Mike Ashley - The Mammoth Book of Locked-Room Mysteries And Impossible Crimes

“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 slammed the receiver down and started for the door.

“Keeler,” he said over his shoulder, “is in Grand Central. There’s room in my car if you want to come.”

He didn’t need to issue that invitation twice. On the way down in the elevator Merlini made one not very helpful comment.

“You know,” he said thoughtfully, “if the judge does have a reservation on the extra-terrestial express – destination: the Outer Darkness – we don’t know what gate that train leaves from.”

We found out soon enough. The Judge stepped through it just two minutes before we hurried into the station and found Lieutenant Malloy exhibiting all the symptoms of having been hit over the head with a sledge hammer. He was bewildered and dazed, and had difficulty talking coherently.

Sergeant Hicks, a beefy, unimaginative, elderly detective who had also seen the thing happen looked equally groggy.

Usually, Malloy’s reports were as dispassionate, precise, and factual as a logarithmic table. But not today. His first paragraph bore a much closer resemblance to a first-person account of a dope-addict’s dream.

“Malloy,” Gavigan broke in icily. “Are you tight?”

The Lieutenant shook his head sadly. “No, but the minute I go off duty, I’m going to get so plas-”

Gavigan cut in again. “Are all the exits to this place covered?”

Hicks replied, “If they aren’t, somebody is sure going to catch it.”

Gavigan turned to the detective who had accompanied us in the inspector’s car. “Make the rounds and double-check that, Brady. And tell headquarters to get more men over here fast.”

“They’re on the way now,” Hicks said. “I phoned right after it happened. First thing I did.”

Gavigan turned to Malloy. “All right. Take it easy. One thing at a time – and in order.”

“It don’t make sense that way either,” Malloy said hopelessly. “Keeler took a cab from the bank and came straight here. Hicks and I were right on his tail. He comes down to the lower level and goes into the Oyster Bar and orders a double brandy. While he’s working on that, Hicks phones in for reinforcements with orders to cover every exit. They had time to get here, too; Keeler had a second brandy. Then, when he starts to come out, I move out to the centre of the station floor by the information booth so I’m ahead of him and all set to make the pinch no matter which gate he heads for. Hicks stands pat, ready to tail him if he heads upstairs again.

“At first, that’s where I think he’s going because he starts up the ramp. But he stops here by this line of phone booths, looks in a directory and then goes into a booth halfway down the line. And as soon as he closes the door, Hicks moves up and goes into the next booth to the left of Keeler’s.” Malloy pointed. “The one with the Out-of-Order sign on it.”

Gavigan turned to the Sergeant. “All right. You take it.”

Hicks scowled at the phone booth as he spoke. “The door was closed and somebody had written ‘Out of Order’ on a card and stuck it in the edge of the glass. I lifted the card so nobody’d wonder why I was trying to use a dead phone, went in, closed the door and tried to get a load of what the Judge was saying. But it’s no good. He was talking, but so low I couldn’t get it. I came out again, stuck the card back in the door and walked back toward the Oyster Bar so I’d be set to follow him either way when he came out. And I took a gander into the Judge’s booth as I went past. He was talking with his mouth up close to the phone.”