  Black holes exceeding a billion solar masses have been detected at redshifts
greater than six. The rapid formation of these objects may suggest a massive
early seed or a period of growth faster than Eddington. Here we suggest a new
mechanism along these lines. We propose that in the process of hierarchical
structure assembly, dense star clusters can be contracted on dynamical time
scales due to the nearly free-fall inflow of self-gravitating gas with a mass
comparable to or larger than that of the clusters. This increases the velocity
dispersion to the point that the few remaining hard binaries can no longer
effectively heat the cluster, and the cluster goes into a period of homologous
core collapse. The cluster core can then reach a central density high enough
for fast mergers of stellar-mass black holes and hence the rapid production of
a black hole seed that could be $10^5 M_\odot$ or larger.
