The Great Merlini

by Clayton Rawson

  Dr. Price spoke suddenly, his voice not at all steady. “Anne, how long has that been there?”

  He was pointing at the wall near the workshop door. About two feet from the floor several dark marks defaced the green-painted plaster—cursive, meaningless scrawls that a child might have made.

  Anne’s eyes were round—and frightened. “It wasn’t there when I left the room.”

  I knew what it was; I had seen Price’s photographs. He had wanted to find more of the alien script, but now he didn’t seem happy about his unexpected success.

  I crossed to the wall, stooped, and ran a finger across the marks. They had been burned into the plaster.

  Kane pulled himself from his chair and faced Merlini. “Who came out of this room? Who did you—”

  It was Anne who answered. “Nobody, Charles. No one came out—no one at all.”

  Kane stared at her. “But someone must have—”

  “Only nobody did,” Merlini said. “And it’s high time we had some brass around here. Ross, there’s a phone on the desk. See if you can get Gavigan before the squad car boys arrive.”

  Outside the door buzzer sounded.

  “There they are now,” I said.

  “Start dialing!” Merlini ordered and moved swiftly to the doorway in which Anne and Dr. Price still stood. “Anne, are the living room and study phones separate, or is one an extension?”

  “Extension.”

  “Good. You answer the door. And tell the cops to listen in on the call we make.” Quickly, before either could object, he slammed the door in their faces and locked us in.

  Putting the three-way phone conversation that followed on paper is a job I’m going to dust off lightly. It was much too scrambled. Some of it occurred simultaneously and parts of it made no sense because two of the parties didn’t know what the other was talking about.

  I got through to Gavigan just as a heavy fist began pounding on the study door. Then, when the Inspector said, “Hello!” a cop at the living room phone bellowed, “Open that door! And be quick about it!” Gavigan said, “What door?” and the cop told him not to be funny.

  At the same time I was trying to tell him, “Gavigan, it’s Ross Harte.” He said, “Who?” and the cop swore, and Merlini calmly advised me to tell Gavigan to tell the cop to shut up. This didn’t work very well because the cop wasn’t taking orders from just anyone on the phone who claimed to be an Inspector, and Gavigan wasn’t very helpful because he had somehow got the idea that our end of the conversation was coming from a tavern.

  “Merlini,” I said, “you take it before Gavigan hangs up. And sound sober.”

  He had somewhat better luck, but it was involved. He got the cop to give his precinct number and asked Gavigan for the name of the Captain of that precinct. When Gavigan knew it, the cop became suddenly more cautious and less noisy.

  Rapidly Merlini said, “Call his captain, Gavigan, and have him call this number and tell the cop who answers to relax until you get here.”

  Gavigan still didn’t like it. “What number? Where am I going? Why—”

  Merlini gave him the telephone number and the address, then added, “Ross and I are locked in a murder room with the victim. And I don’t want any garden variety of cop traipsing around all over some of the damnedest clues you ever saw until you’ve seen them. Stop asking questions and get going!” And he hung up fast.

  It worked. The phone rang a few moments later. I eavesdropped and heard the Captain telling our impetuous friend outside to stand pat. Remembering the language he’d just used to an Inspector I understood why his “Yessir!” sounded a bit hollow.

  “Gavigan,” I told Merlini, “seemed to think I was tight. When he gets here and discovers that we are looking for a refugee from a flying saucer…”

  Merlini wasn’t listening. He was on his knees on the floor examining Kane’s clothes.

  When Gavigan arrived with Lieutenant Doran of Homicide West and Doc Peabody from the M.E.’s office, he was not in a good mood. He barked at Merlini, “You’ve certainly got a highhanded way of taking over a homicide investigation. Start talking.”

  Merlini didn’t look happy either. “I don’t know whether to break it gently or tell you all at once.”

  Gavigan stood in front of the desk scowling down at North’s body. “I don’t care how I get it, but I want it fast!”

  That’s how he got it. “The victim,” Merlini said, “seems to have been killed by some unknown means by something about two feet high that left by walking through the wall.”

  This was too much for anyone to digest all at once. Gavigan didn’t try. “Unknown means?” he asked. “That girl outside says you heard a shot.”

  “We did. But I don’t see any blood nor any bullet wound. I hope Doc Peabody will be able to tell us what killed him.”

  Peabody moved toward the body. “You don’t sound very confident.”

  “I’m not,” Merlini told him. “That’s one thing I’m fresh out of—confidence.”

  Peabody went to work and Merlini gave the Inspector and Doran the whole story from the beginning. They listened without interrupting. Even after Merlini had finished neither of them spoke.

  Gavigan shook his head as if to rid it of a bad dream. Then he asked, “This walking through the wall stuff. Why that?”

  “Several reasons,” Merlini said. “One: Miss O’Hara reports that some flying saucer pilots can do that. Two: while we waited for you I looked in all the places a two-foot-high something might hide and didn’t find a single possibility. Three: take a look at the very curious condition of Kane’s clothes.”

  Doran knelt by the coat. “What’s so curious?”

  “Turn it over.”

  Doran did. Curious was the word, all right. Kane’s shirt was inside the coat, neatly buttoned, the Countess Mara tie still in place, still tied in a neat Windsor knot.

  “And his undershirt is inside the shirt,” Merlini said. “His shorts are inside the trousers, his socks inside the shoes—everything still buttoned up, tied, and zipped. Kane says his clothes were removed while he was unconscious. They would appear to have passed through his body in the process.”

  Gavigan didn’t explode as I expected, but it was a near thing “Why,” he growled, “do you always have to pick the fanciest interpretation?” He turned and faced Kane. “It’s about time you said something. Start with the clothes. After you took them off, you buttoned everything up again. Why? Are you setting up an insanity defense?”

  Kane, staring at the clothing, didn’t seem to hear. Then he looked up and shook his head slowly. “I’m sorry. I can’t add a thing to what Merlini has told you. I came in here with North. I stood there in front of the filing cabinets. I—I heard a movement behind me. Something hit me a crack on the head. Hard. When I came out of it, North was dead. I was naked. And that’s it. That’s all I know. I can’t add one solitary—”

  Behind us Doc Peabody said suddenly, “if you’d like to see what killed this man…”

  We turned to the desk. Peabody poked with a slender pair of tweezers at a small metallic object that lay on a sheet of letter paper.

  “It was in his head,” Peabody said. “And the point of entry wasn’t easy to find because it went in through his right ear.”

  Gavigan bent over the object. “That,” he said, “takes care of the little man from Mars. It’s a common, ordinary .32 caliber slug.”

  “It’s a relief,” Merlini said, “just to hear words like common and ordinary. But I wonder why we haven’t yet seen anything of a gun—a common, ordinary .32, for example.”

  “We’ll find it,” Doran said flatly. “And then Mr. Kane goes downtown and gets booked.”

  Gavigan told Peabody, “See that Ballistics gets the slug, and I want a quick report. Doran, get your boys in and take this place apart.” He turned to Kane. “And you, take off that bathrobe.”

  Kane blinked. “But…”

  “Take it off! I want you out of here and I’m going to be damn
ed sure you don’t take a gun out with you.”

  Kane stood up. “If it’ll convince you that I don’t have and never did have a gun I’ll walk all the way down to headquarters in my skin.” He slipped the robe off and handed it to Gavigan. The Inspector turned the pockets inside out and found nothing. Then he held the robe up and let it fall to the floor. If it had contained a gun we would have heard it. We didn’t.

  Kane put the robe on again and Gavigan walked with him to the door where he told a detective to find Kane some clothes and to keep an eye on him. “He’s being held as a material witness.”

  Gavigan closed the door and came back. “The psychiatrists are going to have a field day with him. If he really thinks the New York Police Department is going to start tracking down a little green man from Mars…”

  “But you aren’t booking him?” Merlini asked.

  “I will as soon as I have the gun. It didn’t go out with him, and you say no one else left this room since you heard the shot. So it’s here and we’ll find it.”

  “I wish you luck,” Merlini said gloomily. “But even if you do find it, don’t book him too fast. You still may not be able to make it stick. When I searched the room I found something I haven’t yet mentioned.” He turned to face the filing cabinets. “Cleaning women sometimes neglect to dust surfaces that are above eye level…”

  Gavigan yanked Miss O’Hara’s chair away from her desk, stood on it, and looked down at the top of the cabinets.

  He froze.

  He was still speechless when I looked a moment later. The steel surface was covered with a thin, gray film of dust across which something had walked leaving three dark imprints.

  They were the prints of naked feet.

  The feet had only three toes.

  And each print was not more than four inches in length.

  The discussion that followed could have been engraved easily on the head of a pin. Gavigan obviously didn’t want to think about the implications of those prints, and he avoided thinking by going into action. Assisted by Doran and two other detectives, he began a grimly determined and painstaking search for the gun. Merlini settled down in the armchair and appeared to fall asleep. I made a trip to the bar and poured myself a good stiff helping of Scotch. I am aware that this is not the recommended antidote for little men who leave three-toed footprints, but I needed it.

  I have seen police searches before, but this one easily took the prize for thoroughness. Gavigan’s final chore was to examine every one of some five hundred books on the shelves of one wall, looking for a hollowed-out recess that might contain a gun. He found no recess, and no gun.

  Then he phoned Ballistics. I was quite prepared to hear them report that the slug which killed North was made of some unknown composition and probably fired from a .425 Intergalactic Special.

  Gavigan listened a moment, then slammed the phone receiver down on the cradle. “If s a .32. Diameter of lands, grooves, and pitch of rifling indicate a Smith & Wesson. And they want to know when they can have the gun for comparison tests.”

  He looked at Merlini who was still in a state of suspended animation.

  “Did you hear me?” Gavigan roared.

  Merlini opened one eye. “I thought for a minute it was an air raid siren. Yes, I heard you.”

  “That gun,” Gavigan said, still rumbling like a volcano on the edge of blowing its top, “is not here. You’re in charge of the Miracle Department. What happened to it? I want an answer—fast!”

  “So do I,” Merlini said, “But we’ve got problems. For one thing, the usual police routine is quite inadequate. The evidence says the gun was taken from the scene of the crime by the murderer. But you can’t set up road blocks to stop a flying saucer, license number unknown, which is capable of speeds around 18,000 miles per hour. And if you broadcast a pickup order for a barefoot midget with three toes on each foot, sex, shape, and color unknown, people will think the teletype machines need repairing.”

  Gavigan glowered. “If you think any of this is funny…”

  Merlini shook his head. “It’s anything but that. I was merely pointing out that the gun is not our only problem.”

  “You give me an answer on the gun, then we’ll worry about other problems. Do you have any idea on the subject, or are you completely up a tree?”

  “One small idea,” Merlini said, “but it’s going to have to grow a lot.”

  “Let’s hear it.”

  “If the vanishing gun is some extra-terrestrial hocus-pocus we’ll never find it, but if it’s the common garden-variety of trickery we at least have a starting point. An audience, watching magic, gets impossible answers because the magician so arranges things that the spectators ask themselves the wrong questions. That may be what we’re doing. If we can figure out the right questions…”

  As a progress report, this was not to the Inspector’s liking. He muttered something that didn’t sound printable, then stopped short as the door from the living room opened and Doran came in with Captain Healy of the Pickpocket and Confidence Squad.

  “I think, “ Healy said, “I might have a lead for you, Inspector.”

  “This case,” Gavigan grunted, “doesn’t have leads. But let’s hear it.”

  “Who is the dapper old boy outside with the glasses?”

  “Dr. Price? He’s an archeologist who believes that flying saucers landed in Central America six hundred years ago. Why?”

  Healy blinked. “He believes what?”

  “I refuse,” Gavigan said flatly, “to say it again.”

  “Well, whatever he says, don’t buy any of it. One of my boys spotted him on the street a few days ago and we’ve been keeping an eye on him, wondering if he might be up to something his parole officer wouldn’t like. The reports says he’s visited this apartment several times, so when I heard you’ve got a homicide here—”

  Gavigan broke in. “Who is he?”

  “A con man,” Healy replied. “One of the best. Most con men work the same old games, but not this character. Some of the swindles he has dreamed up—”

  “Who,” Gavigan asked again, “is he?”

  “The Harvard Kid. He got that moniker because when he’s not working he always has his nose in a book. Egghead-type stuff, too. In one oil well swindle he passed himself off on some pretty sharp businessmen as an expert geologist. And he once sold a trunkful of phony paintings for a quarter of a million dollars by posing as a Belgian art expert. Another time—”

  “That,” Merlini broke in, “explains why he tried to backtrack out of here the moment he discovered there had been a shooting. He’s naturally cop shy.”

  “And his pitch this time,” Gavigan said, “was to get North to put up the dough for an archeological expedition. Then, instead of leaving for the jungles of Yucatan, The Kid would invest it in horses at Miami or the dice tables at Las Vegas. Let’s hear what he says about that.” Gavigan marched out into the living room followed by Doran and Healy.

  “And the galactic script burned into the wall,” Merlini said in a disappointed tone, “doesn’t get translated after all. It’s a great loss to science.”

  “We can also,” I put in, “now forget all about flying saucers and invisible men.”

  “Can we?” Merlini asked. “I wonder. I have an uncomfortable feeling that our unfriendly refugee from the stars may pay us another visit.”

  But he didn’t look uncomfortable; he was smiling faintly. So I didn’t take him seriously. I said, “Oh, yeah,” and went out to the bar for a refill. That was my mistake.

  The living room, by now, was crawling with city officials. An Assistant D.A. and a police stenographer had set up shop in a bedroom and were getting a statement from Anne O’Hara. In the kitchen Gavigan and Healy were having a heart-to-heart talk with Dr. Orville Price. Doran took a photographer and a fingerprint man into the study and put them to work. Later, two men from the Morgue came for North’s body.

  As they were leaving, I heard Merlini ask, “Lieutenant, I hope tha
t search you made for the gun included the body?”

  “It did,” Doran answered. “If you think the gun is going out with him, the answer is no.”

  Ten minutes later it happened. From beyond the closed study door came the unmistakable sound of a shot.

  Time, for a brief moment, stood still. Then a detective near the door sprang at it and pushed it open. I got there a second later and stared over his shoulder.

  I saw Doran turn the knob of the workshop door and fail to open it. Then he banged on the door with his fist.

  “Merlini!” he called. “Open up!” There was no answer.

  A heavy hand clamped on my shoulder and shoved me to one side. Gavigan went past in a hurry.

  Then, suddenly Doran’s gun was in his hand, aimed at the slowly opening workshop door.

  Merlini’s voice said, “Don’t shoot, Lieutenant. If s me.”

  He came out and faced Gavigan. “Inspector,” he said gravely, “I’d like to have you meet our elusive little man from Mars.”

  Gavigan, who was still moving toward him, stopped. Then, seeing the look on Doran’s face as the latter stared at something inside the room, he rushed forward.

  “He’s not easy to see,” Merlini added, “because he’s invisible.

  But there, on the floor, in that sprinkling of sawdust below the vise…”

  I couldn’t see it from where I stood, but I did later.

  It was another nice, neat, tiny, and incredible three-toed footprint.

  “And,” Merlini went on, “you can search this room until Doomsday—you won’t find a gun.”

  “Good,” Gavigan said. “So you’ve figured out how to make a gun vanish into thin air. Doran, give him yours. This I want to see.”

  “Would you like,” Merlini asked, “to get a confession at the same time?”

  “Do I need one? If you know what happened to that gun—”

  “I know what happened, but the evidence we need isn’t going to be easy to find. There’s a chance that when our man sees his very cleverly conceived murder coming apart at the seams, he may crack. But we should hit him hard while he’s still wondering what that shot he just heard means.”