Then he stood back, as though about to salute.
"What a detective!" said Officer Ferris, with still more respect.
"I'm telling you, Slats!" said Officer O'Casey, with an air of nervousness yet determination. "I'm not even sore at him any longer. I'm not going to say anything, mind; I don't want 'em to think I'm nuts. But he's not human!"
"Aw, quit it!" snapped Officer Ferris. "Being a smart cop is one thing. But being..."
Officer O'Casey addressed Cy. "Can we see him, sir?"
While Crystal turned her head away and pretended not to be there, Cy had to drag himself back into a world of reality where policemen really existed.
"See him? Whom do you want to see?"
"The gent with the big bay window."
"He's in conference." Cy brushed a hand across his forehead to clear his mind. "I'm afraid he can't be disturbed. Do you want to give him a message?"
Officer O'Casey, pondering, did not even seem to hear the question.
"He magicked the turnstiles," said O'Casey. "Then he magicked the swimming pool. Now he's magicked the electric chair."
'The... what!"
In Cy's mind was a recollection from some time ago. Standing beside the pool, when Crystal made her appearance, he had looked back over the terrace and seen a grotesque parody of a chair. At the time Cy had believed it was only his imagination which likened it to...
Cy hurried to the right-hand window, and peered out with his cheek pressed to the screen towards the southern side of the rear terrace.
"I didn't notice it when I went to trim the hedges and came back," Officer O'Casey was saying. "Because I was sore, see, and I didn't notice anything. But look at it now!"
On the serene sunlit terrace, with metal headpiece and electrodes dominating what was there, some humorist had placed a life-sized replica of the electric chair.
10
Though it was still broad daylight, a long crimson band of sunset lay behind the railway station westwards, and a feeling of evening was in the air as Cy Norton faced the last charge of reporters on the front step of the house.
"No!" Cy called, amiably but firmly. "You cannot see Sir Henry. He is locked in the wine cellar."
The inevitable question shot back at him in many voices.
"Because he's drunk," replied Cy. (Sensation.) "Yes! D-r-u-n-k, drunk."
"But why is he cockeyed now?’
"Because," called Cy, "his brain won't work properly on a case until he's two-thirds paralyzed with alcohol. Surely you understand that?"
There was a hubbub, not unmixed with expressions of sympathy. The excuse was so frank and unusual, coming from a respectable home in Maralarch, that all except the most suspicious were inclined to believe it.
"Can we quote that about his being pickled?"
"Certainly," answered Cy, wondering how this news would look in Washington. Then he held up his hand. "Lieutenant Trowbridge has already given you the essential facts. I'm going to give you, with his permission, a few more. Now some of you know me. Don't you?"
There was a chorus of assent.
"All right! Then listen! I'm going to give you a real story!"
It was a story, and a beauty. But, as Cy had calculated, the basic part—that Frederick Manning had decamped with the funds of his Foundation—got completely lost in the shuffle. At first sight it appeared that, as the result of some sort of bet, Manning had dived into the pool and vanished like a soap bubble.
"What about that dummy electric chair?"
"Also a joke, it's believed. Several witnesses, who went down to the pool early in the morning, vaguely noticed some kind of chair with, quote, 'a cloth cover over it' Unquote. But they paid no attention. When the chair was uncovered we don't know. It was found by Police Officer Aloysius J. O'Casey."
Presently he got rid of them, at least so he hoped.
Cy closed the front door, and put his head against it
Again the house was a quiet as in the middle of the night dim with Venetian blinds half drawn. Betterton and the District Attorney had left for town in the latter's car shortly after lunch, a lunch at which there had been only random and desultory conversation.
As for Detective Lieutenant Trowbridge, from White Plains, he astonished Jean and Crystal and Bob though he astonished nobody else. They had expected to meet a fat ogre who could chew a cigar and yell. Instead they met a quiet, well-spoken man not yet forty, who merely took statements, and did not question them much about miracles. As for that replica of the electric chair...
"Put it in the cellar," Byles had ordered, "and don't let H.M. see it He'll have an apoplectic fit We don't want our horse going crazy at the starting gate."
And it was to the basement that Cy Norton, after cooling his head against the front door in the dim silent house, hurried now.
Where was Crystal? After lunch Crystal had locked herself in her room, in tears... Stop it! He must not think about Crystal.
Sir Henry Merrivale really was in the wine cellar, though not locked in. It was not dangerous to keep him there away from the press, since H.M., a whisky drinker only, disdained even good wines as slops. But he was in no mood of sweetness and light
Cy, hurrying across a dim basement which smelled of old whitewash, opened the door of the wine cellar. It was an oblong room, lined to the ceiling on every side except the door side with tiers of bottles set on their sides. In the middle, under a dusty electric bulb gleaming yellow, H.M. sat in an old chair and glared at four unopened champagne bottles which were set in a line on the floor in front of him.
"Shut the door," he growled, without looking up from his position as Rodin's Thinker.
Cy complied. "Any inspiration yet?"
H.M. merely grunted. He liked his bathing suit, and still wore it But the dignity of the Merrivales had prompted him to don trousers. These, supported by ancient braces over the red-and-white striped upper part, made him resemble one of the bulkier Bowery toughs in the eighteen-nineties.
"Y'see, I've got half of it," he said. "The other half ought to be easy? But..."
Brooding, he pointed to the four champagne bottles with their gilt tinfoil tops.
"The problem" he said, "is to turn four bottles into three bottles, and still have four bottles."
"That's going to take a long time, isn't it?"
"No, curse it! It oughtn't to. Lemme give you a hint"
"Thanks. I know your hints."
"I'm serious, son," pleaded H.M. "You don't even see all the mystery! What happened to Manning's socks and his wrist watch?"
"What's that?"
"When we met him by the pool," returned H.M., in a far-off musing tone, "anybody could have told you he was wearing socks. As for..."
"Wait a minute!" said Cy, translating memory into pictures. "I do remember the wrist watch. He looked at it, and said something to the effect that it would be several hours before we had to worry about his disappearance."
"Keepin' us still off-balance. Yes."
"Hold on!" muttered Cy. "I remember something else too. He was wearing a shirt too."
"Oh, no, he wasn't!" said H.M. very sharply.
"But I tell you...!"
"That," said H.M., pointing his finger carefully at Cy, "is just the kind of misdirection you got to look out for. Manning's a wizard at it. He wasn't wearing a shirt at all. But he talked about how the sun bothered him, and touched the scarf round his neck, and said, 'so that it's torture to wear this shirt.' You automatically assumed he was wearin' a shirt."
Here H.M. scowled.
"Son, all his other clothes were in that pool. What happened to the socks and the wrist watch?"