“I know I don’t,” Merlini added. “Think how Zareh Bey must have felt, especially if he came out of his trance and was using the shallow-breathing method. Four feet under, going through a nerve-racking feat of endurance that demands absolute calm and freedom from fear. Then, as the minutes go by, he begins to realize that something has gone wrong, that he has, perhaps, trusted someone far too much.” Merlini shivered. He picked up the clippings Flint had placed on the table and glanced through them.
“You know, Lieutenant,” he added, “I don’t think I much like the shape of things to come. If Zareh Bey is playing possum now, if he escapes from that ambulance, if he should get to someone before we know who, we might very well have another corpse on our hands. And there won’t be anything phony about it either.”
That gave me an idea. “Perhaps,” I said, “that’s what has already happened.”
Flint gave me a nervous look. “That means what?”
“Item one: Zareh Bey returns from the grave with blood in his eye and revenge in his heart. Item two: Dudley Wolff was murdered. One and two make three.
But no one paid any attention to my theory. Merlini made a sudden exclamation and passed one of the clippings he held to Flint.
“You missed something,” he said. “Our friend Galt is certainly a lot of help. Now we’ve not only got to show that Zareh Bey wasn’t dead when Haggard examined him, we’ve also got to prove he wasn’t dead when he first appeared in that study — before Wolff ever hit him! The ghost walks again!”
Flint stared at the clipping openmouthed. I got a look and did the same.
The item, from a New York paper, consisted of a long list of names in caps. Halfway down one name was ringed with blue pencil. It was Zareh Bey’s. The dateline at the top was September 8, 1934. The headline read: Dead in Morro Castle Fire.
The library door opened, but no one looked around.
Then Sergeant Lovejoy’s voice said, “What’s all this about the ghost not being dead? He’s got an arm broken in two places, enough lacerations to kill three men, and a skull cracked open wide enough to drive a truck through. He’s dead all right!”
“Sergeant,” Merlini said, “you have no idea how dead he is.”
Chapter Sixteen:
The Persistent Ghost
What we all needed at that moment more than anything else was a week or two in bed in a quiet secluded sanitarium with no visitors allowed. Instead we got Lovejoy’s story. It was not, by any stretch of the imagination, soothing.
He gave it to us rapidly. “That drive out front is so damn full of curves that I couldn’t see which way the car we were following turned when it hit the Post Road. I stopped cars from both directions, found a guy who’d seen the Cadillac heading toward Mamaroneck, and got going again. Then I checked at Nichols’s gas station and they’d seen him make the turn into Barry Avenue on two wheels. That looked like maybe he was aiming for the Parkway, so I did the same. There wasn’t much chance of overhauling him because he didn’t have to stop to ask questions like I did, but I was hoping somebody might nab him for speeding. On the Parkway I turn toward New York figuring that was the best bet and—”
“Look, Sherlock,” Flint cut in impatiently, “skip the deductions. Just tell me where he smashed up and how.”
“It was a couple of miles the other side of Mount Vernon. The alarm you sent out had a Parkway cop waiting at the toll gate at the bridge. Garner sees him eyeing the license numbers, steps on the gas, and shoots through without paying his dime. The cop lit out after him. He says he had his bus up to its limit and was losing ground when the Cadillac suddenly begins to slow up. Then, just as he is pulling up even and for no reason at all it’s on a straight stretch — the car edges over and starts cutting across the eastbound lane. There are two cars coming. The first just manages to duck him, but he sideswipes the next and then crashes head on into a lamppost.
“He’s still hitting at least sixty when this happens and Garner doesn’t stop as sudden as the car does. He takes a header into the windshield. They’ll be a week picking out the glass. He’s dead all right.”
Flint riffled through the newspaper clippings, found the one that bore Zareh Bey’s picture, and handed it to Lovejoy. “He look anything like that?”
The sergeant nodded at once. “Yeah, that’s him.” He took an envelope from his pocket, opened it, and started to remove the card it held. “And I had ’em take his prints as soon as we—”
Tucker stepped forward, snatched the fingerprint card from his hands, and put a magnifying glass on it all in one movement.
Flint looked over his shoulder. “How long’ll it take you to check—”
“They’ll check,” Tucker said gloomily. “I’d know these prints in my sleep I’ve seen enough of ’em. They’re the ghost’s.”
Flint sat down. He looked tired and his voice was discouraged. “First he introduces himself as Smith. Wolff socks him. Haggard pronounces him dead. Then he turns out to have identification that says he’s a dick named Garner. They bury him. He won’t stay in his grave. He comes back and haunts the joint. Then he gets killed again.” Flint looked at Lovejoy. “And you identify him as Zareh Bey, an Algerian whirling dervish who’s been dead eight years. The hell with it.”
Lovejoy’s jaw dropped. “Dead eight years? An Algerian whirling—” He shook his head dazedly. “I don’t get it.”
“Who does?” Flint said. “Find anything on him?”
Lovejoy, still blinking, said, “What? Oh, yeah. Sure. I found plenty.”
He took several handkerchief-wrapped parcels from his overcoat pockets, placed them on the table before Flint, and opened one.
“Billfold,” he said, “but no identification. Small change, pencil, handkerchief, that sort of thing. And two flashlights.”
One was an expensive model streamlined in blue plastic. Lovejoy picked up the other, a cheap dime-store affair that had no glass covering its bulb. When he pressed the button it failed to light.
“Dent in the side, too,” the sergeant added. “And, if it matches those pieces of glass we found in the study, it proves he was there. Probably what he socked Harte with.”
Flint nodded and picked up the other light.
“That one’s Kay’s,” I said. “It’s the one she keeps in her car.”
Lovejoy opened a second parcel. “And this,” he said proudly, “puts the case on ice. It was in the glove compartment in the dash. It’s not loaded, but it’s been fired.”
It was the missing vest-pocket revolver. Its grip was a curved hollow shell of metal which, with the trigger, was folded in and forward along the underside of the cylinder. Flint straightened them out. The thing looked more like a gun then, a tiny freak of a weapon, its barrel hardly longer than the cartridges it fired. But there was an efficient deadliness in its compact design and in the cold glint of the metal that belied its toylike appearance.
“Prints?” Flint asked.
Lovejoy shook his head regretfully. “No. It’s been cleaned.” He unwrapped the other parcel. “But his prints are on this. It was in his coat pocket.”
A queer-looking object lay in the center of the handkerchief. An oblong block of metal with a hole running through it the long way was mounted on a rectangular steel frame that had screw holes at each corner. I saw what looked like a firing pin and a projecting triggerlike lever. Tied to the latter was a length of string which the sergeant unrolled, disclosing a small loop at its other end. The handkerchief also held five long-shanked metal thumbtacks of the sort that I had noticed were used to fasten the explanatory cards to the wall beneath the various exhibits in the gun room.