The Mammoth Book of Locked-Room Mysteries And Impossible Crimes

OFF THE FACE OF THE EARTH by Clayton Rawson

Clayton Rawson (1906-71) was one of the masters of the impossible crime story. He was by profession a stage magician, or more properly an illusionist, and he subsequently wrote a series of novels and short stories featuring The Great Merlini as the magician expert called in by the police to solve the latest unusual crime. The first book, Death from a Top Hat (1938), which dealt with a series of crimes involving magicians, was filmed as Miracles for Sale (1939) and established Rawson with a second career as an author and editor. Rawson and John Dickson Carr used to love setting each other challenges for stories. The following story arose when Carr challenged Rawson to write a story in which someone walks into a telephone booth and vanishes. See if you can work out how it’s done.

The lettering in neat gilt script on the door read: Miracles For Sale, and beneath it was the familiar rabbit-from-a-hat trademark. Inside, behind the glass showcase counter, in which was displayed as unlikely an assortment of objects as could be got together in one spot, stood The Great Merlini.

He was wrapping up half a dozen billiard balls, several bouquets of feather flowers, a dove pan, a Talking Skull, and a dozen decks of cards for a customer who snapped his fingers and nonchalantly produced the needed number of five-dollar bills from thin air. Merlini rang up the sale, took half a carrot from the cash drawer, and gave it to the large white rabbit who watched proceedings with a pink sceptical eye from the top of a nearby escape trunk. Then he turned to me.

“Clairvoyance, mind-reading, extrasensory perception,” he said. “We stock only the best grade. And it tells me that you came to pick up the two Annie Oakleys I promised to get you for that new hit musical. I have them right here.”

But his occult powers slipped a bit. He looked in all his coat pockets one after another, found an egg, a three-foot length of rope, several brightly-coloured silk handkerchiefs, and a crumpled telegram reading: NEED INVISIBLE MAN AT ONCE. SHIP UNIONTOWN BY MONDAY. – NEMO THE ENIGMA. Then he gave a surprised blink and scowled darkly at a sealed envelope that he had fished out of his inside breast pocket.

“That,” I commented a bit sarcastically, “doesn’t look like a pair of theatre tickets.”

He shook his head sadly. “No. It’s a letter my wife asked me to mail a week ago.”

I took it from him. “There’s a mail chute by the elevators about fifteen feet outside your door. I’m no magician, but I can remember to put this in it on my way out.” I indicated the telegram that lay on the counter. “Since when have you stocked a supply of invisible men? That I would like to see.”

Merlini frowned at the framed slogan: Nothing Is Impossible which hung above the cash register. “You want real miracles, don’t you? We guarantee that our invisible man can’t be seen. But if you’d like to see how impossible it is to see him, step right this way.”

In the back, beyond his office, there is a larger room that serves as workshop, shipping department and, on occasion, as a theatre. I stood there a moment later and watched Merlini step into an upright coffin-shaped box in the centre of the small stage. He faced me, smiled, and snapped his fingers. Two copper electrodes in the side walls of the cabinet spat flame, and a fat, green, electric spark jumped the gap just above his head, hissing and writhing. He lifted his arms; the angry stream of energy bent, split in two, fastened on his fingertips, and then disappeared as he grasped the gleaming spherical electrodes, one with each hand.

For a moment nothing happened; then, slowly, his body began to fade into transparency as the cabinet’s back wall became increasingly visible through it. Clothes and flesh melted until only the bony skeletal structure remained. Suddenly, the jawbone moved and its grinning white teeth clicked as Merlini’s voice said:

“You must try this, Ross. On a hot day like today, it’s most comfortable.”

As it spoke, the skeleton also wavered and grew dim. A moment later it was gone and the cabinet was, or seemed to be, empty. If Merlini still stood there, he was certainly invisible.

“Okay, Gypsy Rose Lee,” I said. “I have now seen the last word in strip-tease performances.” Behind me I heard the office door open and I looked over my shoulder to see Inspector Gavigan giving me a fishy stare. “You’d better get dressed again,” I added. “We have company.”

The Inspector looked around the room and at the empty stage, then at me again, cautiously this time. “If you said what I think you did-”

He stopped abruptly as Merlini’s voice, issuing from nowhere, chuckled and said, “Don’t jump to conclusions, Inspector. Appearances are deceptive. It’s not an indecent performance, nor has Ross gone off his rocker and started talking to himself. I’m right here. On the stage.”

Gavigan looked and saw the skeleton shape taking form within the cabinet. He closed his eyes, shook his head, then looked again. That didn’t help. The grisly spectre was still there and twice as substantial. Then, wraithlike, Merlini’s body began to form around it and, finally, grew opaque and solid. The magician grinned broadly, took his hands from the electrodes, and bowed as the spitting, green discharge of energy crackled once more above him. Then the stage curtains closed.

“You should be glad that’s only an illusion,” I told Gavigan. “If it were the McCoy and the underworld ever found out how it was done, you’d face an unparalleled crime wave and you’d never solve a single case.”

“It’s the Pepper’s Ghost illusion brought up to date,” Merlini said as he stepped out between the curtains and came toward us. “I’ve got more orders than I can fill. It’s a sure-fire carnival draw.” He frowned at Gavigan. “But you don’t look very entertained.”

“I’m not,” the Inspector answered gloomily. “Vanishing into thin air may amuse some people. Not me. Especially when it really happens. Off stage in broad daylight. In Central Park.”

“Oh,” Merlini said. “I see. So that’s what’s eating you. Helen Hope, the chorus girl who went for a walk last week and never came back. She’s still missing then, and there are still no clues?”

Gavigan nodded. “It’s the Dorothy Arnold case all over again. Except for one thing we haven’t let the newspapers know about – Bela Zyyzk.”

“Bela what?” I asked.

Gavigan spelled it.

“Impossible,” I said. “He must be a typographical error. A close relative of Etoain Shrdlu.”

The Inspector wasn’t amused. “Relatives,” he growled. “I wish I could find some. He not only claims he doesn’t have any – he swears he never has had any! And so far we haven’t been able to prove different.”

“Where does he come from?” Merlini asked. “Or won’t he say?”

“Oh, he talks all right,” Gavigan said disgustedly. “Too much. And none of it makes any sense. He says he’s a momentary visitor to this planet – from the dark cloud of Antares. I’ve seen some high, wide, and fancy screwballs in my time, but this one takes the cake – candles and all.”

“Helen Hope,” Merlini said, “vanishes off the face of the earth. And Zyyzk does just the opposite. This gets interesting. What else does he have to do with her disappearance?”

“Plenty,” Gavigan replied. “A week ago Tuesday night she went to a Park Avenue party at Mrs James Dewitt-Smith’s. She’s another candidate for Bellevue. Collects Tibetan statuary, medieval relics, and crackpots like Zyyzk. He was there that night – reading minds.”

“A visitor from outer space,” Merlini said, “and a mindreader to boot. I won’t be happy until I’ve had a talk with that gentleman.”

“I have talked with him,” the Inspector growled. “And I’ve had indigestion ever since. He does something worse than read minds. He makes predictions.” Gavigan scowled at Merlini. “I thought fortune tellers always kept their customers happy by predicting good luck?”

Merlini nodded. “That’s usually standard operating procedure. Zyyzk does something else?”

“He certainly does. He’s full of doom and disaster. A dozen witnesses testify that he told Helen Hope she’d vanish off the face of the earth. And three days later that’s exactly what she does do.”

“I can see,” Merlini said, “why you view him with suspicion. So you pulled him in for questioning and got a lot of answers that weren’t very helpful?”

“Helpful!” Gavigan jerked several typewritten pages from his pocket and shook them angrily. “Listen to this. He’s asked: ‘What’s your age?’ and we get: ‘According to which time – solar, sidereal, galactic, or universal?’ Murphy of Missing Persons, who was questioning him, says: ‘Any kind. Just tell us how old you are.’ And Zyyzk replies: ‘I can’t answer that. The question, in that form, has no meaning.’” The Inspector threw the papers down disgustedly.

Merlini picked them up, riffled through them, then read some of the transcript aloud. “Question: How did you know that Miss Hope would disappear? Answer: Do you understand the basic theory of the fifth law of inter dimensional reaction? Murphy: Huh? Zyyzk: Explanations are useless. You obviously have no conception of what I am talking about.”

“He was right about that,” Gavigan muttered. “Nobody does.”

Merlini continued. “Question: Where is Miss Hope now? Answer: Beyond recall. She was summoned by the Lords of the Outer Darkness.” Merlini looked up from the papers. “After that, I suppose, you sent him over to Bellevue?”

The Inspector nodded. “They had him under observation a week. And they turned in a report full of eight-syllable jawbreakers all meaning he’s crazy as a bedbug – but harmless. I don’t believe it. Anybody who predicts in a loud voice that somebody will disappear into thin air at twenty minutes after four on a Tuesday afternoon, just before it actually happens, knows plenty about it!”

Merlini is a hard man to surprise, but even he blinked at that. “Do you mean to say that he foretold the exact time, too?”

“Right on the nose,” Gavigan answered. “The doorman of her apartment house saw her walk across the street and into Central Park at four-eighteen. We haven’t been able to find anyone who has seen her since. And don’t tell me his prediction was a long shot that paid off.”

“I won’t,” Merlini agreed. “Whatever it is, it’s not coincidence. Where’s Zyyzk now? Could you hold him after that psychiatric report?”

“The D A,” Gavigan replied, “took him into General Sessions before Judge Keeler and asked that he be held as a material witness.” The Inspector looked unhappier than ever. “It would have to be Keeler.”

“What did he do?” I asked. “Deny the request?”

“No. He granted it. That’s when Zyyzk made his second prediction. Just as they start to take him out and throw him back in the can, he makes some funny motions with his hands and announces, in that confident manner he’s got, that the Outer Darkness is going to swallow Judge Keeler up, too!”

“And what,” Merlini wanted to know, “is wrong with that? Knowing how you’ve always felt about Francis X. Keeler, I should think that prospect would please you.”

Gavigan exploded. “Look, blast it! I have wished dozens of times that Judge Keeler would vanish into thin air, but that’s exactly what I don’t want to happen right now. We’ve known at headquarters that he’s been taking fix money from the Castelli mob ever since the day he was appointed to the bench. But we couldn’t do a thing. Politically he was dynamite. One move in his direction and there’d be a new Commissioner the next morning, with demotions all down the line. But three weeks ago the Big Guy and Keeler had a scrap, and we get a tip straight from the feed box that Keeler is fair game. So we start working over-time collecting the evidence that will send him up the river for what I hope is a ninety-nine-year stretch. We’ve been afraid he might tumble and try to pull another ‘Judge Crater.’ And now, just when we’re almost, but not quite, ready to nail him and make it stick, this has to happen.”

“Your friend, Zyyzk,” Merlini said, “becomes more interesting by the minute. Keeler is being tailed, of course?”

“Twenty-four hours a day, ever since we got the word that there’d be no kick-back.” The phone on Merlini’s desk rang as Gavigan was speaking. “I get hourly reports on his movements. Chances are that’s for me now.”

It was. In the office, we both watched him as he took the call. He listened a moment, then said, “Okay. Double the number of men on him immediately. And report back every fifteen minutes. If he shows any sign of going anywhere near a railroad station or airport, notify me at once.”

Gavigan hung up and turned to us. “Keeler made a stop at the First National and spent fifteen minutes in the safety-deposit vaults. He’s carrying a suitcase, and you can have one guess as to what’s in it now. This looks like the payoff.”

“I take it,” Merlini said, “that, this time, the Zyyzk forecast did not include the exact hour and minute when the Outer Darkness would swallow up the Judge?”

“Yeah. He sidestepped that. All he’ll say is that it’ll happen before the week is out.”

“And today,” Merlini said, “is Friday. Tell me this. The Judge seems to have good reasons for wanting to disappear which Zyyzk may or may not know about. Did Miss Hope also have reasons?”

“She had one,” Gavigan replied. “But I don’t see how Zyyzk could have known it. We can’t find a thing that shows he ever set eyes on her before the night of that party. And her reason is one that few people knew about.” The phone rang again and Gavigan reached for it. “Helen Hope is the girlfriend Judge Keeler visits the nights he doesn’t go home to his wife!”

Merlini and I both tried to assimilate that and take in what Gavigan was telling the telephone at the same time. “Okay, I’m coming. And grab him the minute he tries to go through a gate.” He slammed the receiver down and started for the door.

“Keeler,” he said over his shoulder, “is in Grand Central. There’s room in my car if you want to come.”

He didn’t need to issue that invitation twice. On the way down in the elevator Merlini made one not very helpful comment.

“You know,” he said thoughtfully, “if the judge does have a reservation on the extra-terrestial express – destination: the Outer Darkness – we don’t know what gate that train leaves from.”

We found out soon enough. The Judge stepped through it just two minutes before we hurried into the station and found Lieutenant Malloy exhibiting all the symptoms of having been hit over the head with a sledge hammer. He was bewildered and dazed, and had difficulty talking coherently.

Sergeant Hicks, a beefy, unimaginative, elderly detective who had also seen the thing happen looked equally groggy.

Usually, Malloy’s reports were as dispassionate, precise, and factual as a logarithmic table. But not today. His first paragraph bore a much closer resemblance to a first-person account of a dope-addict’s dream.

“Malloy,” Gavigan broke in icily. “Are you tight?”

The Lieutenant shook his head sadly. “No, but the minute I go off duty, I’m going to get so plas-”

Gavigan cut in again. “Are all the exits to this place covered?”

Hicks replied, “If they aren’t, somebody is sure going to catch it.”

Gavigan turned to the detective who had accompanied us in the inspector’s car. “Make the rounds and double-check that, Brady. And tell headquarters to get more men over here fast.”

“They’re on the way now,” Hicks said. “I phoned right after it happened. First thing I did.”

Gavigan turned to Malloy. “All right. Take it easy. One thing at a time – and in order.”

“It don’t make sense that way either,” Malloy said hopelessly. “Keeler took a cab from the bank and came straight here. Hicks and I were right on his tail. He comes down to the lower level and goes into the Oyster Bar and orders a double brandy. While he’s working on that, Hicks phones in for reinforcements with orders to cover every exit. They had time to get here, too; Keeler had a second brandy. Then, when he starts to come out, I move out to the centre of the station floor by the information booth so I’m ahead of him and all set to make the pinch no matter which gate he heads for. Hicks stands pat, ready to tail him if he heads upstairs again.

“At first, that’s where I think he’s going because he starts up the ramp. But he stops here by this line of phone booths, looks in a directory and then goes into a booth halfway down the line. And as soon as he closes the door, Hicks moves up and goes into the next booth to the left of Keeler’s.” Malloy pointed. “The one with the Out-of-Order sign on it.”

Gavigan turned to the Sergeant. “All right. You take it.”

Hicks scowled at the phone booth as he spoke. “The door was closed and somebody had written ‘Out of Order’ on a card and stuck it in the edge of the glass. I lifted the card so nobody’d wonder why I was trying to use a dead phone, went in, closed the door and tried to get a load of what the Judge was saying. But it’s no good. He was talking, but so low I couldn’t get it. I came out again, stuck the card back in the door and walked back toward the Oyster Bar so I’d be set to follow him either way when he came out. And I took a gander into the Judge’s booth as I went past. He was talking with his mouth up close to the phone.”

“And then,” Malloy continued, “we wait. And we wait. He went into that booth at five ten. At five twenty I get itchy feet. I begin to think maybe he’s passed out or died of suffocation or something. Nobody in his right mind stays in a phone booth for ten minutes when the temperature is ninety like today. So I start to move in just as Hicks gets the same idea. He’s closer than I am, so I stay put.

“Hicks stops just in front of the booth and lights a cigarette, which gives him a chance to take another look inside. Then I figure I must be right about the Judge having passed out. I see the match Hicks is holding drop, still lighted, and he turns quick and plasters his face against the glass. I don’t wait. I’m already on my way when he turns and motions for me.”

Malloy hesitated briefly. Then, slowly and very precisely, he let us have it. “I don’t care if the Commissioner himself has me up on the carpet, one thing I’m sure of – Ihadn’t taken my eyes off that phone booth for one single split second since the Judge walked into it.”

“And neither,” Hicks said with equal emphasis, “did I. Not for one single second.”

“I did some fancy open-field running through the commuters,” Malloy went on, “skidded to a stop behind Hicks and looked over his shoulder.”

Gavigan stepped forward to the closed door of the booth and looked in.

“And what you see,” Malloy finished, “is just what I saw. You can ship me down to Bellevue for observation, too. It’s impossible. It doesn’t make sense. I don’t believe it. But that’s exactly what happened.”

For a moment Gavigan didn’t move. Then, slowly, he pulled the door open.

The booth was empty.

The phone receiver dangled off the hook, and on the floor there was a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles, one lens smashed.

“Keeler’s glasses,” Hicks said. “He went into that booth and I had my eyes on it every second. He never came out. And he’s not in it.”

“And that,” Malloy added in a tone of utter dejection, “isn’t the half of it. I stepped inside, picked up the phone receiver Keeler had been using, and said, ‘Hello’ into the mouthpiece. There was a chance the party he’d been talking to might still be on the other end.” Malloy came to a full stop.

“Well?” Gavigan prodded him. “Let’s have it. Somebody answered?”

“Yes. Somebody said: ‘This is the end of the trail, Lieutenant.’ Then – hung up.”

“You didn’t recognize the voice?”

“Yeah, I recognized it. That’s the trouble. It was – Judge Keeler!”

Silence.

Then, quietly, Merlini asked, “You are quite certain that it was his voice, Malloy?”

The Lieutenant exploded. “I’m not sure of anything any more. But if you’ve ever heard Keeler – he sounds like a bullfrog with a cold – you’d know it couldn’t be anyone else.”

Gavigan’s voice, or rather, a hollow imitation of it, cut in. “Merlini. Either Malloy and Hicks have both gone completely off their chumps or this is the one phone booth in the world that has two exits. The back wall is sheet metal backed by solid marble, but if there’s a loose panel in one of the side walls, Keeler could have moved over into the empty booth that is supposed to be out of order…”

“Is supposed to be…” Malloy repeated. “So that’s it! The sign’s a phony. That phone isn’t on the blink, and his voice -” Malloy took two swift steps into the booth. He lifted the receiver, dropped a nickel, and waited for the dial tone. He scowled. He jiggled the receiver. He repeated the whole operation.

This specimen of Mr Bell’s invention was definitely not working.

A moment or two later Merlini reported another flaw in the Inspector’s theory. “There are,” he stated after a quick but thorough inspection of both booths, “no sliding panels, hinged panels, removable sections, trapdoors, or any other form of secret exit. The sidewalls are single sheets of metal, thin but intact. The back wall is even more solid. There is one exit and one only – the door though which our vanishing man entered.”

“He didn’t come out,” Sergeant Hicks insisted again, sounding like a cracked phonograph record endlessly repeating itself. “I was watching that door every single second. Even if he turned himself into an invisible man like in a movie I saw once, he’d still have had to open the door. And the door didn’t budge. I was watching it every single-”

“And that,” Merlini said thoughtfully, “leaves us with an invisible man who can also walk through closed doors. In short – a ghost. Which brings up another point. Have any of you noticed that there are a few spots of something on those smashed glasses that look very much like – blood?”

Malloy growled. “Yeah, but don’t make any cracks about there being another guy in that booth who sapped Keeler – that’d mean two invisible men…”

“If there can be one invisible man,” Merlini pointed out, “then there can be two.”

Gavigan said, “Merlini, that vanishing gadget you were demonstrating when I arrived… It’s just about the size and shape of this phone booth. I want to know-”

The magician shook his head. “Sorry, Inspector. That method wouldn’t work here under these conditions. It’s not the same trick. Keeler’s miracle, in some respects, is even better. He should have been a magician; he’s been wasting his time on the bench. Or has he? I wonder how much cash he carried into limbo with him in that suitcase?” He paused, then added, “More than enough, probably, to serve as a motive for murder.”

And there, on that ominous note, the investigation stuck. It was as dead an end as I ever saw. And it got deader by the minute. Brady, returning a few minutes later, reported that all station exits had been covered by the time Keeler left the Oyster Bar and that none of the detectives had seen hide nor hair of him since.

“Those men stay there until further notice,” Gavigan ordered. “Get more men – as many as you need – and start searching this place. I want every last inch of it covered. And every phone booth, too. If it was Keeler’s voice Malloy heard, then he was in one of them, and-”

“You know, Inspector,” Merlini interrupted, “this case not only takes the cake but the marbles, all the blue ribbons, and a truck load of loving cups too. That is another impossibility.”

“What is?”

“The voice on the telephone. Look at it. If Keeler left the receiver in this booth off as Malloy and Hicks found it, vanished, then reappeared in another booth and tried to call this number, he’d get a busy signal. He couldn’t have made a connection. And if he left the receiver on the hook, he could have called this number, but someone would have had to be here to lift the receiver and leave it off as it was found. It keeps adding up to two invisible men no matter how you look at it.”

“I wish,” Malloy said acidly, “that you’d disappear, too.”

Merlini protested. “Don’t. You sound like Zyyzk.”

“That guy,” Gavigan predicted darkly, “is going to wish he never heard of Judge Keeler.”

Gavigan’s batting average as a prophet was zero. When Zyyzk, whom the Inspector ordered brought to the scene and who was delivered by squad car twenty minutes later, discovered that Judge Keeler had vanished, he was as pleased as punch.

An interstellar visitor from outer space should have three eyes, or at least green hair. Zyyzk, in that respect, was a disappointment. He was a pudgy little man in a wrinkled grey suit. His eyes, two only, were a pale, washed-out blue behind gold-rimmed bifocals, and his hair, the colour of weak tea, failed miserably in its attempt to cover the top of his head.

His manner, however, was charged with an abundant and vital confidence, and there was a haughty, imperious quality in his high, thin voice which hinted that there was much more to Mr Zyyzk than met the eye.

“I issued distinct orders,” he told Gavigan in an icy tone, “that I was never, under any circumstances, to be disturbed between the sidereal hours of five and seven post-meridian. You know that quite well, Inspector. Explain why these idiots have disobeyed. At once!”

If there is any quicker way of bringing an inspector of police to a boil, I don’t know what it is. The look Gavigan gave the little man would have wrecked a Geiger counter. He opened his mouth. But the searing blast of flame which I expected didn’t issue forth. He closed his mouth and swallowed. The Inspector was speechless.

Zyyzk calmly threw more fuel on the fire. “Well,” he said impatiently tapping his foot. “I’m waiting.”

A subterranean rumble began deep in Gavigan’s interior and then, a split second before he blew his top, Merlini said quietly, “I understand, Mr Zyyzk, that you read minds?.

Zyyzk, still the Imperial Roman Emperor, gave Merlini a scathing look. “I do,” he said. “And what of it?”

“For a mind-reader,” Merlini told him, “you ask a lot of questions. I should think you’d know why you’ve been brought here.”

That didn’t bother the visitor from Outer Space. He stared intently at Merlini for a second, glanced once at Gavigan, then closed his eyes. The fingertips of one white hand pressed against his brow. Then he smiled.

“I see. Judge Keeler.”

“Keeler?” Gavigan pretended surprise. “What about him?”

Zyyzk wasn’t fooled. He shook his head. “Don’t try to deceive me, Inspector. It’s childish. The Judge has vanished. Into the Outer Darkness – as I foretold.” He grinned broadly. “You will, of course, release me now.”

“I’ll – I’ll what?”

Zyyzk spread his hands. “You have no choice. Not unless you want to admit that I could sit in a police cell surrounded on all sides by steel bars and cause Judge Keeler to vanish off the face of the earth by will power alone. Since that, to your limited, earthly intelligence, is impossible, I have an impregnable alibi. Good day, Inspector.”

The little man actually started to walk off. The detectives who stood on either side were so dazed by his treatment of the Inspector that Zyyzk had gone six feet before they came to life again and grabbed him.

Whether the strange powers he claimed were real or not, his ability to render Gavigan speechless was certainly uncanny. The Inspector’s mouth opened, but again nothing came out.

Merlini said, “You admit then that you are responsible for the Judge’s disappearance?”

Zyyzk, still grinning, shook his head. “I predicted it. Beyond that I admit nothing.”

“But you know how he vanished?”

The little man shrugged. “In the usual way, naturally. Only an adept of the seventh order would understand.”

Merlini suddenly snapped his fingers and plucked a shiny silver dollar from thin air. He dropped it into his left hand, closed his fingers over it and held his fist out toward Zyyzk. “Perhaps Judge Keeler vanished – like this.” Slowly he opened his fingers. The coin was gone.

For the first time a faint crack appeared in the polished surface of Zyyzk’s composure. He blinked. “Who,” he asked slowly, “are you?”

“An adept,” Merlini said solemnly, “of the eighth order. One who is not yet satisfied that you are what you claim to be.” He snapped his fingers again, almost under Zyyzk’s nose, and the silver dollar reappeared. He offered it to Zyyzk. “A test,” he said. “Let me see you send that back into the Outer Darkness from which I summoned it.”

Zyyzk no longer grinned. He scowled and his eyes were hard. “It will go,” he said, lifting his hand and rapidly tracing a cabalistic figure in the air. “And you with it!”

“Soon?” Merlini asked.

“Very soon. Before the hour of nine strikes again you will appear before the Lords of the Outer Darkness in far Antares. And there-”

Gavigan had had enough. He passed a miracle of his own. He pointed a cabalistic but slightly shaking finger at the little man and roared an incantation that had instant effect.

“Get him out of here!”

In the small space of time that it took them to hurry down the corridor and around a corner, Zyyzk and the two detectives who held him both vanished.

Gavigan turned on Merlini. “Isn’t one lunatic enough without you acting like one, too?”

The magician grinned. “Keep your eyes on me, Inspector. If I vanish, as predicted, you may see how Keeler did it. If I don’t, Zyyzk is on the spot and he may begin to make more sense.”

“That,” Gavigan growled, “is impossible.”

Zyyzk, as far as I was concerned, wasn’t the only thing that made no sense. The Inspector’s men turned Grand Central station inside out and the only trace of Judge Keeler to be found were the smashed spectacles on the floor of that phone booth. Gavigan was so completely at a loss that he could think of nothing else to do but order the search made again.

Merlini, as far as I could tell, didn’t seem to have any better ideas. He leaned against the wall opposite the phone booth and scowled darkly at its empty interior. Malloy and Hicks looked so tired and dispirited that Gavigan told them both to go home and sleep it off. An hour later, when the second search had proved as fruitless as the first, Gavigan suddenly told Lieutenant Doran to take over, turned, and started to march off.

Then Merlini woke up. “Inspector,” he asked, “where are you going?”

Gavigan turned, scowling. “Anywhere,” he said, “where I don’t have to look at telephone booths. Do you have any suggestions?”

Merlini moved forward. “One, yes. Let’s eat.”

Gavigan didn’t look as if he could keep anything in his stomach stronger than weak chicken broth, but he nodded absently. We got into Gavigan’s car and Brady drove us crosstown, stopping, at Merlini’s direction, in front of the Williston building.

The Inspector objected, “There aren’t any decent restaurants in this neighbourhood. Why-”

“Don’t argue,” Merlini said as he got out. “If Zyyzk’s latest prediction comes off, this will be my last meal on earth. I want to eat here. Come on.” He crossed the pavement toward a flashing green and purple neon sign that blinked: Johnson’s Cafeteria. Open All Night.

Merlini was suddenly acting almost as strangely as Zyyzk. I knew very well that this wasn’t the sort of place he’d pick for his last meal and, although he claimed to be hungry, I noticed that all he put on his tray was crackers and a bowl of soup. Pea soup at that – something he heartily disliked.

Then, instead of going to a table off in a corner where we could talk, he chose one right in the centre of the room. He even selected our places for us. “You sit there, Inspector. You there, Ross. And excuse me a moment. I’ll be right back.” With that he turned, crossed to the street door through which we had come, and vanished through it.

“I think,” I told Gavigan, “that he’s got a bee in his bonnet.”

The Inspector grunted. “You mean bats. In his belfry.” He gave the veal cutlet on his plate a glum look.

Merlini was gone perhaps five minutes. When he returned, he made no move to sit down. He leaned over the table and asked, “Either of you got a nickel?”

I found one and handed it to him. Suspiciously, Gavigan said, “I thought you wanted to eat?”

“I must make a phone call first,” the magician answered. “And with Zyyzk’s prediction hanging over me, I’d just as soon you both watched me do it. Look out the window behind me, watch that empty booth – the second from the right. And keep your eyes on it every second.” He glanced at his wrist watch. “If I’m not back here in exactly three minutes, you’d better investigate.”

I didn’t like the sound of that. Neither did Gavigan. He started to object. “Now, wait a minute. You’re not going-”

But Merlini had already gone. He moved with long strides toward the street door, and the Inspector half rose from his chair as if to go after him. Then, when Gavigan saw what lay beyond the window, he stopped. The window we both faced was in a side wall at right angles to the street, and it opened, not to the outside, but into the arcade that runs through the Williston building.

Through the glass we could see a twenty-foot stretch of the arcade’s opposite wall and against it, running from side to side, was a row of half a dozen phone booths.

I took a quick look at the clock on the wall above the window just as Merlini vanished through the street door. He reappeared at once in the arcade beyond the window, went directly to the second booth from the right, and went inside. The door closed.

“I don’t like this,” I said. “In three minutes the time will be exactly-”

“Quiet!” Gavigan commanded.

“-exactly nine o’clock,” I finished. “Zyyzk’s deadline!”

“He’s not going to pull this off,” Gavigan said. “You keep your eyes on that booth. I’m going outside and watch it from the street entrance. When the time’s up, join me.”

I heard his chair scrape across the floor as he got up, but I kept my eyes glued to the scene beyond the window – more precisely to one section of it – the booth into which Merlini had gone. I could see the whole face of the door from top to bottom and the dim luminescence of the light inside.

Nothing happened.

The second hand on the wall clock moved steadily, but much too slowly. At five seconds to the hour I found myself on my feet. And when the hand hit twelve I moved fast. I went through the door, turned left, and found Gavigan just inside the arcade entrance, his eyes fixed on the booth.

“Okay,” he said without turning his head. “Come on.”

We hurried forward together. The Inspector jerked the door of the second booth open. The light inside blinked out.

Inside, the telephone receiver dangled, still swaying, by its cord.

The booth was empty.

Except for one thing. I bent down and picked it up off the floor – Merlini’s shiny silver dollar.

Gavigan swore. Then he pushed me aside, stepped into the booth and lifted the receiver. His voice was none too steady. He said one word into the phone.

“Hello?”

Leaning in behind him, I heard the voice that replied -Merlini’s voice making a statement that was twice as impossible as anything that had happened yet.

“Listen carefully,” it said. “And don’t ask questions now. I’m at 1462-12 Astoria Avenue, the Bronx. Got that? 1462-12 Astoria. Keeler’s here – and a murderer! Hurry!”

The tense urgency of that last command sent a cold shiver down my spine. Then I heard the click as the connection was broken.

Gavigan stood motionless for a second, holding the dead phone. Then the surging flood of his emotions spilled over. He jiggled the receiver frantically and swore again.

“Blast it! This phone is dead!”

I pulled myself out of a mental tailspin, found a nickel, and dropped it in the slot. Gavigan’s verbal fireworks died to a mutter as he heard the dial tone and he jabbed savagely at the dial.

A moment later the Telegraph Bureau was broadcasting a bowdlerized version of Gavigan’s orders to the prowl cars in the Astoria Avenue neighbourhood. And Gavigan and I were running for the street and his own car. Brady saw us coming, gunned his motor, and the instant we were aboard, took off as though jet-powered. He made a banked turn into Fifth Avenue against a red light, and we raced uptown, siren screaming.

If Zyyzk had been there beside us, handing out dire predictions that we were headed straight for the Pearly Gates, I wouldn’t have doubted him for a moment. We came within inches of that destination half a dozen times as we roared swerving through the crosstown traffic.

The Astoria address wasn’t hard to find. There were three prowl cars parked in front of it and two uniformed cops on the front porch. One sat on the floor, his back to the wall, holding a limp arm whose sleeve was stained with blood. There were two round bullet holes in the glass of the door above him. As we ran up the walk, the sound of gun fire came from the rear of the house and the second cop lifted his foot, kicked in a front window, and crawled in through the opening, gun in hand.

The wounded man made a brief report as we passed him. “Nobody answered the door,” he said. “But when we tried to crash the joint, somebody started shooting.”

Somebody was still shooting. Gavigan, Brady, and I went through the window and toward the sound. The officer who had preceded us was in the kitchen, firing around the jamb of the back door. An answering gun blazed in the dark outside and the cop fired at the flash.

“Got him, I think,” the cop said. Then he slipped out through the door, moved quickly across the porch and down the steps. Brady followed him.

Gavigan’s pocket-flash suddenly sent out a thin beam of light. It started a circuit of the kitchen, stopped for a moment as it picked up movement just outside the door, and we saw a third uniformed man pull himself to a sitting position on the porch floor, look at the bloodstain on his trouser leg, and swear.

Then the Inspector’s flash found the open cellar door.

And down there, beside the beginning of a grave, we found Judge Keeler.

His head had been battered in.

But he couldn’t find Merlini anywhere in the house. It wasn’t until five minutes later, when we were opening Keeler’s suitcase, that Merlini walked in.

He looked at the cash and negotiable securities that tumbled out. “You got here,” he said, “before that vanished, too, I see.”

Gavigan looked up at him. “But you just arrived this minute. I heard a cab out front.”

Merlini nodded. “My driver refused to ignore the stop lights the way yours did. Did you find the Judge?”

“Yes, we found him. And I want to know how of all the addresses in Greater New York, you managed to pick this one out of your hat?”

Merlini’s dark eyes twinkled. “That was the easy part. Keeler’s disappearance, as I said once before, added up to two invisible men. As soon as I knew who the second one must be, I simply looked the name up in the phone book.”

“And when you vanished,” I asked, “was that done with two invisible men?”

Merlini grinned. “No. I improved on the Judge’s miracle a bit. I made it a one-man operation.”

Gavigan had had all the riddles he could digest. “We found Keeler’s body,” he growled ominously, “beside an open grave. And if you don’t stop-”

“Sorry,” Merlini said, as a lighted cigarette appeared mysteriously between his fingers. “As a magician I hate to have to blow the gaff on such a neatly contrived bit of hocus pocus as The Great Phone Booth Trick. But if I must – well, it began when Keeler realized he was going to have to take a runout powder. He knew he was being watched. It was obvious that if he and Helen Hope tried to leave town by any of the usual methods, they’d both be picked up at once. Their only chance was to vanish as abruptly and completely as Judge Crater and Dorothy Arnold once did. I suspect it was Zyyzk’s first prediction that Miss Hope would disappear that gave Keeler the idea. At any rate, that was what set the wheels in motion.”

“I thought so,” Gavigan said. “Zyyzk was in on it.”

Merlini shook his head. “I’m afraid you can’t charge him with a thing. He was in on it – but he didn’t know it. One of the subtlest deceptive devices a magician uses is known as ‘the principle of the impromptu stooge.’ He so manages things that an unrehearsed spectator acts as a confederate, often without ever realizing it. That’s how Keeler used Zyyzk. He built his vanishing trick on Zyyzk’s predictions and used them as misdirection. But Zyyzk never knew that he was playing the part of a red herring.”

“He’s a fraud though,” Gavigan insisted. “And he does know it.”

Merlini contradicted that, too. “No. Oddly enough he’s the one thing in this whole case that is on the level. As you, yourself, pointed out, no fake prophet would give such precisely detailed predictions. He actually does believe that Helen Hope and Judge Keeler vanished into the Outer Darkness.”

“A loony,” Gavigan muttered.

“And,” Merlini added, “a real problem, at this point, for any psychiatrist. He’s seen two of his prophecies come true with such complete and startling accuracy that he’ll never believe what really happened. I egged him into predicting my disappearance in order to show him that he wasn’t infallible. If he never discovers that I did vanish right on time, it may shake his belief in his occult powers. But if he does, the therapy will backfire; he’ll be convinced when he sees me, that I’m a doppelganger or an astral double the police have conjured up to discredit him.”

“If you don’t stop trying to psychoanalyze Zyyzk,” Gavigan growled impatiently, “the police are going to conjure up a charge of withholding information in a murder case. Get on with it. Helen Hope wasn’t being tailed, so her disappearance was a cinch. She simply walked out, without even taking her toothbrush – to make Zyyzk’s prediction look good – and grabbed a plane for Montana or Mexico or some such place where Keeler was to meet her later. But how did Keeler evaporate? And don’t you give me any nonsense about two invisible men.”

Merlini grinned. “Then we’d better take my disappearance first. That used only one invisible man – and, of course, too many phone booths.”

Then, quickly, as Gavigan started to explode, Merlini stopped being cryptic. “In that restaurant you and Ross sat at a table and in the seats that I selected. You saw me, through the window, enter what I had been careful to refer to as the second booth from the right. Seen through the window, that is what it was. But the line of phone booths extended on either side beyond the window and your field of vision. Viewed from outside, there were nine – not six – booths, and the one I entered was actually the third in line.”

“Do you mean,” Gavigan said menacingly, “that when I was outside watching the second booth, Ross, inside, was watching the third – and we both thought we were watching the same one?”

“Yes. It isn’t necessary to deceive the senses if the mind can be misdirected. You saw what you saw, but it wasn’t what you thought you saw. And that-”

Then Gavigan did explode, in a muffled sort of way. “Are you saying that we searched the wrong phone booth? And that you were right there all the time, sitting in the next one?”

Merlini didn’t need to answer. That was obviously just what he did mean.

“Then your silver dollar,” I began, “and the phone receiver-”

“Were,” Merlini grinned, “what confidence men call ‘the convincer’ – concocted evidence which seemed to prove that you had the right booth, prevented any sceptical second thoughts, and kept you from examining the other booths just to make sure you had the right one.”

I got it then. “That first time you left the restaurant, before you came back with that phoney request for the loan of a nickel – that’s when you left the dollar in the second booth.”

Merlini nodded. “I made a call, too. I dialed the number of the second booth. And when the phone rang, I stepped into the second booth, took the receiver off the hook, dropped the silver dollar on the floor, then hurried back to your table. Both receivers were off and the line was open.”

“And when we looked into the second booth, you were sitting right next door, three feet away, telling Gavigan via the phone that you were in the Bronx?”

Merlini nodded. “And I came out after you had gone. It’s a standard conjuring principle. The audience doesn’t see the coin, the rabbit, or the girl vanish because they actually disappear either before or after the magician pretends to conjure them into thin air. The audience is watching most carefully at the wrong time.”

“Now wait a minute,” the Inspector objected. “That’s just exactly the way you said Keeler couldn’t have handled the phone business. What’s more he couldn’t. Ross and I weren’t watching you the first time you left the restaurant. But we’d been watching Keeler for a week.”

“And,” I added, “Malloy and Hicks couldn’t have miscounted the booths at the station and searched the wrong one. They could see both ends of that line of booths the whole time.”

“They didn’t miscount,” Merlini said. “They just didn’t count. The booth we examined was the fifth from the right end of the line, but neither Malloy nor Hicks ever referred to it in that way.”

Gavigan scowled. “They said Keeler went into the booth ‘to the right of the one that was out of order.’ And the phone in the next booth was out of order.”

“I know, but Keeler didn’t enter the booth next to the one we found out of order. He went into a booth next to one that was marked: Out of Order. That’s not quite the same.”

Gavigan and I both said the same thing at the same time: “The sign had been moved!”

“Twice,” Merlini said, nodding. “First, when Keeler was in the Oyster Bar. The second invisible man – invisible because no one was watching him – moved it one booth to the right. And when Keeler, a few minutes later, entered the booth to the right of the one bearing the sign, he was actually in the second booth from the one whose phone didn’t work.

“And then our second invisible man went into action again. He walked into the booth marked out of order, smashed a duplicate pair of blood-smeared glasses on the floor, and dialed the Judge’s phone. When Keeler answered, he walked out again, leaving the receiver off the hook. It was as neat a piece of mis-direction as I’ve seen in a long time. Who would suspect him of putting through a call from a phone booth that was plainly labelled out of order?”

Cautiously, as if afraid the answer would blow up in his face, the Inspector asked, “He did all this with Malloy and Hicks both watching? And he wasn’t seen – because he was invisible?”

“No, that’s not quite right. He was invisible – because he wasn’t suspected.”

I still didn’t see it. “But,” I objected, “the only person who went anywhere near the booth next to the one Keeler was in-”

Heavy footsteps sounded on the back porch and then Brady’s voice from the doorway said, “We found him, Inspector. Behind some bushes the other side of the wall. Dead. And do you know who-”

“I do now,” Gavigan cut in. “Sergeant Hicks.”

Brady nodded.

Gavigan turned to Merlini. “Okay, so Hicks was a crooked cop and a liar. But not Malloy. He says he was watching that phone booth every second. How did Hicks switch that Out-of-Order sign back to the original booth again without being seen?”

“He did it when Malloy wasn’t watching quite so closely – after Malloy thought Keeler had vanished. Malloy saw Hicks look into the booth, act surprised, then beckon hurriedly. Those actions, together with Hicks’s later statement that the booth was already empty, made Malloy think the judge had vanished sooner than he really did. Actually Keeler was still right there, sitting in the booth into which Hicks stared. It’s the same deception as to time that I used.”

“Will you,” Gavigan growled, “stop lecturing on the theory of deception and just explain when Hicks moved that sign.”

“All right. Remember what Malloy did next? He was near the information booth in the center of the floor and he ran across toward the phones. Malloy said, ‘I did some fancy open-field running through the commuters.’ Of course he did. At fivetwenty the station is full of them and he was in a hell of a hurry. He couldn’t run fast and keep his eyes glued to Hicks and that phone booth every step of the way; he’d have had half a dozen head-on collisions. But he didn’t think the fact that he had had to use his eyes to steer a course rather than continue to watch the booth was important. He thought the dirty work – Keeler’s disappearance – had taken place.

“As Malloy ran toward him through the crowd, Hicks simply took two steps sideways to the left and stared into the phone booth that was tagged with the Out-of-Order card. And, behind his body, his left hand shifted the sign one booth to the left – back to the booth that was genuinely out of order. Both actions took no more than a second or two. When Malloy arrived, ‘the booth next to the one that was out of order’ was empty. Keeler had vanished into Zyyzk’s Outer Darkness by simply sitting still and not moving at all!”

“And he really vanished,” Gavigan said, finally convinced, “by walking out of the next booth as soon as he had spoken his piece to Molloy on the phone.”

“While Malloy,” Merlini added, “was still staring goggle-eyed at the phone. Even if he had turned to look out of the door, all he’d have seen was the beefy Hicks standing smack in front of him carefully blocking the view. And then Keeler walked right out of the station. Every exit was guarded – except one. An exit big enough to drive half a dozen trains through!”

“Okay,” the Inspector growled. “You don’t have to put it in words of one syllable. He went out through one of the train gates which Malloy himself had been covering, boarded a train a moment before it pulled out, and ten minutes later he was getting off again up at 125th Street.”

“Which,” Merlini added, “isn’t far from Hick’s home where we are now and where Keeler intended to hide out until the cops, baffled by the dead-end he’d left, relaxed their vigilance a bit. The judge was full of cute angles. Who’d ever think of looking for him in the home of one of the cops who was supposed to be hunting him?”

“After which,” I added, “he’d change the cut of his whiskers or trim them off altogether, go to join Miss Hope, and they’d live happily ever after on his ill-gotten gains. Fadeout.”

“That was the way the script read,” Merlini said. “But Judge Keeler forgot one or two little things. He forgot that a man who has just vanished off the face of the earth, leaving a deadend trail, is a perfect prospective murder victim. And he forgot that a suitcase full of folding money is a temptation one should never set before a crooked cop.”

“Forgetfulness seems to be dangerous,” I said. “I’m glad I’ve got a good memory.”

“I have a hunch that somebody is going to have both our scalps,” Merlini said ominously. “I’ve just remembered that when we left the shop-”

He was right. I hadn’t mailed Mrs Merlini’s letter.