The Great Merlini
Page 17
Larry grunted. “Me?”
“You put sugar in your coffee. So did Carl. Anna used none. You’re the only one who could have planted poisoned sugar.”
“I used tartar emetic because it looks like sugar and you don’t need a prescription to buy it.”
“That has antimony in it,” Gavigan said, “and a bitter metallic taste. You knew Carl used lots of sugar?”
“Yes. He always put three teaspoonfuls in his coffee. And the brandy helped too. Antimony is as poisonous as arsenic if you get enough of it, but I only added a small pinch to the sugar. I didn’t want to kill him—only to scare some of the self-satisfied, greedy conceit out of him. That film may make him a million dollars and he won’t divvy up any of it with anybody else. Next time I might use something more lethal.”
“I doubt it,” Merlini said. “I don’t think you’re the type. You did one thing many poisoners don’t bother to do: you hung around long enough to see that the right person got the doctored sugar. And the method you used was intelligent too. It’s simple, almost undetectable, and the victim himself destroys the evidence that the packet had been tampered with by tearing it open.
“I was just lucky getting to it before it reached the incinerator. The waitress had thrown the sugar papers into a garbage can and I managed to get there before the can had been emptied. I found the paper”—Merlini took it from his pocket—”which will be Exhibit A if Carl doesn’t recover. Look closely and you can see the slit that was very carefully closed with rubber cement.”
“He’ll recover,” Larry said. “I didn’t use much.”
“The sugar packet idea,” Merlini added, “is also neat because they are filled and sealed by machine and only a very suspicious person would suspect that one of them contained something other than sugar.”
“Sealed by machine,” I said. “In a way, it’s like a locked-room problem. Only this time instead of a murderer having to get out of a sealed ‘room,’ he had to put something into it.”
“And if you ever write it up,” Gavigan added, “you can call it The World’s Smallest Locked Room.”
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1979 by Mrs. Clayton Rawson
Introduction copyright © 1979 by Eleanor Sullivan
Individual Story Copyrights: “The Clue of the Broken Legs,” copyright 1946, by The American Mercury, Inc., renewed; “The Clue of the Missing Motive,” copyright 1947 by The American Mercury, Inc., renewed; “The Clue of the Tattooed Man,” copyright 1946 by The American Mercury, Inc., renewed; “From Another World,” copyright 1948 by Mrs. Clayton Rawson, renewed; “Merlini and the Lie Detector,” copyright 1955 by Mercury Publications, Inc.; “Merlini and the Photographic Clues,” © 1969 by Clayton Rawson; “Merlini and the Sound Effects Murder,” © 1955 by Mercury Publications, Inc.; “Merlini and the Vanished Diamonds,” copyright 1955 by Mercury Publications, Inc.; “Miracles – All in a Day’s Work,” © 1958 by Davis Publications, Inc.; “Nothing is Impossible,” copyright © 1958 by Davis Publications, Inc.; “Off the Face of the Earth,” copyright 1949 by the American Mercury, Inc., renewed; “The World’s Smallest Locked Room,” © by Clayton Rawson.
With grateful acknowledgment to Hugh Rawson for providing original copies of the stories.
978-1-4532-5682-4
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