The Mammoth Book of Locked-Room Mysteries And Impossible Crimes

opened the safe and got the stones? To get us into the room, I said.

“Only the alarm alone would have done that. There had to be another reason. All at once it came to me. He killed the guard just to have a way of hiding the stones on the body and getting them out!”

They all looked down at the uniformed man who was just beginning to groan as he came awake. There was a certain admiration in the eyes of the police.

“He knew we wouldn’t search the dead man until you got him to the morgue,” Slot-Machine said. “So he had to get the stones from the body before it reached the slab. It was quite simple. He just hid in the wagon. Who would think to look for him there?”

Later, in the tavern where Joe Harris was working, Ed Green leaned on the bar beside Slot-Machine Kelly and bought Slot a fourth expensive Irish whisky. Green was still admiring Slot.

“You just got to think logical,” Slot-Machine explained. “Figure the odds. Miracles are out, so there has to be a simple explanation. The more complicated it looks in real life, the simpler it has to be when you figure it out.”

“You make it sound easy,” Green said. “Have another shot.”

“Twist his arm,” Joe said as he poured. “The thinker. So it turned out it was Julius Honder, right?”

“Yeah,” Slot said as he tasted his Irish whisky happily. “He needed cash. Too bad he needed a corpse. He’ll fry crisp as bacon.”

OFF THE FACE OF THE EARTH by Clayton Rawson

Clayton Rawson (1906-71) was one of the masters of the impossible crime story. He was by profession a stage magician, or more properly an illusionist, and he subsequently wrote a series of novels and short stories featuring The Great Merlini as the magician expert called in by the police to solve the latest unusual crime. The first book, Death from a Top Hat (1938), which dealt with a series of crimes involving magicians, was filmed as Miracles for Sale (1939) and established Rawson with a second career as an author and editor. Rawson and John Dickson Carr used to love setting each other challenges for stories. The following story arose when Carr challenged Rawson to write a story in which someone walks into a telephone booth and vanishes. See if you can work out how it’s done.

***

The lettering in neat gilt script on the door read: Miracles For Sale, and beneath it was the familiar rabbit-from-a-hat trademark. Inside, behind the glass showcase counter, in which was displayed as unlikely an assortment of objects as could be got together in one spot, stood The Great Merlini.

He was wrapping up half a dozen billiard balls, several bouquets of feather flowers, a dove pan, a Talking Skull, and a dozen decks of cards for a customer who snapped his fingers and nonchalantly produced the needed number of five-dollar bills from thin air. Merlini rang up the sale, took half a carrot from the cash drawer, and gave it to the large white rabbit who watched proceedings with a pink sceptical eye from the top of a nearby escape trunk. Then he turned to me.

“Clairvoyance, mind-reading, extrasensory perception,” he said. “We stock only the best grade. And it tells me that you came to pick up the two Annie Oakleys I promised to get you for that new hit musical. I have them right here.”

But his occult powers slipped a bit. He looked in all his coat pockets one after another, found an egg, a three-foot length of rope, several brightly-coloured silk handkerchiefs, and a crumpled telegram reading: NEED INVISIBLE MAN AT ONCE. SHIP UNIONTOWN BY MONDAY. – NEMO THE ENIGMA. Then he gave a surprised blink and scowled darkly at a sealed envelope that he had fished out of his inside breast pocket.

“That,” I commented a bit sarcastically, “doesn’t look like a pair of theatre tickets.”

He shook his head sadly. “No. It’s a letter my wife asked me to mail a week ago.”

I took it from him. “There’s a mail chute by the elevators about fifteen feet outside your door. I’m no magician, but I can remember to put this in it on my way out.” I indicated the telegram that lay on the counter. “Since when have you stocked a supply of invisible men? That I would like to see.”

Merlini frowned at the framed slogan: Nothing Is Impossible which hung above the cash register. “You want real miracles, don’t you? We guarantee that our invisible man can’t be seen. But if you’d like to see how impossible it is to see him, step right this way.”

In the back, beyond his office, there is a larger room that serves as workshop, shipping department and, on occasion, as a theatre. I stood there a moment later and watched Merlini step into an upright coffin-shaped box in the centre of the small stage. He faced me, smiled, and snapped his fingers. Two copper electrodes in the side walls of the cabinet spat flame, and a fat, green, electric spark jumped the gap just above his head, hissing and writhing. He lifted his arms; the angry stream of energy bent, split in two, fastened on his fingertips, and then disappeared as he grasped the gleaming spherical electrodes, one with each hand.

For a moment nothing happened; then, slowly, his body began to fade into transparency as the cabinet’s back wall became increasingly visible through it. Clothes and flesh melted until only the bony skeletal structure remained. Suddenly, the jawbone moved and its grinning white teeth clicked as Merlini’s voice said:

“You must try this, Ross. On a hot day like today, it’s most comfortable.”

As it spoke, the skeleton also wavered and grew dim. A moment later it was gone and the cabinet was, or seemed to be, empty. If Merlini still stood there, he was certainly invisible.

“Okay, Gypsy Rose Lee,” I said. “I have now seen the last word in strip-tease performances.” Behind me I heard the office door open and I looked over my shoulder to see Inspector Gavigan giving me a fishy stare. “You’d better get dressed again,” I added. “We have company.”

The Inspector looked around the room and at the empty stage, then at me again, cautiously this time. “If you said what I think you did-”

He stopped abruptly as Merlini’s voice, issuing from nowhere, chuckled and said, “Don’t jump to conclusions, Inspector. Appearances are deceptive. It’s not an indecent performance, nor has Ross gone off his rocker and started talking to himself. I’m right here. On the stage.”

Gavigan looked and saw the skeleton shape taking form within the cabinet. He closed his eyes, shook his head, then looked again. That didn’t help. The grisly spectre was still there and twice as substantial. Then, wraithlike, Merlini’s body began to form around it and, finally, grew opaque and solid. The magician grinned broadly, took his hands from the electrodes, and bowed as the spitting, green discharge of energy crackled once more above him. Then the stage curtains closed.

“You should be glad that’s only an illusion,” I told Gavigan. “If it were the McCoy and the underworld ever found out how it was done, you’d face an unparalleled crime wave and you’d never solve a single case.”

“It’s the Pepper’s Ghost illusion brought up to date,” Merlini said as he stepped out between the curtains and came toward us. “I’ve got more orders than I can fill. It’s a sure-fire carnival draw.” He frowned at Gavigan. “But you don’t look very entertained.”

“I’m not,” the Inspector answered gloomily. “Vanishing into thin air may amuse