My hand, acting apparently of its own volition, was groping in my pocket, hunting for — and not finding — that locker key. Then I knew—this suitcase was my own.
My other packages lay near by, having been kicked in off the sidewalk out of sight. The one that contained the bottle was still intact. I opened it and administered enough first aid to shock me fully awake. Then I stepped out to the sidewalk. Half a block away a taxi came toward me. I waited, took another drink, and flagged him. I gathered up the suitcase and packages, got into the cab and said:
“Grand Central. Let’s see how fast you can do it.”
It was only half a block and he did all right, but we hadn’t started soon enough. He waited while I looked at the locker. I saw the key and knew, before I opened the door, that the locker was quite empty.
We pulled up at the river end of 44th Street a good 20 minutes after nine. But Merlini wasn’t much before me. We stopped behind another taxi just as his long, lank frame got out and unfolded. I was not close enough to see the impish twinkle in his black eyes or the enigmatic half-smile that touched his lips, though I knew they were there, as they always are when he makes that familiar and graceful necromantic gesture that produces the coins — his cab fare in this instance — from thin air. Merlini wears no theatrical opera cape, curling mustachios, or pointed van-dyke, but somehow you feel that those hallmarks of the conjurer are there in spirit. It may be the utterly confident way he carries himself or the sure, smoothly co-ordinated movements of his hands or, perhaps, the resonant, almost hypnotic, voice that with deft, unnoticed misdirection propels you along an apparently sound but quite illogical path of thought, and then, with no warning, springs a trap door that leaves you standing on the sheer edge of an impossibility.
He left the cab driver blinking and came toward me as I disembarked.
“Late again,” he said, grinning.
But I was in an ill humor by now. I pointed to my driver. “That trick you just did,” I said wearily. “This man wants to see it too. Sixty cents worth, plus tip.”
I walked off abruptly, down toward the dock and the long, low speedboat moored there beneath a landing light. A small man wearing a yachting cap approached me.
“Mr. Merlini?” he asked.
“No. He’s coming. Back there. I’m with him.”
He took my packages and the suitcase and stowed them in the boat. Merlini climbed down and sat beside me a moment later. He took a brightly jacketed circus program from his pocket tore the margin from one of its pages, quickly sketched something on it, and passed it over:
“Got a new puzzle for you, Ross,” he said. “Turned it up in an old book the other day. So old it’s new again. Two glasses, water in one, wine in the other, same amount of liquid in each. You take one teaspoonful from the wine glass and put it in the water. Stir well and take one teaspoonful of the resulting mixture and put it back in the wine. Do you now have more wine in the water glass than water in the wine glass, or vice versa, or—”
“Puzzles!” I groaned. “My God! I’ll give you puzzles.”
Merlini looked at me closely.
“Oh. A bit pale around the gills and grouchier than usual. Anything wrong?”
“Wrong?” I rubbed the back of my head, feeling for possible compound fractures. “Oh, no. Unless you count being blackjacked and losing a fortune in gold pieces. Here. Puzzles is it? What do you make of that?”
The boat kicked up a roar and moved out on the dark river. As Merlini took the little box, I got a flashlight from the suitcase and held it for him. He lifted the cardboard cover and regarded the box’s contents with interest. Then he picked out one of the coins and, casually, with what seemed only a simple twist of the wrist, made it vanish. His empty hand reached for another.
“Hey!” I protested, grabbing at the box.
Merlini said, “Sorry,” and the coin reappeared with prompt inexplicability at his fingertips. “They look nice, but they’re a bit small and heavier than I like for easy manipulation. When did you begin collecting old and rare coins?”
“Tonight. But they aren’t so rare. What sort of coin is it and what’s it worth? Do you know?”
“For a coin collector, you’re not too well informed, are you? English guineas — a guinea’s twenty-one shillings — about five dollars. What — here, are you going to be seasick?”
“No,” I said weakly, “I–I don’t think so. I was just multiplying.”
He scowled at me and indicated my packages. “What are all these? More coin collection?”
“Scotch, two more flashlights, sandwiches … ” My voice trailed off. I was remembering the weight of that suitcase.
“Flashlights, sandwiches, odd behavior of ignorant coin collector, blackjack, Scotch … You’ve been burgling a museum. Irate curator lets fly and catches you one. Serves you right. Or else — the Scotch. Any left?”
For once in my life I had the great mysterioso, the high panjandrum of hocus-pocus, right where I wanted him — mystified. I proceeded to take full advantage of it.
“Classified ads,” I said. “Haunted houses. Skelton Island, Colonel Watrous, Miss Verrill, deadly weapon. I’ll trade even. But I want your story first.”
“Deadly weapon?” he asked. “I don’t follow.”
“This one.” I produced the gun Burt had given me. “And don’t hold out. I want the whole story.”
He eyed me with what appeared to be a genuinely puzzled air. “Looks like further burglary to me. It’s the one I keep at the shop. What are you doing with it?”
“I’m asking you. Burt said you told him to have me bring it.”
“I did not.”
We tangled over that, but finally, when I’d explained something of the circumstances, Merlini laughed. “Burt knows you, Ross. Trading on your romantic nature. He wanted to make sure you’d say yes and come along.”
I said, glumly, “What about that classified ad gag?”
“Oh, that. It’s not a gag. It’s a radio broadcast. NBC is starting a series called The Ghost Hour and they want to send some of the programs from haunted houses, graveyards, and such. I’m emceeing the show.”
“You get the ghost to step up to the mike and say a few words. Something like that?”
“Sure, and if the ghost is bashful, there’s always the sound effects department.”
“I’m disappointed. Commercialism rears its sordid head. Probably to introduce a new breakfast cereal called Ghost-Toasties, with testimonials from famous haunts.”
“Sorry if I’ve let you down,” he said. “About these coins—”
“No you don’t. Not yet. What about the Colonel’s mysterious visit this morning, why have you been keeping Miss Verrill from me, and what goes on at Skelton Island that has them all wigwagging for help? Radio sketch, my hat!”
“There’s more to it than that, I’ll admit. There’s a haunted house out there, one I’ve been meaning to get a look at. It was double-starred on the list Watrous made up. But—”
“Oh!” My tone was heavily sarcastic. “NBC hired him too, I suppose, as a technical expert on spooks?”
The red beacon at the upper tip of Welfare Island dropped astern. We swung in a wide curve around through Hellgate toward the great arches of the Triborough Bridge, whose moving flow of lights connected Ward’s Island and Astoria.
“Yes. As a matter of fact they did. Because of his preeminent reputation as a psychical researcher, author, and authority on anything occult, they naturally thought of him first. But they wanted their ghosts treated with a light touch. That upset matters. Not having read any of his books, they didn’t realize that the Colonel’s sense of humor doesn’t operate on that subject. He said if that’s what they wanted they’d better get me. They did.”