“At the camera?”
“Yes. I want to know if our ghost was solid enough to make an impression on the plate. Ross snapped the shutter just before our subject ducked. There might be a picture — unless someone has tampered with the camera too.”
This news interested Galt. He went out the door and down the hall on the double-quick.
“And,” Merlini added, addressing Wolff, “we need a good thorough search of this house. Top to bottom. Leonard and Harte could—”
“Why that?” Wolff cut in. “Mrs. Wolff saw it here in this room. You’ve searched, There’s no way out.”
“Those guns are still missing.”
Wolff scowled. “Yes.” He hesitated a moment. “All right, Leonard, do as he says.”
Merlini turned to me. “Make it quick — but thorough. And don’t go barging into any dark rooms without taking a good look first, not as long as that trap gun is still missing. Better take this.” He gave me Galt’s torch. “Give the place a quick once-over to find out if there’s anyone in the house who shouldn’t be. Then take another look with a fine-toothed comb for those guns.”
I nodded and Leonard and I started out just as Dunning arrived carrying Galt’s fingerprint roller, ink, cards, and an iodine fumer.
I heard him report, “Mr. Galt says that the camera seems to be in good order and that he’s developing the film. He’s fixing up an impromptu darkroom in a bathroom downstairs.”
Leonard and I began our search, but we hit a snag right at the start. Since Merlini had already examined Wolff’s room and the guest room where Anne had been taken, I decided that the next room needing attention was the one other that opened on the hallway this side of the stairs — Wolff’s study.
I went to the head of the stairs and called Phillips.
“I’d like the key to the study, please,” I told him. “Mr. Wolff has asked us to look for those missing guns.”
Phillips seemed surprised. “Did he tell you to look in the study?”
“He said look everywhere.”
“You’ll have to ask him for that key. He hasn’t let anyone go in that room for the past week, not even to clean it.”
I stared at the man, wondering if he knew just how big an applecart he had just tipped over.
“Didn’t Galt search it this morning when he was hunting the ghost?”
“No. He wanted to, but Mr. Wolff refused flatly.”
“Well,” I said. “Just imagine that.” Superman himself couldn’t have backtracked to the bedroom any faster than I did.
As I burst in, Merlini was telling Wolff, “Yes, I think you do know who the ghost is, or, if you must have it that way — was. That’s why you’ve got the wind up so badly. That’s why—” He turned to me. “Find something?”
“It looks promising.” I held my hand out toward Wolff. “May I have the key to the study?”
Wolff looked as if he had been expecting that question, and as if he didn’t care for it or me. “I don’t think it will be necessary to search that room,” he said heavily.
I had given up trying to dope out a technique for handling Wolff. So I simply said, “No? Why not? What have you got in there? Skeletons in the closet?”
Wolff wasn’t accustomed to back talk. His jaw tightened and he took a step toward me.
Merlini cut in quickly, “You’re talking about the locked room just across the hall?”
“Yes,” I said. “I am. And what’s more, Phillips says Galt wasn’t allowed to examine it after the ghost did his vanishing act this morning.”
Merlini turned to Wolff. “I thought you wanted this ghost laid?”
“I do. But you won’t find anything in the study. No one has been in that room for the last week. You can forget about it.”
“Locked doors don’t seem to bother this ghost much.”
“I know. If he could go through the locked door of the study, he could just as easily leave the house. You wouldn’t find him there now.”
“Ghostly behavior is difficult to predict. I want a look.”
“Sorry. But you can’t. That’s final.” It was quite obvious that Wolff meant just what he said.
I sat down. “It we can’t take a look at that room, there’s not much point in searching the rest of the house.”
Wolff said, “Suit yourself.” He evaded further argument by taking the empty glass he held across to his room for a refill.
Merlini looked at Dunning. “I suppose it would be asking too much to inquire of you what this is all about.”
Dunning looked uncomfortable. “I don’t know what it’s all about,” he said.
I felt sure that he was lying, and Merlini’s look said that he did too. But he let it lay. He turned to me again. “Go look for those guns. Never mind the study. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
I grumbled. “Some day I’m going to get myself elected D.A. and make you do the dirty work.” But I did as he asked. Leonard and I spent the next hour poking and prying. We went over the place from attic to wine cellar. We found no ghost and no guns, nothing but a cook and a serving maid in the kitchen, both of whom were on the verge of leaving. Phillips was trying to dissuade them.
“I don’t mind ghosts,” the cook was saying. “I don’t believe in ’em. But when the mistress starts shooting the place up—”
I didn’t blame her much. I could think of places I’d rather be, too.
As we started back to file our report, Galt came out of his bathroom and hurried up the stairs carrying a dripping photographic film. He seemed excited.
I caught up with him by the bedroom door. “Any luck?” I asked.
“Yes. Plenty.”
We went in. Wolff was watching Merlini take Dunning’s fingerprints.
Galt crossed to the nearest floor lamp and lifted off the shade. “Merlini,” he said, “after you’ve explained the vanishing trick, here’s a little something else you can go to work on.”
We all crowded around as he held the film up against the light.
The ghost was there right enough, and much more plainly visible than he had appeared to our eyes. The flash bulb had picked out details that had been hidden by the dark — the outline of the body beneath the face and the dark overcoat he wore. One hand was outstretched, pointing down toward the camera. And the reversal of values in the negative made him appear more ghostly than ever, a white figure with dark face and hands — an Al Jolson ghost in a shroud.
But it wasn’t funny, not when I saw what had excited Galt. The flash had caught something else that the darkness had concealed before, something that made the ghost’s sudden disappearance much more understandable. The background behind him, the baseboard and the pattern of the wallpaper on the corridor wall, showed clearly through his body. Our ghost was, as all good ghosts should be, transparent!
Chapter Ten:
Boy Meets Ghost
Ordinarily the photo wouldn’t have impressed me at all. Anyone who has ever seen a motion picture knows very well that the camera can tell far better lies than anything Ananias ever dreamed up. But, coming just when it did, the picture was — well, disconcerting.
I don’t know whether Merlini felt the same way, but in any event he wasn’t admitting it for the record. “Our astral friend,” he said, “seems to be suffering from an advanced case of malnutrition.”
He was the only one who even pretended to take it lightly. Dudley Wolff stared at the negative as though it were an angry bushmaster in the act of striking. Dunning scowled at it darkly with the nervous uncertain manner that was beginning to be a habit with him. The expression on Galt’s face was curiously mixed. He seemed pleased and excited over obtaining such a lulu of a spirit photo, and, at the same time, worried and annoyed.
Merlini, noticing this, asked, “Something wrong, Galt?”