The Case of the Solid Key

by Anthony Boucher

  “Want a drink?”

  She shook her head. “Let’s have fun without. Just for once, to prove that we can.”

  “What comes first?”

  “Why do you think I said to meet me by the merry-go-round?”

  The calliope, to any impartial ear, was still jangling and tuneless. To Norman it was singing the pure and eternal melody of happiness. Time became one repetitive and endless instant of slowly whirling, snatching rings, tossing them in the devil’s mouth, and laughing across at Sarah, who sat on the inside because she didn’t like to grab rings.

  “I think I must have fallen off a merry-go-round doing that when I was little. A psychiatrist could have fun. Traumas and stuff.”

  Norman snatched in passing and let out a magnificently triumphant Yippee! “Gold! Look, darling; the gold ring. All my life I’ve snatched and snatched, and nothing but plain rings. And tonight—!”

  “It’s an omen,” said Sarah. Her smile was an even better omen.

  After the third or was it maybe the fifth ride, Sarah said, “Help me down.”

  Norman lifted her from the white unicorn which she had chosen. “To keep things best,” she said, “you have to stop in time.”

  “Yes, Grandma. And now what? I don’t know this beach city; I’m in your hands.”

  “Out at the end of this wharf is a place with wonderful steamed clams.”

  “Splendid. And can I have beer with them?”

  “No. Tonight we’re on an uproarious wagon. We’re out to prove that there’s drunkenness enough inside us to make a dipso seem sober.”

  The clams were tender and lovingly begar-licked, and there was much melted butter, or (as Sarah observed reminiscently) ghee, as it is called in India. Norman’s reasons for happiness waxed by the moment. But he was not, unfortunately, the one to let happiness well enough alone.

  “And now,” he said, “without the calliope to drown us out, tell me all about it.”

  Sarah looked up with an oddly quizzical expression. “All about what?”

  “You. Me. Us. Things. What made you vanish? I was getting used to the common or garden stand-up, but when you disappear into thin air, leaving twenty-dollar bills scattered behind you like crumbs—”

  “No,” she said flatly.

  “No what?”

  “Just no. No information.”

  “But Mata, this is more perverse than the first night we met. With all that’s happening and all the countertwined mysteries that are cluttering up life, surely you can at least tell me—”

  Sarah wiped her pink lips and set her unstained napkin on the table. “Norman, you do this again and I’m going home.”

  “And where is that? Where is your home now that—” His tone was half joking, but she started to rise from the table. One look at her angry eyes convinced him that she meant her threat.

  “Why are unicorns better?” he asked quickly.

  “Than plain horses?” She sat down again and resumed work on the clams. “Because they’re not real at all. Because there never was a unicorn and never will be and there you are sitting on one.”

  “Escapist.”

  “It isn’t what you escape from. It’s what you escape to.”

  “And what do you—observe, my sweet, how carefully I do not ask what you escape from—but what do you escape to?”

  “You,” she said. “Want to finish my clams? This is such a vast order.”

  Norman finished them. “Nothing like the healthy appetite of growing youth.”

  “Do you like rollycoasters and such things? Fun-houses and chute-the-chutes and what-have-you?”

  “Do I? Once in my callower days I wrote a whole damned sonnet sequence about rollycoasters.”

  “Oh dear. Do you write sonnet sequences?”

  “Not any more. I’ve had measles too. I’m safe as anything.”

  “Then we’re going to Venice.”

  “On a unicorn? Or just a magic carpet?”

  “No, silly. It’s a town down the beach a mile or so. It’s where all the stuff and things are.”

  It was hard to say whether the stuff or the things were more fascinating. What was the most fun? Colliding head-on with Sarah on the Dodgem? Winning her a singularly repulsive Betty Boop at the shooting gallery? Holding her close on the splendiferous first dip of the scenic railway while she shrilled a Flagstadian Hojotoho! above the clatter of the cars?

  “Wagner must have loved rollycoasters,” Sarah exclaimed as they staggered away limp after their fifth ride. “He couldn’t have written all those swell swoops without them. Oh look! Crazy House. Shall we?”

  Then dark passages and clutching hands, steps that collapsed and tripped you, doors that weren’t doors and solid walls that were, and at last the Room that Defied Gravity.

  This was a triumph of optical ingenuity, its walls so constructed that your senses were totally tricked, and you would swear that the slanting floor was dead level. In a cage at the side of the room strange things went on. Water flowed up hill. A metal ball started at the bottom of a chute and ran nimbly to the top. A clock hung sideways, its pendulum ticking at a blithe angle.

  When the two came into the room, a couple of middle-aged tourists and their small son were contemplating these wonders. “What makes them do that, Pa?” the woman asked awed.

  The child’s eyes grew infinitely round.

  “Well now, Mother, I’ll tell you. It’s scientific.” For the man, that seemed to settle the question.

  But the child let out a little squeal. “I don’t like it, Ma. Take me outa here!”

  “My land, Earl, you hadn’t oughta be scared. Your Pa’ll tell you all about it.”

  “I don’t like it!” Earl repeated insistently; and the family went out, Pa observing, “Now Earl, you gotta realize this is a wonderful age we’re living in. There ain’t no telling what they’ll …”

  Sarah gave herself a little shake. “I don’t much blame Earl. You can tell yourself all you know about optical illusions and you still feel funny.”

  “There aren’t any wooden horses here.”

  “Of course not. They—” Then she smiled slowly. “No, dear. There aren’t.”

  It was the room that tricked them. With the best and simplest amorous intentions, they advanced toward each other. Norman put his arms around. He might as well have put them about a fast-vanishing succuba; for here was he, arms extended, at one end of the room, and Sarah, eyes closed and lips parted, at the other.

  She opened her eyes. They looked at each other and laughed. “The goddamnedest thing,” said Norman. “We’ve been had!”

  “I haven’t,” said Sarah. “That’s the trouble.”

  “Let’s try again. This fantastic room may defy gravity, but there are other natural laws.”

  Resolutely they went to each other. And resolutely they missed.

  “Look,” said Sarah. “This isn’t possible. When people want to, they do; and optical illusions don’t stop them.”

  “Once more,” Norman urged. “And fast this time.”

  The speed made one difference. They hit their separate walls harder.

  “This room,” Sarah observed, “beats any girdle of chastity.”

  “Hold everything. We are not vanquished. I thank whatever gods there be and so on. See that cage effect with the miracles behind it? You grab a bar at your end. Right. I do the same. Now work forward slowly.”

  At the center of the cage they met and kissed. Behind them the clock ticked on perversely, the stream of water continued its resolute uphill course, the metal ball rolled up and up. The world was mad and twisted and cockeyed, but their lips met firmly and one small portion of that room was mad with a madness that was all its own and free of any optical tricks.

  “I love you, of course,” said Norman.

  “Of course, dear.”

  “This is the scene that always stumps me when I have to write it. What do you say after that? What else is there to say?”

  “Nothing. No, on
e thing. Not to say. To ask.”

  “Do you love me?”

  “That’s of course too. And now we don’t have to talk any more.”

  The clock ticked, the water splashed, the ball clicked. The rest was silence.

  They walked out of the Crazy House still silent, hands clasped and eyes looking nowhere. Not until they missed a reeling sailor by millimeters did Sarah speak.

  “Aren’t we the starry-eyed pair, though!” she laughed.

  “And who,” said Norman proudly, “with better right?”

  “It’s true, Norman.” The laugh was gone from her voice. “I do love you. Please.”

  “Please what?”

  “Please believe me. Believe me whatever.”

  “Whatever,” said Norman firmly. “And there, unless my starry eyes deceive me, is a dart-throwing establishment. Shall we try our luck?”

  At midnight they were back at Santa Monica. “I had a bag,” Sarah explained. “I hope the place I checked it is still open.”

  It was. “And now,” she said, “let me go powder my nose. You can have one last ride on the merry-go-round while you wait.”

  Under more normal circumstances, Norman would have waited with a sound foaming beer in his hand; but Sarah was right. There are better intoxicants. He mounted the merry-go-round and snatched at the ring and felt his heart swinging him along faster than the machine.

  Then suddenly he knew why Sarah had looked different in that first glance. The reminiscent happiness of his finger tips told him. He had always thought of Sarah as almost flat-chested. So she had appeared each time he had seen her before. But today …

  Why should she, especially in her profession, choose to conceal her chief claim to beauty? Why—But the hell with puzzles. The hell even with the mystery of her disappearance. The main point was that she had returned, and returned to him. He was no longer a Watson. He was a lover, and as a lover he rejoiced that no one else suspected such secret loveliness.

  When he left the merry-go-round, Sarah was nowhere in sight. He lit his pipe and strolled over to wait near the building she had entered. Women came and went, and a passing cop eyed him suspiciously.

  Twenty minutes later there was still no sign of Sarah. He began to feel a gnawing worry. Such strange things happened, were happening all around them. Suppose (he returned to a four-hour-old fear) she were not a free agent after all, and that whoever or whatever controlled her movements had discovered her escape and had …

  In another ten minutes his worry had become overwhelmingly serious. At last he could restrain himself no longer. He stepped forward and seized the arm of a girl about to enter.

  “I beg your pardon,” he began.

  She shook herself loose. “Jeez!” she exclaimed. “This is a hell of a spot for a pickup.”

  But he caught hold of her again. “I want you to do something for me—something important.”

  “Look, mister. I’m not that kind of a girl and my boy friend’s waiting for me and I’m in a hurry. So please leggo me.”

  “Just a minute. My girl went in there a half-hour ago. She … she wasn’t feeling well and I’m worried about her. Would you mind—ah—looking around? She … she might—well, she might have fainted.”

  The girl looked at his earnest and perturbed eyes. “Sorry, mister. I guess you’re on the level. I’ll take a look around.”

  While she was gone he paced as restlessly as Fergus. His pipe would not stay lit, and he strewed the ground with half-burnt matches. At last the girl came out, carrying a bag.

  “Nobody in there but a fat old biddy with dyed hair,” she announced. “I don’t think she’s your type. Somebody left this bag there, though. Don’t seem to belong to nobody, so I thought maybe your girl friend might’ve left it.”

  He opened the bag. In it were Sarah’s light coat, her scant sunsuit, and the plaster Betty Boop. Silently he lifted the doll in the air and sent it down with a thundering crash to the sidewalk.

  “Jeez,” said the awed girl. “Walked out on you, huh?”

  “Walked out on me,” Norman repeated.

  “Tough. I better get back and see Mike ain’t took a runout powder on me.”

  “Is Mike in a bar?”

  “Sure. Where else does a fella wait for a lady?”

  “Do you think he’d mind,” said Norman tautly, “if I came along?”

  Chapter 12

  The phone call that roused Norman early the next morning was from Fergus. “Come over quick and get me out of here,” the invalid demanded tersely, and hung up.

  Norman arrived at the O’Breen bungalow in a breakfastless hurry to find the detective lying on a couch, his ankle swollen and strapped.

  “Prompt work,” Fergus greeted. “You’re a man to rely on.”

  “What’s all the hurry? Did something break?”

  “Nothing—aside from my bones, and do you have to make such a face at a harmless pun? But Maureen went all maternal over me and men never know how to look after themselves and what I need is a doctor. She phoned for an appointment, and he’s coming this morning at ten. So by that time I’ve got to get out of here.”

  “Ought you to? Mightn’t it be better to go on being Mycroft for a while? You shouldn’t take chances.”

  “Stop parroting my beloved sister! At ten this morning is Mark Andrews’ meeting extraordinary at the theater. You don’t think I’m going to miss that, do you? And I’ve got to have a session with Hilary and one with Fennworth—and Fran and maybe even Jordan. To say nothing of a spot of follow-up work on what we might call the Affaire La Marr. So now help me up.”

  “You can’t even walk? Look, Fergus—”

  “I can make out all right,” the Irishman snapped with that petulance peculiar to invalids who know they can’t. “Fetch me that cane over there. Pop used to carry it in parades; lucky it was still around the house. There.”

  Supported half by the cane, half by his Watson, Fergus limped to the yellow roadster and crawled in. Norman took the wheel and asked, “Where to?”

  “Had breakfast? No? God, but you’re a loyal soul. All right; drive to the joint around the corner and we can talk while you eat.”

  “I expected you,” Fergus began while they waited for Norman’s ham and eggs, “to burst in wild-eyed, shouting, ‘Have they found her yet?’ Why this sudden fading of interest?”

  “But have they?” Norman tried to sound eager.

  “No, they haven’t. Sarah Plunk has vanished as completely as something out of Charles Fort.”

  “Surely,” he continued to play out the comedy, “there must be some trace.”

  “No. Since she left her rooming house, not a living soul can be found that’s seen her—unless, of course, you count your visit last night.”

  Norman executed a major double take. “What do you mean?”

  “What’s the use of bluffing? You saw her last night, and you aren’t any too happy about it. Why keep up this pretense of wondering where she is?”

  Norman set down his tomato juice with a thump. “All right, by God, I’ll say it. ‘Marvelous, O’Breen!’ There; now are you happy? And how the merry hell did you know about it?”

  Fergus grinned. “Nice to be appreciated. And all done without needles, mirrors, or even much of the little gray cells. It goes like this: a, yesterday morning you’re all hepped up about ‘Where is Sarah?’ b, yesterday afternoon you get an implausible phone call ‘from Metropolis.’ c, last night you wander off on secret errands and don’t even arrange to get in touch with me if anything breaks. d, this morning your curiosity has evaporated. Ergo. You see, it’s as simple as that.”

  “Is it? O.K., your deductions are perfectly sound, except maybe about my curiosity. I saw Sarah last night.”

  “All right. What’s all the mystery about? And where is she now?”

  “… Well, the fact of the matter is …” and Norman sighed. “She’s vanished again.”

  “Isn’t a murder enough?” Fergus exclaimed as his remarks finally
cooled down to the printable stage. “Do I have to have teleportation on my hands too? What happened? Did she climb a rope and pull it up after her?”

  “She asked me particularly not to tell you about this; but after what’s happened,” Norman’s voice sounded dry and hard, “I don’t think I’m under any obligations of secrecy.” And he told the whole story of the night before, omitting only the scene in the Room that Defied Gravity.

  “It’s nuts,” said Fergus flatly. “There’s no reason why she should disappear in the first place, but then to reappear for your special benefit and vanish again leaving you stranded like the Forsaken Merman … Well, I ask you!”

  “Do you suppose,” Norman ventured hesitantly, “that this might … Well, look at it this way. A person disappears for some particular reason. What has changed in Sarah’s life recently?”

  “She met you. But that can’t be it, because if she’s escaping from you why should she hunt you up? Carruthers died. And so far as we know nothing else had changed in her life.”

  “Except the appearance of Herr Erich Moser.”

  “A European producer wants to catch an actress and maybe use her and so that’s a reason for vanishing? I don’t get it.”

  “No. Supposing Herr Moser isn’t what he seems. Supposing he’s—”

  “In short,” said Fergus, “supposing he knows where the body’s hid. So Sarah gets the wind up and scrams. Could be. But what’s the body?”

  “Did Herr Moser remind you of anyone?”

  “No. No, unless … I wish to hell,” Fergus broke off, “that I could get in some pacing. This fool ankle is playing the devil with my usual technique.”

  “But if—” Norman started.

  “Having fun, aren’t we? Throwing up nice pretty illusory smoke screens around the fact you don’t want to face. Love-is-a-Wonderful-Thing Department.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that last night somebody who knew my profession had seen to it that I was laid up and helpless. And somebody else made sure that you weren’t available to act as my assistant. Now if anything important happened last night …”

  The eggs seemed tasteless and the ham painfully salty. Norman refused to look too closely in the direction Fergus had indicated. Instead he asked, “And how did you get on last night, Mycrofting away without pacing?”