No Coffin for the Corpse

Chapter Nine: Portrait of a Phantom

The white cone of light moved swiftly, its circle slanting across the walls. Distorted shadows sprang up in its path behind bed, dressing-table, and chairs, shifted crazily and were swallowed again by the larger darkness that filled the room.

But we saw no trace of what we hunted.

Then my light moved across the two doors in the wall at my left. I moved in through the thick, acrid smell of cordite, my hand tense on the butt of my gun. I pulled the first door open and found a closetful of dresses on hangers. Behind me someone clicked the wall switch and the room filled with a soft-rose glow from shaded lamps. I stepped into the closet and pushed the dresses aside. There was no one there.

Merlini reached the second door, turned the knob and pulled. The door was locked and the key was in the keyhole on this side. I turned to face the windows. There were two, both closed. One was directly opposite me beyond the bed, the other in the side wall at my left. Three of the latter’s leaded panes had been pierced by neat round holes that were centered in spidery webs of radiating cracks. Two more bullets had bored their way into the cream-colored plaster of the wall a yard or so to the left, and a sixth had smashed through a framed Laurencin water color. Fragments of glass and plaster littered the floor beneath.

The bed was a low modern affair set so close to the floor that nothing more than a ghost, and a thin one at that, could possibly have crawled beneath. But I stepped forward, dropped to my hands and knees and looked just the same. I found nothing. There was no other possible hiding place within the room.

“Dead-end street,” I announced, glancing up at Merlini. “Where do we go from here?”

He looked at Galt. “The alarm guards those windows too?”

Galt nodded. “Yes.”

Merlini indicated the locked door. “And this goes where?”

“Connecting bath through into Wolffs’ room and that opens out into the hall again. All the rooms this side of the main stairs do that. There’s no other exit. You won’t find a damned thing. This is exactly what happened this morning.”

“And we got here within seconds,” Merlini said, making it still worse. “There was no time for anyone to go through into the bathroom and lock the door after them from the wrong side with any key-and-string hocus-pocus. But we’ll play safe and look just the same.” He tossed the useless flash he carried onto the bed, took Galt’s, and went back out into the hall. The sound of voices and running feet came from the stairway.

Merlini turned his light in that direction. “Phillips,” he ordered, “stay there and watch those stairs. Dunning, do something about some light. Wolff—”

But I didn’t hear the rest. I was staring at the dark square of the window that held the bullet holes. In the lowest pane just above the sill a dim shape had materialized in the darkness outside — the white blur of a man’s face.

I had seen it and stopped halfway in the act of rising to my feet. Now my right arm moved upward under some automatic compulsion of its own, the gun it held aiming at the window. My finger began to squeeze the trigger.

The face jerked swiftly down out of sight.

“Got him!” I shouted. “In here. Hurry!”

I threw myself forward across the room.

The window was unlocked. I pulled it open and leaned forward across the sill, gun ready.

Then everything happened at once. The alarm bell burst into life, and a hand shot up, clamped around my wrist and twisted it with a sudden jerk that started me out in a nose dive over the edge.

I dropped quickly, doubling hingelike and grabbing frantically for a hold with my left hand. The impact of the window ledge against my middle left me gasping. I tried to dig holes in the carpet with my toes.

The man who held my wrist was standing on the upper latticework of a rose trellis that ascended the side of the house almost to the window.

His voice, close beside my ear, ordered, “Drop that gun!”

Pain stabbed up along my arm as he twisted it again violently. The gun fell from my fingers and I started slipping forward again. The marines arrived in the nick of time. Someone threw himself against my legs from behind and hung on grimly. A flashlight beam shot down into my opponent’s face.

It was the chauffeur, Leonard.

“Somebody haul him up,” he growled, “before this damned trellis pulls loose and we both—” Then he saw Merlini. “Say, who the hell—”

Galt’s voice cut in. “Leonard! What are you doing outside this window?”

“I was on guard. Wolff’s orders. And when this guy starts shooting the joint up—”

“Just where were you,” Merlini demanded, “when you first heard the shots?”

“Right here at the corner of the house. I—”

“Hey, for the luvva Mike,” I protested weakly. “Can’t we hold the inquisition somewhere else? I’m coming apart in the middle.”

Leonard recognized my voice. “Oh,” he growled, “so you’re the guy who does the ghost imitations — the guy who conked me this morning!”

He sounded as if he wanted to even the score then and there. But Merlini explained quickly. “He didn’t do the shooting you heard. Unhand him so we can haul him up. And you come along, too.”

Merlini and Galt pulled me up. Leonard, still eyeing me doubtfully, threw a leg over the sill and came in.

Merlini said, “Galt, go shut off that bell and reset the alarm. Quickly!” He turned to the chauffeur. “Let’s have it. What happened out there?”

Leonard scowled, looking around at the damage the bullets had caused. An electric torch projected from the side pocket of his uniform coat and there was a long strip of adhesive on his head just behind his right ear. He looked doubtfully at Merlini.

“And just who are you?”

Wolff’s voice came from the hall. “It’s all right, Leonard. Answer him. What happened outside?”

“Nothing, sir. I was just coming around the corner of the house when somebody started to lay down a barrage. I jumped for the trellis and started up. Then the shots began smacking into the window just above my head and I stood pat. After the shooting stopped, a light came on in here and I eased up for a look. I see this guy crouching on the floor by the bed with a gun in his hand. And, when he starts to aim at me, I—”

Merlini crossed to the other window, examined its latch and said, “Locked. And if Leonard insists that no one could have shinnied down that trellis past him—”

“They certainly couldn’t.” Leonard scowled. “Besides, with that burglar alarm working, how could anyone—”

“It doesn’t look very practical, does it?” Merlini said somewhat glumly. “One door, locked on the inside. Burglar alarm on the windows and a witness just outside the single unlocked one. It’s not bad.”

“And,” I growled, massaging my sore arm, “it’s not good either.”

Dudley Wolff, in the doorway, turned nervously as light flooded the dark hallway behind him at last. Downstairs Galt turned off the alarm bell.

I followed Merlini to the door and saw Dunning climb down from the chair on which he had been standing. In the ceiling socket above, a photoflood bulb shone brightly.

“Loose in the socket?” Merlini asked.

Dunning nodded.

Standing in the doorway, I surveyed the hall. The door to Wolff’s room was directly opposite. There was another in the same wall a few feet to the left. Mrs. Wolff stood backed against it rigidly, Kathryn at her side. There was a third door beyond and across from this, near the head of the stairs where Phillips stood, one hand on the balcony rail. Galt joined him in a moment from below.

Anne stared at her husband as he crossed to her and took her arm.

“What was it? What did you see?” Wolff’s voice didn’t roar now. It was thin and shaky. It almost sounded as though he didn’t really want the answer to the question he asked.

Anne’s voice was a flat dull monotone, little more than a whisper. “I had just gone to bed when I heard the shot outside. I reached for the reading lamp above the bed, and then, before I could find it, I heard something in the hall outside my door. And the doorknob turned.” Her voice faltered. She stared at the door. “I heard the door open—”

“Yes?” Wolff prompted. His fingers were tight on her arm.

“Then the footsteps ran in through the dark, and — and I saw—”

Wolff cut in. “What we saw this morning on the stairs?”

She nodded. “Yes. It moved toward the window. I can’t remember picking up the gun from the bedside table, but I suddenly had it in my hand. I fired. I–I think I cried out. I fired again and again. The figure moved as though the shots made no difference. It reached the window. I fired again, and then — then I was running for the hall. Dudley, I’m afraid. I don’t want to stay in this house any longer. What I saw is—”

Wolff shook her arm, tightening his grasp. “That’s enough, Anne,” he said quickly.

And then, as he spoke, the rigid tension of her body relaxed. She swayed unsteadily; her eyes closed. Wolff put his arm around her.

“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!