The Great Merlini

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The Great Merlini Page 5

by Clayton Rawson


  “Okay, Doran,” Gavigan ordered. “Do it.”

  I saw an objection. “Now you’ve got Rosa framing herself, too,” I said. “If she swallowed the murder knife, why should she put blood on the letter opener? That makes no sense at all.”

  “None of this does,” Gavigan complained.

  “I know,” Merlini answered. “One knife was bad. Two are much worse. And although X-rays of Rosa before the séance would have shown shells, I predict they won’t show a knife. If they do, then Rosa needs a psychiatric examination as well.”

  “Don’t worry,” Gavigan said gloomily. “She’ll get one. Her attorney will see to that. And they’ll prove she’s crazier than a bedbug without half trying. But if that knife isn’t in her…” His voice died.

  “Then you’ll never convict her,” Merlini finished.

  “If that happens,” the Inspector said ominously, “you’re going to have to explain where that knife came from, how it really disappeared, and where it is now.”

  Merlini’s view was even gloomier. “It’ll be much worse than that. We’ll also have an appearing and vanishing murderer to explain—someone who entered a sealed room, killed Drake, put blood on the paper knife to incriminate Rosa, then vanished just as neatly as any of Miss Potter’s ghosts—into thin air.”

  And Merlini’s prediction came true.

  The X-ray plates didn’t show the slightest trace of a knife. And it wasn’t in Rosa’s hospital room or in the ambulance. Nor on Garrett, Paul, Elinor Drake, Isabelle Potter—nor, as Doran discovered, on myself. The Drake house was a mess by the time the boys got through taking it apart—but no knife with a broken point was found anywhere. And it was shown beyond doubt that there were no trapdoors or sliding panels in the study; the door and window were the only exits.

  Inspector Gavigan glowered every time the phone rang—the Commissioner had already phoned twice and without mincing words expressed his dissatisfaction with the way things were going.

  And Merlini, stretched out in Drake’s chair, his heels up on the desk top, his eyes closed, seemed to have gone into a trance.

  “Blast it!” Gavigan said. “Rosa Rhys got that knife out of here somehow. She had to! Merlini, are you going to admit that she knows a trick or two you don’t?”

  The magician didn’t answer for a moment. Then he opened one eye. “No,” he said slowly, “not just yet.” He took his feet off the desk and sat up straight. “You know,” he said, “if we don’t accept the theory of the murderer from beyond, then Ross must be right after all. Elinor Drake’s statement to the contrary, there must have been a third person in this room when that séance began.”

  “Okay,” Gavigan said, “we’ll forget Miss Drake’s testimony for the moment. At least that gets him into the room. Then what?”

  “I don’t know,” Merlini said. He took the roll of gummed paper tape from the desk, tore off a two-foot length, crossed the room, and pasted it across the door and jamb, sealing us in. “Suppose I’m the killer,” he said. “I knock Rosa out first, then stab Drake—”

  He paused.

  Gavigan was not enthusiastic. “You put the murder knife in your pocket, not noticing that the point is broken. You put blood on the paper knife to incriminate Rosa. And then—” He waited. “Well, go on.”

  “Then,” Merlini said, “I get out of here.” He scowled at the sealed door and at the window. “I’ve escaped from handcuffs, strait jackets, milk cans filled with water, packing cases that have been nailed shut. I know the methods Houdini used to break out of safes and jail cells. But I feel like he did when a shrewd old turnkey shut him in a cell in Scotland one time and the lock—a type he’d overcome many times before—failed to budge. No matter how he tried or what he did, the bolt wouldn’t move. He was sweating blood because he knew that if he failed, his laboriously built-up reputation as the Escape King would be blown to bits. And then…” Merlini blinked. “And then…” This time he came to a full stop, staring at the door.

  Suddenly he blinked. “Shades of Hermann, Kellar, Thurston—and Houdini! So that’s it!”

  Grinning broadly, he turned to Gavigan. “We will now pass a miracle and chase all the ghosts back into their tombs. If you’ll get those people in here—”

  “You know how the vanishing man vanished?” I asked.

  “Yes. If s someone who has been just as canny as that Scotch jailer—and I know who.”

  Gavigan said, “It’s about time.” Then he walked across the room and pulled the door open, tearing the paper strip in half as he did so.

  Merlini, watching him, grinned again. “The method by which magicians let their audiences fool themselves—the simplest and yet most effective principle of deception in the whole book—and it nearly took me in!”

  Elinor Drake’s eyes still avoided the stains on the floor. Scott, beside her, puffed nervously on a cigarette, and Dr. Garrett looked drawn and tired. But not the irrepressible Potter. She seemed fresh as a daisy.

  “This room,” she said to no one in particular, “will become more famous in psychic annals than the home of the Fox sisters at Lilydale.”

  Quickly, before she could elaborate on that, Merlini cut in. “Miss Potter doesn’t believe that Rosa Rhys killed Drake. Neither do I. But the psychic force she says is responsible didn’t emanate from another World. It was conjured up out of nothing by someone who was—who had to be—here in this room when Drake died. Someone whom Drake himself asked to be here.”

  He moved into the center of the room as he spoke and faced them.

  “Drake would never have convinced anyone that Rosa could do what she claimed without a witness. So he gave someone a key—someone who came into this room before Drake and Rosa and Elinor came downstairs.”

  The four people watched him without moving—almost, I thought, without breathing.

  “That person hid behind that screen and then, after Rosa produced the apports, knocked her out, killed Drake, and left Rosa to face the music.”

  “All we have to do,” Merlini went on, “is show who it was that Drake selected as a witness.” He pointed a lean forefinger at Isabelle Potter. “If Drake discovered how Rosa produced the shells and realized she was a fraud, you might have killed him to prevent an exposure and save face for yourself and the Society; and you might have then framed Rosa in revenge for having deceived you. But Drake would never have chosen you. Your testimony wouldn’t have convinced any of the others. No. Drake would have picked one of the skeptics—someone he was certain could never be accused of assisting the medium.”

  He faced Elinor. “You said that you accompanied Rosa and your father to the study door and saw them go in alone. We haven’t asked Miss Rhys yet, but I think she’ll confirm it. You couldn’t expect to lie about that and make it stick as long as Rosa could and would contradict you.”

  I saw Doran move forward silently, closing in.

  “And Paul Kendrick,” Merlini went on, “is the only one of you who has an alibi that does not depend on the sealed room. That leaves the most skeptical one of the three—the man whose testimony would by far carry the greatest weight.

  “It leaves you, Dr. Garrett. The man who is so certain that there are no ghosts is the man who conjured one up!”

  Merlini played the scene down; he knew that the content of what he said was dramatic enough. But Garret’s voice was even calmer. He shook his head slowly.

  “I am afraid that I can’t agree. You have no reason to assume that it must be one of us and no one else. But I would like to hear how you think I or anyone else could have walked out of this room leaving it sealed as it was found.”

  “That,” Merlini said, “is the simplest answer of all. You walked out, but you didn’t leave the room sealed. You see, it was not found that way!”

  I felt as if I were suddenly floating in space.

  “But look—” I began.

  Merlini ignored me. “The vanishing murderer was a trick. But magic is not, as most people believe, only a matter of gimmic
ks and trapdoors and mirrors. Its real secret lies deeper than a mere deception of the senses; the magician uses a far more important, more basic weapon—the psychological deception of the mind. Don’t believe everything you see is excellent advice; but there’s a better rule: Don’t believe everything you think.”

  “Are you trying to tell me,” I said incredulously, “that this room wasn’t sealed at all? That I just thought it was?”

  Merlini kept watching Garrett. “Yes. It’s as simple as that. And there was no visual deception at all. It was, like PK, entirely mental. You saw things exactly as they were, but you didn’t realize that the visual appearance could be interpreted two ways. Let me ask you a question. When you break into a room the door of which has been sealed with paper tape on the inside, do you find yourself still in a sealed room?”

  “No,” I said, “of course not. The paper has been torn.”

  “And if you break into a room that had been sealed but from which someone has already gone out, tearing the seals—what then?”

  “The paper,” I said, “is still torn. The appearance is—”

  “—exactly the same!” Merlini finished.

  He let that soak in a moment, then continued. “When you saw the taped window, and then the torn paper on the door, you made a false assumption—you jumped naturally, but much too quickly, to a wrong conclusion. We all did. We assumed that it was you who had torn the paper—when you broke in. Actually, it was Dr. Garrett who tore the paper—when he went out!”

  Garrett’s voice was a shade less steady now. “You forget that Andrew Drake phoned me—”

  Merlini shook his head, “I’m afraid we only have your own statement for that. You overturned the phone and placed Drake’s body near it. Then you walked out, returned to your office where you got rid of the knife—probably a surgical instrument which you couldn’t leave behind because it might have been traced to you.”

  Doran, hearing this, whispered a rapid order to the detective stationed at the door.

  “Then,” Merlini continued, “you came back immediately to ring the front-door bell. You said Drake had called you, partly because it was good misdirection; it made it appear that you were elsewhere when he died. But equally important, it gave you the excuse you needed to break in and find the body without delay—before Rosa Rhys should regain consciousness and see that the room was no longer sealed!”

  I hated to do it. Merlini was so pleased with the neat way he was tying up all the loose ends. But I had to.

  “Merlini,” I said. “I’m afraid there is one little thing you don’t know. When I smashed the door open, I heard the paper tape tear!”

  I have seldom seen the Great Merlini surprised, but that did it. He couldn’t have looked more astonished if lightning had struck him.

  “You—you what?”

  Elinor Drake said, “I heard it, too.”

  Garrett added, “And I.”

  It stopped Merlini cold for a moment, but only a moment.

  “Then that’s more misdirection. It has to be.” He hesitated, then suddenly looked at Doran. “Lieutenant, get the doctor’s overcoat, will you?”

  Garrett spoke to the inspector. “This is nonsense. What possible reason could I have for—”

  “Your motive was a curious one, doctor,” Merlini said. “One that few murderers—”

  Merlini stopped as he took the overcoat Doran brought in and removed from its pocket the copy of the AMA Journal I had noticed there earlier. He started to open it, then lifted an eyebrow at something he saw on the contents listing.

  “I see,” he said, and then read: “A Survey of the Uses of Radioactive Tracers in Cancer Research by Walter M. Garrett, M.D. So that’s your special interest?” The magician turned to Elinor Drake. “Who was to head the $15-million foundation for cancer research, Miss Drake?”

  The girl didn’t need to reply. The answer was in her eyes as she stared at Garrett.

  Merlini went on. “You were hidden behind the screen in the corner, doctor. And Rosa Rhys, in spite of all the precautions, successfully produced the apports. You saw the effect that had on Drake, knew Rosa had won, and that Drake was thoroughly hooked. And the thought of seeing all that money wasted on psychical research when it could be put to so much better use in really important medical research made you boil. Any medical man would hate to see that happen, and most of the rest of us, too.

  “But we don’t all have the coldly rational, scientific attitude you do, and we wouldn’t all have realized so quickly that there was one very simple but drastic way to prevent it—murder. You are much too rational. You believe that one man’s life is less important than the good his death might bring, and you believed that sufficiently to act upon it. The knife was there, all too handy, in your little black case. And so—Drake died. Am I right, doctor?”

  Doran didn’t like this as a motive. “He’s still a killer,” he objected. “And he tried to frame Rosa, didn’t he?”

  Merlini said, “Do you want to answer that, doctor?”

  Garrett hesitated, then glanced at the magazine Merlini still held. His voice was tired. “You are also much too rational.” He turned to Doran. “Rosa Rhys was a cheap fraud who capitalized on superstition. The world would be a much better place without such people.”

  “And what about your getting that job as the head of the medical foundation?” Doran was still unconvinced. “I don’t supposed that had anything to do with your reasons for killing Drake?”

  The doctor made no answer. And I couldn’t tell if it was because Doran was right or because he knew that Doran would not believe him.

  He turned to Merlini instead. “The fact still remains that the cancer foundation has been made possible. The only difference is that now two men rather than one pay with their lives.”

  “A completely rational attitude,” Merlini said, “does have its advantages if it allows you to contemplate your own death with so little emotion.”

  Gavigan wasn’t as cynical about Garrett’s motives as Doran, but his police training objected. “He took the law into his own hands. If everyone did that, we’d all have to go armed for self-protection. Merlini, why did Ross think he heard paper tearing when he opened that door?”

  “He did hear it,” Merlini said. Then he turned to me. “Dr. Garrett stood behind you and Miss Drake when you broke in the door, didn’t he?”

  I nodded. “Yes.”

  Merlini opened the medical journal and riffled through it. Half a dozen loose pages, their serrated edges showing where they had been torn in half, fluttered to the floor.

  Merlini said, “You would have made an excellent magician, doctor. Your deception was not visual, it was auditory.”

  “That,” Gavigan said, “tears it.”

  Later I had one further question to ask Merlini.

  “You didn’t explain how Houdini got out of that Scottish jail, nor how it helped you solve the enigma of the unsealed door.”

  Merlini lifted an empty hand, plucked a lighted cigarette from thin air and puffed at it, grinning.

  “Houdini made the same false assumption. When he leaned exhaustedly against the cell door, completely baffled by his failure to overcome the lock, the door suddenly swung open and he fell into the corridor. The old Scot, you see, hadn’t locked it at all!”

  Off the Face of the Earth

  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 skep
tical 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-colored 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 theater 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 theater. I stood there a moment later and watched Merlini step into an upright coffin-shaped box in the center 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.

 

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