No Coffin for the Corpse

Chapter Twelve: Spectral Fingerprints

When Joe’s captive came into the room, convoyed fore and aft by cops, my hope that the elusive phantom had been captured sagged limply and collapsed with the traditional dull thud. The man couldn’t very well have looked any less like the subject of Galt’s spirit photo. His eyes were not black, but bright blue, and his more than generous nose, glowing with the ruby-redness of a port light, was certainly not ascetic — not by a jugful. He was, furthermore, short, tanned, and clean shaven. A desert isle of baldness atop his head was surrounded by a curling white surf of hair. He was distinctly ill at ease, and he eyed us all with deep suspicion.

Flint frowned uncertainly. “I’ve seen you around before.”

“Lieutenant,” the man protested. “I hae na done anything. Why—”

It was obvious as soon as he spoke who he was. The touch of Scottish accent in his voice told us that. “Douglass!” Flint exclaimed. “The missing boatkeeper.”

The prisoner looked around worriedly. He seemed genuinely puzzled. “What’s happened? What are you doin’ here? Why—”

He stopped as Flint took a step toward him. “What are you doing here?”

“I came back to get some clothes and things from ma room o’er the boathouse, and these men—”

“Where the hell have you been for the last four days? Did you know we were just about to drag the Sound for your body?”

Scotty stared at him for a moment, then looked at the floor. “Í,” he said slowly, “I was away.”

Flint scowled. “We noticed that. Go on, talk. Where and why?”

The boatkeeper’s broad fingers twisted nervously at his hat, turning it around and around. “I — well, I was lookin’ for another job. I found one and I hae to get back.”

“Why’d you leave without notice? And without the pay you had coming?”

Scotty’s answer was slow in coming. He still looked at the floor. “I decided I didna want to work here any more.”

Flint waited for him to continue, but Scotty left it at that. “I see.” Flint’s voice was harsh. “How long have you been working for Wolff?”

“Nine years.”

“And all at once you don’t want to work here any more. Just like that?”

Douglass nodded. His eyes lifted once, darted a furtive look at the rest of us, and dropped again.

Flint regarded him thoughtfully for a second, and then let him have it. “Okay. Suppose I guess. It wouldn’t be because you saw a ghost, would it?”

The reaction he got was quite satisfactory. The white tufts of cotton that were Scotty’s eyebrows ascended like twin stratosphere balloons. He stared as though Flint himself were a ghost. But the cat seemed to have got away with his tongue entirely.

The lieutenant began to grow impatient. “You’re going to talk, Douglass. Plenty. You might as well start now and get it over. When—”

Scotty looked around at the rest of us once more. Then he said, “Where’s Mr. Wolff? I want tae see him.”

“Sure, you can see him,” Flint said. “But it won’t help you any. He’s dead.”

It took Scotty a minute or so to absorb this. Flint didn’t help him any by adding, “He was murdered. Now stop stalling and talk. When did you see this — this ghost?”

Scotty’s mind was still trying to grasp the meaning in Flint’s words. His response was the automatic one of a sleepwalker. “Wednesday,” he said mechanically. “Wednesday night.”

From there on he bogged down after every few words. Flint, pumping the story out of him piece by piece, found, eventually, that the man had not only seen a ghost; it had chased him!

“I didna argue aboot it,” Scotty said. “I went awa’ at once.”

This was an understatement. More questioning disclosed that his departure had been so complete that he hadn’t stopped to look back once this side of Rye.

“Ma father,” he explained with a sudden rush of words and a thickening of his burr, “was once a caretaker of a haunted castle near Inverness. They found him floatin’ in the moat ae mornin’ wi’ his neck broke.”

Flint didn’t fancy the introduction of any additional spooks. “Yeah,” he growled skeptically, “I’ll bet the spirits that chased him came out of a bottle, too.”

“Na!” the Scotsman protested. “Tha’s just the trouble. I hae na hae a drap since Sonday. When a mon is cold sober and sees a dead mon comin’ after him—”

“Dead man?” Flint cut in. “Why are you so sure he was dead? You’d seen him before then? You knew him?”

Scotty’s protest was frantic. “Na. Na! I never saw him before at a’. And I dinna want to see him again. I want to get awa’ from here.” He half turned as if to leave, but one of his guards clamped a hand on his arm.

Flint stepped forward. His face was inches from Scotty’s. “If you didn’t know who he was, if you never saw him before, what made you so sure he was dead? You must have had some reason for thinking—”

Scotty may have been scared, but he still had his wits about him. He saw an out there and took it quickly. “A’richt, then he wasna dead. I made a mistake.”

Flint glared at him for a moment. “You’re making another now.” He glanced at his watch. “How long have you been snooping around outside this place?”

“I got here just now.” Scotty jerked a thumb at the detective on his left. “I went straight tae the boathouse and then this mon—”

“Five o’clock in the morning,” Flint cut in. “That’s a damned funny time of day for a man that’s scared of something he’s not even sure is a ghost.”

“Ma new job starts at nine. I ha tae get back to Stamford. If I don’t—”

Flint turned disgustedly to Lovejoy. “Get him out of here and make him talk. I don’t care how, but do it. Find out where he’s been every minute of the time he’s been gone and start checking back. And send Haggard up here.

Lovejoy, with Scotty and his escorts, left. When the door had closed behind them, Merlini said, “The plot thickens. His yarn sounds thin. One gets you ten that there is more in his ghost story than meets the eye.”

Flint’s expression was on the sour side. “Or,” he said glumly, “a lot less.”

Merlini began counting on his fingers. “Wolff, Mrs. Wolff, Kathryn, Dunning, Phillips, Ross, and myself—” Merlini’s left thumb unexpectedly came off in his right hand. He regarded it with surprise but no alarm, then calmly replaced it, waggled it experimentally once or twice, and went on, “—and myself have all, at one time or another, seen the apparition in the presence of corroborating witnesses. Scotty, though uncorroborated, says he saw it. Leonard has a bump on his head to show that he felt it. Galt has a portrait study. You surely aren’t going to deny there’s no fire behind a dense and billowing cloud of smoke like that, are you?”

“No,” Flint said grudgingly, “maybe not. But it doesn’t have to be hell-fire. That photo’s a fake. Any kid with a box camera and a back number of the Photographer’s Home Companion could cook it up. The broken chinaware, the spilled ink, the pictures falling off the walls, the mess in the library, the torn book illustration and the dagger — they don’t mean a thing. Nobody saw ’em happen. Anybody could have done ’em. The great vanishing act in Mrs. Wolff’s bedroom is just a matter of a flashlight on the burglar alarm and taking it on the lam down the trellis. You’ve proved that yourself.”

“And Leonard?” Merlini asked, lifting one eyebrow. “Then he’s lying when he says that no one, not even a ghost, left by that window?”

“Either that or he’s it himself.”

A playing card appeared mysteriously in Merlini’s fingers. He tried and succeeded in balancing his whisky glass on its edge. “You dismiss Leonard far too offhandedly. If he’s lying, he’s covering someone. Why should he do that for whoever bopped him on the head earlier? Or, it his injury was self-inflicted, if he is the ghost, and he fits the description none too well, then how did he shuck the dark overcoat, whiskers, necessary make-up et cetera so quickly? Is he a lightning-change artist? And what did he do with the disguise? An overcoat’s not an easy article to hide, not in the few seconds he had. It’s not in the shrubbery down below that window. I looked when I did my climb down the trellis. Leonard is definitely a problem.”

“Yes,” Flint agreed. “The answers he gives about his past are altogether too damned hazy and he strikes me as being smarter than a chauffeur should be. I’ll know more when I finish checking back on him. I’ve got a hunch the answers may be interesting.”

“Speaking of interesting answers,” Merlini said, “were you able to reach Wolff’s lawyers and find out about his will?”

Flint nodded, “Kathryn Wolff and Mrs. Wolff each get half. Doctor Haggard and Galt each get twenty-five grand for research. Dunning gets five thousand; Phillips and Douglass, two apiece.”

“And Leonard?”

Flint shook his head. “He doesn’t even get an honorable mention.”

Merlini stopped juggling his drink and drank it. “If he’s the ghost, his motive seems a bit obscure.” Merlini scaled the playing card he held to the floor near Flint’s feet. He snapped his fingers. The card jumped up and flew back into his hand. “One item was missing from the poltergeist phenomena you just listed as proving nothing, Lieutenant. What about the flower vase that up and smashed itself on the floor while Miss Wolff and Phillips were watching it? You heard about that, didn’t you?”

“Thread,” Flint answered at once. “Same like you used on that card just now.”

Merlini held out the card and his hands for inspection. “Take a look. Miss Wolff thought of that too. And she looked. She didn’t find any either. What’s more, the windows were all tightly closed, and Kay had just entered by one door, Phillips by the other. If there were threads, coming in through keyholes or such, they’d have snagged them. No, I don’t think it was thread.”

“Okay,” Flint growled, “but will you stop trying to prove it was an invisible man?”

“But if he’s not invisible,” I asked, not trying to provoke Flint, but merely wanting an answer, “how the hell did he get out of that study?”

I spoke out of turn. Flint had an answer — one that I liked even less. “Your word,” he snapped, “is all I’ve got that says he was ever in the study. And when Haggard—” He stopped abruptly and started toward the door. “I wonder where the devil—”

The door opened just as he reached it. Lovejoy and the doctor were there. The latter puffed nervously at a cigarette.

“You wanted to see me?” he asked.

“Yes. Come in. Lovejoy, get Tucker. I want him too.”

Haggard stepped in and waited.

Flint said, “What’s Mrs. Wolff’s condition? I’ve got to see her.”

“She’s sleeping. You can’t question her now. I gave her a sedative.”

“You tell her about her husband?”

“No. I didn’t think she could take it just then. After she’s slept—”

“We’d better get it over. You can wake her, can’t you?”

Haggard frowned. “Yes. But I don’t think—”

“It won’t wait. If you don’t wake her, I will.”

Flint’s curt manner only put Haggard’s back up. The latter gave the lieutenant an obstinate look, and seemed about to tell him where to head in. But the immediate clash was averted when a short, harassed-looking little man hurried in with a fistful of fingerprint cards and took Flint’s attention.

“About time you had something to report, isn’t it, Tucker?” the lieutenant asked.

The man nodded. “I was just coming with it. Got a couple of things that look interesting.” He hesitated, glancing uncertainly at the rest of us. But Flint’s impatience overflowed.

“Okay. Let’s have ’em.”

Tucker was definitely no press agent. The things he described as merely interesting needed the circus vocabulary of a Dexter Fellows to do them justice. “I picked up a nice clear print on the rail at the head of the front stairs,” he said. “All four fingers and a partial thumb. I’ve checked against prints of everyone in the joint. No soap. We need more samples.”

“Including me?” I asked. I knew definitely that I hadn’t touched that stair rail.

“Including you. I copped your prints while you were sleeping.”

“What about the boatkeeper?” Flint asked. “Did you get his?”

“Yeah, his too.”

Flint looked at Merlini. “Well, that’s that. Or are you going to tell me that spooks can leave fingerprints just like anybody else?”

The lieutenant stuck his neck all the way out on that one, and the ax fell promptly.

“It is not,” Merlini answered, “an uncommon psychic phenomenon. The famous ‘Margery,’ who was investigated in ’24 by the Scientific American committee, obtained thumbprints in wax of her deceased brother and spirit control, Walter. Or so she claimed. Later, they turned out to look an awful lot like the prints of a still living dentist who had attended some of her earlier sittings. On the other hand, Franek Kluski obtained wax molds of spirit hands, complete with friction ridges, and with the fingers so interlocked that dematerialization would seem to be the only possible manner in which the hands could have been withdrawn, leaving the molds intact. Galt, if you ask him, will probably cite that case as one of the unexplained and thus genuine proofs of—”

The quick readiness of Merlini’s reply caught Flint a bit oft balance. Regaining it finally, he cut in, “Don’t worry, I won’t ask.” He turned back to Tucker. “Anything else?”

The fingerprint man nodded. “Plenty. A flock of prints that match the ones on the stair rail. Dozen or so altogether. A couple on the window in Mrs. Wolff’s room, three or four on those pictures that fell off the walls last week, a couple on the pieces of that smashed flower vase, and the rest—”

He hesitated, aware that Flint wasn’t going to like what came next.

“And the rest,” he finished, “are all in the study.”

Under the circumstances, Flint controlled himself remarkably well. All he did was bellow, “WHERE?” with a blast that nearly swept the little fingerprint expert off his feet.

“In the study,” Tucker repeated jumpily. “Three prints on the desk top, a couple on the door, one on the light switch, one near the—”

The lieutenant had heard enough. “Haggard!” he snapped. “I’m seeing Mrs. Wolff now!” He shot out through the door so fast I marveled that the friction of the air didn’t make him blaze, meteorlike, into incandescence.

Haggard scowled and hurried after him. Then, as Merlini followed, I swung quickly out of bed, pulled my cocoon of blankets around me and joined the parade, shedding hot-water bottles as I went.

As I passed Tucker he was saying, “Hey, Lieutenant. Wait! The worst is yet to—”

But Flint didn’t hear him. He had seen Merlini and was busy growling, “Oh no you don’t. You two are staying put. Tucker, see that they stay in that bedroom.”

He vanished with the doctor into Mrs. Wolff’s room. The door closed solidly behind them.

“The policeman’s lot,” Merlini muttered glumly, “is not so hot. And an amateur detective naps on no bed of roses either.” He turned and looked at Tucker. “What is this ominous-sounding something else you found?”

If Merlini intended to catch the detective oft guard, he failed. Tucker said, “Wouldn’t you like to know?” shooed us back into Wolff’s room, and locked the door.

“Well,” I griped, “here we are again. In the soup. Didn’t you have Flint check with Gavigan’s office and get our detecting visas okayed?”

“I tried,” Merlini said, “but the inspector is the little man who isn’t there when we need him most. He’s attending a police convention in Philadelphia. And cops’ conventions, apparently, are like all the others. I put through a long-distance call to his hotel. Four o’clock in the morning and he wasn’t in his room. I wonder what amusements an inspector of police can find at that hour and, of all places, in that town? It’s highly suspicious.”

He filled his whisky glass and walked into tire bathroom.

“You should talk,” I grumbled. “Bathroom drinker! I wish you’d put some of that highly advertised clairvoyance of yours to work and find out what goes on in Mrs. Wolff’s room.”

“That,” his voice came back, “is exactly what I am doing. Pipe down, will you?”

I blinked and joined him hastily. He stood close by the connecting door that led into Mrs. Wolff’s room, his ear pressed against the panel. I imitated him. But, although the sound of voices trickled through, the words were indistinguishable. Merlini warned me with a glance and turned the doorknob slowly and carefully. When the catch had been drawn all the way back, he eased the door open a fraction of an inch.

Flint’s voice was saying, “Why did your husband decide so suddenly a week ago to transfer his files to his bedroom and lock up that study? Why did he issue orders that no one was to go into that room?”

Mrs. Wolff’s voice, worried, replied, “I don’t know.”

“But he must have given some reason. What was it?”

“He didn’t give one. He merely issued orders. And Dudley wasn’t the sort of person one cross-examined.”

“All right, then why do you think he did it? You could guess, couldn’t you?”

Flint wasn’t getting very far very fast. “I’m sorry,” Mrs. Wolff said, “I haven’t the slightest idea. I don’t understand it at all.”

The lieutenant was silent for a moment. Then he said, “You have a key to the study?”

“A key? No. My husband and Dunning were the only ones who had keys. And he took Dunning’s.”

“I see. And yet when you left the guest room you went directly to the study, and went in. What made you think that door would be unlocked?”

“I didn’t. I wanted to see Dudley. I thought I was opening his door. It was because the door wasn’t locked that I didn’t realize I had opened the wrong one until I was inside. Why was the door unlocked? Who—”

Flint ignored that. “You went in. Go on. Then what?”

“I–I was curious to know why Dudley had locked the room up. I wondered why it was unlocked now. I started to look around. Then—”

“You had turned on the light?”

“Yes. But then suddenly I heard someone in the hall outside — someone putting a key in the lock.”

“You locked the door after going in. Why?”

“The door was partly ajar when I got there. When I closed it behind me, it locked by itself. It’s a spring lock.”

“Go on. Someone turned the key.”

“I–I was frightened. I didn’t know who — or what it might be. I–I switched off the light, and then — the door opened.”

She stopped. Flint said nothing, waiting.

There was a mounting tenseness in her voice when she continued. “Someone fumbled at the switch. The light came on. It was Dudley. He wanted to know what I was doing there and how I had got in. He was angry. He didn’t believe me at first and he started to accuse me of taking one of the study keys that he’d just discovered missing from his key ring. And then, in mid-sentence, he stopped. He stared past me over my shoulder. I heard a movement behind me. I started to turn. Then—”

Her voice slowed. She seemed to be trying to make an effort to remember.

“And then?” Flint prompted impatiently.

“Something struck me on the head. That’s all I can remember. What happened? Is Dudley all right? Who—”

Flint cut in, his voice grim. “You’re positive there was someone else in that room with you and your husband?”

“Yes. I heard someone move. The desk was behind me. He must have been hiding behind that.”

“But you didn’t see him?”

“No, but I—”

She stopped uncertainly. Flint urged her on. “But you what?”

“I think I know who it was. I remember now. Just as I turned I–I heard Dudley whisper, ‘The ghost!’”

That tore it. Flint forgot himself and swore heavily.

Then Mrs. Wolff’s voice, frightened, demanded, “Why are you here? What happened to my husband? What—”

Flint told her. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Wolff. Your husband was shot.”

“He — he’s dead?”

“Yes.”

The silence that followed was complete. Then, after a moment, Haggard’s voice said quickly, “You’d better let me handle this, Lieutenant.”

I heard Flint turn and cross the room. And then I made my mistake. I started to retreat too soon, before Merlini had quite closed the door. Flint’s footsteps stopped abruptly, Merlini gave me a hopeless glance, dropped quickly to his knees, and, when the lieutenant jerked the door open and came in, was busily investigating the underside of a bath mat.

“I’m positive that half dollar rolled in here when I dropped it,” he said. He turned his head, saw Flint’s feet and, without looking up, tapped the latter’s shoe. “Would you mind stepping back just—”

The lieutenant moved involuntarily. And Merlini’s hand came up holding the coin at his finger tips. “Here it is. Clumsy of me—”

“Yes,” Flint agreed in a tone that was anything but reassuring. Very clumsy. I hope you two heard everything?”

Merlini nodded, calmly closed his fingers over the coin and then opened them to find a cigarette in its place. He got to his feet. “We heard enough,” he admitted brightly, “to indicate that Mrs. Wolff’s story was no great help.”

“Not to your friend Harte, it wasn’t,” Flint said quite uncharitably.

“Nor to you. You were hoping to get a witness who’d put Ross in the room at the time the shots were fired. What you got was a statement that the ghost—”

“So what? He’s a guy with a beard. Maybe it came off out there in the Sound. Maybe — yes, Tucker?”

I turned. The fingerprint man stood in the doorway.

“I had something else to report,” he said, “but you ran out on me. I found a couple of other prints in the study — prints that do match one of the persons in this house.”

He held out a fingerprint card. Flint’s grab at it went far toward proving that the hand is quicker than the eye.

I took a step forward and sneaked a hasty look over his shoulder.

The name written across the card’s top above the ten black ink smudges was: Doctor Sydney Haggard.

I needed time to reorient myself after that one. But I didn’t get it. The doctor himself, in person, picked precisely that moment to open the door of Mrs. Wolff’s room. He stepped in, saw the look on Flint’s face, and stopped dead.

A collection of discarded store-window dummies would have presented a gayer, more animated appearance than we did for the next second or two. Finally the lieutenant opened his mouth to speak — then closed it again promptly.

The burglar alarm clanged furiously and, behind Haggard, out beyond the windows of Mrs. Wolff’s room, hell popped. A car motor burst with a lion’s roar into sudden violent action. The angry rush of sound swelled, drowned out a shouted command to stop, and began to diminish as the car swept on down the drive away from the house. A frantic fusillade of shots followed.

Flint zoomed cometlike toward the hall, leaving half a dozen words floating in his wake.

“Tucker! Haggard’s under arrest. Watch him!”

More gunfire came from outside, and the roar of a second car.

Tucker tried to stop Merlini and myself as we raced after Flint, but the orders concerning Haggard handicapped him. Just as we started down the stairs the front door opened and a uniformed policeman stepped in. He had his gun in his hand.

“A car came out of the garage like a bat out of hell,” he reported quickly. “I jumped out to stop it and the bastard tried to run me down. Lovejoy and Newman went after him in the squad car.”

Flint, shooting past him, snapped, “Who was driving?”

“I couldn’t see. He was hunched down over the wheel and he went past too damned fast. It was a blue Cadillac convertible. License 9V1–315.”

I grabbed for the stair rail when I heard that, and nearly lost my covering of blankets. The car was Kay’s!

Flint took one look outside the door, then came back. “Phone!” he ordered. “Get an alarm out. And keep the line open. I’ll get you a description. I’m going to count noses.”

That didn’t take him long. Galt and Phillips were already in the hall below. Doctor Haggard and Tucker appeared, and then as I started toward Kay’s door she hurried out, still tying the blue dressing-gown she’d drawn on hastily over her pajamas.

Three minutes later Flint was at the phone rattling off a description of the one person who had not answered the roll call — Albert Dunning.