“Whoever it was,” Merlini stated, “could have gone on through this room and into any of the others on the other side of the house. Down and out the front door for that matter. There aren’t any alibis. Headache, Colonel?”
Watrous had pulled himself shakily to his feet and stood, one hand holding tightly to the back of a chair. “Yes,” he said.
“Get him to his room, Ross. Give him these.” Merlini handed me two capsules.
Watrous said, “No, I’m all right. We’ll have to look around. Must find out—”
“Well take care of it, Colonel. You sleep it off. Go on. You’re no good without your glasses anyway.”
He protested a bit more. “I’ve some others. I—” Then he wavered a bit. “All right,” he said, giving in.
I took him to his room and put him to bed.
When I got back, Merlini stood in the hall before the closed door of Linda’s room, arguing in a low whisper with Lamb.
“You get into your room,” he said, “and stay there. I’ll handle this. No use waking the others. It’s too late. We wouldn’t learn a thing.” Merlini put his hand on the knob of Floyd’s door.
“I don’t like this at all,” Lamb growled. He looked at us both suspiciously. “How the hell do I know—?” Then he shrugged his heavy shoulders and walked quickly along the hail to his room at the end.
Merlini waited until the door had closed after him. Then: “Quick, back in there.” His head jerked toward Linda’s door.
I slid in and he followed, pulling the door to, softly.
“No lights,” he said, “and pull that shade.”
As I did so, he locked the door to the hall. Then his flash blinked on, and I saw him take an automatic from his pocket, look at it interestedly for a brief moment, and re-pocket it.
“We’d better get at that burglary I mentioned, before something else happens.” He crossed the room.
“Where did you get that gun?”
“It’s Lamb’s.” He lifted a framed Bakst costume sketch from the wall and disclosed the black, square and shiny dial of a small wall safe.
“What tuition do you charge for a course of pickpocket lessons? I’d like to sign up. It makes detecting so simple.”
“I’m not giving one this semester,” he said. “Here, hold this light for me. I’ll demonstrate the ABC’s of safe cracking.”
From his vest pocket he took what I thought, at first, was a watch, until I noticed that its face carried only a single sensitive hand that quivered as he held it.
“Harry Houdini gave me this little gadget,” he said. “It’s the only one there is — which is just as well.”
On one edge of the dial where the winder of a watch would be, was a small cup-shaped projection. He held this against the face of the safe and moved it about, turning the safe’s dial with his other hand. Finally he held it on one spot and then turned the lock dial slowly, watching the small hand that wavered and, now and again, jumped slightly. When this happened, he twisted the dial in the opposite direction.
“What do you expect to find in there?” I asked.
“Loot, of course. Maybe a motive. I don’t know. There.”
He pulled at the door, and it swung out. He took the flashlight and directed it at the safe’s interior. His arm reached in and brought out three school slates like the one we had seen before. Handing them to me, he explored again, fishing out a checkbook and a letter-size leather case.
He ran quickly through the check stubs. “Nothing much there,” he said. “A $100 check to Rappourt marked Contribution Psychical Society, but the rest all innocent enough.”
He opened the leather case and removed a crisp legal document. I saw the printed words on the face: The Last Will and Testament of—and the typewritten name, Linda May Skelton.
As he looked quickly through the document, I started to examine the slates. Chalked on the first was a scraggly uncertain outline of Skelton Island and, in the corner, a somewhat florid signature that I made out as Capt. Pole.
Halfway through the small, scratchy handwriting of the message that covered the second slate, Bow at 108 feet beam 112 four feet silt two tar—, I stopped suddenly and put the slate down. I took Merlini by the arm and drew him hastily toward the window. “See that?” I asked.
Toward the left, along the shore, and back a bit from the water we could see the lighted square of a window. And it blinked irregularly, but purposefully, on and off — Dots and dashes!
“So, someone does know Morse code after all,” Merlini said softly. “Ross, why weren’t you a boy scout?”
“Didn’t know what I was missing,” I said. “Sorry. I’ll join up tomorrow. That’s Doc Gail’s place isn’t it? Do we pay him a call?”
“Thought you were sleepy?” he chuckled. “Yes, I think we do.”
Chapter Nine:
SORCERER’S APPRENTICES
The doctor’s cottage was a small summer affair close by the shore, perhaps 100 yards from the larger house. The lighted window, as we drew near, still blinked monotonously, sending its cryptic message out across the water. During the lighted intervals, now, we could see Dr. Gail. Wearing a dark blue dressing gown and slippers, he stood by the light switch with his right hand on the button. His left held a sheet of note paper that he watched carefully.
Merlini’s knuckles rapped sharply against the door. The dots and dashes stopped abruptly, leaving the room in darkness.
After a short silence, the Doctor’s voice called out: “Who is it?”
“Man from the light company,” answered Merlini. “Noticed you were having trouble.”
The light came on, footsteps crossed the room, and the Doctor smiled at us from the open door. “Come in. You gave me a start for a moment. Thought perhaps it might be the murderer.”
Merlini marched in, past him.
“Maybe it is,” he replied.
Dr. Gail blinked a bit at that. “I’ll take a chance. You’re company at any rate. I rent this place from Miss Skelton and come out here week-ends mainly for solitude. Somehow that doesn’t seem to be what I want tonight.”
Merlini indicated the paper the Doctor still held in his hand. “May I see that, please?”
“What? Oh, of course.” He handed it over, looked at us both for a moment through narrowed eyes, and then grinned widely. “Mysterious signals in the night arouse suspicion because no one admitted knowing Morse code. Investigators investigate.” He nodded at the paper. “I hope that clears me?”
I looked over Merlini’s shoulder. On the paper, printed in pencil and widely spaced were the letters: SOS SEND POLICE SKELTON ISLAND HURRY. Each letter had beneath it a combination of dots and dashes, the first few like this:
“I don’t know the code,” Gail continued, “but after I’d returned here it suddenly occurred to me that the encyclopedia should have it. It does.” He pointed at a volume of the Britannica that lay open on the table. “And since the visibility has cleared somewhat in the last hour — you can make out the lights on shore now — I thought it was just possible someone might catch on. And we could do with the police, you know.”
“I see,” Merlini said pleasantly. “Sure this is what you were sending?”
“Yes, at least, that’s what I hope I was sending. Though God knows what a professional telegrapher would think of it. And I was getting awfully bored. Perhaps one of you would like to have a go at it?”
“It won’t be necessary,” Merlini explained casually. “We managed to phone in.”
“Phone? How?” He seemed genuinely surprised.
“The person who cut the line kindly repaired it for us. Is that coffee I smell?”