“And then,” Flint continued, “I located the booking agent who handled Zareh Bey back in ’33 and ’34.” Flint opened the big scrapbook, across the cover of which was lettered: Zareh Bey, The Man Who Cannot Die — Press Notices. “The dates on these clippings tell a good bit of the story. The agent gave me the rest. Zareh blew in to the country in ’29 just after Rahman and Hamid started the burial-alive ball rolling. They were all featured vaudeville headliners for a year or two, but then the supply of fakirs began to exceed the demand, the novelty wore off, vaudeville died on its feet, and by ’33 Zareh is playing two-bit carnivals. In ’34 he decided to have a go at the South American circuit, but he was working on a shoestring and somebody slapped an attachment on his show before he got any farther than Havana. He was head over heels in debt, and then his wife walked out on him. He took the Morro Castle back. You can see why he didn’t deny the newspaper reports of his—”
“Did you say wife?” Merlini put in.
Flint turned a few more pages of the scrapbook and then put his finger on a one-column half-tone cut. The caption beneath read: Medium Produces Strange Spirit Lights in Séance.
“She was the added attraction that entertained the customers while Zareh Bey took his underground nap. Recognize the lady?”
“Yes. She was still married to him at the time of the fire?”
Flint nodded. “You get the idea. And she never got a divorce before marrying Wolff because she didn’t know she needed one.”
“But,” I said, “she finds out when husband number one sees her picture in the papers and discovers who she’s married. He returns from the dead and threatens to tell Wolff that his wife is guilty of bigamy unless she can give him a few good reasons why not — preferably in unmarked bills of large denomination. She can’t pay off because she has no money of her own and Dudley is distinctly not the sort who’d give her any such amount and no questions asked. Zareh Bey won’t take that for an answer. She has to think up another one. So she suggests that they blackmail Wolff together. And, since he doesn’t scare easily except on one count, they play upon his fear of death and get him to believe he has killed a man by staging the phony death and burial of Mr. Smith.”
“A scheme,” Merlini added, “having possibilities that intrigue Zareh Bey. And a few that he doesn’t notice. Mrs. Wolff had a talent for schemes that worked two ways. This one would not only give her the lever she needed to handle Wolff, but would, at the same time, cancel out husband number one by putting him back in the grave she thought he had been in all along. If the man who could not die had only stayed dead he might still be alive.”
“And the real joker,” Flint said, “is that Zareh Bey didn’t actually have anything on her at all. It she believed he was dead when she married Wolff, she did it in good faith and it doesn’t count as bigamy. But she doesn’t know enough law. She tries to kill him off, and because he’s the world’s champion zombi, she has to strike three times before he’s out and shoot husband number two as well. If I ever get another case like it, I’m going to crawl into a hole, pull it in after me, and do some shallow breathing myself.”
Burt Fawkes hurried in. “Overture’s on,” he announced. “Let’s go.”
Merlini stood up, made a gesture with his empty hand and produced a theater ticket from nothing. “Fifth row, center aisle,” he said, handing it to Flint. “We bury ’em alive, burn ’em alive, and saw ’em in two. Just the sort of thing every policeman should know. Go out front and enjoy yourself. I have to finish dressing. Burt, hand me those rabbits.”
A few minutes later, as I waited in the wings with Kay for her first cue, I gave her a kiss for good luck.
“Now go out there and disappear into thin air. But don’t you dare fail to come back.”
“I won’t,” she promised. “I’m going to haunt you for a long time to come. Scared?”
“Well maybe just a little. But I like it.”