His face was very calm, but his words were thunderous. “I suspect it is the odor of brimstone, my friend. Rager has finally had his wish granted. Satan has taken him to Hades.”
No one else was ready to accept Simon’s assessment of the situation. The bald man, who identified himself as Thomas Robock from the record company, ushered us quickly into a private room. Susan Yantz was left outside. “We don’t need that little tramp,” he muttered. “There’s enough trouble already.”
“We were to meet with Rager,” I said lamely. “His manager, Les Fenton, was arranging it.”
“Where the hell is Fenton?”
“No doubt on his way up from the lobby,” Simon said. “Tell me exactly what happened.”
“Nothing happened,” Thomas Robock said. “We were all waiting here to welcome Rager when he stepped off the elevator. Fenton was holding it downstairs for his arrival. As soon as the light went on showing it was coming up, we got ready. Then the doors slid open and there was no one inside — just one of his damned fireballs.”
Simon Ark nodded. “No chance he could have slipped past you, hidden by the smoke?”
“None. The smoke wasn’t that thick.”
“What about the escape hatch that’s in the top of every elevator?”
“This one has hidden bolts that can be worked from inside or outside the car. But they do have to be opened. These were still tightly closed.”
“There would have been no time for that anyway,” I hastened to point out. “Rager was in full view in that glass elevator all the way up to the sixtieth floor. He was only hidden for the last floor, a matter of a few seconds.”
“The people in the lobby couldn’t see him, up that high.”
“No, but the bank of glass elevators is surrounded by terraces leading to each floor’s guest rooms. Any number of guests might have observed him all the way to the sixtieth floor.”
There was a knock on the door and Les Fenton entered. “Where is he, Robock? What’s happened?”
The recording executive went through his brief story again. “Tell me it’s a publicity stunt, Les. Tell me he’ll turn up any minute.”
“If it’s a publicity stunt, it was done without my knowledge. Find Clare Goddard and get her in here. She’s in charge of publicity.”
She was outside talking with the press, trying to calm them down. She came in shaking her head, looking a bit less cool and collected than when I’d first seen her. “If this is one of Rager’s tricks—”
“You mean you don’t know where he is?”
“Of course I don’t know,” she told Fenton. “If I knew, I’d have him out there with the press this minute. He’s had his fun with this elevator business. I hope he comes to his senses and reappears.”
“There may be no way back from where Rager has gone,” Simon Ark said quietly. They all stared at him. “He called upon Satan to take him, you’ll remember.”
“He did that every night,” Les Fenton scoffed. “It was part of the act. The kids love that weird stuff.”
“If his disappearance was a trick,” I asked, “how was it done?”
“Maybe he was never on the elevator in the first place,” Robock said.
Fenton and Clare Goddard were quick to rule that out. “Fifty people saw him board that elevator, including fans and police guards,” Fenton said.
“And I saw him rising through the lobby myself,” Clare confirmed. “The elevator doesn’t go anywhere but up here. It doesn’t even make a lobby stop. It’s strictly an express for Skytop customers who aren’t staying at the hotel.”
Robock pondered for a moment. Then he said, “This has gone far enough. I’m calling the police.”
A missing persons report in New York City rarely brings out a detective with the rank of lieutenant. But Rager was someone special, and so in a way was Lieutenant Fisk. He was tall, with steel gray hair and a manner that could change from friendly to tenacious in an instant.
“The missing man’s name is Roger Jones?” he asked, making careful notes of everything said.
“Rager is his stage name,” Les Fenton said. “That’s the name everyone knows him by.”
“All right. Roger Jones, alias Rager.”
“It’s not really an alias. The man’s not a criminal.”
“That remains to be seen,” Fisk told them. He glanced over at Simon and me. “Who did you say you were?”
“We came to see Rager about doing a book. I’m the senior editor at Neptune Books, and this is Simon Ark, an author and investigator of unusual phenomena.” I made a point of not mentioning Satanism.
The detective glanced at Simon. “You solved this one yet, Pop?”
Simon started to speak, but I cut him short. “We can show you the elevator where it happened.”
Lieutenant Fisk took the trouble to get down on his knees and examine the scorched carpeting. He even took an evidence envelope from his pocket and scooped some of the remaining ash into it. When he stood up he said, “This looks like some sort of con game to me. Was Rager into you people for any money?”
“It’s no con game,” Robock said. “The young man earns better than a million dollars a year with concerts and record albums.”
“Is that so?” Fisk opened his notebook again. “I’ll want to talk to each of you individually. Let’s start with Miss Goddard here.”
He led her into a private room while Fenton and Robock went out to confront the waiting guests. I was content to enjoy the Manhattan skyline, but Simon had other ideas. He spotted Susan Yantz, Rager’s girlfriend, across the room and headed toward her. I tailed along.
“Any sign of him yet?” Simon asked.
Susan was beginning to look distraught. “I think something bad has happened to him. If it was some sort of stunt he’d have told me in advance.”
“It certainly seems he would have told someone,” Simon agreed, “either yourself or his manager or his publicity agent or his record producer. Tell me, were there any other women in his life?”
“Not since he met me,” she said with the supreme confidence of the young. “He didn’t need anyone else.”
“Did he have any enemies, anyone who threatened him?”
“Not really. He got into a fight in a bar in Australia—”
“But nothing here, in New York?”
“No.”
“Were there ever any unexplained mystical experiences, especially after his nightly shows when he issued his challenge to the Devil?”
Susan Yantz shook her head. “You’re taking that whole Devil thing too seriously. Lots of performers do something like that for a big closing. You know, with lightning bolts and all the—”
She was was cut short in mid-sentence by the sudden appearance of Lieutenant Fisk. He burst from the private room and dashed toward the elevators, with Clare Goddard trailing behind. “What is it?” I asked her.
“Something’s happened downstairs. He just got a call.”
We started toward an open elevator, but Fisk chose the one from which Rager had vanished. “The express is faster,” he told us, jabbing his finger at the bottom button.
Simon and Clare and I managed to crowd in with him before the door closed, but Susan was left behind. “Has Rager reappeared?” Simon asked.
“Maybe,” Fisk told him. “There’s a fire on the lower level, in the parking garage.”
The elevator deposited us in the garage itself, below the street level, and we saw at once that the fire had been confined to a service area close to the ramp. A line of several Dumpsters collected each day’s rubbish from the hotel and were in turn emptied by daily service from a private contractor. Two fire hoses led down the ramp from the street, and the firemen had made short work of the blaze in one of the Dumpsters. Now only a pall of smoke hung in the air.