Then Merlini woke up. “Inspector,” he asked, “where are you going?”
Gavigan turned, scowling. “Anywhere,” he said, “where I don’t have to look at telephone booths. Do you have any suggestions?”
Merlini moved forward. “One, yes. Let’s eat.”
Gavigan didn’t look as if he could keep anything in his stomach stronger than weak chicken broth, but he nodded absently. We got into Gavigan’s car and Brady drove us crosstown, stopping, at Merlini’s direction, in front of the Williston building.
The Inspector objected, “There aren’t any decent restaurants in this neighbourhood. Why-”
“Don’t argue,” Merlini said as he got out. “If Zyyzk’s latest prediction comes off, this will be my last meal on earth. I want to eat here. Come on.” He crossed the pavement toward a flashing green and purple neon sign that blinked: Johnson’s Cafeteria. Open All Night.
Merlini was suddenly acting almost as strangely as Zyyzk. I knew very well that this wasn’t the sort of place he’d pick for his last meal and, although he claimed to be hungry, I noticed that all he put on his tray was crackers and a bowl of soup. Pea soup at that – something he heartily disliked.
Then, instead of going to a table off in a corner where we could talk, he chose one right in the centre of the room. He even selected our places for us. “You sit there, Inspector. You there, Ross. And excuse me a moment. I’ll be right back.” With that he turned, crossed to the street door through which we had come, and vanished through it.
“I think,” I told Gavigan, “that he’s got a bee in his bonnet.”
The Inspector grunted. “You mean bats. In his belfry.” He gave the veal cutlet on his plate a glum look.
Merlini was gone perhaps five minutes. When he returned, he made no move to sit down. He leaned over the table and asked, “Either of you got a nickel?”
I found one and handed it to him. Suspiciously, Gavigan said, “I thought you wanted to eat?”
“I must make a phone call first,” the magician answered. “And with Zyyzk’s prediction hanging over me, I’d just as soon you both watched me do it. Look out the window behind me, watch that empty booth – the second from the right. And keep your eyes on it every second.” He glanced at his wrist watch. “If I’m not back here in exactly three minutes, you’d better investigate.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. Neither did Gavigan. He started to object. “Now, wait a minute. You’re not going-”
But Merlini had already gone. He moved with long strides toward the street door, and the Inspector half rose from his chair as if to go after him. Then, when Gavigan saw what lay beyond the window, he stopped. The window we both faced was in a side wall at right angles to the street, and it opened, not to the outside, but into the arcade that runs through the Williston building.
Through the glass we could see a twenty-foot stretch of the arcade’s opposite wall and against it, running from side to side, was a row of half a dozen phone booths.
I took a quick look at the clock on the wall above the window just as Merlini vanished through the street door. He reappeared at once in the arcade beyond the window, went directly to the second booth from the right, and went inside. The door closed.
“I don’t like this,” I said. “In three minutes the time will be exactly-”
“Quiet!” Gavigan commanded.
“-exactly nine o’clock,” I finished. “Zyyzk’s deadline!”
“He’s not going to pull this off,” Gavigan said. “You keep your eyes on that booth. I’m going outside and watch it from the street entrance. When the time’s up, join me.”
I heard his chair scrape across the floor as he got up, but I kept my eyes glued to the scene beyond the window – more precisely to one section of it – the booth into which Merlini had gone. I could see the whole face of the door from top to bottom and the dim luminescence of the light inside.
Nothing happened.
The second hand on the wall clock moved steadily, but much too slowly. At five seconds to the hour I found myself on my feet. And when the hand hit twelve I moved fast. I went through the door, turned left, and found Gavigan just inside the arcade entrance, his eyes fixed on the booth.
“Okay,” he said without turning his head. “Come on.”
We hurried forward together. The Inspector jerked the door of the second booth open. The light inside blinked out.
Inside, the telephone receiver dangled, still swaying, by its cord.
The booth was empty.
Except for one thing. I bent down and picked it up off the floor – Merlini’s shiny silver dollar.
Gavigan swore. Then he pushed me aside, stepped into the booth and lifted the receiver. His voice was none too steady. He said one word into the phone.
“Hello?”
Leaning in behind him, I heard the voice that replied -Merlini’s voice making a statement that was twice as impossible as anything that had happened yet.
“Listen carefully,” it said. “And don’t ask questions now. I’m at 1462-12 Astoria Avenue, the Bronx. Got that? 1462-12 Astoria. Keeler’s here – and a murderer! Hurry!”
The tense urgency of that last command sent a cold shiver down my spine. Then I heard the click as the connection was broken.
Gavigan stood motionless for a second, holding the dead phone. Then the surging flood of his emotions spilled over. He jiggled the receiver frantically and swore again.
“Blast it! This phone is dead!”
I pulled myself out of a mental tailspin, found a nickel, and dropped it in the slot. Gavigan’s verbal fireworks died to a mutter as he heard the dial tone and he jabbed savagely at the dial.
A moment later the Telegraph Bureau was broadcasting a bowdlerized version of Gavigan’s orders to the prowl cars in the Astoria Avenue neighbourhood. And Gavigan and I were running for the street and his own car. Brady saw us coming, gunned his motor, and the instant we were aboard, took off as though jet-powered. He made a banked turn into Fifth Avenue against a red light, and we raced uptown, siren screaming.
If Zyyzk had been there beside us, handing out dire predictions that we were headed straight for the Pearly Gates, I wouldn’t have doubted him for a moment. We came within inches of that destination half a dozen times as we roared swerving through the crosstown traffic.
The Astoria address wasn’t hard to find. There were three prowl cars parked in front of it and two uniformed cops on the front porch. One sat on the floor, his back to the wall, holding a limp arm whose sleeve was stained with blood. There were two round bullet holes in the glass of the door above him. As we ran up the walk, the sound of gun fire came from the rear of the house and the second cop lifted his foot, kicked in a front window, and crawled in through the opening, gun in hand.
The wounded man made a brief report as we passed him. “Nobody answered the door,” he said. “But when we tried to crash the joint, somebody started shooting.”
Somebody was still shooting. Gavigan, Brady, and I went through the window and toward the sound. The officer who had preceded us was in the kitchen, firing around the jamb of the back door. An answering gun blazed in the dark outside and the cop fired at the flash.
“Got him, I think,” the cop said. Then he slipped out through the door, moved quickly across the porch and down the steps. Brady followed him.
Gavigan’s pocket-flash suddenly sent out a thin beam of light. It started a circuit of the kitchen, stopped for a moment as it picked up movement just outside the door, and we saw a third uniformed man pull himself to a sitting position on the porch floor, look at the bloodstain on his trouser leg, and swear.