminal knew it. This would keep them in the cockpit and bring the ’plane down, perhaps out of control. A forced landing would provide a chance of escape; a disastrous one would kill them all, along with the felon.

  Right hand out of it, gun on floor, no knee control – he must fall to the floor where he could reach the gun with his left hand. But things were happening so slowly, like a slow-motion moving picture. He swayed backward, then bent at the waist; gradually the chair-tops rose above him. He was managing to fall backward, then.

  He was sitting on the floor and that hardness in the small of his back was one of the eight-inch-high lateral braces across the aisle. His left hand was groping for the automatic. A chair-leg. No, that’s not it. Two men, he saw, were on their feet. No use; no good trying to rush the criminal. The rear of the confined cabin was accessible by three routes only – over the tops of the two rows of seats down its sides (but they were occupied) and along the aisle, but little more than eighteen inches wide and impeded by cross-braces every three or four feet of its length. It couldn’t be done. Lord was dizzy and his senses were blurring with the effort of keeping his left hand searching along the floor.

  Then his senses cleared momentarily as the rear end of the cabin tilted and rose high above him. There seemed a sudden and devastating silence as the motors were cut. Pong! That sway was not in him; it was the ’plane that was swaying now. In a great arc the after-end of the cabin moved leftward and up, as Lord felt the gathering acceleration of the whole ’plane downward . . .

  7100 FEET

  The senior pilot was speaking with San Francisco . . . ‘Dew-point six, one; probable hail squalls south-east Reno . . . ’The ear-phones were clamped on his head and he held the microphone close to his lips.

  ‘Altitude seven, six hundred, field –’

  A tinkle of glass behind him interrupted his report, and he glanced sharply around. For a moment he stared uncomprehendingly at the broken window, then at the splintered edge of the instrument panel in front of him. In the seat at his right side the junior pilot seemed suddenly to be manipulating the controls in a peculiar fashion.

  The senior snatched off his ear-phones and half rose in his seat; he sank back as first one, then two more holes appeared in the flooring between the dual ‘Dep’ controls. ‘Pong . . . ! Pong! Pong!’ came faintly to his ears. With one hand he drew his safety belt across his seat and reached for his own ‘Dep.’ The cockpit lurched forward and down to the left while he spoke rapidly into the microphone in his other hand. ‘Firing in cabin. Taking over ship. Controls may be hit . . . Port aileron controls gone. Ship falling – going into spin . . . ’He dropped the microphone and both hands became busy with his controls, while his lean, competent face gradually whitened.

  The junior pilot was out of his seat, clutching its back with one hand as the cockpit swung leftward in ever-decreasing circles and the nose of the ship edged over and down. His right hand pulled his revolver from its holster and his right foot sought and found the instrument panel behind and now below him. In the whirling cockpit he braced himself for a leap toward the door to the cabin.

  5400 FEET

  From the floor of the cabin, close to the cockpit doorway, Michael Lord regarded his own feet above him up the aisle. If only everything di
dn’t go so slowly! A portfolio, tilted out of a rack overhead, was falling (it seemed to drift) on to the girl beside him, who had turned in her seat and was clinging to the back of it, looking up the aisle.

  Suddenly his hand found the automatic, wedged against the lateral brace at his back. But could he use it? He was a poor shot with his left hand, and he was dizzy; he knew he was dizzy. He couldn’t take the chance of hitting the little stewardess. She had struggled free now, but she was holding to the last chair in the cabin, and the criminal’s body was still more than half covered by hers, although the criminal, too, was striving to keep upright by grasping the same seat with both hands.

  No, he couldn’t do it. What a mess, what a damned mess! He had bungled everything – the whole case from beginning to end. And now at the end he had passed the game over into the felon’s own hands. And the felon, more alert than himself, had seized the offered instant, had shot him and wrecked the ’plane. For there was no mistaking the ship’s movement; through the deceptive slowness of his own sensations, Lord realised that the angle of the cabin, the circling of its after-end and the sighing rush of wind he heard almost unconsciously, meant just one thing – a spin.

  So this was the finish. They would all die, he reflected bitterly – all of them. He hoped there would be a crushing impact, and oblivion. No fire; dear God, no fire! A galling rage swept through his veins, and with gritting teeth he managed to raise himself partly on one side. Even if they did die, he would kill that – With a thundering roar both motors cut in and the cabin was jerked forward and down from under him. His head swung forward, then back, and above his face a tongue of flame leapt out with a terrific c-rash!

  He was losing consciousness; mustn’t do that. Dizzy, it was blurred. Was his head rising? Blurred. Finish; he had bungled it; this was the finish. As if he were following a book that is written or hearing a story that is told, he saw the whole case successively spread out before him, saw its incidents re-enacted, heard its characters speak, including that character which he recognised impersonnally as Captain Michael Lord, Special Officer attached to the staff of the Commissioner of Police of the City of New York . . .

  Part I – Preparation

  HEADQUARTERS

  It began in the office of the Commissioner of Police.

  The dingy April morning accented the Victorian drabness of the high-ceilinged room on the third floor of the old building on Center Street. The room was spotlessly clean; its drabness was that of a period of little physical grace and even less graceful architecture. On the large desk in the centre of the apartment a single daisy in a high-stemmed holder made the only spot of colour in the furnishings.

  An identical daisy in the lapel of the Commissioner responded to the first one. Oliver Darrow, the current incumbent of the office, always wore a fresh daisy on his nine a.m. appearance. According to instructions its counterpart greeted him from the desk on his arrival, to be placed in turn in his buttonhole about noon. In a city as dirty as New York it was necessary.

  The Commissioner has just come in and his secretary had, likewise, just placed before him the tentative schedule of his day. Tentative, because the breaking of any serious crime in the large community for whose safety he was responsible, would interrupt it, might even sweep it entirely off the desk and into the waste basket. Few of his schedules ever did see complete fulfilment, as a matter of fact. Still, they made a background, if only for the unexpected; they were invariably prepared.

  Commissioner Darrow bent over the present one. 9.45: the line-up; the Marchiotti gang and ‘Spud’ Nicholas (he wanted to hear them both questioned by the detectives, and they would not appear until that time). 10.30: Conference with His Honour at City Hall (arrangements for the reception and protection of a foreign Royalty and for his safe, and relieving, dispatch to Washington). 1 p.m.: Advertising Club luncheon at the Waldorf (address by the Commissioner) .2.30: Three churchwomen on a matter of vice conditions on West Forty-Seventh Street. (‘My God,’ groaned the Commissioner.) 3 p.m.: Conference with Captain Burrow of the Homicide Squad on the progress in the Mandable investiga –

  ‘What is it, Felix?’ Darrow raised his head and looked over at his secretary, to whom a police captain had entered and stood talking at the small desk across the room. Both men approached. The officer saluted smartly (Darrow’s war record had made him a strict disciplinarian) and the secretary laid a small card before the Commissioner. ‘Amos Cutter,’ announced the card; and, as an afterthought, ‘878 Park Avenue.’

  ‘Cutter?’ asked the Commissioner, after a brief glance. ‘Not the Secretary of – ’

  ‘No sir. Not the Secretary; his brother, I believe. The surgeon. Very well known; you’ll remember he’s the man who operated on the President last year.’

  ‘Of course, yes.’ Darrow spoke almost absently. ‘Did you tell him, Captain Dennis, that I see visitors only by appointment?’

  The usually good-natured officer drew himself up and stared straight ahead, stonily. ‘I told him, sor. He insisted. He nearly pushed past me. He’ll be outside now, though.’ A small degree of satisfaction crept into his voice. Then he added, coldly, ‘Said his time was important, but he’d have to wait.’

  Darrow drummed on his desk with the fingers of one hand, thinking of the reports he wished to clear from it before 9.40. Finally, ‘H’m . . . Well . . . No use having a fuss with Washington . . . Show him in, then, Captain.’

  Disgruntled, Captain Dennis saluted and walked away stiffly, while the Commissioner’s secretary turned on the visitor’s light overhead, an ordinary-appearing ceiling fixture, but arranged in such a way that the figure in the comfortable chair opposite the Commissioner’s desk was clearly illuminated at the scarcely noticeable expense of the other parts of the room.

  Darrow rose as his caller entered, but found it unnecessary to offer his hand. ‘How do you do, Dr Cutter? Will you take this seat?’ He placed himself again behind his own desk, courteous but restrained. The dignity of the Police Department was at least equal to that of a Cabinet Officer’s brother.

  The visitor, as he sat down, was seen to be a tall man, as tall as the Commissioner, but somewhat heavier. His hair and his short beard were grizzled, he was probably between fifty and sixty, and the large, strong lines of his face stood out in bold relief. In comparison with his involuntary host his clothing was untidy, slightly wrinkled and already ashed with cigar droppings. Unexpectedly (for the Commissioner’s visitors seldom did this) he came brusquely to the point.

  On the edge of his chair Dr Cutter leaned farther forward and, without preamble, his harsh voice cut short Oliver Darrow’s uncommenced inquiry. ‘You are a busy man, Mr Commissioner, and so am I. I have received what the tabloids call a death-threat. I have to come to place it in your hands.’

  Darrow, taken a little aback by this succinct statement of his caller’s business, said, ‘Yes, Dr Cutter,’ almost perfunctorily. Then, with more interest, ‘I am glad you have come to us at once. If more people would do that ... In what form was this threat made to you?’

  The surgeon produced his wallet and took from it a large envelope. From this he carefully withdrew a smaller envelope, which he passed over to the Commissioner. ‘Came in the late post last night,’ he stated briefly. ‘Mailed at Grand Central some time before four o’clock, as you see.’

  The Commissioner of Police accepted the envelope and scrutinised it in silence. The postmark bore out Cutter’s information; for the rest it was merely a cheap envelope with the address printed in capital letters and bearing no other marks whatsoever. With a pair of pincers from his desk drawer Darrow drew out the enclosure and spread its single fold. On cheap, ruled paper, such as is found in thousands of pads, there was printed, also in capital letters, the following sentence:

  YOU WILL DIE APRIL THIRTEENTH AT NOON EXACTLY CENTRAL TIME.

  A precise announcement. Nothing superfluous except, perhaps, the one word, ‘exactly.’

  ‘A hoax?’

  The surgeon’s grat
ing tone interrupted Darrow’s examination and he looked up. ‘I take it you think not,’ he countered, ‘or you would not have brought it here so promptly. Have you some suspicion as to the source of this note?’

  ‘None at all. I take it seriously for an entirely different reason. My abilities are unusual,’ Cutter stated without the slightest self-consciousness. ‘They are about to be employed in a most important matter.’

  Darrow said, ‘Of course I can guarantee you complete protection at noon on the thirteenth, if you will place yourself in my hands. A cordon around your house and two of my men inside – ’

  ‘Will not be of the least use.’ From the same wallet the surgeon extracted another paper and handed it across. This time it was a telegraph blank:

  Amos Cutter Reno, Nov. 11-4-34. 12.11 p.

  878 Park Avenue

  New York City

  PATIENTS CONDITION ALARMING OPERATION IMPERATIVE WITHIN ONE HUNDRED HOURS.

  MacKenzie.

  To Darrow’s inquiring glance Cutter grated, ‘Patient’s my brother. The operation is a serious one; there’s only one other man in this country who could make it without pretty certain failure, and he’s in Europe. In the present juncture of affairs my brother’s life is of some moment.’

  ‘I am aware that your brother is Secretary of State, Dr Cutter. And I am certain that, aside from personal consideration, his life is extraordinarily valuable, especially just now. But is it not unusual that you intend to operate upon him yourself? I had always thought a physician outside the family – ?’

  ‘Can’t help it. I’d have had Schall, if he’d been here. As it is, I’m the only one who can do it without taking chances.’