No Coffin for the Corpse Page 5

  “Besides,” I added, “I just came down for a swim and some fishing. But I didn’t expect to catch a crab so soon, and in the Lido lobby! Boy!” I beckoned a bellhop and jerked a thumb at Old Faithful. “Send this down to a taxidermist. Get it stuffed and mounted. With its mouth open—like this.”

  I demonstrated, then turned and walked out before Wolff could put in a call for a house dick and have me thrown out. Getting through to Kathryn after this was going to take some doing. Wolff would have all the barricades manned. My direct frontal attack had been intercepted too soon, its surprise element lost. I would have to lay out a new and much better planned campaign.

  I returned to my own hotel, a smaller one where the uniformed help didn’t wear so much gold braid and the rates were not computed in astronomical units, picked up my bathing trunks, and headed oceanward. I swam out to the farthest float, climbed aboard, and stretched out in the sun to do some concentrated, and highly involved thinking.

  Wolff, being the tyrant that he was and disliking me as heartily as he seemed to, was quite capable of keeping his daughter in her room—locked in, if necessary—until I should give up and wheel away my siege guns. I could almost imagine him shipping her off to the nearest nunnery if there should be a nice impregnable one handy. It was going to be difficult.

  Of course, if this were light fiction or a Grade B movie, I’d simply disguise myself as Room Service and go in carrying her breakfast tray. But, in real life, that somehow didn’t seem so simple. And, in the Lido, the necessary fix money might very well run to more than I could afford. False whiskers were not in my line either. And, if Dunning was half as experienced as Phillips, which was likely, any act I might put on by phone would be expertly nipped in the bud. Besides, it was still just possible that Kay had sent that wire after all. I much preferred to see her in person.

  I surveyed the problem from a dozen angles without being able to crack it to my satisfaction. Finally, I went back to my hotel for dinner still trying to evolve some sort of definite plan. Then, thinking that perhaps the bribe a bellhop would demand for a little fifth-column activity might be within my means, I returned to the Lido Club. I approached more warily this time, watching to see if Wolff had thrown out any advance patrols. None being evident, I picked a likely-looking boy, crossed his palm with some folding money, and showed him my press card.

  “I want you to find out if Miss Kathryn Wolff is in. And, if not, see if you can find out where she might have gone.”

  He looked at the bill I had given him with interest, but not much enthusiasm. “Why don’t you ask the desk clerk?” he said.

  “Because I suspect he’s been told not to give out information to anyone answering my description. But my city editor won’t take that for an answer.” I gave him another bill. “Is that enough?”

  He estimated my probable Dun & Bradstreet rating with one shrewd look and decided correctly that, enough or not, it was all he was going to get. “It’ll do,” he said. “Wait here.”

  He gave full measure for moneys received, even though the answers weren’t at all what I wanted. His first one was a distinct shock.

  “There’s no Miss Kathryn Wolff registered,” he said.

  I didn’t believe it. This, I thought, is another sample of Dudley’s genius for organization.

  “I see,” I said. “No Kathryn Wolff. What about a Mr. and Mrs. Dudley Wolff? And a man named Dunning? Don’t tell me the desk clerk never heard of them. I know better.”

  “They’re not registered either,” he said calmly. “They were, up until about an hour ago. But they checked out. Funny too. Their suite was reserved for another two weeks.” He gave me a suspicious look.

  I gave him one in return that Dudley Wolff couldn’t have bettered, said, “Damn!” and then turned and legged it for the nearest phone, muttering other expletives not nearly as printable. I was beginning to have an uneasy feeling that I had been outsmarted in a big way. I realized suddenly that, except for that telegram whose antecedents were doubtful, I had never had any good evidence that Kay had ever left New York at all. It was quite possible that Wolff, discovering I thought she was with them, had done what he could to further the impression. It would suit him only too well if I spent my time chasing after her a thousand miles in the wrong direction.

  I called the airport. “Miami News,” I said. “What planes checked out in the last hour?”

  “The Chicago plane left at nine.”

  “Were there any seats reserved in the name of Dudley T. Wolff?”

  The clerk hesitated. “Did you say this was the News?”

  I put a city editor’s growl in my voice. “I did. Hurry it, will you?”

  “Well,” he said doubtfully. “Just a moment.”

  I waited, dithering. Finally his voice came back. “No, not for Chicago, but he has seats on the New York plane. It’s just leaving now.”

  I heard it in the phone behind his voice—the low, distant roar of a plane taking off.

  “Through tickets?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “When’s the next one leave?”

  “Ten-thirty.”

  “Okay,” I said slowly, knowing that the fare was going to give my financial rating a disastrous body blow, “I’ll be out. Save me a seat.”

  This game of transcontinental hop-skip-and-jump was proving too much for me. I decided that the next time I fell in love it would be with an orphan.

  I returned to the hotel, checked out, and took a taxi to the 36th-Street Airport. I am apparently allergic to sleep in both Pullman and plane berths. As a matter of fact, for the past week my sleep had not been of the best quality in my own bed. Consequently, when I landed in New York the next morning, the picture I presented of a man who has just had a relaxing restful swim in sunny Florida waters would have been a distinct shock to the Miami Chamber of Commerce.

  I phoned Peg again and asked her to find out if the Wolffs were back in Mamaroneck, whether or not they intended to leave for Cape Horn, and where Kathryn had been all this time.

  “Phillips,” she reported back a few minutes later, “grudgingly admits that his employer is once more in residence, but insists that Miss Wolff is still out of town and refuses to divulge any further details on that point. He also states that no South American trip is scheduled. I don’t think Cape Horn sounds reasonable myself.”

  “That’s just why I suspect Dudley Wolff might go there,” I growled. “Keep one eye on them for me, will you? And if you see any sign of his daughter I want to know. I’ll be here. I’m going to get some sleep.”

  “Sleep? At nine in the morning? And what were you up to all night, or am I being personal?”

  “Chasing wild geese and counting sheep, believe it or not.”

  “What’s that? A special assignment for Country Gentleman?”

  “Something like that. I edit the joke page. You’ll get a rejection slip in the mail. ’By.”

  I went to bed and dreamed that Dudley Wolff had left with Kay on the 8:15 rocket to the moon. I stowed away on the next flight out—the nonstop Lunar Flyer. But my additional and unsuspected weight upset the navigator’s calculations. The ship promptly curved back and headed for a watery grave in mid-Atlantic. I heard the warning bells that signaled a crash landing. Then, waking, I shut off my alarm clock, took an aspirin, showered, dressed, and went out for lunch, unhappily.

  Afterward, I walked cross town toward Times Square. I had some vague idea that perhaps I might be able to circumvent the censors at the Wolff house and get a letter forwarded to Kathryn, wherever she was, by using code or maybe invisible ink. Since The Great Merlini’s Magic Shop was the local headquarters for that sort of thing, I went there. A course of “Ten Easy Lessons in Clairvoyance and Applied Crystal Gazing” might be a good buy, too.

  But I purchased none of those things. I even forgot to ask for them. I should have stayed in bed and continued with the dream. A few minutes later I found myself watching a man being buried alive.

 
Chapter Five:

  Merlini Loses an Angel

  IF SOME ARCHEOLOGIST of the year 3000 ever digs up an Early Twentieth Century Manhattan classified telephone directory, and if one of his historian colleagues, carefully investigating its brittle pages, notices a listing that is there under M—Magical Apparatus, Magicians—I suspect that his published comments on the civilization of the Streamlined Age will contain certain belittling remarks.

  If, on the other hand, a medieval sorcerer, Raymond Lully perhaps, or Nicholas Flamel, could return from the grave and walk into the shops of any of the nine concerns listed, he would sell his soul a dozen times over for many of the mysteries in stock. Even Cagliostro would be as excited as a small boy in a toy store at Christmas time. And the Spanish Inquisition, after one hasty horrified glance at the catalogues, would promptly consign them, the shops, and their proprietors to the flames.

  The most famous of these stores among conjurers is Merlini’s The Magic Shop, located in an otherwise sedate office building just off Broadway. Although it is not the dusty, gloomy little shop of black candles, incense, and stuffed alligators attended by an elderly gnome in a tall pointed hat that its sales slogan, Nothing Is Impossible, might lead you to expect, it does nevertheless have a distinct air of sulphur and brimstone about it. The miracles for sale that are spread out in its neat, shining glass showcases, although intended for entertainment purposes only, are witchcraft just the same—psychological sorcery in modern dress.

  The right-hand wall as you enter is covered with curiously lettered playbills describing the performances of Pinetti, Bosco, Anderson, Blitz, Alexander, Frikell, Döbler, Robert-Houdin, and the other early celebrities of conjuring. With them are the more modern, mostly autographed photographs of such men as the Herrmanns, Kellar, Maskelyne, Devant, Houdini, Thurston, Leipzig, Cardini, Tenokai.

  On the opposite wall, shelves mount ceilingward bearing a bewildering assortment of conjuring paraphernalia, an odd and infinitely varied collection of commonplace objects which, in a magician’s hands, attain the peculiar property of violating all the more immutable laws of physics. There are bird cages that vanish at the count of three, rose bushes that blossom on command, inexhaustible bottles that pour forth any drink called for. There are bright-colored silk handkerchiefs, giant playing cards, billiard balls, red-and-gold Chinese boxes, eggs, alarm clocks, crystal-gazing globes, slates, swords, fish bowls, red-haired ventriloquial dummies, and, of course, a rabbit.

  Peter, purely a floor sample and not for sale, is no ordinary bunny. He is a veteran trouper, an honorary member of the Lambs’ and Players’ Clubs, so much the actor that I suspect he too hopes some day to tread the boards as Hamlet. In his time he has made many a sudden and dramatic entrance before the footlights, usually from a top hat. But now, somewhat heavier about the middle and not so easily concealed, he has been retired to a Mohammedan paradise of ease and lettuce nibbling. As I entered, he peered at me from behind a talking skull marked: This Week Only—$7.50, and his pink excited nose wigwagged a friendly greeting.

  Burt Fawkes, ex-contortionist, once billed on sideshow banners as Twisto, the Man Who Turns Himself Inside Out, and now Merlini’s shop assistant, leaned across the counter. He was talking to John Scarne, Luis Zingone, and Paul Rosini, a trio of exceedingly nimble-fingered gentlemen who earn their living making decks of cards sit up, roll over, and jump through impossible hoops.

  “He was a little guy with an underslung chin and big spectacles,” Burt was saying. “He didn’t say much until he saw Merlini demonstrate our new rapping hand. Then his eyes pop, and before long I’m wrapping up the hand, a spirit bell, a floating light bulb, a medium-size wonder cabinet, the blueprints for walking through a brick wall, and a copy of Miracle Mind-Reading Secrets. He hurries off like he’s got a paying date that night and wants to work all those stunts into his routine before curtain time.

  “But the next morning, when I open up, he’s waiting outside the door, and muttering. He eyes me the same way he would if I’d sold him a shipment of gold bricks. He has all the apparatus with him and he dumps it out on the counter nearly breaking the glass. ‘I want my money back,’ he demands flatly. ‘Every cent of it!’

  “I didn’t get it. Our improved rapping hand is the best on the market, the spirit bell has a money-back guarantee, and the wonder cabinet holds a bigger load than some I’ve seen twice its size. I tell him so. But he’s stubborn and keeps insisting that none of the stuff is any good at all. He is very insistent about getting his money back. If not, he threatens to complain to the Better Business Bureau.

  “‘About what?’ I ask him. ‘This merchandise does everything we claim. You saw it demonstrated yourself. The light bulb burns without visible connection and floats in midair. The brick-wall trick is the original Houdini method.’

  “Then it comes out. ‘It’s all a swindle!’ he says disgustedly. ‘They’re just tricks!’

  “That floored me for a minute. I edged over nearer those brass lota bowls so I could heave one at his head in case he got violent. ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘you want the real thing? A rapping hand with a direct spirit connection to hell, a floating light held up by mental concentration, and a recipe for walking through just any brick wall that you happen to meet. That it?’

  “He nods, leans across the counter, and whispers confidentially, ‘Yes. No tricks. The real thing! It’s quite all right if you sell them to me. I’m a Third Degree Adept of the Atlantean Order of Rosicrucians. Here’s my Master’s diploma.’ And he gives me a quick look at a very fancy sample of printing and engraving from a Los Angeles correspondence school in the Higher Mysticism. It was signed, spirit writing I suppose, by Saint-Germain and a couple of Tibetan lamas.”

  Burt’s audience was grinning. “Did you give him his money back?” Zingone asked.

  “I did. Quick too. He’d have probably put the evil eye on me and then gone to the Better Business Bureau, the Mayor’s office, and the FBI.”

  “You missed a bet mere, Burt,” I cut in. “You should have sold him a strait-jacket escape. He may be needing it.”

  Burt looked around. “Oh, hello, Ross. He wouldn’t have liked that either unless the directions told him how to dematerialize into ectoplasm, ooze through the eyelets, and reassemble himself on the outside. Where have you been? The boss was trying to get you yesterday.”

  “Out of town.” I glanced toward the door behind the counter that led to the sanctum sanctorum, if that term is applicable to a workshop where such diabolic contrivances as those Merlini designs are put together. “Is he in?”

  “No.” Burt left his audience and moved down the counter toward me. The magicians resumed their discussion of the merits of the Erdnase one-hand shift, which is not the article of wearing apparel you might imagine, but a gambler’s sleight with cards. “He’s over at the Drury Lane. He wants you to stop in. Some script changes, I think, in those sketches you wrote for the show.”

  “Rehearsals under way?”

  “They were this morning.” Burt frowned. “But I don’t know how long they’ll last. Merlini is shy an angel.”

  “Oh, oh. That sounds serious.”

  “It is, and somebody has got to be cast for the part quick before we lose our shirts.”

  I started for the door. “Don’t look at me,” I said. “At the moment, I couldn’t finance a one-ring flea circus. See you later.”

  I headed for the Drury Lane. The Great Merlini, it appeared, in spite of being a magician, was up to his neck in trouble too.

  His farewell tour in ’29 was proving to be about as final as any actor’s. This was to be expected in a man who was born on a circus train en route and into a family whose name had been famous in sawdust annals for five generations. Twenty-six years of entertaining audiences under canvas and in what seemed to me, when I once heard him list some of them, nearly every theater on the habitable globe, was a record that makes retirement difficult. Merlini, I had always known, would never be able to resist the call of grease paint and
footlights as long as his lean and agile fingers were still nimble enough to make a half dollar vanish into thin air.

  He was, at the moment, head over heels in a project he had long dreamed of, one more ambitious than any he had yet attempted—a full-dress magical-musical revue complete with chorus, singers, dancers, a cast that included half a dozen top-flight magicians, and a libretto shot through with streamlined mystification. Big-illusion magic, since the deaths of vaudeville and of Howard Thurston, is rarely seen on today’s stages. The best current conjuring is the more intimate close-up sleight of hand that a group of polished performers present in night-club floor shows and around hotel supper-club tables. It was Merlini’s idea that the larger magical feats were still good box office, provided they were presented in a novel up-to-the-minute manner and in a sophisticated setting of girls and music. He was playing this hunch with his currently projected Hocus-Pocus Revue.

  I entered the Drury Lane on 45th Street by the stage door, climbed a short flight of iron steps and found myself suddenly swept on-stage by a rush of girls in ballet slippers and practice costumes. Piano music issued from the orchestra pit, and, from somewhere in the outer dark of the auditorium, Merlini’s voice rose. “Ross, this is an underwater ballet sequence. And we aren’t casting any flounders. Swim down out of it.”

  I put an arm around each of the two nearest dancers. “I’m an octopus,” I said. “I’ll need six more of these, one for each arm.”

  The piano music stopped. “We’ve got a comedian,” Merlini answered. “A good one.” He spoke to a man in shirt sleeves who sat on the piano top. “Let the girls go, Larry. They’ve been at it long enough. Besides, Don’s all set and he’ll have to be getting back for the next Music Hall show shortly. Bring in the tank and let’s run through that. And I want the lights—spots, foots, and the underwater circuit. Ross, you sit down here and try to act like a tired businessman. I want your reaction.”