“He had another flashlight on him when Lovejoy found his body.”
“A flashlight,” Merlini objected, “which you have identified as the one Kay kept in her car. But would Smith have it up there in the bedroom at that time? Would he have taken it earlier when there was nothing wrong with his own? He couldn’t have foreseen that he was going to tangle with you. He couldn’t—”
“Okay. There’s a lamp in the room. He took that over to the window—”
Merlini shook his head obstinately. “You’re clutching at straws. That lamp’s on the opposite side of the room and there’s no base plug or other outlet near enough to the window. There were no spare flashlights at hand in that bedroom either. I know because I searched it earlier when you and Leonard searched the rest of the house. I’m very much afraid that you’ve pushed Mr. Smith right out on the end of a long and shaky limb. You’ve said that he vanished from the bedroom first by not going into it but by going into the study instead. Then you explain him out of the study right back into the bedroom.
“You’ve left him standing by the window fiddling with a broken flashlight and listening, a moment later, to hell breaking loose in the hall outside. He hears the sound of shots and my pounding on the study door. The hallway fills up with people. A police car arrives and parks in the drive outside, smack at the foot of the trellis. Episode thirteen of The Perils of Mr. Smith will be shown next week at this theater.”
“And yet,” Flint added, “when we carried Mrs. Wolff in and put her to bed he wasn’t there. He didn’t go through the bathroom into Wolff’s room because that’s where we put you to bed. Maybe he went down the drain?”
“Or passed,” Merlini suggested, “as dry ice does, directly from a solid to gaseous state leaving no residue. The invisible man rides again. And that reminds me of the strange affair of the unsteady flower vases. Smith could have caused all the other poltergeist phenomena, but what about the vase that Kay and Phillips saw fall when no one else was there? And what about the one that tipped over in the living-room just now when everyone was there — everyone but the dead man whose fingerprint was on it? That’s question number four. Do you have that answer, Ross, or does the program’s sponsor have to send another encyclopedia to Mr. Z. B. Smith, Brimstone Manor, Purgatory Avenue, Hell?”
“No,” I said, “I don’t have the answer. But you’re acting as though you did. All right, if your theory ties up those loose ends, let’s hear it.”
“My theory?” he asked innocently. “Do I have to have one? Can’t a critic give his opinion of an omelet without being asked to lay an egg?”
Flint stepped up to the plate swinging. “I know damn well you’ve got a theory. I don’t think I’m going to like it either, but I want to hear it just the same. And right now!”
Merlini frowned, glanced at his wrist watch, frowned again, and then admitted grudgingly, “Well, I do have one or two ideas, but it’s a bit soon to—”
“No,” Flint said flatly. “Nothing doing. You may be able to pull that one on your friend Inspector Gavigan, but it doesn’t go with me. You’ve read too many detective stories where the amateur mastermind holds out his solution until last. Not this time you don’t. I’m giving you mine last, and you can count on that. Now talk!”
Merlini said, “Oh, you’ve got it solved too, have you?”
“Yes. Strangely enough I have. This is the pay-off. It’s all over but the shouting.”
Merlini glanced again at his watch. “Shouting?” he asked, and then added, ominously, “Or shooting?”
The lieutenant stepped toward him belligerently. “What do you mean by that? What are you waiting for?”
Merlini got to his feet. His facetious manner of a moment ago was suddenly gone. “Murder,” he said quietly. “There’s one more yet to come. It’s billed to go on almost any minute now. Upstairs in the study. I think we should attend.”
The solemn, completely serious way in which he spoke threw Flint off balance. He stared for a moment and then shook his head as if trying to wake from a bad dream.
“The hell it is. What are you trying to pull off now? How do you know that? Why—”
Merlini’s answer was short and devastating. “I arranged it.”
Chapter Nineteen:
The Spiders and the Fly
Merlini should have disappeared in a puff of smoke. The look Flint gave him was deadly enough.
The lieutenant jerked his thumb toward the livingroom. “The whole crowd’s in there,” he said, “And they’re going to stay there. That doesn’t get you a murder upstairs in the study.”
Merlini nodded. “I know, but you can’t keep them there forever. Sooner or later—”
“You think someone’s crazy enough to try another murder with the house full of cops?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised. All murderers are more or less insane. This one is desperate. Besides, just to make sure that it comes off, I want you to leave the house and remove your men.”
“Oh, you do, do you?”
“Yes. It will be a quite harmless murder and the victim won’t mind a bit. He’s quite used to it by now. You see, the victim will be the same man the murderer has already tried to get three times. Mr. Smith — Zareh Bey, the man who defies death, the man who—”
Flint glared at the magician. “Are you trying to tell me that the man we saw at the morgue is someone else, that Smith is still alive, still here in this house?”
No. Smith is Zareh Bey. He is the man in the morgue. He’s dead. But the people in the next room don’t know that. And one of them has an appointment upstairs in the study with Smith.”
“How do you know that?”
“I made the appointment. I thought that the murderer, hearing nothing of any traffic accident, would suppose that the dry-ice scheme had failed and might not be too surprised to hear from Smith. So I brought him back from the dead again, a bit of necromancy that wasn’t difficult to accomplish when you consider that it’s none too easy to identify voices over a telephone.”
Flint glared at Merlini angrily. “You did what?”
“I phoned someone, pretended to be Smith, and said that I’d come back here as soon as the police had gone.”
“Who,” Flint demanded savagely, “did you phone?”
If Flint’s manner worried Merlini, he didn’t show it. “I phoned a person against whom we haven’t a scrap of decent evidence, the person who may give us what we need by making the mistake of walking through that study door, very probably prepared to make a last desperate attempt to eliminate Smith once and for all. If you pretend to send away your men and if we secretly station ourselves in the study—”
Flint was incredulous. “Do you think I’ll play along on a stunt like that unless I know who you phoned?”
“I hope so,” Merlini said seriously. “It’s our only chance of getting evidence that will convict.”
“And who told you,” Flint said coldly, “that you could be the judge of that? When were you put in charge of this case?”
“I’m sorry, Lieutenant. You’re quite right. But I can’t tell you who I phoned. I know exactly what would happen if I did. You wouldn’t like my answer. You’d give me an argument and you’d want proof of a kind I can’t give you. While we argued we’d miss our chance. Even if I managed to convince you that I was right, I’m afraid that you would think my trap is too theatrical. You’re not used to doing things that way. It’s not recommended by the manual of procedure. You’d want to use the orthodox tactics — make an arrest and hope that a taste of jail and some third degree would get results. That may work sometimes, but when a murderer is as clever and as stubborn as events have indicated this one is, you wouldn’t get to first base.”