He hesitated a moment, then let me have both barrels.
“Those shells suggest that Drake’s death might have been caused by even stranger forces—evil and evanescent ones—from another world!”
My acquaintance with a police inspector cut no ice with Doran; he ordered me right back into the living room.
I heard a siren announce the arrival of Gavigan’s car shortly after, but it was a long hour later before Doran came in and said, “The Inspector wants to see all of you—in the study.”
As I moved with the others out into the hall I saw Merlini waiting for me.
“It’s about time,” I growled at him. “Another ten minutes and you’d have found me D.O.A., too—from suspense.”
“Sorry you had to cool your heels,” he said, “but Gavigan is being difficult. As predicted, he doesn’t like the earful Doran has been giving him. Neither do I.” The dryly ironic good humor that was almost always in his voice was absent. He was unusually sober.
“Don’t build it up,” I said. “I’ve had all the mystery I can stand. Just give me answers. First, why did you tell me to warn Drake about Rosa Rhys?”
“I didn’t expect murder, if that’s what you’re thinking,” he replied. “Drake was elaborating on some of Rhine’s original experiments aimed at discovering whether ESP operates more efficiently when the subject is in a trance state. Rosa is a medium.”
“Oh, so that’s it. She and Drake were holding a séance?”
Merlini nodded. “Yes. The Psychical Research Society is extremely interested in ESP and PK—it’s given them a new lease on life. And I knew they had recommended Rosa, whom they had previously investigated, to Drake.”
“And what about the Roman coins, roses, Buddhist prayer beads—and snail shells? Why the bathing suit and how does that explain why the room was sealed?”
But Doran, holding the study door open, interrupted before he could reply.
“Hurry it up!” he ordered.
Going into that room now was like walking onto a brightly lighted stage. A powerful electric bulb of almost floodlight brilliance had been inserted in the ceiling fixture and its harsh white glare made the room more barren and cell-like than ever. Even Inspector Gavigan seemed to have taken on a menacing air. Perhaps it was the black mask of shadow that his hat brim threw down across the upper part of his face; or it may have been the carefully intent way he watched us as we came in.
Doran did the introductions. “Miss Drake, Miss Potter, Paul Kendrick, Dr. Walter Garrett.”
I looked at the middle-aged woman whose gayly frilled, altogether feminine hat contrasted oddly with her angular figure, her prim determined mouth, and the chilly glance of complete disapproval with which she regarded Gavigan.
“How,” I whispered to Merlini, “did Isabelle Potter, the secretary of the Psychical Research Society, get here?”
“She came with Rosa,” he answered. “The police found her upstairs reading a copy of Tyrrell’s Study of Apparitions.” Merlini smiled faintly. “She and Doran don’t get along.”
“They wouldn’t,” I said. “They talk different languages. When I interviewed her, I got a travelogue on the other world—complete with lantern slides.”
Inspector Gavigan wasted no time. “Miss Drake,” he began, “I understand the medical foundation for cancer research your father thought of endowing was originally your idea.”
The girl glanced once at the stains on the carpet, then kept her dark eyes steadily on Gavigan. “Yes,” she said slowly, “it was.”
“Are you interested in psychical research?”
Elinor frowned. “No.”
“Did you object when your father began holding séances with Miss Rhys?”
She shook her head. “That would only have made him more determined.”
Gavigan turned to Kendrick. “Did you?”
“Me?” Paul lifted his brows. “I didn’t know him well enough for that. Don’t think he liked me much, anyway. But why a man like Drake would waste his time—”
“And you, doctor?”
“Did I object?” Garrett seemed surprised. “Naturally. No one but a neurotic middle-aged woman would take a séance seriously.”
Miss Potter resented that one. “Dr. Garrett,” she said icily, “Sir Oliver Lodge was not a neurotic woman, nor Sir William Crookes, nor Professor Zoëllner, nor—”
“But they were all senile,” Garrett replied just as icily. “And as for ESP, no neurologist of any standing admits any such possibility. They leave such things to you and your society, Miss Potter—and to the Sunday supplements.”
She gave the doctor a look that would have split an atom, and Gavigan, seeing the danger of a chain reaction if this sort of dialogue were allowed to continue, broke in quickly.
“Miss Potter. You introduced Miss Rhys to Mr. Drake and he was conducting ESP experiments with her. Is that correct?”
Miss Potter’s voice was still dangerously radioactive. “It is. And their results were gratifying and important. Of course, neither you nor Dr. Garrett would understand—”
“And then,” Garrett cut in, “they both led him on into an investigation of Miss Rhys’s psychic specialty—apports.” He pronounced the last word with extreme distaste.
Inspector Gavigan scowled, glanced at Merlini, and the latter promptly produced a definition. “An apport,” he said, “from the French apporter, to bring, is any physical object supernormally brought into a séance room—from nowhere usually or from some impossible distance. Miss Rhys on previous occasions—according to the Psychical Society’s Journal—has apported such objects as Roman coins, roses, beads, and seaweed.”
“She is the greatest apport medium,” Miss Potter declared somewhat belligerently, “since Charles Bailey.”
“Then she’s good,” Merlini said. “Bailey was an apport medium whom Conan Doyle considered bona fide. He produced birds, oriental plants, small animals, and on one occasion a young shark eighteen inches long which he claimed his spirit guide had whisked instantly via the astral plane from the Indian Ocean and projected, still damp and very much alive, into the séance room.”
“So,” I said, “that’s why this room was sealed. To make absolutely certain that no one could open the door or window in the dark and help Rosa by introducing—”
“Of course,” Garrett added. “Obviously there could be no apports if adequate precautions were taken. Drake also moved a lot of his things out of the study and inventoried every object that remained. He also suggested, since I was so skeptical, that I be the one to make certain that Miss Rhys carried nothing into the room on her person. I gave her a most complete physical examination—in a bedroom upstairs. Then she put on one of Miss Drake’s bathing suits.”
“Did you come down to the study with her and Drake?” Gavigan asked.
The doctor frowned. “No. I had objected to Miss Potter’s presence at the séance and Miss Rhys countered by objecting to mine.”
“She was quite right,” Miss Potter said. “The presence of an unbeliever like yourself would prevent even the strongest psychic forces from making themselves manifest.”
“I have no doubt of that,” Garrett replied stiffly. “It’s the usual excuse, as I told Drake. He tried to get her to let me attend but she refused flatly. So I went back to my office down the street. Drake’s phone call came a half hour or so later.”
“And yet”—Gavigan eyed the two brightly colored shells on the table—“in spite of all your precautions she produced two of these.”
Garrett nodded. “Yes, I know. But the answer is fairly obvious now. She hid them somewhere in the hall outside on her arrival and then secretly picked them up again on her way in here.”
Elinor frowned. “I’m afraid not, doctor. Father thought of that and asked me to go down with them to the study. He held one of her hands and I held the other.”
Gavigan scowled. Miss Potter beamed.
“Did you go in with them?” Merlini asked.
She shook
her head. “No. Only as far as the door. They went in and I heard it lock behind them. I stood there for a moment or two and heard Father begin pasting the tape on the door. Then I went back to my room to dress. I was expecting Paul.”
Inspector Gavigan turned to Miss Potter. “You remained upstairs?”
“Yes,” she replied in a tone that dared him to deny it. “I did.”
Gavigan looked at Elinor. “Paul said a moment ago that your father didn’t like him. Why not?”
“Paul exaggerates,” the girl said quickly. “Father didn’t dislike him. He was just—well, a bit difficult where my men friends were concerned.”
“He thought they were all after his money,” Kendrick added. “But at the rate he was endowing medical foundations and psychic societies—”
Miss Potter objected. “Mr. Drake did not endow the Psychic Society.”
“But he was seriously considering it,” Garrett said. “Miss Rhys—and Miss Potter—were selling him on the theory that illness is only a mental state due to a psychic imbalance—whatever that is.”
“They won’t sell me on that,” Elinor said and then turned suddenly on Miss Potter, her voice trembling. “If it weren’t for you and your idiotic foolishness Father wouldn’t have been—killed.” Then to Gavigan, “We’ve told all this before—to the Lieutenant. Is it quite necessary—”
The Inspector glanced at Merlini, then said, “I think that will be all for now. Okay, Doran, take them back. But none of them are to leave yet.”
When they had gone, he turned to Merlini. “Well, I asked the questions you wanted me to, but I still think it was a waste of time. Rosa Rhys killed Drake. Anything else is impossible.”
“What about Kendrick’s cab driver?” Merlini asked. “Did your men locate him yet?”
Gavigan’s scowl, practically standard operating procedure by now, grew darker. “Yes. Kendrick’s definitely out. He entered the cab on the other side of town at just about the time Drake was sealing this room and he was apparently still in it, crossing Central Park, at the time Drake was killed.”
“So,” I commented, “he’s the only one with an alibi.”
Gavigan lifted his eyebrows. “The only one? Except for Rosa Rhys they all have alibis. The sealed room takes care of that.”
“Yes,” Merlini said quietly, “but the people with alibis also have motives while the one person who could have killed Drake has none.”
“She did it,” the Inspector answered. “So she’s got a motive—and we’ll find it.”
“I wish I were as confident of that as you are,” Merlini said. “Under the circumstances you’ll be able to get a conviction without showing motive, but if you don’t find one, it will always bother you.”
“Maybe,” Gavigan admitted, “but that won’t be as bad as trying to believe what she says happened in this room.”
That was news to me. “You’ve talked to Rosa?” I asked.
“One of the boys did,” Gavigan said sourly. “At the hospital. She’s already preparing an insanity defense.”
“But why,” Merlini asked, “is she still hysterical with fright? Could it be that she’s scared because she really believes her story—because something like that really did happen in here?”
“Look,” I said impatiently, “is it top secret or will somebody tell me what she says happened?”
Gavigan glowered at Merlini. “Are you going to stand there and tell me that you think Rosa Rhys actually believes—”
It was my question that Merlini answered. He walked to the table in the center of the room. “She says that after Drake sealed the window and door, the lights were turned off and she and Drake sat opposite each other at this table. His back was toward the desk, hers toward that screen in the corner. Drake held her hands. They waited. Finally she felt the psychic forces gathering around her—and then, out of nowhere, the two shells dropped onto the table one after the other. Drake got up, turned on the desk light, and came back to the table. A moment later it happened.”
The magician paused for a moment, regarding the bare, empty room with a frown. “Drake,” he continued, “was examining the shells, quite excited and pleased about their appearance when suddenly, Rosa says, she heard a movement behind her. She saw Drake look up and then stare incredulously over her shoulder.” Merlini spread his hands. “And that’s all she remembers. Something hit her. When she came to, she found herself staring at the blood on the floor and at Drake’s body.”
Gavigan was apparently remembering Merlini’s demonstration with the gun in his office. “If you,” he warned acidly, “so much as try to hint that one of the people outside this room projected some mental force that knocked Rosa out and then caused the knife to stab Drake—”
“You know,” Merlini said, “I half expected Miss Potter would suggest that. But her theory is even more disturbing.” He looked at me. “She says that the benign spirits which Rosa usually evoked were overcome by some malign and evil entity whose astral substance materialized momentarily, killed Drake, then returned to the other world from which it came.”
“She’s a mental case, too,” Gavigan said disgustedly. “They have to be crazy if they expect anyone to believe any such—”
“That,” Merlini said quietly, “may be another reason Rosa is scared to death. Perhaps she believes it but knows you won’t. In her shoes, I’d be scared, too.” He frowned. “The difficulty is the knife.”
Gavigan blinked. “The knife? What’s difficult about that?”
“If I killed Drake,” Merlini replied, “and wanted appearances to suggest that psychic forces were responsible, you wouldn’t have found a weapon in this room that made it look as if I were guilty. I would have done a little de-apporting and made it disappear. As it is now, even if the knife was propelled supernaturally, Rosa takes the rap.”
“And how,” Gavigan demanded, “would you make the knife disappear if you were dressed, as she was, in practically nothing?” With sudden suspicion, he added, “Are you suggesting that there’s a way she could have done that—and that you think she’s not guilty because she didn’t?”
Merlini lifted one of the shells from the table and placed it in the center of his left palm. His right hand covered it for a brief moment, then moved away. The shell was no longer there; it had vanished as silently and as easily as a ghost. Merlini turned both hands palms outward; both were unmistakably empty.
“Yes,” he said, “she could have made the knife disappear—if she had wanted to. The same way she produced the two shells.”
He made a reaching gesture with his right hand and the missing shell reappeared suddenly at his fingertips.
Gavigan looked annoyed and relieved at the same time. “So,” he said, “you do know how she got those shells in here. I want to hear it. Right now.”
But Gavigan had to wait.
At that moment a torpedo hit the water-tight circumstantial case against Rosa Rhys and detonated with a roar.
Doran, who had answered the phone a moment before, was swearing profusely. He was staring at the receiver he held as though it were a live cobra he had picked up by mistake.
“It—it’s Doc Hess,” he said in a dazed tone. “He just started the autopsy and thought we’d like to know that the point of the murder knife struck a rib and broke off. He just dug out a triangular pointed piece of—steel.”
For several seconds after that there wasn’t a sound. Then Merlini spoke.
“Gentlemen of the jury. Exhibit A, the paper knife with which my esteemed opponent, the District Attorney, claims Rosa Rhys stabbed Andrew Drake, is a copper alloy—and its point, as you can see, is quite intact. The defense rests.”
Doran swore again. “Drake’s inventory lists that letter opener, but that’s all. There is no other knife in this room. I’m positive of that.”
Gavigan jabbed a thick forefinger at me. “Ross, Dr. Garrett was in here before the police arrived. And Miss Drake and Kendrick.”
I shook my head. “Sorry. There
was no knife near the door and neither Elinor nor Paul came more than a foot into the room. Dr. Garrett examined Drake and Rosa, but I was watching him, and I’ll testify that unless he’s as expert at slight-of-hand as Merlini, he didn’t pick up a thing.”
Doran was not convinced. “Look, buddy. Unless Doc Hess has gone crazy too, there was a knife and it’s not here now. So somebody took it out.” He turned to the detective who stood at the door. “Tom,” he said, “have the boys frisk all those people. Get a police woman for Miss Drake and Potter and search the bedroom where they’ve been waiting. The living room, too.”
Then I had a brainstorm. “You know,” I said, “if Elinor is covering up for someone—if three people came in here for the séance instead of two as she says—the third could have killed Drake and then gone out—with the knife. And the paper tape could have been…” I stopped.
“—pasted on the door after the murderer left?” Merlini finished. “By Rosa? That would mean she framed herself.”
“Besides,” Gavigan growled, “the boys fumed all those paper strips. There are fingerprints all over them. All Drake’s.”
Merlini said, “Doran, I suggest that you phone the hospital and have Rosa searched, too.”
The Lieutenant blinked. “But she was practically naked. How in blazes could she carry a knife out of here unnoticed?”
Gavigan faced Merlini, scowling. “What did you mean when you said a moment ago that she could have got rid of the knife the same way she produced those shells?”
“If it was a clasp knife,” Merlini explained, “she could have used the same method other apport mediums have employed to conceal small objects under test conditions.”
“But dammit!” Doran exploded. “The only place Garrett didn’t look was in her stomach!”
Merlini grinned. “I know. That was his error. Rosa is a regurgitating medium—like Helen Duncan in whose stomach the English investigator, Harry Price, found a hidden ghost—a balled-up length of cheesecloth fastened with a safety pin which showed up when he X-rayed her. X-rays of Rosa seem indicated, too. And search her hospital room and the ambulance that took her over.”
The Great Merlini Page 4