The Headless Lady

Chapter Sixteen Cells for Two

The character or, perhaps better, the lack-of-character reference supplied by our old friend Chief Inspector Homer Gavigan was obviously less than no help at all. Detective Lester Burns, who had disappeared with Merlini’s fingerprint card, came back into the room and made a report that didn’t improve matters.

“The prints on the trunk compartment lid,” he said, “are being photographed now. As soon as I can get them developed and have some enlargements run off I can give you a final report. But I just gave them a quick once-over, and I haven’t any doubt that they’ll check with these.” He indicated the black smudges on Merlini’s card. “And there are a couple that fit Mr. Harte.”

“Good,” Schafer said. “What about that glossy photo of the accident? Any prints there?”

“No. That’s clean.”

Merlini asked, “Did you make that nitrate test on the gloves, Burns?”

Burns didn’t reply, but Schafer said, “Show him.”

The detective went to his desk in the corner and came back with several paraffin molds which he placed before the Captain on the blotter. Merlini and I stepped forward to look. O’Halloran and Hooper did the same.

“I put the gloves on and made paraffin molds in the usual manner rather than apply the reagent directly to the gloves,” Burns said, displaying his technical knowledge rather proudly for the Chief’s benefit. “Rubber contains some combined nitrate that might, just possibly, react positively and spoil the test.”[4]

He had gotten his positive reaction on one of the molds. A dozen or so nitrate specks which the invisible backfire of the gun had deposited on the glove had been lifted off by the mold and now, due to the application of the reagent, showed as blue specks against the milky white paraffin near the crotch of the thumb and along the upper edge of the forefinger.

Merlini looked at the mold a moment, then said, “Funny, isn’t it, that, if I used gloves when I shot the girl and when I handled the photo, I was so careless when I loaded the body and the other stuff into my car?”

“I don’t think so,” Chief Hooper put in. “In the first place, you’d already given us the gloves to test. And besides, you’d know that if anyone found the body in the car, the lack of fingerprints on the lid wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference. You’re guilty as hell either way.”

“If my prints weren’t on the car,” Merlini insisted, “I might have an easier time selling you on the idea that someone planted that stuff there. Not much easier, but some.”

“No,” Hooper contradicted, “not even some.”

Merlini fished for some more information. “The glove-wearer fired a shot, all right. But we still don’t know if the Headless Lady was shot — or do we? Are there any bullet wounds on the body?”

“The medical examiner is having a look at it now,” Schafer answered. “I doubt if he’ll find any. I think you got her in the head.”

“I hope you’re going to make a strenuous effort to find that head.”

Schafer nodded. “The boys I left at the lot are doing that, and there’s a search in progress where you found the trailer. But you don’t really want us to find it, do you?”

“Yes, I do,” Merlini said earnestly. “Because once you find it, you’ll know that I’m not the murderer. And without it, unless the medical examiner does find some evidence of violent death on or in the body, you or anyone else is going to have the devil’s own time proving that she was murdered.”

“Now I know you’re nuts,” the Chief said. “Her head was sawed off, wasn’t it? You don’t think that was an accident, or suicide, or death from natural causes, do you — for God’s sake?”

“The fact that her head was removed certainly doesn’t prove murder. There was very little blood on either the body or the sword. I think your medical examiner may tell you that the head was removed quite a while after death. My guess would be about twelve hours — death at 7:00 a.m., head removed at 7:00 p.m. You can prove mutilation of a dead body; you can’t positively prove that her death was not accidental, natural, or suicidal.”

“It ain’t very likely to be one of those, is it?” the Chief said.

“Maybe not,” Merlini said. “But ‘It ain’t likely,’ won’t be good enough when you get into court. You’ll do a lot better if you hunt like hell for the head and hope it’ll give you the evidence that will prove cause of death.”

The Captain reached for the phone. I’m still wondering why the phone’s mouthpiece didn’t shrivel up or at least blister when he spoke into it. The exchange operator was startled enough so that she gave him his number in record time.

“Byrd,” he howled. “What have you done on that autopsy so far?”

We could hear the doctor’s voice coming angrily in reply. “For God’s sake, man! The body just came in. What do you think I use, a high-speed buzz saw?”

“It’d help,” Schafer said. “Are there any surface indications of the cause of death?”

The doctor’s voice was sarcastic. “Why, yes,” he said. “There’s one little thing. Her head’s missing.”

Schafer glanced at Merlini and spoke again into the phone. “That what killed her?”

“I don’t know. Didn’t I tell you the body just got here?”

“Well, go look, dammit,” Schafer said. “I’ll wait.”

We all waited. Schafer’s left hand played with a pen on the desk and dug savagely with its point into the blotter. Hooper took an angry bite from a plug of tobacco. No one spoke.

Finally the Captain dropped the pen and said, “Yes?”

We heard the doctor’s first words. “There is no exterior indication of what caused death. The head was removed several hours after death.” Then, more puzzled now than angry, he stopped shouting and the rest of what he said came to us as an indistinct muttering.

In the middle of it Schafer suddenly sat bolt upright and barked. “Say that again!”

He listened very briefly; and then, while the doctor’s voice still continued faintly, Schafer reached out and slammed the receiver back on its hook. He swiveled around in his chair to face Merlini.

“For a murderer,” he said in an awed and baffled voice, “even a batty one, you do some of the goddamnedest things. Burns, get me those hair samples I gave you.”

Burns at his desk produced the envelope containing the hair combings Merlini had found in the trailer that morning. Schafer hurriedly opened the envelope, tipped the contents out onto a sheet of paper before him, and pulled the goose-neck desk light down close above them. He stared at them a moment, then slowly looked up. “Merlini,” he said, “how do I know you found these in that trailer?”

I answered him: “If you look at the envelope you’ll see my initials. I was around when he found the hair.”

“You see him take them out of the wastebasket?”

“I—” Then I remembered. I had been outside the trailer when Merlini had made the discovery. “Well, no, but—”

“What the hell is this?” Hooper growled. “And what if Harte had seen him? Merlini’s a sleight-of-hand expert. He takes rabbits out of empty hats. He could pretend to take some little wisps of hair out of a wastebasket without any ever having been there. I could get by with that myself. What—”

Merlini went to bat. “Don’t you two gentlemen ever look before you leap? Perhaps if you examined the trailer yourself you might find more of the same. I didn’t go over the interior with a vacuum cleaner.”

“Always got an answer ready, haven’t you?” Schafer said belligerently. “What did you do, plant more blond hair around the place?”

Merlini raised an eyebrow. “Oh, I see. It’s the blondness of it. Hold your hats, everybody; we’re going to do a loop-the-loop. The doctor says the body is a brunette. That it?”

“Yes, dammit, he did! If this case doesn’t take the cake—”

“That’s mild,” Merlini commented. “It gets the bale of blue ribbons and several gross of loving cups. If the clothing labels do identify the brunette corpse, you’ve still got a blond, vanished, and unknown lady to worry about. We both do, for that matter.”

I suddenly caught a curious look on O’Halloran’s listening face, something that was almost a smile; but he hastily concealed it. None of the others had noticed.

“Chief,” the Captain said, “lock ’em up. This guy will drive me nuts too if I have to listen to him much longer. We’ll keep him on ice for Inspector Gavigan and hope he’s got something that’ll help. And in the meantime we’re going to be busy as all hell.”

Merlini said, “You’re charging me, then?”

“Yes.” Schafer eyed him calculatingly. “I won’t make it a murder charge until Gavigan gets here and I find out what he’s got. For the moment, we’ll make it breaking and entering Major Hannum’s trailer last night. You picked the lock, you know.”

“Won’t do,” Merlini objected. “Miss Hannum won’t back you up. If she does, I’ll prefer a similar charge against her. Besides, it hasn’t been established yet that she owns that trailer. Miss King insists that she does. You can’t get the owner to prefer a charge until you know who the owner is.”

The Captain, however, still held an ace. He turned to O’Halloran, who stood leaning against the wall at his right. “Merlini picked your pocket yesterday. You’re charging him with that. Understand?”

“But I returned his property to him,” Merlini said.

“Maybe so,” Schafer returned, “maybe not. If you’ve got any evidence or witnesses to prove it, you can produce them before the judge tomorrow. In the meantime—”

Merlini faced O’Halloran. “Well,” he said, “whose side are you playing on?”

O’Halloran took his cigarette from his mouth and tapped the ashes into a tray on the desk. He gave Merlini a wink as he did so and crossed the first two fingers of his right hand, which was on the side away from Schafer, but visible to us. “I can’t help myself very well, can I?” he answered.

I decided then to make a last stand myself. “You aren’t locking me up as a material witness without a court order,” I stated.

Schafer said, “A sea lawyer, eh? Okay, then I’ll get one. Hooper, get Judge Ewing on the phone.”

As the Chief reached for the instrument, Merlini took a step forward, gave me a dig in the ribs with his elbow and said, “I guess he wins this round, Ross. Come on. Let’s see your dungeon, Hooper.”

Hooper put the phone down. He and Stevens started to take us out. Schafer said, “Don’t forget those picklocks of his, Chief. Inspector Gavigan said it would be a good idea to strip them both. He says Merlini knows how to escape from packing boxes that have been nailed up and dumped in the river.”

Hooper snorted. “This jail ain’t no packing box. He’ll find that out.”

The prospect of jail hadn’t bothered me much until I heard this. I’d figured that Merlini might be able to roll up his sleeves and pass a minor miracle that would circumvent the stone walls and iron bars. I was beginning to have doubts, and in a few moments I had more of them.

If Merlini was bothered, however, he pretended not to show it. As our guides ushered us into the jail proper, he said lightly, “I’d like a nice roomy cell with a southern exposure, please.”

“You’ll take what you get,” Hooper growled. “And none of the cells have any windows, so if you’re thinking of sawing your way out, forget it. Every bar in the place is case-hardened steel, and if I gave you a hacksaw you’d still be trying six months from now.”

The cells, a dozen barred steel cages, were arranged in two rows on either side of a corridor within the cell-block that ran the length of the long cement-floored room. Another exterior corridor, ten feet wide, completely circled the cell-block, so that it was a steel-ringed island completely isolated from the outside walls. There were a half-dozen smallish windows in one wall, but from the interior of the cell-block they were completely inaccessible, and the grating of thick, close-set bars that crossed them looked distinctly formidable.

Hooper opened the door of an electrical control box on the wall and pulled a switch. “Each cell has its own individual lock,” he said proudly. “And this switch operates an additional bolt on all the cells simultaneously, double locking them. Your arms are plenty long, but they’d have to be about ten feet longer yet to get at this switch. A ghost couldn’t get outta here unless I let him.”

“Very nice,” Merlini commented. “And you don’t believe in ghosts, I suppose?”

Hooper didn’t think that merited an answer. He took a ring of keys from Stevens and fitted one in the lock of the single door that opened into the cell-block corridor. “We’ll put Merlini in Cell Two with Harte across from him, well out of reach of that switch even if they had a twenty-foot pole, but in sight of the door so I can look in now and then and keep an eye on them.” He turned to Merlini. “I guess we can take them cuffs off now.” As Stevens removed them, Hooper added, “And your duds too. Peel them off.”

“All of them?” Merlini asked.

“Yeah, you ain’t too modest, are you?”

“I’m very susceptible to colds, Chief,” Merlini replied. “And, warm as the weather is, these cells are built so as to allow the maximum number of drafts. If one of your prisoners dies of pneumonia you’ll have a newspaper scandal on your hands. What’s more, I’ll come back and haunt you.”

“Stop jabbering and undress. Stevens, there are a couple of old uniforms in the locker room. Have Robbins get them. They won’t fit so well, but these guys aren’t going any place.”

The Chief investigated the pockets of Merlini’s clothes as they came off. He found, among other things, a couple of decks of cards, a red and green silk handkerchief, several vari-colored thimbles, a spool of black silk thread, and two or three queer-looking gadgets of an indeterminate nature.

“Lunatic,” Hooper said. “If you get violent you can try our padded cell. First chance I’ve had to use it.” Then he found a key ring that held a dozen oddly shaped angular bits of metal — the picklocks. “That’s that,” he grinned. “I’ll let Burns add these to the Crime Museum he’s collecting.”

“Not unless they execute me,” Merlini objected. “I want those returned when I leave here. Some of those picks are collector’s items. They were once Houdini’s.”

“Okay,” Hooper said. “If you leave.”

“Any objection if the condemned men keep their cigarettes?” asked Merlini, indicating his pack of Camels and a cigarette lighter the Chief had taken from his pockets.

Hooper looked at him suspiciously, carefully examined the two articles in question, and then handed them over. “I guess not,” he said, and, turning, gave my discarded clothes equal attention. When we had completely disrobed, he eyed us both inquisitively as if he were making sure that neither of us were equipped by nature, like kangaroos, with pockets in our skins.

Hooper, satisfied but wary, ushered us into our respective cells and locked the doors behind us himself.

The metallic clang of my door as it closed and the shooting over of the heavy bolt were final, irrevocable sounds that were anything but reassuring. Chief Hooper’s satisfied smile was even less so.

He and Stevens went out through the cell-block door; and, as Stevens was locking that, Hooper threw the switch in the wall. I heard the extra bolts click over solidly all down the line.

Hooper gave us a last malevolent grin and then went out. He slammed the door behind him.