by Mike Ashley
Somebody was still shooting. Gavigan, Brady, and I went through the window and toward the sound. The officer who had preceded us was in the kitchen, firing around the jamb of the back door. An answering gun blazed in the dark outside and the cop fired at the flash.
“Got him, I think,” the cop said. Then he slipped out through the door, moved quickly across the porch and down the steps. Brady followed him.
Gavigan’s pocket-flash suddenly sent out a thin beam of light. It started a circuit of the kitchen, stopped for a moment as it picked up movement just outside the door, and we saw a third uniformed man pull himself to a sitting position on the porch floor, look at the bloodstain on his trouser leg, and swear.
Then the Inspector’s flash found the open cellar door.
And down there, beside the beginning of a grave, we found Judge Keeler.
His head had been battered in.
But he couldn’t find Merlini anywhere in the house. It wasn’t until five minutes later, when we were opening Keeler’s suitcase, that Merlini walked in.
He looked at the cash and negotiable securities that tumbled out. “You got here,” he said, “before that vanished, too, I see.”
Gavigan looked up at him. “But you just arrived this minute. I heard a cab out front.”
Merlini nodded. “My driver refused to ignore the stop lights the way yours did. Did you find the Judge?”
“Yes, we found him. And I want to know how of all the addresses in Greater New York, you managed to pick this one out of your hat?”
Merlini’s dark eyes twinkled. “That was the easy part. Keeler’s disappearance, as I said once before, added up to two invisible men. As soon as I knew who the second one must be, I simply looked the name up in the phone book.”
“And when you vanished,” I asked, “was that done with two invisible men?”
Merlini grinned. “No. I improved on the Judge’s miracle a bit. I made it a one-man operation.”
Gavigan had had all the riddles he could digest. “We found Keeler’s body,” he growled ominously, “beside an open grave. And if you don’t stop—”
“Sorry,” Merlini said, as a lighted cigarette appeared mysteriously between his fingers. “As a magician I hate to have to blow the gaff on such a neatly contrived bit of hocus pocus as The Great Phone Booth Trick. But if I must – well, it began when Keeler realized he was going to have to take a runout powder. He knew he was being watched. It was obvious that if he and Helen Hope tried to leave town by any of the usual methods, they’d both be picked up at once. Their only chance was to vanish as abruptly and completely as Judge Crater and Dorothy Arnold once did. I suspect it was Zyyzk’s first prediction that Miss Hope would disappear that gave Keeler the idea. At any rate, that was what set the wheels in motion.”
“I thought so,” Gavigan said. “Zyyzk was in on it.”
Merlini shook his head. “I’m afraid you can’t charge him with a thing. He was in on it – but he didn’t know it. One of the subtlest deceptive devices a magician uses is known as ‘the principle of the impromptu stooge.’ He so manages things that an unrehearsed spectator acts as a confederate, often without ever realizing it. That’s how Keeler used Zyyzk. He built his vanishing trick on Zyyzk’s predictions and used them as misdirection. But Zyyzk never knew that he was playing the part of a red herring.”
“He’s a fraud though,” Gavigan insisted. “And he does know it.”
Merlini contradicted that, too. “No. Oddly enough he’s the one thing in this whole case that is on the level. As you, yourself, pointed out, no fake prophet would give such precisely detailed predictions. He actually does believe that Helen Hope and Judge Keeler vanished into the Outer Darkness.”
“A loony,” Gavigan muttered.
“And,” Merlini added, “a real problem, at this point, for any psychiatrist. He’s seen two of his prophecies come true with such complete and startling accuracy that he’ll never believe what really happened. I egged him into predicting my disappearance in order to show him that he wasn’t infallible. If he never discovers that I did vanish right on time, it may shake his belief in his occult powers. But if he does, the therapy will backfire; he’ll be convinced when he sees me, that I’m a doppelganger or an astral double the police have conjured up to discredit him.”
“If you don’t stop trying to psychoanalyze Zyyzk,” Gavigan growled impatiently, “the police are going to conjure up a charge of withholding information in a murder case. Get on with it. Helen Hope wasn’t being tailed, so her disappearance was a cinch. She simply walked out, without even taking her toothbrush – to make Zyyzk’s prediction look good – and grabbed a plane for Montana or Mexico or some such place where Keeler was to meet her later. But how did Keeler evaporate? And don’t you give me any nonsense about two invisible men.”
Merlini grinned. “Then we’d better take my disappearance first. That used only one invisible man – and, of course, too many phone booths.”
Then, quickly, as Gavigan started to explode, Merlini stopped being cryptic. “In that restaurant you and Ross sat at a table and in the seats that I selected. You saw me, through the window, enter what I had been careful to refer to as the second booth from the right. Seen through the window, that is what it was. But the line of phone booths extended on either side beyond the window and your field of vision. Viewed from outside, there were nine – not six – booths, and the one I entered was actually the third in line.”
“Do you mean,” Gavigan said menacingly, “that when I was outside watching the second booth, Ross, inside, was watching the third – and we both thought we were watching the same one?”
“Yes. It isn’t necessary to deceive the senses if the mind can be misdirected. You saw what you saw, but it wasn’t what you thought you saw. And that—”
Then Gavigan did explode, in a muffled sort of way. “Are you saying that we searched the wrong phone booth? And that you were right there all the time, sitting in the next one?”
Merlini didn’t need to answer. That was obviously just what he did mean.
“Then your silver dollar,” I began, “and the phone receiver—”
“Were,” Merlini grinned, “what confidence men call ‘the convincer’ – concocted evidence which seemed to prove that you had the right booth, prevented any sceptical second thoughts, and kept you from examining the other booths just to make sure you had the right one.”
I got it then. “That first time you left the restaurant, before you came back with that phoney request for the loan of a nickel – that’s when you left the dollar in the second booth.”
Merlini nodded. “I made a call, too. I dialed the number of the second booth. And when the phone rang, I stepped into the second booth, took the receiver off the hook, dropped the silver dollar on the floor, then hurried back to your table. Both receivers were off and the line was open.”
“And when we looked into the second booth, you were sitting right next door, three feet away, telling Gavigan via the phone that you were in the Bronx?”
Merlini nodded. “And I came out after you had gone. It’s a standard conjuring principle. The audience doesn’t see the coin, the rabbit, or the girl vanish because they actually disappear either before or after the magician pretends to conjure them into thin air. The audience is watching most carefully at the wrong time.”
“Now wait a minute,” the Inspector objected. “That’s just exactly the way you said Keeler couldn’t have handled the phone business. What’s more he couldn’t. Ross and I weren’t watching you the first time you left the restaurant. But we’d been watching Keeler for a week.”
“And,” I added, “Malloy and Hicks couldn’t have miscounted the booths at the station and searched the wrong one. They could see both ends of that line of booths the whole time.”
“They didn’t miscount,” Merlini said. “They just didn’t count. The booth we examined was the fifth from the right end of the line, but neither Malloy nor Hicks ever referred to it in that way.�
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Gavigan scowled. “They said Keeler went into the booth ‘to the right of the one that was out of order.’ And the phone in the next booth was out of order.”
“I know, but Keeler didn’t enter the booth next to the one we found out of order. He went into a booth next to one that was marked: Out of Order. That’s not quite the same.”
Gavigan and I both said the same thing at the same time: “The sign had been moved!”
“Twice,” Merlini said, nodding. “First, when Keeler was in the Oyster Bar. The second invisible man – invisible because no one was watching him – moved it one booth to the right. And when Keeler, a few minutes later, entered the booth to the right of the one bearing the sign, he was actually in the second booth from the one whose phone didn’t work.
“And then our second invisible man went into action again. He walked into the booth marked out of order, smashed a duplicate pair of blood-smeared glasses on the floor, and dialed the Judge’s phone. When Keeler answered, he walked out again, leaving the receiver off the hook. It was as neat a piece of mis-direction as I’ve seen in a long time. Who would suspect him of putting through a call from a phone booth that was plainly labelled out of order?”
Cautiously, as if afraid the answer would blow up in his face, the Inspector asked, “He did all this with Malloy and Hicks both watching? And he wasn’t seen – because he was invisible?”
“No, that’s not quite right. He was invisible – because he wasn’t suspected.”
I still didn’t see it. “But,” I objected, “the only person who went anywhere near the booth next to the one Keeler was in—”
Heavy footsteps sounded on the back porch and then Brady’s voice from the doorway said, “We found him, Inspector. Behind some bushes the other side of the wall. Dead. And do you know who—”
“I do now,” Gavigan cut in. “Sergeant Hicks.”
Brady nodded.
Gavigan turned to Merlini. “Okay, so Hicks was a crooked cop and a liar. But not Malloy. He says he was watching that phone booth every second. How did Hicks switch that Out-of-Order sign back to the original booth again without being seen?”
“He did it when Malloy wasn’t watching quite so closely – after Malloy thought Keeler had vanished. Malloy saw Hicks look into the booth, act surprised, then beckon hurriedly. Those actions, together with Hicks’s later statement that the booth was already empty, made Malloy think the judge had vanished sooner than he really did. Actually Keeler was still right there, sitting in the booth into which Hicks stared. It’s the same deception as to time that I used.”
“Will you,” Gavigan growled, “stop lecturing on the theory of deception and just explain when Hicks moved that sign.”
“All right. Remember what Malloy did next? He was near the information booth in the center of the floor and he ran across toward the phones. Malloy said, ‘I did some fancy open-field running through the commuters.’ Of course he did. At fivetwenty the station is full of them and he was in a hell of a hurry. He couldn’t run fast and keep his eyes glued to Hicks and that phone booth every step of the way; he’d have had half a dozen head-on collisions. But he didn’t think the fact that he had had to use his eyes to steer a course rather than continue to watch the booth was important. He thought the dirty work – Keeler’s disappearance – had taken place.
“As Malloy ran toward him through the crowd, Hicks simply took two steps sideways to the left and stared into the phone booth that was tagged with the Out-of-Order card. And, behind his body, his left hand shifted the sign one booth to the left – back to the booth that was genuinely out of order. Both actions took no more than a second or two. When Malloy arrived, ‘the booth next to the one that was out of order’ was empty. Keeler had vanished into Zyyzk’s Outer Darkness by simply sitting still and not moving at all!”
“And he really vanished,” Gavigan said, finally convinced, “by walking out of the next booth as soon as he had spoken his piece to Molloy on the phone.”
“While Malloy,” Merlini added, “was still staring goggle-eyed at the phone. Even if he had turned to look out of the door, all he’d have seen was the beefy Hicks standing smack in front of him carefully blocking the view. And then Keeler walked right out of the station. Every exit was guarded – except one. An exit big enough to drive half a dozen trains through!”
“Okay,” the Inspector growled. “You don’t have to put it in words of one syllable. He went out through one of the train gates which Malloy himself had been covering, boarded a train a moment before it pulled out, and ten minutes later he was getting off again up at 125th Street.”
“Which,” Merlini added, “isn’t far from Hick’s home where we are now and where Keeler intended to hide out until the cops, baffled by the dead-end he’d left, relaxed their vigilance a bit. The judge was full of cute angles. Who’d ever think of looking for him in the home of one of the cops who was supposed to be hunting him?”
“After which,” I added, “he’d change the cut of his whiskers or trim them off altogether, go to join Miss Hope, and they’d live happily ever after on his ill-gotten gains. Fadeout.”
“That was the way the script read,” Merlini said. “But Judge Keeler forgot one or two little things. He forgot that a man who has just vanished off the face of the earth, leaving a deadend trail, is a perfect prospective murder victim. And he forgot that a suitcase full of folding money is a temptation one should never set before a crooked cop.”
“Forgetfulness seems to be dangerous,” I said. “I’m glad I’ve got a good memory.”
“I have a hunch that somebody is going to have both our scalps,” Merlini said ominously. “I’ve just remembered that when we left the shop—”
He was right. I hadn’t mailed Mrs Merlini’s letter.
MURDER STRIPS OFF
Amy Myers
I should have expected it! When I first contacted authors in the hope they’d be interested in contributing to this anthology I was delighted with the diversity and originality of ideas that were suggested. And yes, I should have expected it. After all, what could be more impossible than a murder committed in full view of an audience when the only possible suspects are the strippers on the stage! And it’s very clear that they had no weapons to hand! Amy Myers (b.1938) is the author of the popular series featuring August Didier, the Victorian/Edwardian chef/detective. The following story delightfully introduces Nick Didier, following in his great-grandfather’s footsteps.
“Never again.” Hamish Scott scrabbled into his clothes for dear life. “Those hyenas are going to tear it off one of these days. Count me out.”
“If I had a prick like yours, mate,” Paul Duncan sniggered, eyeing the weedy former schoolteacher from top to toe, “I’d feel the same.” He squared his footballer’s shoulders, and admired himself in the cracked mirror of the scruffy room allotted to them at the pub.
“I’m with you, Hamish.” Jason Knight saw where his best interests lay, but the redundant salesman in him sought to smooth things over. “None of us can quit, can we, Greta?” They couldn’t – she’d made sure of that.
“Glad you remembered which side your privates are buttered.” Tony Hobbs (ex-colonel) heaved himself up ostentatiously with the aid of his stick, banged it on the floor to emphasize his authority, and limped to the piano to place an affectionate hand on his wife’s shoulder. “I’ve worked my ass off managing you lot, and so’s Greta.”
The three men kept silent as they bitterly recalled just how darling Greta had worked her ass off on their account.
“If only my boys would try to get along better,” Greta purred reproachfully, but the small black eyes in the solid face flickered malevolently. “You all dance to my tunes so admirably it seems a pity to break the trio up. Perhaps I’ll try a new routine. How would that be?”
Even Tony danced to Greta’s tune, but tonight Hamish had reached breaking point. “I won’t do it. I won’t even do Wednesday.” His voice rose to a shriek. “I want out now!”
“Oh, you will mate,” Paul said viciously. Wednesday meant serious money, even the vastly reduced amount that dribbled down to them, and no replacement could learn the routines in two days. “Face it, Hamish. She’s got us by the short and curlies.”
“Sweet of you, my great big cuddly teddy bear. Tonight’s teddy bear?” Greta suggested lightly, while her husband listened impassively.
Paul fell suddenly silent, and Justin saw his chance.
“Come on, Hamish. One more show won’t kill you.”
“All right, but Wednesday’s the last.” Hamish hurled his defiance at their trainer, pianist and de facto boss.
Greta grinned. “Over my dead body.”
How did he land up in this hole? It was Nick Didier’s philosophy that a job was a job and even the most repellent had something to offer if you could stand back a few paces and think of something worse. Spider-catching in Antarctica, for instance. He hated the cold, he hated spiders, and compared with these horrors catering for Women’s Only Night at a steamy club looked tolerable, even if they were gathered to watch male strippers. This trio, The Bubbling Berties, hardly lived up to their name – they looked dead miserable.
“Fancy ’em, do you?.
Les leered over Nick’s shoulder, as he watched the trio from the doorway of the kitchen at the side of the hall. Les’s Crappy Catering Company (as Nick termed it) had finished its own role for the evening, and two hundred or so women were gearing up to scream their loudest, having drunk enough to dull their indigestion pains.
“I’d sooner fancy your food, mate,” Nick replied amiably.
Les only laughed. His only concession to haute cuisine was the names he gave the muck. Turkish Salsa, Thai Salad of Minty Prawns, and Cajun Chicken à l’Orange turned out to be yoghurt flavoured with almond essence, pink slop prawn cocktail (with a parsley leaf as garnish if it wasn’t too expensive) capped by your old friend fried chicken with a tired orange segment. With the right names the ladies would love roasted cowpats, Les maintained, only he didn’t call them cowpats.
