The Invisible Host

Gwen Bristow, Bruce Manning

• Publisher: Dean Street Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781914150845
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Crime & Mystery Literature
• Index: Literature

"Do not doubt me, my friends; you shall all be dead before morning."

New Orleans, 1930. Eight guests are invited to a party at a luxurious penthouse apartment, yet on arrival it turns out that no one knows who their mysterious host actually is. The latter does not openly appear, but instead communicates with the guests by radio broadcast. What he has to tell his guests is chilling: that every hour, one of them will die. Despite putting the guests on their guard, the Host's prophecy starts to come horribly true, each demise occurring in bizarre fashion. As the dwindling band of survivors grows increasingly tense, their confessions to each other might explain why they have been chosen for this macabre evening-and invoke the nightmarish thought that the mysterious Host is one of them. The burning question becomes: will any of the party survive, including the Host...?

The Invisible Host (1930) established one of the best-loved and most durable forms in classic mystery fiction. It was famously to reappear in Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None (1939). How much Christie's novel is indebted to its predecessor is open to conjecture (and the subject is discussed in our new introduction, by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans). Whatever the verdict, readers will delight in The Invisible Host, an innovative and most unusual mystery from the golden age of crime fiction. It was adapted into a play, and a Hollywood movie as The Ninth Guest (1934).

CHAPTER ONE

“That makes thirty-seven words,” said the girl.

“Will you read the telegram again?” came the voice over the wire.

She read: “Congratulations stop plans afoot for small surprise party in your honor Bienville pent-house next Saturday eight o’clock stop all sub rosa big surprise stop maintain secrecy stop promise you most original party ever staged in New Orleans Signed Your host.”

“That’s correct. Send the message to each of the eight addresses.”

“The eight telegrams,” said the girl, “will cost three dollars and thirty-six cents.”

Thirteen quarters and three nickels banged and clicked into the coin-box. “Thank you,” said the girl.

From the other end of the line she heard the click of the receiver.

“Gee,” she remarked to the girl at the next telephone, “but that guy had a spooky voice.”

“Maybe he’s an undertaker.”

“No, he’s having a party,” she answered, as she punched out the message on the keyboard before her.

Fifteen minutes later eight yellow envelopes were briskly on their way toward their eight destinations.

Mrs. Gaylord Chisholm tore open her yellow envelope with slim aristocratic fingers and read the message twice. A puzzled line came between her eyebrows, then she smiled amusedly.

Under the pale lights of her boudoir Margaret Chisholm had the air of one of those ancient queens whose sculptured profiles look disdainfully down upon posterity. There was a gesture of empire in the very way she touched a flame to the end of her cigarette and held up the telegram to read it again through the blue plumes of smoke.

CONGRATULATIONS STOP PLANS AFOOT FOR SMALL SURPRISE PARTY IN YOUR HONOR BIENVILLE PENTHOUSE NEXT SATURDAY EIGHT OCLOCK STOP ALL SUB ROSA BIG SURPRISE STOP MAINTAIN SECRECY STOP PROMISE YOU MOST ORIGINAL PARTY EVER STAGED IN NEW ORLEANS

YOUR HOST

What a silly telegram—and yet it was rather clever, thought Margaret. Somebody appeared to be challenging her own position as originator of the city’s most amusing parties. Margaret smiled and considered.

Of course it was not necessary to explain to anyone acquainted with the social rivalries of the city that Mrs. Gaylord Chisholm really deserved congratulations for the calm fashion in which she had placed the stamp of her disapproval on the season’s only questionable débutante by omitting Catherine Slamon from the list of guests at her annual débutante ball. It was curious, Margaret had reflected afterwards, how much of an impression that had made. The state of society had become appalling; a few years ago nobody would have dreamed of accepting the daughter of an Irish politician into the heart of the Mardi Gras festivities, no matter how rich and philanthropic her heavy-jowled father might be. But everybody had accepted her, and she had danced gayly through the Carnival until the night of the Chisholm ball. Margaret had discussed it beforehand with Jason Osgood, whose daughter was also a débutante that year. The result had been that when the guests arrived at Margaret’s famous ball for the season’s débutantes, Catherine Slamon had simply not been there.

And so it was that at the party Saturday night, Margaret told Dr. Murray Chambers Reid that she had thought he was the sender of the telegram, congratulating her on her successful snub of the Slamons. Dr. Reid was too consciously blue-blooded not to admire Margaret for that; and besides, Margaret informed Dr. Reid lest he feel too flattered, the wording of the telegram had sounded to her like a savant’s effort to be facetious.

That was what Margaret was to say Saturday night. For the present she simply folded up the telegram and laughed to herself as she screwed her cigarette in a bowl of sandalwood cinders.

Dr. Murray Chambers Reid carefully pushed back the pile of university records on his desk and tore open the telegram his secretary had brought in.

Much of Dr. Reid’s reputation in the cool academic circles where he was reverenced was due to the fact that he never gave the impression that he was being told something for the first time. He glanced at the telegram and glanced up to say, “No answer, Miss Ashmere,” but as the door closed behind her his face relaxed into an enigmatic frown.

CONGRATULATIONS STOP PLANS AFOOT FOR SMALL PARTY . . .

Of course, Dr. Reid knew it had been rather clever of him to have young Henry Abbott quietly retire from the faculty when Abbott showed an unmistakable tendency to preach subversive social theories in his classes. But very few persons knew why young Abbott had left the university after so short a time; and one really didn’t proclaim the inner creakings of a great institution by celebrations. Only two or three special friends of the university had found excuse to congratulate Dr. Reid on the efficiency with which he had once more cleared its corridors of turbulent doctrines. These were men who knew the good work he was doing, such as Jason Osgood.

And so when he arrived at the party Saturday night, Dr. Reid was to tell Jason Osgood in an aside why he had thought Mr. Osgood had sent the telegram. He was to add that he had thought it a wise precaution on Mr. Osgood’s part to sign himself simply “Your host,” so as not to give the inquisitive an inkling that it was Jason Osgood who had endowed the chair of economics and who took a fatherly interest in what was taught from it.

Dr. Reid was to say all that Saturday night. He knew it now as he put the telegram into his breast pocket and rang for his secretary. Dr. Reid easily made up his mind in advance.

As his secretary flounced through the door, Jason Osgood, annoyed at having a wire interrupt him at this time, frowned impatiently, pushed aside his report to the stockholders and tore open the envelope of the third telegram.

At the party Saturday night Mr. Osgood was to charge Peter Daly with sending the telegram. He was to explain how exasperated he had been upon receiving it—it was not soothing to be interrupted in his office by cryptic messages from artistic youngsters of the French Quarter. Still, Mr. Osgood was to say, he had reflected that it had been rather important to have financed the Civic Forum, and he hadn’t been surprised that Peter had planned to celebrate the Osgood Foundation. “Then, of course,” Mr. Osgood was to add, “I wanted to congratulate you on having your book dramatized on Broadway. So I decided to run up for a while after a meeting in my office.”

That was what Mr. Osgood was to say Saturday night. Now he read the telegram, and put it aside as he turned back to his report. Mr. Osgood’s office was in the shining new Bienville Building, but he had not yet had a look at the penthouse, twenty-two stories above the street. He remembered that the architects had said it would be the smartest thing of its kind in town.

Peter Daly had been browsing among the bookshops along Royal Street, and found his message on the mantelpiece when he came in. He deposited a newspaper-wrapped bundle of books on the floor and opened the fourth telegram.

“It took me three full minutes to decide on the sender,” Peter was to report at the party Saturday night, “but after running down the list of my friends I remembered Sylvia, and I was certain it was she. You see, Sylvia was always a pal of mine—she used to read my stuff and say it was good back in the days when I hardly believed it was good myself, and it seemed just like Sylvia to want to give me a party during these first days back home. I suppose I was a little bit silly—seeing one’s first play on Broadway does go to one’s head.”

That was to be Peter’s explanation Saturday night. But now when he read the telegram he simply went out on his balcony and looked down over the strange dilapidated beauty of the old French Quarter and listened to the chime of bells in the dust-gray cathedral tower.

“Telegram, Miss Sylvia.”

“Thanks, Chad.” Sylvia Inglesby lifted her sleek golden head to look at her office boy, and smiled in spite of herself. “Chad, how often have I told you not to chew gum in the office?”

“Oh, gee, Miss Sylvia, I’m sorry.” He fished a slip of paper from the wastebasket and wrapped up the gum. “That all right?” he asked as he put the ball back into the basket.

“Yes, I suppose so. And Chad, tell Miss Worthington to have those briefs ready by five o’clock. Mr. Lindsay will be in then.”

“Yes ma’am.” Chad’s head bobbed and he grinned at her as he went out.

Sylvia smiled after him as she slipped her fingers under the flap of the fifth telegram. She took a foolish delight in the adoration of the office boy as being a typical tribute to how much and yet how little she looked like a lawyer.

Her face lit again with amusement as she read the telegram:

CONGRATULATIONS . . . YOUR HOST

“But it was so exactly like you, Tim,” she was to whisper at the party Saturday night.

Sylvia was an admirable lawyer, logical and coldly inspired. There were several of her clients who had become in the course of time her warmest friends, and perhaps the closest friend she had among them was Tim Slamon, the politician whose bulbous, pugnacious face belied his very real intellect. Sylvia was fond of Tim, and Tim had a high regard for Sylvia’s ability.

“But I wondered at the time,” Tim was to hear her say Saturday night, “if it was wise of you to celebrate with a party. Of course it was a triumph for us both when we managed to adduce proof that Cosgrave was legally entitled to run for mayor after all the mud slung by Osgood’s faction. I couldn’t help thinking it was good of you to give me a party.”

Sylvia was thinking about that Osgood-Slamon battle as she tucked away the telegram. She knew her methods there had smacked considerably of the shyster. She did not think she would have strained so many points for anybody but Tim. Good old Tim.

It was characteristic of Tim Slamon that he never chewed his cigars. As he came back to his office on his return from City Hall the blue smoke enwreathed his head till he looked like one of a race of funny Celtic genii advancing in a cloud.

Two telegrams lay on his desk. The first proved to be a message from one of the out-of-town directors of the Art Craftsmen’s Club thanking Mr. Slamon for his public-spirited work in getting the Craftmen’s Club an appropriation from city funds. Tim read it and put it aside with a benign nod. He approved of the Craftsmen’s Club. Not that he had ever had time to learn much about pictures, pottery and sculpture, but it was run by an amusing group and its school had achieved a reputation that a civic leader of Tim’s caliber could not overlook. Young Abbott, reflected Tim, had probably nudged the board of directors and suggested this telegram of thanks. Abbott was a nice fellow, in spite of his recent mysterious elimination from the university faculty after a teaching career of four months; and he would naturally be interested in the welfare of the Club, for he had just been awarded first prize in their spring exhibit.

Tim opened the other telegram.

Meeting young Abbott on Saturday night, Tim was to explain that he had thought Abbott must have sent the congratulating telegram. It had seemed so obviously the work of a harebrain like Abbott. “I thought you were trying to be mysterious, and it seemed rather fun to fall in with you,” Tim said. “I thought I’d just come as directed and pretend I had no idea who the host was and be surprised when you confessed over the cocktails.”

Tim reflected as he put aside the telegram that it was a good thing he had had long experience in learning how to please everybody.

Henry L. Abbott, known in the lopsided familiarity of the Quarter as Hank, sat in a palmy patio on Royal Street painting the crooked stairway that led to the balcony when the ancient maid who kept his apartment in order brought him the seventh telegram. She jabbered in her soft, pleasant and unprintable Creole patter that it had just arrived. Hank, who never understood more than half she told him, said, “All right.” As she retreated he leaned over and studied the dash of blue he had put into the shadow on the stair. It seemed too blue. Hank knew considerably more about painting than he did about communism; in fact, he was given to wondering what he had said in his classroom lectures that had sounded communistic to Dr. Reid. He frowned over the blue shadow and tore open the telegram.

He read it several times, chuckling. Hank had been in particularly good humor since he had won the prize at the spring exhibit.

“Jean,” said Hank to the blue-shaded stairway. “Jean.”

At the party Saturday night Hank was to confess to Jean that she was the only possible sender of the telegram who had occurred to him. “It had such a Hollywood flavor,” he was to say. “And it seemed so like you to remember in the midst of your flashing career that I had won a bit of a prize myself.”

Hank stuffed the telegram into his pocket and returned to his survey of the shadow on the blue stairway.

But Jean, beautiful, misty, diaphanous Jean Trent of the talkies, back home in New Orleans on a holiday, said that she did not think about Hank when she received the eighth telegram. She said Saturday night that as soon as she had read it she had thought about Margaret Chisholm.

Jean had gone from a stock company to Broadway and thence to Hollywood, and there she had made three talkies that had placed her name in shining letters on the perishable Hollywood roll of fame. But Jean was lonely in Hollywood. New Orleans was her home town, and like others who have been bred in the magic green and gold of New Orleans Jean came back as often as she could.

Jean’s newest picture had opened in New Orleans the day before, and Jean had made a personal appearance; this telegram was only one of many that congratulated her. Margaret had promised before Jean came back to New Orleans on this visit to give her a party to which all her most delightful friends would be invited; so nobody was surprised Saturday night when Jean said she had thought the telegram came from Margaret. She had never known Margaret to send an invitation by wire, she confessed, but she had hardly thought of that, for like other intimate friends of Mrs. Chisholm she was us...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page/About the Book
• Contents
• Introduction by Curtis Evans
• CHAPTER ONE
• CHAPTER TWO
• CHAPTER THREE
• CHAPTER FOUR
• CHAPTER FIVE
• CHAPTER SIX
• CHAPTER SEVEN
• CHAPTER EIGHT
• CHAPTER NINE
• CHAPTER TEN
• CHAPTER ELEVEN
• About The Authors
• Copyright