“Damn it!” he said. “The Telegram must have hired a clairvoyant. They’ve put out an extra with footprints on the ceiling and tons of sunken gold all over the front page.” He gave me a look that was a stranger to soap and water. “And,” he barked at Merlini, “you’d better snap out of it because all the amateur dicks in town are gunning for your job. When those papers hit the streets, all hell broke loose at headquarters.”
The phone behind him rang sharply. He disappeared. Then his voice came. No effort at concealment this time. “What! I’ll be damned! Get off this phone, Sergeant, and put a call through to Washington. I’ll hang on. I want Ed Stansbury at the FBI.” Then his head poked around the door. “Grimm!”
Grimm came in from the hall, joined Gavigan, and the door closed on them.
“The FBI,” Merlini said. “Now what’s he bumped into?”
Merlini seemed to be genuinely puzzled and not pleased.
“Serves you right,” I said. “Are you trying to get a corner on mysterious phone calls? I’ve got a good notion to make one myself, just to keep you guessing.”
But Merlini wouldn’t be baited. He maintained a thoughtful and clamlike silence until Gavigan finally emerged.
“Solved the case?” Merlini asked, seeing his grin.
“I’ll have it sewed up in another half hour. Just as soon as I get a few things from town I’m waiting for. And this time I’m being cryptic. Hope you like it.”
“Congratulations, Inspector. But it would be nice, you know, if your solution included Mr. X.”
“What makes you think it doesn’t?”
“Because I’ve got him sewed up. If you’d like to meet the gentleman, I can arrange it right now. Coming, Ross?”
He made for the door, and while Gavigan looked at him, went out without looking back. I wasn’t going to miss that boat. I trotted after him. We didn’t get far.
Gavigan burst out after us. “Wait, dammit!”
Merlini stopped and said quietly, “Do you have that lighter with you? I’ll show you how that fire was started, too. On one condition — you’ve got to put a tail on Rappourt until we get back. Tell him to keep his eyes open.”
“That’s all fixed. I told Malloy—”
Just as he spoke, Captain Malloy burst from the house. “Found it, Inspector!” he announced.
“Good. Send Grimm in and tell him to step on it.”
Malloy nodded and left hurriedly.
“Busy place around here just now,” Merlini commented as we started off.
Gavigan replied, “You haven’t seen anything yet.”
It was obvious that that was all he was giving out at the moment, and Merlini stopped trying.
Arriving at the old house, Gavigan hailed a figure perched high up on the widow’s walk. “Anything doing, Leach?”
“No,” the detective answered, “nary a visitor.”
“Okay. Keep at it.” Gavigan turned to Merlini. “Well?”
Merlini said, “Ross, could I borrow your necktie, please?”
There was an impish gleam in his eye that I should have distrusted. I said, “What’s wrong with your own?”
“Nothing. I like it. But just at the moment I need a knitted one like yours.”
That should have tipped me off, but it didn’t. There had been so much happening in the last few minutes, I was mentally winded from trying to keep up. I took it off and passed it over. “That was a present from a very nice blonde,” I said. “Be careful of it, will you?”
“I want you outside, Ross,” he said, apparently not hearing my request. “Station yourself at that cellar window. You can watch us through it. Come on Inspector.”
They went in the front door.
Merlini had indicated a small cellar window flush with the ground and directly below one of the living-room windows from which two beady, bright eyes peered at me through a small open space where one of the boards nailed across the broken shutters had fallen away and a pane of glass was missing. I picked up a rock and let fly. The eyes vanished as the rat scrambled down from the ladder-back chair that stood just inside.
The cellar window, though paneless, was covered with a stout iron grating. I dropped to my hands and knees and, peering in, soon saw Merlini and Gavigan come into the front cellar room. Merlini hunted among the debris scattered on the floor. He took a dog-eared book from the overturned book box. “Sermons by the Rev. Hugh Blair, D.D.,” he said. “Captain Skelton must have recanted.”
He ripped out half a dozen leaves and constructed a tentlike structure with them on the floor. Above and around this he carefully placed more paper, the slats from an old chair, and other inflammable odds and ends.
“That’s enough to give you a rough idea,” he said. “Lighter, please.”
Gavigan passed it over. Merlini fussed with it a moment and then placed it on the floor under, but somewhat beyond, the paper and wood. He twirled it with his thumb, and the tiny flame sprang up. He rose and backed slowly toward the window where I watched. When he reached it, he turned and pushed a sorry-looking object out at me between the bars. It was my tie, or what remained of it, half unraveled, the thread running off across the cellar to the lighter.
“Small price to pay to learn about the great lighter trick.” He grinned. “The magician’s old stand-by, you see. Thread. That lighter will, when full, burn for 15 minutes or so. Haul in on your tie, Harte. Easy. And just a little — a foot or so.”
“So that’s the answer to Linda’s Ascot scarf.”
“It does seem to explain why we found it in the cellar.”
The lighter slid six inches across the floor, and, came directly under the paper. A moment later the tiny glow grew and spread; the paper burst into flame.
“It also explains why Harte and I saw no light in this room when we passed through the rear one. The lighter’s glow was small and hidden by the debris piled up above and around it.”
“Okay,” Gavigan said grudgingly. “It explains the scarf. But who pulled the string? It certainly wasn’t long enough to go clear down to the other house where everybody was.”
The sound of a motorboat nosing in at the landing behind the house captured Gavigan’s attention. Merlini pulled the lighter from the fire, quickly extinguished the flames, and hurried out after the Inspector, who had disappeared in the direction of the sound. I had just started to get up and follow suit when a voice behind me said, “The Inspector down there?”
I swung around to see Dr. Gail. He had an excited, breathless look about him. I said, “Yes. This way,” and started to pilot him around the house. Then I noticed what it was he carried. My jaw dropped down around knee level. Gail didn’t wait for me to recover. He ran toward the rear and the sound of tire motorboat. I lit out after him.
Burt, Merlini’s contortionist shop assistant, was stepping out of the speedboat. I recognized our speedboat pilot of the night before and saw a stranger, a short, muscular man with a thick-jawed, foreign-looking face. His suit stretched tightly across his shoulders as if it were too small, and he was nervous as a cat.
Gavigan gave us a glance as we came in, started to turn away; and then, seeing what the Doctor held, he stopped dead.
Gail said, “Take a look at this. I knew I’d find treasure on this island some day.
He dropped the familiar black suitcase on the stone landing and pushed at the catches. When the lid fell open, I heard the boat driver say, “Holy Mother of God!” It was the same suitcase and the same guineas — all of them: the Hussar treasure.