“Yes,” I said. “I know who’s been trying to get Smith and who shot Wolff. I know—”
“That’s fine,” Sergeant Lovejoy growled. “Who did?” He glowered at me from the doorway.
“Go away,” I said. “Solve your own cases. I’m busy.” I forgot about him. “Kay, this is the pay-off. I only need one thing more. I’ve got to dope out how Smith did his vanishing act. Flint’s not going to like the answer unless I can—”
“He’s not going to like it unless you get started downstairs, either,” Lovejoy broke in heavily. “Both of you. He’s back and he wants everybody—”
Then, all at once, I saw it. As soon as I’d really accepted the fact that Smith had not killed Wolff, the answer jumped at me.
I felt like celebrating. In fact, I did celebrate. I kissed Kay.
“We’ll put the clinch in right here,” I said. “This is the last-act finale.”
“You’re sure?”
“Sure, I’m sure. It’s all over. From here on we can relax. Come on.”
But I was wrong about that. The atmosphere that we walked into when we entered the living-room downstairs was anything but relaxing. It was the tense, foreboding sort that precedes a thunderstorm.
Everyone was there. Mrs. Wolff, wearing a deep-blue hostess gown that gave her a Lady Macbeth appearance, sat stiffly erect in a high-backed chair before the fireplace. She watched Flint with cold dislike. Behind her, Doctor Haggard leaned against the mantelpiece, hands in his pockets, and an unlighted cigarette between his lips. His calm confident manner had been replaced by a glum scowling one. Francis Galt on the other hand was reacting oppositely. Usually fidgety and nervous, he now stood quietly near by, motionless except for an occasional quick movement of his eyes behind their thick round spectacles.
Dunning was there too, sitting limply in another chair, a white bandage around his head. He looked tired and his pale face was whiter than ever. Douglass, Phillips, and Leonard stood on the right against the wall. Scotty was as uneasy as ever, and worried wrinkles disturbed even the usually unruffled surface of the butler’s professional poker face. Leonard, oddly enough, was the only one of the lot who seemed to be at ease and who was not staring at Flint with a taut, wary intentness. He was, instead, watching the others with careful sidewise glances.
Tucker and Ryan stood by the door to the library looking official but worried. Merlini lay back in a low armchair, his long legs thrust out, apparently asleep. I would have given any odds that he was nothing of the sort.
From the center of the room a disgusted, angry, and belligerent lieutenant faced the group before the fireplace. He was issuing storm warnings. “Somebody,” he said, “has been lying like blazes. So we start all over. I’m going to take you one at a time and hear those stories again. And I’m going to keep doing it until somebody slips. Leonard, you’re first. In the library.”
The chauffeur hesitated a moment, then shrugged his shoulders, turned, and moved toward the library door. Ryan opened it and waited for him to go through. Flint stood a moment as though waiting for someone to say something. No one did. Then he crossed the room. Just as he reached the doorway and was about to go through, Merlini came to life.
“Lieutenant,” he said quickly, opening his eyes, “just a minute.” He sat up slowly as Flint stopped and turned. “There’s something that I want to say before you—”
Then it happened. On the opposite side of the room, just on the edge of my vision, something white moved. I jerked my head around. On the table, between the windows that overlooked the Sound, a Venetian-glass vase holding white narcissus had been standing. Now, and no one was within fifteen feet of it, the vase was unaccountably toppling forward.
The brief moment during which it tipped through its downward arc and then fell to shatter on the hardwood floor seemed endless. No one moved to catch it. No one was within miles of being near enough.
Another long utterly silent moment followed. Then Flint snapped out of it. “All of you,” he commanded, “stay exactly where you are!”
He ran across the room and bent above the flowers and the fragments of glass. Then he straightened and quickly examined the table top, making exploratory motions with his hands over it and along the wall. Tucker moved forward and joined him.
Flint found exactly what I was afraid he would find — nothing. But Tucker, a moment later, was more successful. I was afraid of what he found too.
He stood up suddenly. “Phillips, these flowers aren’t the same ones that were here earlier this morning. When’d you change them?”
“It was a little over an hour ago.”
“How much over? I want to know exactly.”
Merlini answered. “It was nearer an hour and a half. I saw him carrying the vase into the living-room shortly before the lieutenant and I left the house.” He looked at the three-cornered fragment of glass Tucker was holding between thumb and forefinger. “What is it? Fingerprint?”
Tucker didn’t answer. Instead he asked Phillips, “Was the vase washed when the flowers were changed?”
The butler nodded. “Yes, it was.”
This answer seemed to hit Tucker hard. He stood there for a moment without speaking, staring blankly at the glass in his hand.
Then Flint said, “Well, let’s have it. Whose print—”
Tucker’s answer was barely audible. The bottom had dropped out of his voice completely.
“It’s Smith’s,” he said.
The man who refused to stay dead, the man whose body had been lying on a cold slab at the morgue for nearly three hours, was back again.
Chapter Seventeen:
The Fine Art of Murder
Just when I thought I had found a silver lining in the cloud, the damned thing exploded thunder and lightning. I had been ready to guarantee my solution free from all supernatural impurities and had been sure that it would even meet the lieutenant’s specifications in that respect. I had exorcised the ghost completely, and, in the next moment, he was right back again just as lively as ever — and twice as dead!
All my answers, as far as I could see, were still good except that none of them would explain what had just happened. I knew how Smith had vanished both from Mrs. Wolff’s bedroom and from the study. But, even if he were still alive, those methods wouldn’t begin to explain how he could have come unseen into this room and tipped over that vase. They certainly wouldn’t explain it if he were dead. And worse, even if I disregarded the fingerprint, I saw no way anyone else could have managed it. That included the murderer. I couldn’t even see why the murderer would want to do it.
The one thing I did know was that I was not going to let a ghost come creeping back into my solution no matter what sort of fingerprint credentials he offered. He was, somehow, going to have to turn out to be the juggling trick he always had been. The thing to do was refer the matter to the technical expert in hocus-pocus, Merlini. It was in his department.
I turned and saw him making for the door to the hall. I caught him just before he went out.
“Just a minute,” I said. “Is Smith really dead this time, or isn’t he?”
“If he’s only pretending,” Merlini answered, “it’s as realistic a job of acting as I ever saw. We stopped at the morgue on our way back just now and had a look at most of him.”
“Most of him?”
“Yes. The medical examiner had removed a few pieces here and there for analysis.”
“And did you find out if his death was accidental or on purpose?”
“Well, there wasn’t anything wrong with the car that couldn’t have been caused by the smash, and the autopsy hasn’t turned up anything, so far at least, that contradicts an accidental death. The toxicological tests, of course, will take time.”