“I wasn’t meaning anything,” he evaded. “I was just commenting.”
“All right, comment on this. From the highhanded confident way you’ve been carrying on, I think you know who the zombi is. How am I going to write your memoirs if I never get told anything? Who is he?”
“Ross, you fire questions about as fast as a late-model machine gun. I’m punch drunk. Who do you think he is?”
“I know who he’s not. I’ll give you two to one he’s nothing as ordinary as a detective named Garner, not if he’s the cataleptic-trance expert you say.”
“I won’t take the bet,” Merlini said. “That beard of his never did fit the Garner picture anyway. It’s not exactly what the well-dressed dick wears these days. Even false whiskers went out of style some time back.”
“And,” I added, “if he’s not Garner, then the identification Wolff found on him was either phony or—” I paused, not liking the alternative that presented itself.
Merlini gave me a quick sideways glance. “Or what?”
“Well, when you consider the bloodthirsty habits our zombi has, I’m wondering where the real Mr. Garner is and what the state of his health may be at the moment.”
Merlini’s voice told me that he had also thought of the possibility. But all he said was, “Don’t count your corpses before you come to them.”
I disagreed. “Why not? It’s less of a shock to expect them than to run into them suddenly. And stop evading me. If the mystery man’s not Garner, who is he?”
“I don’t know, Ross. Cross my heart. But I’ll bet you a nice new coffin your size that he’ll turn out to be a professional fakir who has or once had an act featuring the burial alive. And I’ll throw in a ‘Gates Ajar’ floral wreath if Francis Galt doesn’t know who he is.”
“Galt?”
“Yes. I rather thought from the uneasy way he acted at the time that he recognized the figure in the spirit photo. Now I’m sure of it. As part of his psychic research Galt keeps a weather eye on such performers.”
“So,” I said suspiciously, “and that brings up the question: Why has he been keeping it mum?”
I got my answer to that one in just about ten seconds flat. As we entered the house again we found Francis Galt in the hall just outside the library door. Beyond it Lieutenant Flint’s voice could be heard boiling into a phone.
Galt looked at us uncertainly, his shrewd gray eyes round behind their spectacles. His hands made nervous half-finished gestures.
“The grave was empty?” he asked.
“How,” Merlini replied, “did you know about that?”
“I helped put Dunning to bed. He’s not fully conscious, but he’s talking. I gathered that he seems to think it was the ghost that hit him, and that the ghost is that of a man he helped bury. Also the lieutenant seems upset.”
“He’s going to be even more upset,” Merlini said, “when he discovers that you’ve known all this time who the ghost is, but denied it. All I need to do now to find that out is phone a few booking agents. It might be simpler all the way around if you told us.”
Galt gave him a sharp glance. “Apparently you’re getting warm. Yes, I’ll tell you. I was intending to tell Lieutenant Flint as soon as he was free.”
Galt drew an envelope from his pocket, opened it, and took out several newspaper clippings. He started to hand them to Merlini just as Flint, coming through the doorway behind him, said, “I’ll take those.”
I managed to glimpse a few headlines as the lieutenant spread the clippings out.
Algerian Magician Presents Eastern Magic
Fakir Outwits Death Underground
Zareh Bey Baffles Doctors In Underwater Burial
There was a half-tone cut with one story that showed a white-robed figure being lowered into a hole in the ground. Another was a close-up of the performer’s face. Zareh Bey’s dark-eyed, bearded features were the same as those in Galt’s phantom portrait.
The glare Flint aimed at Galt could have been used for smashing atoms. “And why haven’t I seen these before now?”
“I just got them,” Galt explained nervously. “I phoned, had my assistant get them from the files and send them out by messenger.”
“Why have you been denying all along that you knew who the ghost was?”
“I wasn’t sure. You’ll notice that the dates on those clippings are all nine or ten years back. I haven’t looked at them since I filed them. I didn’t want to make any sensational statements that might not be true.”
Hint glared at him a moment longer. Then he said, “Stick around. I’ll want to see you. Tucker, bring Merlini and Harte in here.” He went back into the library.
When the door closed he scowled darkly at Merlini and said, “I’ve just had a report from the FBI. They never heard of anyone named Garner. So that’s that. The identity card he had was a phony. And you think he’s an Algerian whirling dervish who egged Wolff into socking him one, popped off into his suspended-animation song and dance, and let himself be buried alive, all so Wolff would think he’d killed a man and be on the spot for some really high-powered blackmail. Is that it?”
“You don’t sound too happy about it,” Merlini said. “But it may not be as farfetched as you’re trying to make it sound. Wolff’s temper was notorious and dependable. Getting a rise out of him was a cinch. Most people didn’t even have to try very hard. Zareh Bey, waiting for the blow, rolled with it. If his repertoire included Hamid’s stunt of having boulders smashed with a sledge hammer on his chest, he’d know how to take a punch in the jaw without—”
Then Flint popped a question that the catechism I’d thrown at Merlini hadn’t included. It was a honey. “And how,” he wanted to know, “did Mr. Bey plan to squirm out from under four feet of earth? Is he an escape artist too?”
“I think,” Merlini said slowly, “that if it had been me I’d have made arrangements to have someone dig me up.”
Flint nodded. “Douglass. This story of his about being scared is a little thick. And he was probably paid to take it on the lam too.” He started toward the door again. “I’ll find out or know—”
Merlini stopped him. “Wait, Lieutenant. If Scotty was cast in the role of digger-up, he’d have started his excavating a lot sooner than he did. He wouldn’t have had to go back to the house for a spade; he’d have had one ready. Zareh Bey wouldn’t take chances on an hour burial when a fifteen-minute one would do as well. Not unless we’re hunting a loony.”
“I don’t need to hunt loonies,” Flint came back. “You’re not making sense. If there was some other accomplice ready and waiting to dig into the grave right after the burial, it would have been empty when Scotty came back.”
“Yes,” Merlini agreed calmly. “It would unless the person who’d promised to do the digging happened to — well, forget about it.”
I blinked. There were more rabbits in the hat after all. They were parading out, two abreast!
“Forget,” Flint said suspiciously. “What do you mean forget?” The dawn was beginning to break over him as it was over me. But he wanted to hear Merlini say it. Merlini did, with trimmings.
“Perhaps I was being a bit generous. To put it bluntly, Zareh Bey’s assistant might have decided to make the fake murder genuine. By the exceedingly simple device of just leaving him there. That’s a murder device for the book. Get your victim to let himself be buried alive, then fail to dig him up! You kill him off merely by not doing something. It’s simple, neat, and, if the burial is secret, about as sure-fire as they come.”
Flint scowled at him. “You’re certainly not making this case any simpler. If you’re right I don’t think I care for the way someone’s mind works.”