by Mike Ashley
“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 Insp
ector 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.”