“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 skeptical 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 phony 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 misdirection as I’ve seen in a long time. Who would suspect him of putting through a call from a phone booth that was plainly labeled out of order?”
Cautiously, as if afraid the answer would blow up in his face, I 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 info
rmation 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 five-twenty 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 Malloy 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 Hicks’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.
Merlini and the Lie Detector
A CIRCLE OF ONLOOKERS CROWDED THREE DEEP AROUND TWO MEN sitting at a table in the bar of the Overseas Press Club. One was a Police Inspector, the other a lean and nimble-fingered gentleman with a sardonic smile and a lively twinkle in his eye. The latter held a deck of playing cards in his right hand, and said, “This next demonstration shows how the dark powers of the occult might be used by up-to-date police departments. Inspector, please note and remember any one of these cards.” The deck he held sprang suddenly to life as the cards arched through two feet of space, one following the other like well-trained seals into his left hand. “Did you choose one?”
Inspector Gavigan nodded, then reached for the deck. “I’ll shuffle them,” he said.
The Great Merlini smiled and gave him the deck. “A policeman’s lot is not a trusting one.” He lifted his empty highball glass. “This,” he added, “once contained spirits. One—an invisible genie—may still remain. Let us see.” His right hand reached into the air and a silver dollar appeared from nothing at his fingertips. He dropped it into the glass and then placed a saucer over its top. “Now give me ten or a dozen cards, with the one you chose among them. And watch the coin in the glass!”
Merlini took the cards and flipped the first one face up on the table. “Answer no to each question. Is this your card?”
Gavigan shook his head. “No.”
Merlini dealt another and got another denial. On the sixth card, just as the Inspector said “No,” the imprisoned coin, propelled by some invisible force, bounced into the air, turned over, and jingled in the glass.
“The genie says you lied just now,” Merlini announced. “Is he right?”
Gavigan nodded, reaching for the saucer. Merlini lifted the glass, poured out the coin, flipped it into the air, caught it, and gave both the coin and glass to the Inspector. “No police department should be without them.”
Through the ripple of applause a woman’s voice asked eagerly, “Do you read palms too?”
Merlini shook his head. “No, but I sometimes see things in a crystal ball—or even in a glass of water.”
“Will this do?” a reporter asked, placing his daiquiri on the table.
“That’s harder,” Merlini said. “The vision is often obscured by pink elephants. But I’ll try.” He leaned forward and stared intently into the liquid, and suddenly his face became solemn.
“I’m not going to play the straight man for this one,” Gavigan said. “Excuse me.” He rose and started for the bar. But he didn’t get far.
Merlini’s voice stopped him. “I see the motionless body of a man lying on the floor. Near his head is a silvery, shining statuette of a nude male figure holding a sword—an Academy Award Oscar. Its base is splotched with a dark wet stain…”
Gavigan spoke in spite of himself. “I’ll call your bluff on that one,” he said. “I’ve got a ten spot that says you can’t tell where this dead man is.”
The Great Merlini lifted the glass, swirled the liquid, and continued. “I see a street sign … Lexington and 44th Street. And now … an apartment building near the corner. On its marquee the numerals … five … three … five.”
One of the reporters said, “What are we waiting for?” and the circle of onlookers melted.
Gavigan scowled after the departing newspapermen. “Okay,” he said slowly. “So there is a body. You wouldn’t let a practical joke backfire the way this one could if those reporters don’t find one.” His last words came back over his shoulder as he too made for the door.
Merlini drank the daiquiri, stood up, and followed. In the lobby outside he found Gavigan eyeing three wire-service teletype machines that clacked noisily and spewed forth long paper strips. “Crystal gazing, my eye!” Gavigan growled. “You got that flash here when you made a trip to the men’s room a few minutes back.”
“I plead guilty, Inspector,” Merlini grinned. “These mechanical Delphic Oracles did help. But I saw something more. You’re going to be paged any minute. It’s an important murder. The victim is the movie and TV producer, Carl Todd.”
The door to the street opened and Gavigan’s driver entered right on cue. “Radio call for you, Inspector. Headquarters—”
“—reports a homicide at 535 East 44th,” Gavigan said. “Let’s go.” The driver goggled.
“And who,” Merlini asked as they went through the door, “is playing practical jokes now?”
From the walls of the den beyond the living room the photographs of many familiar movie faces looked down on Carl Todd’s body. Behind a desk in one corner a filing cabinet, drawers half open, was surrounded by a snowfall of papers.
“We got two candidates for the Murder One rap,” Lieutenant Malloy reported. “Todd’s producing a TV spectacular, and when we get here we find his script writer and his female lead with the body. Each one accuses the other. I was just going to hear their stories together and see what kind of sparks we get.”
Helen Lowe sat on the divan in slacks and a f
ur jacket. Opposite her, Don Sutton, in a gabardine raincoat, dabbed a pink-stained handkerchief across the four long scratches on his cheek.
“Let’s have your story again, Miss Lowe,” Malloy said. “We want to hear what Mr. Sutton thinks of it.”
The girl was blonde and blue-eyed. Her soft clear voice held an undertone of desperation. “I was to meet Carl at six and after dinner here we were to drive my car up to Connecticut for the weekend. I was late. When I tried to leave the Broadway rehearsal hall at 50th Street, rain was coming down in sheets. The car was two blocks over and I’d been soaked to the skin before I’d gone twenty feet. I waited there until it stopped just after six, and got here ten or twelve minutes later. I let myself in—”
“You have a key?” Gavigan asked.
“Yes. Carl and I—” she stopped, her eyes closed “—were to be married next month.” Then, with an effort, she went on. “I saw his body beyond the door. I ran toward him. Just inside the den there was a man waiting, and he grabbed me. It was Don—”
Sutton stood up. He crew-cut bristled and his dark eyes behind the horn-rimmed glasses flashed. “Please remember,” he said in a tight voice, “that Miss Lowe is an actress—and a damned good one. She’s lying in her teeth and she’s doing it beautifully.”
Helen moved gracefully and fast, crossing to face Sutton. “I had no reason to kill Carl! I loved him—”
Don shook his head. “That could be a reason, couldn’t it? Had he found another girl? Did he tell you he was through? Or did you discover he’d been cheating—”
The slap she delivered to the side of his face rocked him. He grabbed her arms and shook her, shouting, “You can’t get away with it, Helen! Tell them you killed him! Tell them—”
Malloy broke it up and Gavigan commanded, “That will be all of that! Sit down, both of you!” He faced Miss Lowe. “Sutton grabbed you as you came through the door. Then what?”
The Great Merlini Page 8