No Coffin for the Corpse Page 14

  “And so what?” Flint wanted to know. “Maybe you’re a two-gun man. I’ve got another version of what happened in that study. And no ghosts. You tell me what’s wrong with it. Nobody dumped you out the window. There wasn’t anybody there to do it. You were still there when Mrs. Wolff came in. And you were there when her husband arrived. Wolff had told you to stay out of the house more than once. Now, in the middle of the night, he finds you back again, in a room he’d ordered everyone to stay out of. And with his wife. That would make anybody boil over. And Dudley Wolff—well, if I tried real hard, maybe I could imagine how he’d act. We gave him a summons for double parking once and it’s a wonder the station is still standing.

  “He socked you. That accounts for the bump on your head. And then you saw some red yourself and let him have it. You had plenty of reason for wanting him out of the way. You head for the door, intending to take it on the lam through the bedroom across the hall and down the trellis. But you didn’t make it. Someone in the hall outside began pounding on the study door. You were trapped. You knew that if you were found in that room you were sunk.”

  I looked at Merlini. “Is he making this up as he goes along, or did he read it in Astounding Detective Tales?”

  But Flint wasn’t finished. “You also realized that if you could pull a little high-class vanishing act of your own, it would leave Mrs. Wolff in a lovely jam. I think you figured that diving out a second-story window on a cold February night into ice-cold water was so much like a Grade B movie serial no one would believe it. You tossed out the andiron and light cord to make the story you’ve just told look good, and then did your high dive.” He paused briefly. “But you made one bad mistake. Maybe you know now what it was?”

  I shook my head. “No. I wouldn’t even try to guess. What?”

  “You forgot to leave the gun you shot Wolff with in Mrs. Wolff’s hand. As soon as it’s low tide and I fish it up off the bottom—”

  “Wow!” I cried, sitting up. “Came the dawn! So that’s it! That’s why you detour all the way around Robin Hood’s barn and take a running jump at me! That’s why Anne gets a clean bill of health. There wasn’t any gun in the room!”

  “Right,” Flint nodded. “No gun—and no ghost!”

  I turned to Merlini. “Twenty-five caliber. Sounds like the mysteriously missing vest-pocket gun.”

  “Yes,” he said. “It does.”

  “But a gun as small as that one—”

  Flint shook his head. “What do you think I’ve been doing all this time? We took that room apart. If there was a rod there ten times as small we’d have found it.”

  Merlini underscored that. “They did a very thorough job, Ross. I watched it. They found a few things that may or may not be clues. One of the two study keys was on a ring in Wolff’s pocket, the other was lying on the floor behind the desk. The cord of the desk phone appears to have been cut at some time or other and later repaired in a makeshift way. There were some small broken pieces of glass on the floor near the door which, fitted together, form a glass disc an inch and a half in diameter. There were four thumbtack holes on the top of the bookcases just to the left of the door. And, on the floor near Wolff, there were three un-fired .25 caliber cartridges and two empty shells that will probably match the bullets in the body. But there was no sign of any gun.”

  “Mrs. Wolff? They searched her just as thoroughly?”

  Merlini grinned and nodded. “He did. He could hardly wait to put the handcuffs on her. All he needed was the gun. When he didn’t find it, he naturally started wondering about you.”

  “But,” I insisted again, “such a small gun—”

  The lieutenant glared at me. “I had two men with her every damn minute until I could get a woman in to frisk her. We don’t have any lady cops. I got a female doctor. She put Mrs. Wolff to bed, and I had a look at the nightdress and robe she’d been wearing. She couldn’t have smuggled a pin out of that study. And nobody else could have copped it because nobody except my men ever got a foot inside that door. The gun left that room the same way you did—out the window. And, if you try to tell me now that Mrs. Wolff must have tossed it out, you’ll have to explain why you just said that the window was closed and that no one came near it from the time you heard the shots until I put my head out. That was a mistake too, wasn’t it?”

  I groaned. “The guy who cracked that honesty is the best policy was a dope. My story happens to be the truth even if I am stuck with it. I still insist that nothing or nobody came out that window. If the gun’s not in the room now, then it must have left the same way my murderous friend with the beard did—by the door.”

  The looks on both Merlini’s and Flint’s faces said very plainly that I’d gone and put my foot in it again.

  “Okay, Merlini,” Flint said. “You tell him.”

  Merlini took a cigarette from a package and scowled at it. I knew, since he didn’t take the trouble to produce it from thin air already lighted, that he was worried. Then he did as Flint suggested. He told me. It was plenty.

  “I was the one who pounded on that study door before the reports of those two shots died away.”

  He let that soak in while he struck a match and lighted his cigarette. “When I didn’t get any answer, I tried to smash the door down. All that got me was a sore shoulder, so I went to work on the lock again. And I was right there, smack in front of that door, every second until the lieutenant here arrived just as I got it open again. If any gun or, for that matter, your bearded assailant, came out that door they were a lot more than semitransparent. They must have been invisible. We’re up against the walking-through-a-brick-wall stunt again—with variations. Variations that I don’t like.”

  “Invisible men!” Flint groaned. “Walking through brick walls! Do you have to begin that again?”

  “You’re something of a magician yourself, Lieutenant,” I said. “Just how did you happen to wander in at just the proper moment right on cue?”

  “After Wolff had bounced you and Merlini, your girl friend got to thinking it over and decided to deal a hand of her own. She phoned the station and reported that a couple of guns had been stolen.”

  I turned to Merlini. “And who came up those back stairs just before I ducked into the study?”

  “Phillips. He said he couldn’t sleep and decided to take a look around. He came along the hall, turned his light on the front stairs for a moment, and then went back. I had ducked into the library but, as soon as the coast was clear, I came up the stairs again. I assumed you had holed up as I’d suggested, in the bedroom. I had just reached the top of the stairs when the guest-room door opened. I ducked again. Anne Wolff came out, closed the door behind her, and started down the hall in the dark. I heard a door open and close softly. And I hope I’ll never have to live through those next few minutes again. I thought, of course, that she’d gone back to her own room and that she’d find you there, unable to escape because I had the flashlight. I sat tight, waiting for the end of the world and without the vaguest notion of how we could talk our way out of a spot like that. But nothing happened at all. The dark silence of a grave would have been bright and cheerful by comparison. Then, suddenly, I doped it out. You must have gone into the study instead.

  “And then, just as I began to breathe easier, Wolff’s door opened. He left it ajar a bit and, in the light from his room, what do I see him do but make tracks for the study! There’s nothing to that yarn about a person’s hair turning white in moments of intense emotional stress. If there were, mine would be. Wolff unlocked the door and went in. The room inside was dark. He clicked the light switch. And, just as the door slammed shut, I heard him cry, ‘Anne!’ in a completely thunderstruck tone of voice. I felt the same way.

  “I shook my head and did a mental somersault back to theory number one again. Since Mrs. Wolff had gone into the study, you must be in the bedroom. I decided that perhaps we had better join forces and get set to evacuate. I started down the hall. I was just easing past the study door �
��on tiptoes stealing’ when those shots banged out. I think there’s a gash in the ceiling where my head hit it when I jumped.”

  Merlini reached for a refill of Scotch. “And the finishing blow came when I discovered that you weren’t in either the study or the bedroom! My nervous system will never be the same again!”

  My own was completely numb. “The ghost,” I said weakly, “improves with practice. He didn’t come out the window, and he didn’t come out the door—at least not visibly. And for good measure, he spirits the gun away too! No trap doors this time either, I suppose?”

  “No. The age of trap doors ‘has went.’ Even in the theater. Stages are concrete these days. Lieutenant Flint here, consequently, has to choose between a murderer who goes out like a light and one who can swim. You appreciate his dilemma, don’t you?”

  “I can’t very well overlook it. But have you noticed mine? And do you remember who got me into it? And when are you going to do something about it?”

  Merlini looked at Flint. “What about Mrs. Wolff? When do we interview her?”

  “Now.” Flint, who had been pacing irritably back and forth, turned and strode toward the door. Halfway there he stopped. Running footsteps pounded along the hall outside. Someone banged on our door.

  Flint jumped for it, calling, “Come in.”

  The door opened and disclosed Sergeant Lovejoy, breathing hard. “Got something,” he reported. “Joe saw a guy trying to get into the boathouse just now. Then he turned tail and headed for the woods, but Joe tackled him. The boys are bringing him up now.”

  There were voices and the tramp of feet on the stairs.

  “Well, Lieutenant,” I said, “perhaps now you’ll believe in ghosts!”

  Chapter Twelve:

  Spectral Fingerprints

  WHEN JOE’S CAPTIVE came into the room, convoyed fore and aft by cops, my hope that the elusive phantom had been captured sagged limply and collapsed with the traditional dull thud. The man couldn’t very well have looked any less like the subject of Galt’s spirit photo. His eyes were not black, but bright blue, and his more than generous nose, glowing with the ruby-redness of a port light, was certainly not ascetic—not by a jugful. He was, furthermore, short, tanned, and clean shaven. A desert isle of baldness atop his head was surrounded by a curling white surf of hair. He was distinctly ill at ease, and he eyed us all with deep suspicion.

  Flint frowned uncertainly. “I’ve seen you around before.”

  “Lieutenant,” the man protested. “I hae na done anything. Why—”

  It was obvious as soon as he spoke who he was. The touch of Scottish accent in his voice told us that. “Douglass!” Flint exclaimed. “The missing boatkeeper.”

  The prisoner looked around worriedly. He seemed genuinely puzzled. “What’s happened? What are you doin’ here? Why—”

  He stopped as Flint took a step toward him. “What are you doing here?”

  “I came back to get some clothes and things from ma room o’er the boathouse, and these men—”

  “Where the hell have you been for the last four days? Did you know we were just about to drag the Sound for your body?”

  Scotty stared at him for a moment, then looked at the floor. “Í,” he said slowly, “I was away.”

  Flint scowled. “We noticed that. Go on, talk. Where and why?”

  The boatkeeper’s broad fingers twisted nervously at his hat, turning it around and around. “I—well, I was lookin’ for another job. I found one and I hae to get back.”

  “Why’d you leave without notice? And without the pay you had coming?”

  Scotty’s answer was slow in coming. He still looked at the floor. “I decided I didna want to work here any more.”

  Flint waited for him to continue, but Scotty left it at that. “I see.” Flint’s voice was harsh. “How long have you been working for Wolff?”

  “Nine years.”

  “And all at once you don’t want to work here any more. Just like that?”

  Douglass nodded. His eyes lifted once, darted a furtive look at the rest of us, and dropped again.

  Flint regarded him thoughtfully for a second, and then let him have it. “Okay. Suppose I guess. It wouldn’t be because you saw a ghost, would it?”

  The reaction he got was quite satisfactory. The white tufts of cotton that were Scotty’s eyebrows ascended like twin stratosphere balloons. He stared as though Flint himself were a ghost. But the cat seemed to have got away with his tongue entirely.

  The lieutenant began to grow impatient. “You’re going to talk, Douglass. Plenty. You might as well start now and get it over. When—”

  Scotty looked around at the rest of us once more. Then he said, “Where’s Mr. Wolff? I want tae see him.”

  “Sure, you can see him,” Flint said. “But it won’t help you any. He’s dead.”

  It took Scotty a minute or so to absorb this. Flint didn’t help him any by adding, “He was murdered. Now stop stalling and talk. When did you see this—this ghost?”

  Scotty’s mind was still trying to grasp the meaning in Flint’s words. His response was the automatic one of a sleepwalker. “Wednesday,” he said mechanically. “Wednesday night.”

  From there on he bogged down after every few words. Flint, pumping the story out of him piece by piece, found, eventually, that the man had not only seen a ghost; it had chased him!

  “I didna argue aboot it,” Scotty said. “I went awa’ at once.”

  This was an understatement. More questioning disclosed that his departure had been so complete that he hadn’t stopped to look back once this side of Rye.

  “Ma father,” he explained with a sudden rush of words and a thickening of his burr, “was once a caretaker of a haunted castle near Inverness. They found him floatin’ in the moat ae mornin’ wi’ his neck broke.”

  Flint didn’t fancy the introduction of any additional spooks. “Yeah,” he growled skeptically, “I’ll bet the spirits that chased him came out of a bottle, too.”

  “Na!” the Scotsman protested. “Tha’s just the trouble. I hae na hae a drap since Sonday. When a mon is cold sober and sees a dead mon comin’ after him—”

  “Dead man?” Flint cut in. “Why are you so sure he was dead? You’d seen him before then? You knew him?”

  Scotty’s protest was frantic. “Na. Na! I never saw him before at a’. And I dinna want to see him again. I want to get awa’ from here.” He half turned as if to leave, but one of his guards clamped a hand on his arm.

  Flint stepped forward. His face was inches from Scotty’s. “If you didn’t know who he was, if you never saw him before, what made you so sure he was dead? You must have had some reason for thinking—”

  Scotty may have been scared, but he still had his wits about him. He saw an out there and took it quickly. “A’richt, then he wasna dead. I made a mistake.”

  Flint glared at him for a moment. “You’re making another now.” He glanced at his watch. “How long have you been snooping around outside this place?”

  “I got here just now.” Scotty jerked a thumb at the detective on his left. “I went straight tae the boathouse and then this mon—”

  “Five o’clock in the morning,” Flint cut in. “That’s a damned funny time of day for a man that’s scared of something he’s not even sure is a ghost.”

  “Ma new job starts at nine. I ha tae get back to Stamford. If I don’t—”

  Flint turned disgustedly to Lovejoy. “Get him out of here and make him talk. I don’t care how, but do it. Find out where he’s been every minute of the time he’s been gone and start checking back. And send Haggard up here.

  Lovejoy, with Scotty and his escorts, left. When the door had closed behind them, Merlini said, “The plot thickens. His yarn sounds thin. One gets you ten that there is more in his ghost story than meets the eye.”

  Flint’s expression was on the sour side. “Or,” he said glumly, “a lot less.”

  Merlini began counting on his fingers. “Wolff, Mrs
. Wolff, Kathryn, Dunning, Phillips, Ross, and myself—” Merlini’s left thumb unexpectedly came off in his right hand. He regarded it with surprise but no alarm, then calmly replaced it, waggled it experimentally once or twice, and went on, “—and myself have all, at one time or another, seen the apparition in the presence of corroborating witnesses. Scotty, though uncorroborated, says he saw it. Leonard has a bump on his head to show that he felt it. Galt has a portrait study. You surely aren’t going to deny there’s no fire behind a dense and billowing cloud of smoke like that, are you?”

  “No,” Flint said grudgingly, “maybe not. But it doesn’t have to be hell-fire. That photo’s a fake. Any kid with a box camera and a back number of the Photographer’s Home Companion could cook it up. The broken chinaware, the spilled ink, the pictures falling off the walls, the mess in the library, the torn book illustration and the dagger—they don’t mean a thing. Nobody saw ’em happen. Anybody could have done ’em. The great vanishing act in Mrs. Wolff’s bedroom is just a matter of a flashlight on the burglar alarm and taking it on the lam down the trellis. You’ve proved that yourself.”

  “And Leonard?” Merlini asked, lifting one eyebrow. “Then he’s lying when he says that no one, not even a ghost, left by that window?”

  “Either that or he’s it himself.”

  A playing card appeared mysteriously in Merlini’s fingers. He tried and succeeded in balancing his whisky glass on its edge. “You dismiss Leonard far too offhandedly. If he’s lying, he’s covering someone. Why should he do that for whoever bopped him on the head earlier? Or, it his injury was self-inflicted, if he is the ghost, and he fits the description none too well, then how did he shuck the dark overcoat, whiskers, necessary make-up et cetera so quickly? Is he a lightning-change artist? And what did he do with the disguise? An overcoat’s not an easy article to hide, not in the few seconds he had. It’s not in the shrubbery down below that window. I looked when I did my climb down the trellis. Leonard is definitely a problem.”