No Coffin for the Corpse

by Clayton Rawson

  “Guest room!” he said. “Quick!”

  Galt, who was nearest, turned to the door at the head of the stairs and put his hand on the knob. Merlini called, “Wait!” and jumped toward him.

  “Don’t,” he warned, “go barging into rooms that way without looking. Not as long as that trap gun is still missing.”

  He turned the knob himself, pushed the door in, and examined the interior with the pocket flash. Then he said, “All right. Where’s the switch?”

  Galt readied around the door jamb and snapped it. Merlini stepped in. Wolff put an arm under Anne’s knees, lifted her, and followed. Inside I heard a closet door open and close. Then Merlini’s voice. “Come in. There’s nothing here.”

  Kay followed her father in. Merlini came out and back toward me. He stopped at the door against which Mrs. Wolff had been standing and tried the knob. It was locked.

  “What’s in here?”

  “Mr. Wolff’s study,” Dunning answered.

  “Does it connect with his bedroom?”

  “No.”

  Merlini moved toward Wolff’s door. “Ross,” he said. “Keep an eye on that locked bathroom door and let me through when I knock.”

  He pushed Wolff’s door open, examined the room beyond with his flash, then felt for and found the light switch. When he returned to Mrs. Wolff’s room through the bath a few moments later he reported, “Nothing. Not even a mouse.”

  Francis Galt joined us. His eyes moved warily about the room and then rested on Merlini. “Well,” he asked slowly, “are you satisfied now?”

  Merlini nodded. “Yes, satisfied that there’s monkey business afoot.”

  Galt thought that over. Then he asked, “Why? Just on general principles? Or can you prove it?”

  “Let me ask you one. You tested the photoflood bulb after putting it in the ceiling socket in the hall?”

  “Yes. I did.”

  Merlini picked up the electric torch he had dropped on the bed. “And this flashlight which I took from your suitcase. Was it in working order last time you tried it?”

  Galt nodded, frowning. “It was.”

  “It wasn’t much help when I needed it. Look.” Merlini pressed the button, then unscrewed the cap at the end and let the batteries slide out into his hand. One of them, had been inserted the wrong way around. Merlini glanced at Galt and, without saying anything, reversed the battery and replaced it. This time the torch lighted.

  “Ghosts don’t like light. I know that. But when they unscrew bulbs and tamper with flashlights—”

  Galt was obviously worried. “I’ll admit I don’t like that,” he said. “But there’s something else I like even less. If you’re going to insist that what you saw at the head of those stairs was a three-dimensional flesh-and-blood person, you’re going to have to explain how he could have run into this room and then, in the space of three or four seconds, vanished into thin air. I don’t think you can do it. I know how your stage illusions are done—your vanishing girls, your trunk- and coffin-escapes. Any competent psychic investigator has to know that sort of thing. None of those answers fit.”

  “Are you sure?” Merlini said. He took his half dollar from his pocket and flipped it once in the air. Then he held it by the extreme edge between thumb and forefinger. “Suppose we let this coin represent the phantom.” He laid it carefully on the palm of his left hand and slowly closed his fingers over it. “My closed fist is the locked room. There’s nothing astral about the coin. It’s good solid metal, and yet—”

  His fingers opened slowly. His hand was empty. I glanced quickly at his other hand. That was empty too.

  “The fact,” he continued, “that the coin escapes invisibly is no proof that its solid matter dematerialized in some occult manner. Not when there is a much simpler explanation. Not when—”

  Wolff’s voice came from the doorway behind us. “It was done like that, was it?” He sounded skeptical. The color of the liquid in the tall glass he held in his hand indicated that little if any soda water had been added to the whisky it contained.

  Merlini said, “Yes, that might be one way.”

  “One way?” Galt exclaimed. “You don’t mean that there’s more than one?”

  “I don’t know yet. That’s what we’ve got to find out. I don’t suppose there are any trap doors or sliding panels in this room?”

  Wolff was positive on that point. “No. There are not. I built this house. I know.”

  Galt shook his head. “You can forget that. It’s no magician’s cabinet. It’s an ordinary room with no trickery in its construction whatever. I went over every inch when I searched it this morning.”

  “I just thought I’d ask,” Merlini said. “I didn’t think there would be. But there are more ways than one to skin a cat, or to disappear. There was no trap door in my hand either. Galt, I saw fingerprinting equipment in that suitcase of yours downstairs. I brought some too, but yours is handier. Would you get it?”

  “Yes. I was intending to.”

  “Good. Send Dunning up with it, and then take a look at that camera of yours.”

  “At the camera?”

  “Yes. I want to know if our ghost was solid enough to make an impression on the plate. Ross snapped the shutter just before our subject ducked. There might be a picture—unless someone has tampered with the camera too.”

  This news interested Galt. He went out the door and down the hall on the double-quick.

  “And,” Merlini added, addressing Wolff, “we need a good thorough search of this house. Top to bottom. Leonard and Harte could—”

  “Why that?” Wolff cut in. “Mrs. Wolff saw it here in this room. You’ve searched, There’s no way out.”

  “Those guns are still missing.”

  Wolff scowled. “Yes.” He hesitated a moment. “All right, Leonard, do as he says.”

  Merlini turned to me. “Make it quick—but thorough. And don’t go barging into any dark rooms without taking a good look first, not as long as that trap gun is still missing. Better take this.” He gave me Galt’s torch. “Give the place a quick once-over to find out if there’s anyone in the house who shouldn’t be. Then take another look with a fine-toothed comb for those guns.”

  I nodded and Leonard and I started out just as Dunning arrived carrying Galt’s fingerprint roller, ink, cards, and an iodine fumer.

  I heard him report, “Mr. Galt says that the camera seems to be in good order and that he’s developing the film. He’s fixing up an impromptu darkroom in a bathroom downstairs.”

  Leonard and I began our search, but we hit a snag right at the start. Since Merlini had already examined Wolff’s room and the guest room where Anne had been taken, I decided that the next room needing attention was the one other that opened on the hallway this side of the stairs—Wolff’s study.

  I went to the head of the stairs and called Phillips.

  “I’d like the key to the study, please,” I told him. “Mr. Wolff has asked us to look for those missing guns.”

  Phillips seemed surprised. “Did he tell you to look in the study?”

  “He said look everywhere.”

  “You’ll have to ask him for that key. He hasn’t let anyone go in that room for the past week, not even to clean it.”

  I stared at the man, wondering if he knew just how big an applecart he had just tipped over.

  “Didn’t Galt search it this morning when he was hunting the ghost?”

  “No. He wanted to, but Mr. Wolff refused flatly.”

  “Well,” I said. “Just imagine that.” Superman himself couldn’t have backtracked to the bedroom any faster than I did.

  As I burst in, Merlini was telling Wolff, “Yes, I think you do know who the ghost is, or, if you must have it that way—was. That’s why you’ve got the wind up so badly. That’s why—” He turned to me. “Find something?”

  “It looks promising.” I held my hand out toward Wolff. “May I have the key to the study?”

  Wolff looked as if he had been
expecting that question, and as if he didn’t care for it or me. “I don’t think it will be necessary to search that room,” he said heavily.

  I had given up trying to dope out a technique for handling Wolff. So I simply said, “No? Why not? What have you got in there? Skeletons in the closet?”

  Wolff wasn’t accustomed to back talk. His jaw tightened and he took a step toward me.

  Merlini cut in quickly, “You’re talking about the locked room just across the hall?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I am. And what’s more, Phillips says Galt wasn’t allowed to examine it after the ghost did his vanishing act this morning.”

  Merlini turned to Wolff. “I thought you wanted this ghost laid?”

  “I do. But you won’t find anything in the study. No one has been in that room for the last week. You can forget about it.”

  “Locked doors don’t seem to bother this ghost much.”

  “I know. If he could go through the locked door of the study, he could just as easily leave the house. You wouldn’t find him there now.”

  “Ghostly behavior is difficult to predict. I want a look.”

  “Sorry. But you can’t. That’s final.” It was quite obvious that Wolff meant just what he said.

  I sat down. “It we can’t take a look at that room, there’s not much point in searching the rest of the house.”

  Wolff said, “Suit yourself.” He evaded further argument by taking the empty glass he held across to his room for a refill.

  Merlini looked at Dunning. “I suppose it would be asking too much to inquire of you what this is all about.”

  Dunning looked uncomfortable. “I don’t know what it’s all about,” he said.

  I felt sure that he was lying, and Merlini’s look said that he did too. But he let it lay. He turned to me again. “Go look for those guns. Never mind the study. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

  I grumbled. “Some day I’m going to get myself elected D.A. and make you do the dirty work.” But I did as he asked. Leonard and I spent the next hour poking and prying. We went over the place from attic to wine cellar. We found no ghost and no guns, nothing but a cook and a serving maid in the kitchen, both of whom were on the verge of leaving. Phillips was trying to dissuade them.

  “I don’t mind ghosts,” the cook was saying. “I don’t believe in ’em. But when the mistress starts shooting the place up—”

  I didn’t blame her much. I could think of places I’d rather be, too.

  As we started back to file our report, Galt came out of his bathroom and hurried up the stairs carrying a dripping photographic film. He seemed excited.

  I caught up with him by the bedroom door. “Any luck?” I asked.

  “Yes. Plenty.”

  We went in. Wolff was watching Merlini take Dunning’s fingerprints.

  Galt crossed to the nearest floor lamp and lifted off the shade. “Merlini,” he said, “after you’ve explained the vanishing trick, here’s a little something else you can go to work on.”

  We all crowded around as he held the film up against the light.

  The ghost was there right enough, and much more plainly visible than he had appeared to our eyes. The flash bulb had picked out details that had been hidden by the dark—the outline of the body beneath the face and the dark overcoat he wore. One hand was outstretched, pointing down toward the camera. And the reversal of values in the negative made him appear more ghostly than ever, a white figure with dark face and hands—an Al Jolson ghost in a shroud.

  But it wasn’t funny, not when I saw what had excited Galt. The flash had caught something else that the darkness had concealed before, something that made the ghost’s sudden disappearance much more understandable. The background behind him, the baseboard and the pattern of the wallpaper on the corridor wall, showed clearly through his body. Our ghost was, as all good ghosts should be, transparent!

  Chapter Ten:

  Boy Meets Ghost

  ORDINARILY THE PHOTO wouldn’t have impressed me at all. Anyone who has ever seen a motion picture knows very well that the camera can tell far better lies than anything Ananias ever dreamed up. But, coming just when it did, the picture was—well, disconcerting.

  I don’t know whether Merlini felt the same way, but in any event he wasn’t admitting it for the record. “Our astral friend,” he said, “seems to be suffering from an advanced case of malnutrition.”

  He was the only one who even pretended to take it lightly. Dudley Wolff stared at the negative as though it were an angry bushmaster in the act of striking. Dunning scowled at it darkly with the nervous uncertain manner that was beginning to be a habit with him. The expression on Galt’s face was curiously mixed. He seemed pleased and excited over obtaining such a lulu of a spirit photo, and, at the same time, worried and annoyed.

  Merlini, noticing this, asked, “Something wrong, Galt?”

  The man nodded. “Yes, dammit, you know there is. This is the best spirit photo I’ve obtained in twenty years of trying. I know positively that it can’t be anything but genuine. And now—” He scowled again at the negative, then added, “Let me ask you just one thing. Do you think I’m a complete idiot?”

  Merlini shook his head. “No. Quite the contrary.”

  “Thanks. Then perhaps you’ll believe that, if I had expected or known that the result was going to be anything like this, I wouldn’t have gone into the darkroom and developed this plate all by myself. Perhaps you’ll admit that I’d have had you and Wolff right there and insisted that you oversee every step of the operation.”

  “Yes,” Merlini nodded. “That sounds likely. Your laxness in that respect appears to give you a clean bill of health. Barring a very fancy double bluff, it hardly looks as though you were responsible for what is on the plate. But any such train of logic is at the very best only negative evidence of the authenticity of the picture. It certainly won’t win any prize money from the American Scientist committee. How sure are you that no one monkeyed with that plate before you loaded it in the camera? How do you know it might not have been switched for another plate later? The camera hasn’t been under guard all the time?”

  “I’m positive there can’t have been any sleight of hand,” Galt said with exasperation. “But I can’t prove it to anyone else. The plate hasn’t been out of my possession since I bought it this afternoon. And no exchange was possible because I marked it for identification. That’s routine. I always do. I’m satisfied. But you won’t accept it on faith.” He eyed the negative with a curious look. “And yet—”

  “And yet what?” Merlini asked.

  “And yet,” Galt said slowly, “in order to avoid losing that prize money you’ll have to duplicate this photo. And something tells me that you may get yourself a headache trying to do that.”

  Merlini gave Galt a sharp look, took the negative from him, held it before the light, and examined it closely. “I’m afraid I don’t see the difficulty,” he said. “Why do you say that?”

  Whatever it was Galt had up his sleeve, he was keeping it there for the moment. He shook his head. “I’ll tell you later. I want to check something first, just to be sure. But if I’m right, I warn you, you’re in for an unpleasant surprise.”

  Merlini scowled at the picture again, obviously puzzled.

  Then Wolff stepped up to bat. “I don’t know what Galt means,” he said. “But he’s right. You can’t possibly duplicate that picture. And I will tell you why. You might dress someone up to look like that man, put him at the head of the stairs, and take a double exposure so that the background would show through his body. But that wouldn’t be an exact duplication.”

  “I’d have to find this same man and have him pose. Is that what you mean?”

  “Yes. And that’s impossible. That’s what proves this photo to be genuine. It can’t be anything else!”

  Merlini faced him. “So, we come to it at last, do we? You’re finally going to admit that you do know who the ghost is. I couldn’t get him to pos
e for me because he’s dead and buried. Is that it?”

  Wolff nodded hopelessly. “Yes. That’s it.”

  “Well, go on. Who was he? What makes you so sure he’s dead? What proof do you have?”

  Wolff acted scared to death, yet he was as obstinate and unyielding as ever. “I can’t tell you that.”

  “Can’t,” Merlini snapped. “Or won’t.”

  “Whichever you like. I’ve said all I’m going to. You can take it or leave it. I know the photo has to be genuine. I don’t give a damn what you think.”

  That seemed to settle that, but Merlini kept after him. “You know when he died? And how?”

  Wolff just barely nodded. Something had gone wrong with his voice. “Yes,” he whispered.

  “And you’re convinced that the figure we saw on those stairs, that the image in this photo is so like the dead man that no one could have impersonated him?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “And,” Galt objected, “you can’t even suggest any such theory until you’ve explained how an impersonator could have escaped from this room leaving it the way we found it. When you’ve done that—”

  “Perhaps,” Merlini said calmly, “I’d better save time and do it now. If I give you a good practical explanation, will you admit—”

  “Maybe,” Galt said. “But I’ll hear it first. And skip your sleight-of-hand coin-trick analogies. It’ll have to be much better than that.”

  “All right.” Merlini pointed at the bathroom door. “Close that, Galt, lock it, and leave it just as we found it. Dunning, go downstairs and stand guard at the burglar-alarm control. Make sure that it’s operating and see that no one touches it.”

  Dunning looked questioningly at Wolff. The latter regarded Merlini intently for a moment, scowling. Then he nodded irritably. “All right, Dunning. Do it.”

  The secretary went out. Merlini followed him as far as the door. “And,” he added, “the rest of you come out here.”

  Galt turned the key of the bathroom door, rattled the knob, turned about, and cast a worried look around the room. Then he moved toward the door. Wolff and I followed.