No Coffin for the Corpse

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 pose 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.

When we were all out in the hall, Merlini said, “You’ll admit that I’m not a semitransparent spook, won’t you?”

They nodded, glumly as though they rather wished he were.

Wolff said, “Get on with it.”

Merlini called, “Dunning, are you set?”

The secretary’s voice answered, “Yes. The alarm is on.”

“Good.” Merlini stepped back within the room as though entering a magician’s cabinet and gave us his good-matured but exasperating professional smile. “Give me thirty seconds by your watches. When you come in, I shall try not to be here.” He started to close the door. “The fourth-dimension express is now leaving on track six for the River Styx, Purgatory, Hell, and points south. I hope this will prove that ghosts are not always what they seem, that stone walls do not a prison make, and that jumping at conclusions is a risky form of mental exercise. Ready. Set. Go!”

The door slammed.

I spent the next thirty seconds thinking fast, furiously, and in circles. Either Foxy Grandpa really had doped out a method of exiting from that damned room, or else it was a fancy bit of leg-pulling aimed at getting us out of the way while he put over a fast one. He was quite capable of either. I expected the worst. Wolff and Galt looked as if they did too.

Galt didn’t give Merlini any more rope than he’d asked for. He pushed the door in right on the dot. Then he swore fervently. The burglar alarm hadn’t emitted a single solitary peep. The bathroom door was still locked, its key on the inside. The clothes closet was empty.

And Merlini had vanished without leaving as much as a puff of smoke or the faintest odor of brimstone behind.

Galt walked to the center of the room, turned around twice, swore again heavily, and looked at Wolff. I had the privilege, for once, of seeing the latter at a complete loss. The trouble was that I was in the same fix.

I called, “Come out, come out, wherever you are! They’re convinced. So am I. We give up.” I didn’t get as much as an echo for an answer. Merlini had not only gone, it looked as if he were going to stay that way.

Galt didn’t take it lying down. He was mad. He searched the bedroom, the bathroom, Wolff’s room, and then Anne’s room again. He did everything but look under the ash trays and behind the pictures on the wall. He even began to doubt his previously stated opinion as to secret exits in the woodwork and had actually started tapping the floor when, at last, we heard the magician’s voice again.

It said, “All right, Dunning. You’re relieved.” And it came from the front hall downstairs!

When he joined us, after a moment, in the bedroom, I said, “So, it was a trap door after all.”

He grinned. “No, Ross. Cross my heart. No trap doors.” He looked at Wolff and Galt. “Well, what price ghost now? Will you admit that maybe our mysterious visitor doesn’t need to assay one hundred percent ectoplasm?”

Galt growled. “Never mind the prologue. Let’s have it.”

Merlini shook his head. “Not so fast. The escape from this room is a good trick. My business is selling tricks. I’m afraid I’ll have to make a charge.” He was looking at Wolff.

The latter grunted. “I’ll be damned! All right. What do you want?”

“Information. I want to know who this alleged ghost pretends to be, when he died, and how. I want to examine that study, and I want you to report the unexplained absence of your boatkeeper to the police.”

Wolff glared at him, silent for a long moment. Then he snapped, “That’s all, is it?”

“For the moment, yes. Is it a deal?”

There was nothing ambiguous about Wolff’s answer. He said, “No!” explosively.

I didn’t like the way things were shaping up at all. When Dudley Wolff reacted that way blasting powder wouldn’t budge him. Unless Merlini came down off his high horse we were stymied.

But he only grew more reckless. “Wolff,” he said, “you’ve been investigating psychic phenomena and you’ve picked up a red-hot poker. I think I can help you. But not unless I get some co-operation.”

Wolff went into his steam-roller act. “How,” he demanded thunderously, “did you get out of this room?”

Merlini stood pat. “I’m a ghost. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it as long as you keep saying no. Come on, Ross. We’re leaving.”

He turned on his heel and started out. I opened my mouth to protest. But he threw me a wink as he turned and, although I knew it wasn’t going to work, there was little I could do but follow his lead. Galt started to give Wolff an argument as we left, but the latter cut him off angrily.

Merlini walked slowly down the hall, giving Wolff a chance to change his mind. Wolff didn’t take it. Instead, he called down and told Phillips to give us our hats and coats.

“This,” I complained feelingly as the door closed behind us, “is just swell! God knows what will happen in there next. And you have to get us tossed out on our ears! Don’t you know that Dudley Wolff is six times as stubborn as an army mule, that trying to force him to do something is decidedly not the way to handle him, that—”

“Yes, I know all that,” Merlini said. “But I’ve developed a ‘How to Handle Dudley Wolff’ system. I thought it worked rather well.”

“Oh you do, do you? I suppose you wanted to get us thrown out.”

“That was the general idea. I had to avoid telling Wolff how I got out of that room for one thing. There wasn’t a lot more we could do there anyway. We’ve got to find out what he’s holding back. We can’t do it under his eagle eye. But if he thinks we’ve gone, if we drive off noisily in the car, and then return on the q.t.—”

I didn’t get any of this. I said so. “Maybe I’m crazy, but what kind of an investigation can we carry on when we’re locked out?”

Merlini grinned. “You forget, Ross. I’m a magician. Put your faith in the Magic Shop slogan: Nothing Is Impossible. Stop fussing, and get that car going.”

“Okay. But whatever it is you’ve got up your sleeve, it had better be good”

I started the car, racing the motor a bit as we moved off so that Wolff could hear it. Two or three hundred yards from the house I turned off the drive at Merlini’s direction and parked under the trees. We left the car there and made our way cautiously back toward the house, keeping a weather eye peeled for Leonard in case he had resumed his patrol. We found a place from which we could watch the house without being seen and settled down to wait.

Merlini tried, mysteriously, to parry all my questions, but I finally wore him down. “Listen,” I objected, “if you don’t tell me how you managed that escape act I’ll — I’ll—”

“You’ll what?”

“I haven’t decided yet, but it will be drastic. I’m in the mood for an ax murder.”

“How do you think it was done?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea. I only know that when you did it, you ruined a perfectly lovely disappearing ghost theory that I had just finished piecing together. It even explains the mystery of the study.”

“It must have been a honey if it did that. What do you think is in the study?”

“A set of false whiskers and a dark overcoat. I suspect Wolff is right about our ghostly friend being a dead one. That’s why it gives him the willies. Therefore, Dudley Wolff to the contrary, someone has been masquerading. And, with that burglar alarm operating, it has to be someone in the house. You, Wolff, Kay, and I were together when His Nibs appeared. That lets us out. Galt, Dunning, and Phillips are all minus alibis, since they were all separately searching each other’s rooms.

“But they were all in the wrong end of the house. That leaves Mrs. Wolff. There’s no real evidence to back up her story that someone or something came in through the locked door into her room. In fact, the whole yarn sounds distinctly phony. She could have put on the ghost act at the head of the stairs, tossed her costume into the study in passing, and created that rumpus in her room as misdirection. That’s why Dudley won’t open up the study. He’s covering her. And it explains the now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t haunt. Or it did up until you spoiled it by proving that there’s some sort of secret exit out or that room after all.

Merlini didn’t like it. “Ross, you’ve got a comic-magazine mind. She’d have to be a wizard at make-up and a lightning-change artist. She couldn’t shed her disguise as quickly as all that. You forget that she was in Florida last week when the poltergeist phenomena occurred, and that this morning she was with the others in the hall downstairs when the ghost appeared on the landing. Also, it happens that there is evidence that someone or something else was in her room. I found a couple of nice clear thumbprints on the inside of one pane of that unlocked window above the trellis. They’re not hers.”

I gave that some thought. “The ghost’s appearance this morning gives everybody an out except Galt and Leonard. And Galt’s appearance this morning just after the ghost disappeared was almost too pat. Suppose he put on the disguise and slipped up those back stairs. We didn’t see which direction the ghost came from. Then, when Wolff takes a pot shot at him, he high-tails it down the hall and into Mrs. Wolff’s room. He ducks her barrage, vanishes according to your recipe, whatever that is, and reappears—” I stalled.

Merlini said, “What’s wrong?”

“He reappeared on that back stairs too quickly. Or can you manage that by your vanishing method too?”

“I’m afraid I can’t. You see I went out the window and down the trellis!”

I groaned. “Do you mean that Wolff’s pet burglar alarm is a pushover, that our nicely isolated house has been wide open all this time to anyone who happened to come along?”

“Well not exactly, but it’s not infallible. The alarm is designed to trip up the unsuspecting prowler and would probably serve that purpose very well. But when one knows that it’s there and knows how it operates, getting past it isn’t too hard. I had Galt’s flashlight and I simply centered it on the photoelectric cell while I crossed the sill. As long as the cell gets light, black or white, the alarm is a sleeping dog.”

“So,” I said, “Friend Leonard again. He had a Hash. And you sent him along with me to hunt the ghost!”

“I wanted him out of the way while I snooped. I rather thought he had possibilities. After I climbed down the trellis, I picked the lock on the garage door. It’s on the same side of the house, basement floor. I edged in past the electric eye again and I found Leonard’s room. I gave it a quick once-over without turning up anything suspicious. And then, not having asked him for a sample of his prints because I didn’t want him to know I had doubts about his alibi, I looked for some. I found several on his shaving mirror. The pattern of the print on the window classes as a twin loop. But Leonard’s is a whorl.”

“So,” I said dizzily, “am I. You checked all the others — Wolff, Dunning, Phillips, Galt, Kay?”

“I did. Results negative all around.”

“Then unless Leonard’s lying when he swears no one shinnied down out of that window, there must be still another way out of that room!”

“It looks like it,” Merlini said unhappily. “Either that or there are ghosts and Wolff collects the ten grand. That’s why I couldn’t tell them I had escaped by the window. The moment we checked Leonard’s prints and cleared him, his evidence that no one left by the window throws my vanishing explanation out of court and closes that room up again as tight as a coffin. I figured that Dudley might sleep better if he didn’t know that. And I need time to dope out another exit before I have to admit that the one I used doesn’t fill the bill.”

“You might have managed it,” I objected, “so that we didn’t have to spend the night camping out in the wild wet woods with pneumonia lurking behind every tree.”

“Concentrate on our problem then. Emulate the lamas of Tibet who sit naked in the icy snows of the Himalayas and warm themselves by the power of thought alone.”

“It won’t work. When I think of what may happen in that house, I get cold chills. I wish I knew where those guns are.”

“Oh,” Merlini said, “that reminds me. Take this. It might come in handy.”

He made a William S. Hart gesture, brought out a revolver in each hand, and gave one to me.

“At this rate,” I said, “it won’t be long before the Wolff gun room resembles Mother Hubbard’s cupboard.”

“I didn’t take these from the gun room. Yours is the one Mrs. Wolff had, the one you dropped out the window when Leonard grabbed you. I salvaged it in passing. And this other is Dudley’s. As soon as the house has settled down for the night, we’re going back in. I thought it might be safer to burglarize a house whose owner is unarmed, so I picked his pocket before we left.”

I released the barrel latch of Anne’s gun and broke it open. The six chambers all held dead soldiers. “I can’t bring down any ghosts with this,” I protested. “You would give me the unloaded one.”

“Mine’s going to be unloaded too,” he replied, ejecting the cartridges. “Then, if we’re apprehended, we won’t have to take the rap for anything more than second-degree burglary. It may save us as much as fifteen years apiece in Sing Sing. Unless, of course, they get you for life on account of prior convictions.”

“They will some day, if I continue to associate with you. What are we going to look for in the house beside another exit from the bedroom?”

“We’re going to investigate Bluebeard’s study.”

The lights in the house went out after a while, all but the one in Wolff’s room. After a half-hour’s cold, uncomfortable wait, during which I decided that burglary wasn’t my calling, Merlini said, “If we wait until he douses that light we may be here all night. In his state of mind he doesn’t like the dark. He may not even try to sleep. We’ll have to chance it.”

We had seen Leonard make the rounds several times at fifteen-minute intervals. We waited until just after he had finished a tour of inspection and then approached the house.

“Up the trellis again,” Merlini said. “I left the window unlatched. I’ll go first and put the hex on the evil eye. You follow along pronto. I don’t want to use the flash any more than necessary.”

Merlini went up and in without accident. I followed. When I reached the sill, he turned his light again on the depression in the window frame where the photoelectric cell kept its vigil. We proceeded from there without using the light at all.

If the dark hall beyond the bedroom had been black before, it was Stygian now. We felt our way slowly and cautiously toward the study door.

Merlini flicked the light on for a brief moment, keeping the lens covered with his fingers so that only a few dim rays came through. He examined the lock.

“This may take a while,” he whispered. “It’s a Yale-type pin tumbler.” He turned the torch off and gave it to me. “Find the chair Dunning used. Unscrew that ceiling light again so we’ll have time for a getaway if Wolff catches wise. But go easy with that light.”

“Okay, Butch, but woik fast. I got a noivous temperament.”

I put the ceiling light out of commission and then felt my way back along the wall to the door where Merlini was making small mouselike noises with his lockpick.

“Give me a spot of light,” he whispered. “Okay, that’s enough. One of these pins keeps slipping on me.”

I had seen him do this sort of thing often enough to have some idea of the technique employed. He had inserted a tension tool in the lower part of the keyway and was applying a turning pressure on the lock cylinder. Then, with a slender curved pick made from a hacksaw blade, he was probing delicately and patiently raising one pin after another in an attempt to get them all into line, an operation that the irregular edge of a key does in one motion. It was a ticklish business under any conditions. Attempted in total darkness in a house illegally entered, it was also nerve-racking. I began to understand why so many thieves become narcotic addicts.

After ten or a dozen of the longest minutes I’ve ever experienced, I finally heard the metallic click which meant that the lock cylinder had turned and the bolt moved over. Merlini gave a low whistle of relief. Simultaneously, from somewhere belowstairs, came the furtive, cautious tread of footsteps!

I felt Merlini’s hand grip my arm. We stood for a long moment, motionless and silent. Then the sounds died away. I started to speak, but Merlini’s hand tightened on my arm and we waited again, endlessly. At last his whisper, so close beside my ear that I felt his breath, said, “Flash, please.”

I pushed it toward him.

“Stand pat,” he added. “If anything happens jump for the bedroom.”

He moved off toward the stairs. And I waited for another eternity in a dark void that was as lonesome as the outer reaches of interstellar space. Almost anyone, even the ghost who had appeared and vanished earlier along this same hallway, would have been welcome company.

I had just decided, impatiently, to end the interminable waiting and go in search of Merlini when I heard the sound of footsteps again.

They came, this time, from the back stairs at the hall’s far end beyond the main staircase. Then, in the arched opening of the door at their top, I saw the moving flicker of a flashlight. Its gleam gave me a momentary glimpse of Merlini’s dark figure standing motionless at the head of the main stairs. His return was impossible. He had no time. I saw him dodge quickly, down into the shadows toward the front hall.

I took a half-step toward Mrs. Wolff’s room, then stopped. That was useless. If I tried to take a powder out the window, the alarm would set the whole house on its ear. Merlini had the flashlight!

My indecision held me too long. Now even my chance of reaching the bedroom had vanished. The man on the stairs was too near. In another second his head would clear the top step, his light would find me—

I flattened instinctively back against the door, felt it move inward, and, almost without thinking, stepped backward into the study. I groped for the doorknob, twisted it so that the bolt would make no noise, and pushed the door gently home. Wolff’s orders being what they were I was safer from discovery here than in the bedroom.

Safer? Half a second later I knew that a lion’s cage would have been preferable. There was a quick rush of movement in the dark behind me. Something lunged heavily against my back. An arm hooked around my neck and squeezed nut-crackerlike, jerking my head up and back, strangling the startled cry that I had begun.

I staggered, off balance, trying to twist from the tightening grasp and face my assailant. I didn’t have a chance. Something hard and heavy struck my head, and a shattering burst of pain exploded and blotted out all else. A milky way of shifting, giddily swirling light specks danced in Surrealist confusion before my eyes and I dropped swiftly into nothing.

Falling, one faint memory lingered for a moment — the rough prickly feel of my attacker’s bearded jaw as it scraped along the side of my face!

Later, how much later I had no way of knowing, I struggled upward again and felt the chill night air against my face and a throb of pain pounding in my head. I seemed to be upside down, arms dangling, a heavy weight pressing against my thighs. Somewhere, behind the waves of pain, a warning rang and brought a swift flooding of awareness.

I was lying, for the second time that night, face down across a window sill, my body half out and within a scant inch of toppling over and down.

Reflex action jerked at the muscles of my legs and my hands tried vainly to reach the sill. I felt a constricting tightness about my ankles and, at the same instant, the grasp of two hands that gripped my legs and lifted them, tipping my body forward. The rough stone of the outer wall scraped against my face as I somersaulted out and hurtled down.

My mind raced in one last frantic burst of activity, deducing from the sudden jerk at my legs and the rushing acceleration of my downward plunge that a weight was fastened to my ankles. Then the breathtaking shock of the icy water that surged up and closed over me brought the blackout down again.