“Not emanations,” Merlini replied. “Exhumations. The bodies were found to have changed position in ways that indicated movement after burial. And post-mortems disclosed that death was due not to the certified cause, but to asphyxia.”
The lieutenant turned to Doctor Haggard. “Well, what about it? He’s saying that the medical profession doesn’t know for sure when a man’s dead.”
Haggard, who had been frowning intently at the empty grave, looked up, first at Merlini and then at Flint. Slowly he said, “I’m afraid he’s right about premature burial. He seems to have been reading Hartmann and Tebb.[1] Another authority on the subject, LeGuern, collected evidence of over twenty-three hundred cases and came to the conclusion that as many as three in every thousand interments might — this was before embalming became general practice of course — be premature ones.
“Death can be a very difficult thing to determine. There is only one absolutely certain sign — decomposition. But unless the man I saw was a schizophrenic — cataleptic coma occurs commonly in that disease — or unless he was otherwise ill or suffering from acute hysteria, I don’t see—”
Haggard glanced again at the grave. “The empty grave proves nothing. I’m inclined to agree that Douglass’s taste for stimulants—”
Merlini interrupted. “You keep forgetting that there are other witnesses as well. You, yourself, identified the image in Galt’s photograph as being that of the dead man.” He looked at Flint. “And Mrs. Wolff did the same, didn’t she?”
Flint nodded. “Yeah, but—”
“And, if they are the same,” Merlini went on, “lots of witnesses beside Scotty here have seen the corpse in motion. Mrs. Wolff, Miss Wolff, Phillips, Dunning, Galt, Harte, myself—”
“Dammit,” Flint burst out, “even if I should admit catalepsy—” he used the word gingerly as if afraid it might bite—“and I’m not saying I do, you aren’t going to make me believe that anyone could stay in that hole in the ground, under four feet of sand and earth, for one solid hour unless—” Flint gave Merlini a sudden suspicious scowl—“unless he’s a magician!”
Merlini grinned. “I think you may have something there. Only, just because I’m so handy, don’t start barking up the wrong magician. The one that climbed up out of this grave was a conjurer of another color. Do you know anything about the magic of Egypt, Algiers, and India?”
Flint looked anything but interested. “No. I don’t. I’ve got along so far without it.”
“Then perhaps this is where you change cars. The prize item in the Eastern fakirs’ bag of tricks is voluntary burial alive for varying periods in an apparent state of suspended animation. I think I’ll go back to the house. It’s chilly out here.” He moved as if to start off.
Flint snapped, “You stay where you are!” He looked as if he felt the course of the investigation slipping out of control, and as if he didn’t at all like the direction in which it was going. I had qualms myself.
Merlini turned.
Flint went on, “You said tricks. The stunts they do are all monkey business with trap doors, secret exits, air tubes. That’s why they’re called fakirs. Garner, if I’m to believe anything I’ve been told, had an impromptu burial in a spot he couldn’t possibly have predicted. That grave doesn’t show the slightest sign of hocus-pocus. It’s four feet deep. There wasn’t any coffin. He was in it for an hour. No Egyptian, Algerian, or Hindu—”
“Now,” Merlini put in, “you’re trespassing on my department. The world’s all-time record for lying still is held by Marguerite Bozenval, ‘The Dormouse of Menelles.’ Her sad case would give any practical joker pause. She had an illegitimate child when she was twenty-one and a girl friend told her, as a joke, that the gendarmes were coming to arrest her. Hysterical, she became unconscious and stayed that way, fed through a tube, for twenty years. She regained consciousness in 1903 a few hours before she died.
“And the probable world’s champion emulator of Lazarus was the Fakeer of Lahore who, in 1837, at the court of Runjeet Singh, was triply encased in a linen bag, a padlocked box, and a stone vault that was sealed and guarded day and night by a squad of British soldiers supplied by the then Governor General of India, Sir Claude Wade. The Fakeer, still alive, though somewhat shriveled and stiff, came out of his trance little the worse for wear after six weeks!”
Flint was unconvinced.
“Believe-It-or-Not Ripley lives down the road a piece. Remind me to introduce you sometime. The two of you would get along swell. You can believe that was the longdistance trance and non-eating record if you want but it looks to me like the corporal of the guard collected some fix money. Besides, that guy wasn’t filed away underground. A padlocked box and a stone vault, probably with barred windows, wouldn’t be so airtight. Can’t you skip the Sunday-supplement yarns that have nothing to do with the case?”
“All right,” Merlini grinned. “I’ll stick to underground burials. Another Hindu is reported by Sir James Braid to have been buried five feet down, his grave guarded, and corn planted in the earth above it which sprouted and grew to a height of several inches before he was exhumed. There are other recorded cases of burials lasting from three to thirty days, the best authenticated of which is probably that reported from Tunis by Harry Price, secretary of the University of London Council for Psychic Research, who was present when an Algerian fakir was exhumed after a ten-day burial. He states that the grave had been guarded throughout, that he personally examined it and found no slightest evidence of trickery — and he’s an experienced investigator who knows all the tricks. The linen bag that shrouded the performer was almost entirely covered with a green mildew, the symptoms of a rigid trance were present — bloodless face, teeth set so tightly they had to be pried apart with a knife, body as cold as ice, no discernible heart action detectible by an attending physician.[2]
“Price thinks that the man may have used some narcotic or alkaloid to help induce the trance, although I suppose it might be argued that anyone who would let himself be buried for ten days where no help could possibly reach him in time, if anything went wrong, is so mad that his catalepsy is undoubtedly due to schizophrenia or some such mental derangement. But, except for the cataleptic coma, which they apparently induce at will, they show no other signs of that disease. Human hibernation—”
Flint stopped him. “For God’s sake! Human hibernation! If this is the beginning of a cheery and exhaustive treatise with lantern slides on Why People Are Bears, or the Economic and Social Aspects of Life in a Coffin, I’m going out to the box office now and demand a refund. Those cases are all ancient history, and, witnesses or not, at this distance we’ve no way of knowing how reputable they are. They sound like screwballs. Stop riding your hobby and get down to—”
“Well,” Merlini said, “that corn growing over the grave does sound a bit as if someone exaggerated some. But history isn’t as dead a subject as the police appear to think — especially not the history of premature burial and voluntary interment. Quickly, before my audience walks out entirely, I’m going to mention Rahman Bey. He’s what I was leading up to all along anyway. And the date, 1926, isn’t so ancient. You’ll find armloads of newspaper clippings documenting the case at the public library. It made headlines from here to the coast and back.
“Egyptian, Algerian, and a good bit of Hindu magic consists in the display of apparently supernormal physical feats — demonstrations of the fakir’s ability to withstand, or not to feel, pain when swords and knives are plunged into his body or when the flesh is exposed to flame, and demonstrations of voluntary control over such usually involuntary biological actions as the pulse rate and the circulatory system. The Mavlevee whirling dervishes, the Algerian sect of Aissauas, the Hindu fakirs, commonly practice such feats both in connection with religious rituals and among the street performers as entertainment.
1
Burial Alive. — Dr. Franz Hartmann, Boston, 1895; Premature Burial and How It May Be Prevented, with special reference to trance, catalepsy, and other forms of suspended animation. — William Tebb, F.R.G.S., and Colonel Edward Perry Vollurn, M.D., Swan Sonnennschein & Co., Ltd., London, 1905.