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.
Then the Inspector’s flash found the open cellar door.
And down there, beside the beginning of a grave, we found Judge Keeler.
His head had been battered in.
But he couldn’t find Merlini anywhere in the house. It wasn’t until five minutes later, when we were opening Keeler’s suitcase, that Merlini walked in.
He looked at the cash and negotiable securities that tumbled out. “You got here,” he said, “before that vanished, too, I see.”
Gavigan looked up at him. “But you just arrived this minute. I heard a cab out front.”
Merlini nodded. “My driver refused to ignore the stop lights the way yours did. Did you find the Judge?”
“Yes, we found him. And I want to know how of all the addresses in Greater New York, you managed to pick this one out of your hat?”
Merlini’s dark eyes twinkled. “That was the easy part. Keeler’s disappearance, as I said once before, added up to
“And when you vanished,” I asked, “was that done with two invisible men?”
Merlini grinned. “No. I improved on the Judge’s miracle a bit. I made it a one- man operation.”
Gavigan had had all the riddles he could digest. “We found Keeler’s body,” he growled ominously, “beside an open grave. And if
“Sorry,” Merlini said, as a lighted cigarette appeared mysteriously between his fingers. “As a magician I hate to have to blow the gaff on such a neatly contrived bit of hocus pocus as The Great Phone Booth Trick. But if I must – well, it began when Keeler realized he was going to have to take a runout powder. He knew he was being watched. It was obvious that if he and Helen Hope tried to leave town by any of the usual methods, they’d both be picked up at once. Their only chance was to vanish as abruptly and completely as Judge Crater and Dorothy Arnold once did. I suspect it was Zyyzk’s first prediction that Miss Hope would disappear that gave Keeler the idea. At any rate, that was what set the wheels in motion.”
“I thought so,” Gavigan said. “Zyyzk was in on it.”
Merlini shook his head. “I’m afraid you can’t charge him with a thing. He was in on it – but he didn’t know it. One of the subtlest deceptive devices a magician uses is known as ‘the principle of the impromptu stooge.’ He so manages things that an unrehearsed spectator acts as a confederate, often without ever realizing it. That’s how Keeler used Zyyzk. He built his vanishing trick on Zyyzk’s predictions and used them as misdirection. But Zyyzk never knew that he was playing the part of a red herring.”
“He’s a fraud though,” Gavigan insisted. “And he does know it.”
Merlini contradicted that, too. “No. Oddly enough he’s the one thing in this whole case that is on the level. As you, yourself, pointed out, no fake prophet would give such precisely detailed predictions. He actually does believe that Helen Hope and Judge Keeler vanished into the Outer Darkness.”
“A loony,” Gavigan muttered.
“And,” Merlini added, “a real problem, at this point, for any psychiatrist. He’s seen two of his prophecies come true with such complete and startling accuracy that he’ll never believe what really happened. I egged him into predicting my disappearance in order to show him that he wasn’t infallible. If he never discovers that I did vanish right on time, it may shake his belief in his occult powers. But if he does, the therapy will backfire; he’ll be convinced when he sees me, that I’m a doppelganger or an astral double the police have conjured up to discredit him.”
“If you don’t stop trying to psychoanalyze Zyyzk,” Gavigan growled impatiently, “the police are going to conjure up a charge of withholding information in a murder case. Get on with it. Helen Hope wasn’t being tailed, so her disappearance was a cinch. She simply walked out, without even taking her toothbrush – to make Zyyzk’s prediction look good – and grabbed a plane for Montana or Mexico or some such place where Keeler was to meet her later. But how did Keeler evaporate? And don’t you give me any nonsense about two invisible men.”
Merlini grinned. “Then we’d better take my disappearance first. That used only one invisible man – and, of course, too many phone booths.”
Then, quickly, as Gavigan started to explode, Merlini stopped being cryptic. “In that restaurant you and Ross sat at a table and in the seats that I selected. You saw me, through the window, enter what I had been careful to refer to as the second booth from the right. Seen through the window, that is what it was. But the line of phone booths extended on either side beyond the window and your field of vision. Viewed from outside, there were nine – not six – booths, and the one I entered was actually the third in line.”
“Do you mean,” Gavigan said menacingly, “that when I was outside watching the second booth, Ross, inside, was watching the third – and we both thought we were watching the same one?”
“Yes. It isn’t necessary to deceive the senses if the mind can be misdirected. You saw what you saw, but it wasn’t what you thought you saw. And that-”
Then Gavigan did explode, in a muffled sort of way. “Are you saying that we searched the
Merlini didn’t need to answer. That was obviously just what he did mean.
“Then your silver dollar,” I began, “and the phone receiver-”
“Were,” Merlini grinned, “what confidence men call ‘the convincer’ – concocted evidence which seemed to prove that you had the right booth, prevented any sceptical second thoughts, and kept you from examining the other booths just to make sure you had the right one.”
I got it then. “That first time you left the restaurant, before you came back with that phoney request for the loan of a nickel – that’s when you left the dollar in the second booth.”
Merlini nodded. “I made a call, too. I dialed the number of the second booth. And when the phone rang, I stepped into the second booth, took the receiver off the hook, dropped the silver dollar on the floor, then hurried back to your table. Both receivers were off and the line was open.”
“And when we looked into the second booth, you were sitting right next door, three feet away, telling Gavigan via the phone that you were in the Bronx?”
Merlini nodded. “And I came out after you had gone. It’s a standard conjuring
