For a moment Dr. Horace Verner was silent. Then he fixed me with the Dear-boy-how-idiotic! twinkle. “But only I,” he announced tranquilly, “had realized that in that . . . space all sound, like the Our Father itself, was reversed. The voice cried ever Eem vull! and what is that phonetically but Love me! backwards? Only my prayer was effective, because only I had the foresight to pray in reverse phonetics.”
I phoned Abrahams to say I had an idea and could I do some checking in the Stambaugh apartment?
“Good,” he said. “I have an idea too. Meet you there in a half hour.”
There was no Abrahams in the corridor when I got there; but the police seal was broken and the door was ajar. I went on in and stopped dead.
For the first moment I thought it was still Stambaugh’s clothes spread out there. But there was no mistaking Inspector Abrahams’ neat gray plainclothes—with no Abrahams in them.
I think I said something about the horror. I draw pretty much of a blank between seeing that empty suit and looking up to the far doorway and seeing Inspector Abrahams.
He was wearing a dressing gown of Stambaugh’s, which was far too short for him. I stared at his grotesque figure and at the android parody which dangled from his hand.
“Sorry, Lamb,” he grinned. “Couldn’t resist the theatrical effect. Go on. Take a good look at the empty man on the floor.”
I looked. The clothes were put together with the exactly real, body-fitting, sucked-out effect which we had already decided was impossible.
“You see,” Abrahams said, “I remembered the vacuum cleaner. And the Downtown Merchants’ parade.”
I was back at the studio early the next morning. There was nobody from Verner’s Varieties there but Slavko, and it was so relatively quiet that Dr. Verner was just staring at the manuscript of The Anatomy without adding a word.
“Look,” I said. “In the first place, Stambaugh’s record player isn’t equipped for hill-and-dale records.”
“They can be played even on an ordinary machine,” Dr. Verner observed tranquilly. “The effect is curious—faint and with an odd echoing overlap, which might even enhance the power of the cantrip.”
“And I looked in his card catalog,” I went on, “and he didn’t have a recording of the Pergolesi Pater Noster by anybody.”
Dr. Verner widened his overblue eyes. “But of course the card would vanish with the record,” he protested. “Magic makes allowances for modern developments.”
“Wait a minute!” I exclaimed suddenly. “Hey, I’m brilliant! This is one Abrahams didn’t think of. It’s me, for once, that solves a case.”
“Yes, dear boy?” said Dr. Verner gently.
“Look: You cant play an inside-start record backwards. It wouldn’t work. Visualize the spiraling grooves. If you put the needle in the outside last groove, it’d just stay there ticking—same like it would if you put it in the inside last groove of a normal record. To play it backwards, you’d have to have some kind of gearshift that’d make the turntable spin backwards.”
“But I have,” said Dr. Verner blandly. “It enables one to make extraordinarily interesting experiments in sound. Doubtless Mr. Stambaugh had too. It would be simple enough to switch over by mistake; he was drinking . . . Tell me, the spinning turntable that you saw . . . was it revolving clockwise or counterclockwise?”
I thought back, and I was damned if I knew. Clockwise, I took for granted; but if I had to swear . . . Instead I asked, “And I suppose Captain Clutsam and the Bishop of Cloisterham had alternate counterclockwise gearshifts?”
“Why, of course. Another reason why such a serious collector as Mr. Stam-baugh would. You see, the discs of the Fonogrammia company, a small and obscure firm but one boasting a few superb artists under exclusive contract, were designed to be so played.”
I stared at those pellucid azure eyes. I had no notion whether counterclockwise Fonogrammia records were the coveted objective of every collector or a legend that had this moment come into being.
“And besides,” I insisted, “Abrahams has demonstrated how it was really done. The vacuum cleaner tipped him off. Stambaugh had bought a man-sized, man-shaped balloon, a little brother of those monster figures they use in parades. He inflated it and dressed it in his clothes. Then he deflated it, leaving the clothes in perfect arrangement with nothing in them but a shrunken chunk of rubber, which he could withdraw by unbuttoning the shirt. Abrahams found the only firm in San Francisco that manufactures such balloons. A clerk identified Stambaugh as a purchaser. So Abrahams bought a duplicate and pulled the same gag on me.”
Dr. Verner frowned. “And the vacuum cleaner?”
“You use a vacuum cleaner in reverse for pumping up large balloons. And you use it normally for deflating them; if you just let the air out whoosh! they’re apt to break.”
“The clerk” (it came out dark, of course) “identified Stambaugh positively?”
I shifted under the piercing blueness. “Well, you know identifications from photographs . . .”
“Indeed I do.” He took a deliberately timed pause. “And the record player? Why was its turntable still revolving?”
“Accident, I guess. Stambaugh must’ve bumped against the switch.”
“Which projected from the cabinet so that one might well engage it by accident?”
I pictured the machine. I visualized the switch and the depth to which one would have to reach in. “Well, no,” I granted. “Not exactly . . .”
Dr. Verner smiled down at me tolerantly. “And the motive for these elaborate maneuvers by Stambaugh?”
“Too many threatening male relatives on his tail. He deliberately staged this to look oh-so-mysterious nobody’d spot the simple fact that he was just getting the hell out from under. Abrahams has an all-points alarm out; he’ll be picked up any time within the next few days.”
Dr. Verner sighed. His hands flickered through the air in gesture of infinitely resigned patience. He moved to his record cabinet, took out a disc, placed it on the turntable, and adjusted certain switches.
“Come, Slavko!” he announced loudly. “Since Mr. Lamb prefers rubber balloons to truth, we
