Merlini wasn’t very helpful. All he would say was, “You’ve talked yourself into a lovely dilemma there, haven’t you?”
I gave him a suspicious look. “Meaning that you know the answer?”
“I wasn’t meaning anything,” he evaded. “I was just commenting.”
“All right, comment on this. From the highhanded confident way you’ve been carrying on, I think you know who the zombi is. How am I going to write your memoirs if I never get told anything? Who is he?”
“Ross, you fire questions about as fast as a late-model machine gun. I’m punch drunk. Who do you think he is?”
“I know who he’s not. I’ll give you two to one he’s nothing as ordinary as a detective named Garner, not if he’s the cataleptic-trance expert you say.”
“I won’t take the bet,” Merlini said. “That beard of his never did fit the Garner picture anyway. It’s not exactly what the well-dressed dick wears these days. Even false whiskers went out of style some time back.”
“And,” I added, “if he’s not Garner, then the identification Wolff found on him was either phony or—” I paused, not liking the alternative that presented itself.
Merlini gave me a quick sideways glance. “Or what?”
“Well, when you consider the bloodthirsty habits our zombi has, I’m wondering where the real Mr. Garner is and what the state of his health may be at the moment.”
Merlini’s voice told me that he had also thought of the possibility. But all he said was, “Don’t count your corpses before you come to them.”
I disagreed. “Why not? It’s less of a shock to expect them than to run into them suddenly. And stop evading me. If the mystery man’s not Garner, who is he?”
“I don’t know, Ross. Cross my heart. But I’ll bet you a nice new coffin your size that he’ll turn out to be a professional fakir who has or once had an act featuring the burial alive. And I’ll throw in a ‘Gates Ajar’ floral wreath if Francis Galt doesn’t know who he is.”
“Galt?”
“Yes. I rather thought from the uneasy way he acted at the time that he recognized the figure in the spirit photo. Now I’m sure of it. As part of his psychic research Galt keeps a weather eye on such performers.”
“So,” I said suspiciously, “and that brings up the question: Why has he been keeping it mum?”
I got my answer to that one in just about ten seconds flat. As we entered the house again we found Francis Galt in the hall just outside the library door. Beyond it Lieutenant Flint’s voice could be heard boiling into a phone.
Galt looked at us uncertainly, his shrewd gray eyes round behind their spectacles. His hands made nervous half-finished gestures.
“The grave was empty?” he asked.
“How,” Merlini replied, “did you know about that?”
“I helped put Dunning to bed. He’s not fully conscious, but he’s talking. I gathered that he seems to think it was the ghost that hit him, and that the ghost is that of a man he helped bury. Also the lieutenant seems upset.”
“He’s going to be even more upset,” Merlini said, “when he discovers that you’ve known all this time who the ghost is, but denied it. All I need to do now to find that out is phone a few booking agents. It might be simpler all the way around if you told us.”
Galt gave him a sharp glance. “Apparently you’re getting warm. Yes, I’ll tell you. I was intending to tell Lieutenant Flint as soon as he was free.”
Galt drew an envelope from his pocket, opened it, and took out several newspaper clippings. He started to hand them to Merlini just as Flint, coming through the doorway behind him, said, “I’ll take those.”
I managed to glimpse a few headlines as the lieutenant spread the clippings out.
Algerian Magician Presents Eastern Magic
Fakir Outwits Death Underground
Zareh Bey Baffles Doctors In Underwater Burial
There was a half-tone cut with one story that showed a white-robed figure being lowered into a hole in the ground. Another was a close-up of the performer’s face. Zareh Bey’s dark-eyed, bearded features were the same as those in Galt’s phantom portrait.
The glare Flint aimed at Galt could have been used for smashing atoms. “And why haven’t I seen these before now?”
“I just got them,” Galt explained nervously. “I phoned, had my assistant get them from the files and send them out by messenger.”
“Why have you been denying all along that you knew who the ghost was?”
“I wasn’t sure. You’ll notice that the dates on those clippings are all nine or ten years back. I haven’t looked at them since I filed them. I didn’t want to make any sensational statements that might not be true.”
Hint glared at him a moment longer. Then he said, “Stick around. I’ll want to see you. Tucker, bring Merlini and Harte in here.” He went back into the library.
When the door closed he scowled darkly at Merlini and said, “I’ve just had a report from the FBI. They never heard of anyone named Garner. So that’s that. The identity card he had was a phony. And you think he’s an Algerian whirling dervish who egged Wolff into socking him one, popped off into his suspended-animation song and dance, and let himself be buried alive, all so Wolff would think he’d killed a man and be on the spot for some really high-powered blackmail. Is that it?”
“You don’t sound too happy about it,” Merlini said. “But it may not be as farfetched as you’re trying to make it sound. Wolff’s temper was notorious and dependable. Getting a rise out of him was a cinch. Most people didn’t even have to try very hard. Zareh Bey, waiting for the blow, rolled with it. If his repertoire included Hamid’s stunt of having boulders smashed with a sledge hammer on his chest, he’d know how to take a punch in the jaw without—”
Then Flint popped a question that the catechism I’d thrown at Merlini hadn’t included. It was a honey. “And how,” he wanted to know, “did Mr. Bey plan to squirm out from under four feet of earth? Is he an escape artist too?”
“I think,” Merlini said slowly, “that if it had been me I’d have made arrangements to have someone dig me up.”
Flint nodded. “Douglass. This story of his about being scared is a little thick. And he was probably paid to take it on the lam too.” He started toward the door again. “I’ll find out or know—”
Merlini stopped him. “Wait, Lieutenant. If Scotty was cast in the role of digger-up, he’d have started his excavating a lot sooner than he did. He wouldn’t have had to go back to the house for a spade; he’d have had one ready. Zareh Bey wouldn’t take chances on an hour burial when a fifteen-minute one would do as well. Not unless we’re hunting a loony.”
“I don’t need to hunt loonies,” Flint came back. “You’re not making sense. If there was some other accomplice ready and waiting to dig into the grave right after the burial, it would have been empty when Scotty came back.”
“Yes,” Merlini agreed calmly. “It would unless the person who’d promised to do the digging happened to—well, forget about it.”
I blinked. There were more rabbits in the hat after all. They were parading out, two abreast!
“Forget,” Flint said suspiciously. “What do you mean forget?” The dawn was beginning to break over him as it was over me. But he wanted to hear Merlini say it. Merlini did, with trimmings.
“Perhaps I was being a bit generous. To put it bluntly, Zareh Bey’s assistant might have decided to make the fake murder genuine. By the exceedingly simple device of just leaving him there. That’s a murder device for the book. Get your victim to let himself be buried alive, then fail to dig him up! You kill him off merely by not doing something. It’s simple, neat, and, if the burial is secret, about as sure-fire as they come.”
Flint scowled at him. “You’re certainly not making this case any simpler. If you’re right I don’t think I care for the way someone’s mind works.”
“I know I don’t,” Merlini added. “Think how Zareh Bey must have felt, especially if he ca
me out of his trance and was using the shallow-breathing method. Four feet under, going through a nerve-racking feat of endurance that demands absolute calm and freedom from fear. Then, as the minutes go by, he begins to realize that something has gone wrong, that he has, perhaps, trusted someone far too much.” Merlini shivered. He picked up the clippings Flint had placed on the table and glanced through them.
“You know, Lieutenant,” he added, “I don’t think I much like the shape of things to come. If Zareh Bey is playing possum now, if he escapes from that ambulance, if he should get to someone before we know who, we might very well have another corpse on our hands. And there won’t be anything phony about it either.”
That gave me an idea. “Perhaps,” I said, “that’s what has already happened.”
Flint gave me a nervous look. “That means what?”
“Item one: Zareh Bey returns from the grave with blood in his eye and revenge in his heart. Item two: Dudley Wolff was murdered. One and two make three.
But no one paid any attention to my theory. Merlini made a sudden exclamation and passed one of the clippings he held to Flint.
“You missed something,” he said. “Our friend Galt is certainly a lot of help. Now we’ve not only got to show that Zareh Bey wasn’t dead when Haggard examined him, we’ve also got to prove he wasn’t dead when he first appeared in that study—before Wolff ever hit him! The ghost walks again!”
Flint stared at the clipping openmouthed. I got a look and did the same.
The item, from a New York paper, consisted of a long list of names in caps. Halfway down one name was ringed with blue pencil. It was Zareh Bey’s. The dateline at the top was September 8, 1934. The headline read: Dead in Morro Castle Fire.
The library door opened, but no one looked around.
Then Sergeant Lovejoy’s voice said, “What’s all this about the ghost not being dead? He’s got an arm broken in two places, enough lacerations to kill three men, and a skull cracked open wide enough to drive a truck through. He’s dead all right!”
“Sergeant,” Merlini said, “you have no idea how dead he is.”
Chapter Sixteen:
The Persistent Ghost
WHAT WE ALL NEEDED at that moment more than anything else was a week or two in bed in a quiet secluded sanitarium with no visitors allowed. Instead we got Lovejoy’s story. It was not, by any stretch of the imagination, soothing.
He gave it to us rapidly. “That drive out front is so damn full of curves that I couldn’t see which way the car we were following turned when it hit the Post Road. I stopped cars from both directions, found a guy who’d seen the Cadillac heading toward Mamaroneck, and got going again. Then I checked at Nichols’s gas station and they’d seen him make the turn into Barry Avenue on two wheels. That looked like maybe he was aiming for the Parkway, so I did the same. There wasn’t much chance of overhauling him because he didn’t have to stop to ask questions like I did, but I was hoping somebody might nab him for speeding. On the Parkway I turn toward New York figuring that was the best bet and—”
“Look, Sherlock,” Flint cut in impatiently, “skip the deductions. Just tell me where he smashed up and how.”
“It was a couple of miles the other side of Mount Vernon. The alarm you sent out had a Parkway cop waiting at the toll gate at the bridge. Garner sees him eyeing the license numbers, steps on the gas, and shoots through without paying his dime. The cop lit out after him. He says he had his bus up to its limit and was losing ground when the Cadillac suddenly begins to slow up. Then, just as he is pulling up even and for no reason at all it’s on a straight stretch—the car edges over and starts cutting across the eastbound lane. There are two cars coming. The first just manages to duck him, but he sideswipes the next and then crashes head on into a lamppost.
“He’s still hitting at least sixty when this happens and Garner doesn’t stop as sudden as the car does. He takes a header into the windshield. They’ll be a week picking out the glass. He’s dead all right.”
Flint riffled through the newspaper clippings, found the one that bore Zareh Bey’s picture, and handed it to Lovejoy. “He look anything like that?”
The sergeant nodded at once. “Yeah, that’s him.” He took an envelope from his pocket, opened it, and started to remove the card it held. “And I had ’em take his prints as soon as we—”
Tucker stepped forward, snatched the fingerprint card from his hands, and put a magnifying glass on it all in one movement.
Flint looked over his shoulder. “How long’ll it take you to check—”
“They’ll check,” Tucker said gloomily. “I’d know these prints in my sleep I’ve seen enough of ’em. They’re the ghost’s.”
Flint sat down. He looked tired and his voice was discouraged. “First he introduces himself as Smith. Wolff socks him. Haggard pronounces him dead. Then he turns out to have identification that says he’s a dick named Garner. They bury him. He won’t stay in his grave. He comes back and haunts the joint. Then he gets killed again.” Flint looked at Lovejoy. “And you identify him as Zareh Bey, an Algerian whirling dervish who’s been dead eight years. The hell with it.”
Lovejoy’s jaw dropped. “Dead eight years? An Algerian whirling—” He shook his head dazedly. “I don’t get it.”
“Who does?” Flint said. “Find anything on him?”
Lovejoy, still blinking, said, “What? Oh, yeah. Sure. I found plenty.”
He took several handkerchief-wrapped parcels from his overcoat pockets, placed them on the table before Flint, and opened one.
“Billfold,” he said, “but no identification. Small change, pencil, handkerchief, that sort of thing. And two flashlights.”
One was an expensive model streamlined in blue plastic. Lovejoy picked up the other, a cheap dime-store affair that had no glass covering its bulb. When he pressed the button it failed to light.
“Dent in the side, too,” the sergeant added. “And, if it matches those pieces of glass we found in the study, it proves he was there. Probably what he socked Harte with.”
Flint nodded and picked up the other light.
“That one’s Kay’s,” I said. “It’s the one she keeps in her car.”
Lovejoy opened a second parcel. “And this,” he said proudly, “puts the case on ice. It was in the glove compartment in the dash. It’s not loaded, but it’s been fired.”
It was the missing vest-pocket revolver. Its grip was a curved hollow shell of metal which, with the trigger, was folded in and forward along the underside of the cylinder. Flint straightened them out. The thing looked more like a gun then, a tiny freak of a weapon, its barrel hardly longer than the cartridges it fired. But there was an efficient deadliness in its compact design and in the cold glint of the metal that belied its toylike appearance.
“Prints?” Flint asked.
Lovejoy shook his head regretfully. “No. It’s been cleaned.” He unwrapped the other parcel. “But his prints are on this. It was in his coat pocket.”
A queer-looking object lay in the center of the handkerchief. An oblong block of metal with a hole running through it the long way was mounted on a rectangular steel frame that had screw holes at each corner. I saw what looked like a firing pin and a projecting triggerlike lever. Tied to the latter was a length of string which the sergeant unrolled, disclosing a small loop at its other end. The handkerchief also held five long-shanked metal thumbtacks of the sort that I had noticed were used to fasten the explanatory cards to the wall beneath the various exhibits in the gun room.
“The trap gun,” Flint said regarding the contraption with a jaundiced eye. He pulled back the firing pin and removed an empty cartridge case. “And it’s been fired. Somebody placed it on top of that bookcase where we found the thumbtack holes at just about the height of a man’s head. The string ran across the room and was tacked to the wall opposite. A nice thing to run into in the dark! When you hit the string you’re in line with the gun. And somebody did. But who? And when?”
&nb
sp; The desk phone at his elbow rang as though it had been waiting the cue and gave him one of the answers. Flint, still scowling at the weapon, reached for the phone, talked a moment, scowled still more, and then replaced the receiver.
He glared angrily at the trap gun.
Merlini said, “Bad news?”
“I don’t know what it is,” Flint answered. “The medical examiner’s just had a look at the body. He wants to know what the hell a powder burn is doing on the left cheek!”
Merlini lifted an eyebrow. “Now that,” he said, “is interesting. I hope your medical examiner doesn’t walk into a trap too.”
Flint blinked. “What does that mean?”
“He might jump at conclusions. He might assume that those lacerations and the cracked skull were the sole cause of death. He might not do a full-dress autopsy. I’d like to know if there’s anything else that could have—”
“Anything else?” Flint’s surprise brought him up out of his chair. “Isn’t that enough? What—”
Merlini pointed a long forefinger at the trap gun. “That ominous gadget and the powder burn set off a positively explosive train of reasoning. It suggests that there has been a second attempt on Smith-Garner-Zareh Bey’s life. Or maybe we better just call him Smitty for short.” Merlini’s finger moved lip and pointed at Flint. “Suppose you’d tried to eliminate someone by not digging him up on schedule. Then, a week later, when you’re sure your victim is thoroughly dead, he pops up again pretending to be a spook. You don’t dare contradict him because he knows you tried to do him in. What would you do then?”
Flint’s eyes returned to the trap gun.
“Exactly,” Merlini said. “You’d buy another chance at him, before he has a go at you. But this particular victim has more lives than a cat. The trap gun misses too. And then—”
No Coffin for the Corpse Page 19
