Castle Skull: A Rhineland Mystery (British Library Crime Classics Book 75) by John Dickson Carr

Author:John Dickson Carr [Carr, John Dickson]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Germany, Magician, Black Forest, Bonn, gothic, Detection Club, 1930s
Publisher: British Library Publishing
Published: 2020-01-10T05:00:00+00:00

‌XII

The Torch That Was Alive

Giving us a short bow, von Arnheim sat down and ordered beer. He still carried his old newspapers, which he placed beside his chair. Then he folded his hands on the table and spoke crisply:

“Mr. Gallivan, you are the only journalist on the premises now?”

Gallivan winced at the word “journalist,” but he nodded.

“Unless,” he said, “the German papers are giving it a whirl. I know half the crowd on the Continent, and I haven’t seen anybody about. I’m just supposed to be doing local colour, you see, but if you could let me in on any developments…”

“There are developments,” interposed von Arnheim, “but nothing must be said of them now. If you so desire, you may have the entire story very shortly. You will now give out only the statement that von Arnheim, of Berlin, has taken charge of the case, and that an arrest will be made within twenty-four hours. There are no ‘buts’ or ‘ifs’ or conditionary clauses. An arrest will be made within that time.”

There was a pause. Bencolin lighted a cigarette thoughtfully.

“The real story, sir,” said Gallivan, “is the presence of you two in—in co-operation. Er—”

“If you obtain my friend Bencolin’s permission,” von Arnheim told him, “you may also use that.” He smiled in his tight-lipped way. “As a matter of fact, the arrest will be made tonight. Now to business. Mr. Marle gives me to understand that at one time you were well acquainted with Mr. Myron Alison. Is that correct?”

“Oh, not very well. I knew him.”

“A pleasant sort of person?”

“He was with the press. I always rather liked him. I mean—champagne dinners, and calling you by your first name; he liked to stand in well with us. They say he was dead mean and spiteful, but he was always fine to me because I boomed him so much. Lord knows, I don’t think he was a great actor, but I’ve a weakness for that cloak-and-sword stuff…”

“He was quite a friend of the magician Maleger, I am told?”

“H’m… Well, that’s what they say, but it always looked to me like a close association of mutual enmity. Here was the point: Alison was handsome as all hell; he’d a fine voice, was an idol of the women and a splendid mimic. In plays calling for the acrobatic-Douglas-Fairbanks business he had no equal, and he had, above everything, a fine stage-sense. But he wanted to be thought a great actor. And Maleger singled out that one little sore point to get a knife into him…”

Birds squeaked, and a flutter of them fought shrilly in the branches over our heads. A steamer bell clanged on the bright river. Over Coblenz the sun was whitening into cloudless still heat; you could pick out fiery windows in white houses on the opposite bank of the Rhine. Von Arnheim’s beer-glass tilted slowly…

“I’ll never forget,” said Gallivan, “the first time I ever saw Maleger. It was in nineteen-ten, about six months before I began to work for him. And it was the opening night of one of Alison’s big successes.

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