No Coffin for the Corpse Page 6

  I crossed the footlights, descended the rundown, and took a seat in the third row beside the magician whose tall, spare, and sometimes dignified frame extended for an alarming distance out into the aisle. Although he is one of those fortunate persons who can get along comfortably on much less sleep than the average mortal, I got the impression, for once, that he was tired. Why I thought that I don’t know. His black eyes still sparkled with their customary alertness, and the good-humored crinkles at the corners of his mouth bracketed his characteristic impish smile. His magician’s air of self-confidence was there too; his precisely modulated voice still captured and then smoothly misdirected the attention with all its old, expert, hypnotic power.

  The delicately co-ordinated movements of his body and highly trained hands, the forcefully cut, though asymmetric, planes of his face, and his attentive interest in practically everything made him appear, as always, at least fifteen years younger than the sixty his Who’s Who biography admits.

  His off-stage informality of dress, his lack of the traditional mustache and flowing hair are deceptively unmagicianlike. But, the moment he begins to work at being a conjurer, the practiced ease with which he seems to accomplish the utterly impossible imparts such an air of genuineness to his trickery that a century or two earlier he would have been taken out posthaste and burned at the stake.

  “Where,” I asked as I sat down, “did you acquire an underwater ballet, of all things? It’ll give the customers an eyeful of the Grade A, fancy assorted, female anatomy you seem to have hired, but I don’t see how it fits in.”

  “You will,” he grinned. “It’s a build-up for the newest Merlini Mystery. Accept no substitutes and keep your eyes peeled. If you can explain it, we’ll toss it out.”

  “Always the guinea pig,” I said. “Okay, baffle me.”

  As I spoke, the long, white, conical beams of twin spots streamed out above our heads from the balcony and centered in mid-stage on the great, square, glass-walled tank that half a dozen stagehands were pushing out into place. Water swirled and foamed within it, gushing from the nozzles of fire hoses that curled up over the tank’s edge and led away, twisting snakelike across the stage floor to the wings.

  Then a raised platform slightly higher than the tank and extending partly over it was shoved into position. A young athletic man with a dark handsome face rose from the seat behind Merlini.

  “Well, here goes,” he said, and moved forward toward the stage. He slipped off the dressing-gown he wore, dropped it across a first-row aisle seat, and then, clothed only in the briefest of scarlet swimming trunks, vaulted lightly over the footlight trough up onto the stage. His bronzed body was something that any matinee idol could have been proud of, and he used it with all the sure, graceful ease of a skilled athlete—which, among other things, was what he was.

  “A little something,” I said, “for the tired businesswoman to look at too, I see.”

  The performer on stage ran lightly up a flight of steps to the raised platform, turned, and bowed in our direction. He stood beside the dark sinister shape of an upended open coffin. Two stage assistants followed him, carrying a formidable collection of heavy handcuffs and leg irons. They quickly adjusted the handcuffs on his extended wrists, pulled the ratchets tight, and locked them. Then they affixed the massive shackles on his legs.

  “The cuffs,” Merlini commented, “have been loaned by the police department. Gavigan owed me a favor or two, and I collected. I want you to play that up in one of the publicity releases.”

  “Who, me?”

  “Yes. You’ve just been appointed press agent.”

  I remembered what Burt had said about a missing angel and started to make a delicate inquiry as to salary, but Merlini’s mind-reading ability was working with its usual efficiency.

  “We’ll have a business conference later,” he said. “Watch this.”

  The two assistants were lifting the performer’s body and placing it within the waiting coffin. The piano player increased his tempo.

  The man in the coffin looked out at us, smiled, and raised his manacled arms in a gesture toward the large clock dial that hung from the flies above the tank and on which a single hand began to move, marking off the seconds.

  The assistants pulled the hinged coffin lid around into place and swiftly fitted the six chromium hasps that bordered its edge down upon their staples. Heavy padlocks were snapped into place. Then one man tossed the keys that fitted cuffs, shackles, and padlocks down onto the stage floor, and turned to help his partner attach steel lifting cables into fittings at the coffin’s ends.

  The men straightened. One waved an arm. A whistle blew, and the cables tightened. The coffin tilted unsteadily, then lifted, swinging out into space.

  The whistle shrilled again. The rush of water that poured from the hoses died away and the six-foot depth of water within the tank shone in the spotlight greenly phosphorescent. The dark shape of the coffin hung above it, one assistant leaning precariously forward to steady it with his hands. The piano music was muted, almost inaudible.

  Then, the whistle sounded again, loud in the hush. The cables dropped swiftly. The coffin struck the surface with a splash that sent a myriad flashing fountains of bright color cascading upward in the light.

  Slack appeared again in the cables as the coffin floated for a moment. Then slowly, as the water seeped in, it sank down through the sparkling green depths. The outline of its hard ugly shape was blurred by the swirling water. It came to rest, finally, on the floor of the tank.

  For a space, nothing moved except the hand on the clock dial which reached and passed the first minute mark, and crept closer toward that final red-lettered word: Danger.

  As the hand neared the two-minute mark, one assistant hurried from the platform down to the stage and picked up a red-handled fire ax. He hefted it slowly, his eyes on the clock. The other man above gazed anxiously into the water.

  “Nice touch,” I commented. “And good acting.”

  “It’s not acting,” Merlini said, his eyes fastened on the stage, his voice taut. “This is the first time we’ve tried it!”

  My association with Merlini and the magicians who made his shop their headquarters had dulled my wonder at the average miracle and I had, thus far, been watching calmly, sprawled out in my seat. But those words brought me upright, out on the chair’s edge.

  The moving hand went on. Two minutes, two and a half. It neared the three-minute mark and the red Danger sign. Then with only twenty short seconds of safety remaining, the assistant down below moved in closer to the tank. He swung his ax up, holding it ready in both hands. The space between the moving pointer and the Danger mark diminished rapidly. A quick, accelerating tom-tom beat swelled in the music.

  But still there was no movement from the submerged coffin, no hint of what might be happening in its black, water-filled interior.

  Just as the last five seconds began to tick away, the man on the platform suddenly raised one arm. The whistle shrilled again. The man below lifted his ax higher, its bright edge flashing where the spotlight shimmered on the sharp steel.

  And then, abruptly, a masking curtain of air bubbles ascended through the water, billowing upward from the tank’s floor around the coffin like escaping steam. The pianist reached the crescendo he had been building toward. The white glare of the spotlights changed to amber, and the green water glinted gold.

  The second hand reached and passed the danger mark.

  The thin piercing note of the whistle shrilled once more. And slowly, the rising geyser gush of bubbles faded and cleared. The coffin could be seen again, still submerged, still closed, and still locked.

  But just above it there was a flash of red swimming suit and of a brown body rising.

  Don Diavolo’s head broke the surface. Applause broke the tension in the dark around us where the ballet girls had gathered to watch.

  The magician, free of cuffs, shackles, and coffin, pulled himself slowly up from the water’s surface onto
the tank’s brassbound edge. He lifted one leg over and balanced there, shaking the dark wet hair back from his eyes. He breathed heavily, filling his aching lungs with air.

  “And then,” Merlini said, “curtain. Like it?”

  I nodded. “Yes. In fact, I think it’s good. But I know how it’s done.”

  That nearly put him down for the count. His eyes popped.

  “You what!” he exclaimed, staring at me as though were something with two heads that had just escaped from a bottle.

  “I know how it’s done. It’s a trick.”

  He grinned with relief and whispered confidentially, “Don’t tell anyone, but that’s it exactly. You’re an analytical genius. I don’t know how you do it.”

  “It runs in the family,” I said. “Medical science is baffled. There’s no cure. And how are you?”

  “I’m baffled too.” He leaned back in his seat and frowned up at the stage where Larry was saying, “Alright. That’s all. Everybody report at nine in the morning.”

  For the first time since I had known him, Merlini’s voice, usually so charged with energy, seemed tired. “I had forgot,” he added, “how many things can go wrong with a Broadway show between script and opening night.” .

  “Burt,” I said, “mentioned a little something about angel trouble.”

  Merlini nodded glumly at the shiny half dollar that he balanced on his finger tips. “A lot of things in this show vanish into thin air.” The half dollar flickered and did just that as he spoke. “But I hadn’t counted on it happening to the man who writes the checks. It certainly wasn’t in the script. He tried to put over some complicated financial sleight of hand down in Wall Street, and it backfired. The reverberations, of course, echoed dismally all up and down Broadway. And the creditors are howling like so many wolves.”

  I decided not to bother the man with my troubles. He had enough of his own. “And so,” I said, “you need a press agent who doesn’t have to eat until after opening night.”

  “It’s not quite as bad as that. The Mrs. Merlini Home-Cooked Meals Corporation will be happy to extend you an Annie Oakley, good until opening night. I think she’ll stay in business that long.”

  “You think—say, have you put your own money into this show?”

  The vanished half dollar reappeared in his fingers as a quarter, then shrank at once to a dime. “I couldn’t help myself,” he admitted. “I had to throw something to the biggest and hungriest wolves.”

  I took the dime from his hand quickly before it could decrease in value further. “Okay. I’m hired. I’ll take this as a retainer. I didn’t expect to sleep much for the next few days anyway. And it may keep my mind off other things.”

  He gave me a sharp look. “I thought you seemed a bit subdued. Not as much bounce as usual. What’s wrong now?”

  “Same trouble you’ve got. Same trouble Red Ridinghood’s maternal grandparent had. Wolves. Tell you about it later. Right now I think I’d better get busy and see if I can think of some way to entice a nice fat angel into our parlor.”

  “If you can catch one,” he said gloomily, “I’ll get you an honorary membership in the Society of American Magicians, with loving cup to match. The Broadway angel crop, this late in the season, has been pretty thoroughly picked over.”

  Behind us a familiar voice suddenly said, “I think perhaps I can supply one.”

  I nearly did a vanishing act of my own that wasn’t in the script, a descent without benefit of trap doors straight down through the floor. I still don’t know what prevented it.

  The voice was Kathryn Wolff’s.

  Chapter Six:

  The Curious History

  FOR A WEEK NOW my most strenuous efforts had all been futile. I had chased clear to Florida and back, more than two thousand miles. Fines, phone calls, train and plane fares had reduced my bank account to the status of an exploded theory. And now, just as soon as I sat down and relaxed, she appeared out of nowhere like a jinni from a bottle.

  I sat there for a moment, afraid to turn and look for fear that it might be only another of Merlini’s conjuring illusions. Then, getting up, he spoke. “You think you can supply—”

  His voice tumbled suddenly headlong over a precipice and fell down out of sight. A weak astonished echo floated back. “What have you done to your hair?”

  I took a chance and looked, expecting anything. If what I saw was a hallucination, it was visual as well as auditory. And worth, in my estimation, the full price of admission.

  Though Kay wore no hat, I could see nothing wrong with her hair. It seemed to be just as usual, framing her face with gold and dropping down to break in a bright curling foam around her neck. Her clothes—the deep-blue dress that matched the color of her eyes, the short fur jacket thrown carelessly across her shoulders, the big, fire-engine red purse—were all out of Vogue by Bonwit Teller, but worn, as she always wore them, with a careless nonchalance.

  She gave me a nod and half a smile, and said, “Hello, Ross.”

  I had just zoomed up to the dizzy top of an emotional roller coaster. The completely impersonal tone of her voice, as cool and distant as the dark nebula in Orion, sent me dropping again, straight down.

  She answered Merlini before I could speak, “Don’t you like my hair this way?”

  “I do,” he said, still sounding a bit off balance. “I think I like it even better, especially that shade of blond. But I didn’t cast you as a lightning-change artist. Will it stay that way? I can’t order new costumes and scenery to match each time you change your mind.”

  It was Greek to me—the whole conversation. That, or some lost Sanskrit dialect. “What goes on here?” I asked. “What color did you think her hair was? It’s always been blond.”

  “Not last week it wasn’t,” Merlini said, eyeing me with some suspicion. “It was a dark shade of brunette. Apparently you two know each other?”

  I nodded. “We did. But something slipped. Look, Kay, were you here in town rehearsing with Merlini all week?”

  Merlini answered, “She’s on the pay roll, such as it is. She gets sawed in half in the first act, burned alive in the second, and is magically patched up again in time to go to town on the ‘Sleight of Heart’ song. And, as press agent, I want you to see that Miss Lamb gets—”

  “Miss who?” I blurted.

  “Lamb.” Merlini scowled at me. “L-a-m-b. Who did you think she was?”

  “I know who she is. She’s a Wolff in—”

  “In sheep’s clothing,” Kay cut in, addressing Merlini and still pretending that I wasn’t there. “I was wearing a wig on account of the detectives.”

  “Oh, I see,” Merlini said, blinking a bit and not seeing any more than I did. “Detectives. You’re a fugitive from something?”

  “From home. Dad and I disagreed, and I decided not to darken his door again, at least not until he calmed down. Last time that happened he ordered squads of private detectives. I was afraid they’d be watching all the theaters and booking agencies.”

  Slowly, as if to see how it sounded, Merlini said, “Wolff. Kathryn Wolff.” Then he looked curiously at me. “If that’s who she is, why is it that you haven’t been around before now, Ross?”

  Merlini knew I had been dating Kathryn Wolff with more regularity than I displayed toward the average blonde, but he hadn’t met her, at least not under that name.

  “I’ve been vacationing,” I said. “A seven-day cruise around Robin Hood’s barn. Kay, there are one or two things I want to—”

  But she wasn’t having any. “Merlini,” she cut in quickly, “don’t you want to hear about the angel I found?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I do.” He looked a bit baffled by my cryptic remarks and Kay’s attitude. “Sit down.” He waved his hand at the thousand or so empty seats that surrounded us, offering her all of them.

  I was baffled too. I knew now that if she had been here in New York all week, she hadn’t been responsible for that telegram. And yet she was acting just as if she fe
lt the way the wire had sounded. I didn’t get it at all. It didn’t even look as if I was going to get a chance to discuss it.

  Merlini balanced himself on the back edge of row two, put his feet on the seat in row three, facing Kathryn. “Wolff,” he said again somewhat suspiciously. “That isn’t the angel’s name too, by any chance?”

  Kay nodded. “Yes. It’s Dad. He’s in a jam. You’re the only person I know who can help, and if you do—”

  Merlini seemed incredulous. “Wait,” he interrupted. “Did he actually tell you that he’d put money of his in a show of mine?”

  “Well, no. He didn’t. But—’’

  “I was afraid of that,” Merlini said disappointedly, seeing the promised financial backing fade. Dudley T. Wolff explodes violently like a shipment of his own blasting powder every time he hears my name mentioned. I’ve seen people run for cover thinking it was a thunderstorm. And yet you—”

  Merlini halted. He didn’t seem, somehow, to be operating with his usual efficiency. “Jam?” he asked then, backtracking a bit. “What kind of a jam?”

  Kay hesitated, lit a cigarette, took a nervous puff or two, and then forgot she had it. The gay, lighthearted smile which was so much her own that she could have patented it wasn’t there any longer.

  “It’s—It’s—” She stopped as if facing a cold shower. Then suddenly, holding her breath, she plunged in. “Well, it’s a ghost.”

  If the silence that followed that had been set aside to cool, it would have jelled.

  “Ghost,” Merlini repeated uncertainly. “Lamb. Wolves. Angels. Detectives. Jam. And now ghost. You know I’m not quite sure I follow this, but go on.”

  “I know how it sounds,” Kay said. “But I’m quite serious. Father and Francis Galt have at last got what they’ve always wanted—and it’s too much for them.” Kathryn spoke rapidly now, almost breathlessly. “Merlini, you’ve got to help. You’re chairman of the American Scientist’s psychic-investigating committee. You say you can duplicate any occult phenomena by ordinary magician’s means. The only other person who knows nearly as much about such things is Francis Galt, and he—”