No Coffin for the Corpse

Chapter Fifteen: A Dead Man Dies

Merlini’s dash after the lieutenant was short-lived. Ryan roared a command to halt. Merlini paid no attention. The policeman drew his gun and fired once in the air.

That got results. Merlini stopped and looked back. “Are you a good shot?” he asked.

“You just keep running,” Ryan promised. “You’ll find out.”

Merlini shook his head. “I’ll take your word for it.”

Hastily Ryan herded us back toward the house. I fell into step beside Merlini. “Got any more rabbits in your hat like that last one?”

“I don’t know, but I’m going to look. We still need a few.”

I agreed to that heartily. “We certainly do. Your appealing theory that the haunt is the dead man himself doing a return engagement cancels out quite a few stickers. We don’t need to hunt for a lightning-change impersonator any longer, and it gives an explanation for Scotty’s story, the matching fingerprints, and most of the poltergeist tomfoolery — the smashed china, the transposed pictures, the spilled ink, the library books, the frightened servants. But just look at the ragged fringe of loose ends all around the edges.

“How, if he’s flesh and blood and not a bona fide wraith, did he smash that flower vase? There were witnesses that time and he wasn’t exactly visible. He may use a flashlight to outwit the burglar alarm, but it wouldn’t help him wriggle through locked doors the way he does. How did he vanish from Mrs. Wolff’s room quicker than you can say ‘Scat!’ or was Leonard lying when he insisted no one shinnied out the window? He could have gotten into the study with the key Wolff missed, but how’d he exit again after the shooting when I was watching the window and you guarded the door?

“For that matter, why’d he toss me into the drink? Unless he’s a homicidal maniac, it doesn’t make sense. If he wanted to liquidate a witness to the fact that he was hiding in the study, then why is he so careless with his fingerprints? Why does he leave so many of them everywhere anyway? It almost looks as if—”

“Go on,” Merlini said. “You’re doing fine. As if what?”

“As if he left them on purpose.” But I sounded doubtful.

“Well,” Merlini said matter-of-factly, “why not? Before we knew that the grave was empty, the prints seemed to offer the final proof that the ghost was the real thing. He might have planned that for Wolff’s benefit.”

I objected. “No, you’re slipping. Why would he leave them for Wolff’s benefit when the next thing he does is shoot Wolff? And how come, in that blamed photo, does he show up as transparent as a guppy? Or are you going to tell me that Lady Edgcumbe and General Lee’s mother could do that sort of thing too? Because if you are—”

“I’m not. Those are added wrinkles. But you’re being coy about the photo. You’re the boy who used to wear his Leica to bed. You can explain that one.”

“Yes,” I admitted. “It’s just a common garden variety of double exposure, the kind all beginners make when they forget to wind their film between shots. Galt had set up the camera and left it loaded, aimed, focused, and unguarded. Mr. Ghost floats in, clicks the shutter, and puts a shot of the background on the film. The light from the photoflood bulb in the upper hall would have served nicely. He goes upstairs, unscrews the bulb in the corridor, and waits for his cue. Then, when he makes his little bow, I click the shutter again, and the shot of him that I get overlays the background that’s already on the film, giving us a phantom view. He certainly took pains to give Wolff a scare. And why? More blackmail?”

Merlini nodded. “Looks that way. Wolff was shying frantically from unfavorable publicity. He thought he’d killed a man, and he’d tried to cover up by burying the body. Can you think of any better blackmail material?”

“No,” I said. “Don’t think I can. But, if he goes to all that trouble to blackmail Wolff, why does he shoot him? There’s no point in that. And, even if he hadn’t, he couldn’t leave Wolff a spirit message demanding that he put the money in unmarked bills of small denomination on the gravel. Spooks aren’t troubled by the rising cost of living; it’s a contradiction in terms. Wolff would have smelled rats. If he should suspect that the ‘dead man’ is alive it upsets the whole scheme. And if the dead man stays dead, how does he collect?”

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.

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 came 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.”