some people. Not me. Especially when it really happens. Off stage in broad daylight. In Central Park.”
“Oh,” Merlini said. “I see. So that’s what’s eating you. Helen Hope, the chorus girl who went for a walk last week and never came back. She’s still missing then, and there are still no clues?”
Gavigan nodded. “It’s the Dorothy Arnold case all over again. Except for one thing we haven’t let the newspapers know about – Bela Zyyzk.”
“Bela what?” I asked.
Gavigan spelled it.
“Impossible,” I said. “He must be a typographical error. A close relative of Etoain Shrdlu.”
The Inspector wasn’t amused. “Relatives,” he growled. “I wish I could find some. He not only claims he doesn’t have any – he swears he never has had any! And so far we haven’t been able to prove different.”
“Where does he come from?” Merlini asked. “Or won’t he say?”
“Oh, he talks all right,” Gavigan said disgustedly. “Too much. And none of it makes any sense. He says he’s a momentary visitor to this planet – from the dark cloud of Antares. I’ve seen some high, wide, and fancy screwballs in my time, but this one takes the cake – candles and all.”
“Helen Hope,” Merlini said, “vanishes off the face of the earth. And Zyyzk does just the opposite. This gets interesting. What else does he have to do with her disappearance?”
“Plenty,” Gavigan replied. “A week ago Tuesday night she went to a Park Avenue party at Mrs James Dewitt-Smith’s. She’s another candidate for Bellevue. Collects Tibetan statuary, medieval relics, and crackpots like Zyyzk. He was there that night – reading minds.”
“A visitor from outer space,” Merlini said, “and a mindreader to boot. I won’t be happy until I’ve had a talk with that gentleman.”
“I have talked with him,” the Inspector growled. “And I’ve had indigestion ever since. He does something worse than read minds. He makes predictions.” Gavigan scowled at Merlini. “I thought fortune tellers always kept their customers happy by predicting good luck?”
Merlini nodded. “That’s usually standard operating procedure. Zyyzk does something else?”
“He certainly does. He’s full of doom and disaster. A dozen witnesses testify that he told Helen Hope she’d vanish off the face of the earth. And three days later that’s exactly what she does do.”
“I can see,” Merlini said, “why you view him with suspicion. So you pulled him in for questioning and got a lot of answers that weren’t very helpful?”
“Helpful!” Gavigan jerked several typewritten pages from his pocket and shook them angrily. “Listen to this. He’s asked: ‘What’s your age?’ and we get: ‘According to which time – solar, sidereal, galactic, or universal?’ Murphy of Missing Persons, who was questioning him, says: ‘Any kind. Just tell us how old you are.’ And Zyyzk replies: ‘I can’t answer that. The question, in that form, has no meaning.’” The Inspector threw the papers down disgustedly.
Merlini picked them up, riffled through them, then read some of the transcript aloud. “Question: How did you know that Miss Hope would disappear? Answer: Do you understand the basic theory of the fifth law of inter dimensional reaction? Murphy: Huh? Zyyzk: Explanations are useless. You obviously have no conception of what I am talking about.”
“He was right about that,” Gavigan muttered. “Nobody does.”
Merlini continued. “Question: Where is Miss Hope now? Answer: Beyond recall. She was summoned by the Lords of the Outer Darkness.” Merlini looked up from the papers. “After that, I suppose, you sent him over to Bellevue?”
The Inspector nodded. “They had him under observation a week. And they turned in a report full of eight-syllable jawbreakers all meaning he’s crazy as a bedbug – but harmless. I don’t believe it. Anybody who predicts in a loud voice that somebody will disappear into thin air at twenty minutes after four on a Tuesday afternoon, just before it actually happens, knows plenty about it!”
Merlini is a hard man to surprise, but even he blinked at that. “Do you mean to say that he foretold the exact time, too?”
“Right on the nose,” Gavigan answered. “The doorman of her apartment house saw her walk across the street and into Central Park at four-eighteen. We haven’t been able to find anyone who has seen her since. And don’t tell me his prediction was a long shot that paid off.”
“I won’t,” Merlini agreed. “Whatever it is, it’s not coincidence. Where’s Zyyzk now? Could you hold him after that psychiatric report?”
“The D A,” Gavigan replied, “took him into General Sessions before Judge Keeler and asked that he be held as a material witness.” The Inspector looked unhappier than ever. “It would have to be Keeler.”
“What did he do?” I asked. “Deny the request?”
“No. He granted it. That’s when Zyyzk made his second prediction. Just as they start to take him out and throw him back in the can, he makes some funny motions with his hands and announces, in that confident manner he’s got, that the Outer Darkness is going to swallow Judge Keeler up, too!”
“And what,” Merlini wanted to know, “is wrong with that? Knowing how you’ve always felt about Francis X. Keeler, I should think that prospect would please you.”
Gavigan exploded. “Look, blast it! I have wished dozens of times that Judge Keeler would vanish into thin air, but that’s exactly what I don’t want to happen right now. We’ve known at headquarters that he’s been taking fix money from the Castelli mob ever since the day he was appointed to the bench. But we couldn’t do a thing. Politically he was dynamite. One move in his direction and there’d be a new Commissioner the next morning, with demotions all down the line. But three weeks ago the Big Guy and Keeler had a scrap, and we get a tip straight from the feed box that Keeler is fair game. So we start working over-time collecting the evidence that will send him up the river for what I hope is a ninety-nine-year stretch. We’ve been afraid he might tumble and try to pull another ‘Judge Crater.’ And now, just when we’re almost, but not quite, ready to nail him and make it stick, this has to happen.”
“Your friend, Zyyzk,” Merlini said, “becomes more interesting by the minute. Keeler is being tailed, of course?”
“Twenty-four hours a day, ever since we got the word that there’d be no kick- back.” The phone on Merlini’s desk rang as Gavigan was speaking. “I get hourly reports on his movements. Chances are that’s for me now.”
It was. In the office, we both watched him as he took the call. He listened a moment, then said, “Okay. Double the number of men on him immediately. And report back every fifteen minutes. If he shows any sign of going anywhere near a railroad station or airport, notify me at once.”
Gavigan hung up and turned to us. “Keeler made a stop at the First National and spent fifteen minutes in the safety-deposit vaults. He’s carrying a suitcase, and you can have one guess as to what’s in it now. This looks like the payoff.”
“I take it,” Merlini said, “that, this time, the Zyyzk forecast did not include the exact hour and minute when the Outer Darkness would swallow up the Judge?”
“Yeah. He sidestepped that. All he’ll say is that it’ll happen before the week is out.”
“And today,” Merlini said, “is Friday. Tell me this. The Judge seems to have good reasons for wanting to disappear which Zyyzk may or may not know about. Did Miss Hope also have reasons?”
“She had one,” Gavigan replied. “But I don’t see how Zyyzk could have known it. We can’t find a thing that shows he ever set eyes on her before the night of that party. And her reason is one that few people knew about.” The phone rang again and Gavigan reached for it. “Helen Hope is the girlfriend Judge Keeler visits the nights he doesn’t go home to his wife!”
Merlini and I both tried to assimilate that and take in what Gavigan was telling the telephone at the same time. “Okay, I’m coming. And grab him the minute he tries to go through a gate.” He
