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

“And then,” Malloy continued, “we wait. And we wait. He went into that booth at five ten. At five twenty I get itchy feet. I begin to think maybe he’s passed out or died of suffocation or something. Nobody in his right mind stays in a phone booth for ten minutes when the temperature is ninety like today. So I start to move in just as Hicks gets the same idea. He’s closer than I am, so I stay put.

“Hicks stops just in front of the booth and lights a cigarette, which gives him a chance to take another look inside. Then I figure I must be right about the Judge having passed out. I see the match Hicks is holding drop, still lighted, and he turns quick and plasters his face against the glass. I don’t wait. I’m already on my way when he turns and motions for me.”

Malloy hesitated briefly. Then, slowly and very precisely, he let us have it. “I don’t care if the Commissioner himself has me up on the carpet, one thing I’m sure of – I hadn’t taken my eyes off that phone booth for one single split second since the Judge walked into it. ”

“And neither,” Hicks said with equal emphasis, “did I. Not for one single second.”

“I did some fancy open-field running through the commuters,” Malloy went on, “skidded to a stop behind Hicks and looked over his shoulder.”

Gavigan stepped forward to the closed door of the booth and looked in.

“And what you see,” Malloy finished, “is just what I saw. You can ship me down to Bellevue for observation, too. It’s impossible. It doesn’t make sense. I don’t believe it. But that’s exactly what happened.”

For a moment Gavigan didn’t move. Then, slowly, he pulled the door open.

The booth was empty.

The phone receiver dangled off the hook, and on the floor there was a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles, one lens smashed.

“Keeler’s glasses,” Hicks said. “He went into that booth and I had my eyes on it every second. He never came out. And he’s not in it.”

“And that,” Malloy added in a tone of utter dejection, “isn’t the half of it. I stepped inside, picked up the phone receiver Keeler had been using, and said, ‘Hello’ into the mouthpiece. There was a chance the party he’d been talking to might still be on the other end.” Malloy came to a full stop.

“Well?” Gavigan prodded him. “Let’s have it. Somebody answered?”

“Yes. Somebody said: ‘ This is the end of the trail, Lieutenant. ’ Then – hung up.”

“You didn’t recognize the voice?”

“Yeah, I recognized it. That’s the trouble. It was – Judge Keeler !”

Silence.

Then, quietly, Merlini asked, “You are quite certain that it was his voice, Malloy?”

The Lieutenant exploded. “I’m not sure of anything any more. But if you’ve ever heard Keeler – he sounds like a bullfrog with a cold – you’d know it couldn’t be anyone else.”

Gavigan’s voice, or rather, a hollow imitation of it, cut in. “Merlini. Either Malloy and Hicks have both gone completely off their chumps or this is the one phone booth in the world that has two exits. The back wall is sheet metal backed by solid marble, but if there’s a loose panel in one of the side walls, Keeler could have moved over into the empty booth that is supposed to be out of order…”

“Is supposed to be…” Malloy repeated. “So that’s it! The sign’s a phony. That phone isn’t on the blink, and his voice -” Malloy took two swift steps into the booth. He lifted the receiver, dropped a nickel, and waited for the dial tone. He scowled. He jiggled the receiver. He repeated the whole operation.

This specimen of Mr Bell’s invention was definitely not working.

A moment or two later Merlini reported another flaw in the Inspector’s theory. “There are,” he stated after a quick but thorough inspection of both booths, “no sliding panels, hinged panels, removable sections, trapdoors, or any other form of secret exit. The sidewalls are single sheets of metal, thin but intact. The back wall is even more solid. There is one exit and one only – the door though which our vanishing man entered.”

“He didn’t come out,” Sergeant Hicks insisted again, sounding like a cracked phonograph record endlessly repeating itself. “I was watching that door every single second. Even if he turned himself into an invisible man like in a movie I saw once, he’d still have had to open the door. And the door didn’t budge. I was watching it every single-”

“And that,” Merlini said thoughtfully, “leaves us with an invisible man who can also walk through closed doors. In short – a ghost. Which brings up another point. Have any of you noticed that there are a few spots of something on those smashed glasses that look very much like – blood?”

Malloy growled. “Yeah, but don’t make any cracks about there being another guy in that booth who sapped Keeler – that’d mean two invisible men…”

“If there can be one invisible man,” Merlini pointed out, “then there can be two.”

Gavigan said, “Merlini, that vanishing gadget you were demonstrating when I arrived… It’s just about the size and shape of this phone booth. I want to know-”

The magician shook his head. “Sorry, Inspector. That method wouldn’t work here under these conditions. It’s not the same trick. Keeler’s miracle, in some respects, is even better. He should have been a magician; he’s been wasting his time on the bench. Or has he? I wonder how much cash he carried into limbo with him in that suitcase?” He paused, then added, “More than enough, probably, to serve as a motive for murder.”

And there, on that ominous note, the investigation stuck. It was as dead an end as I ever saw. And it got deader by the minute. Brady, returning a few minutes later, reported that all station exits had been covered by the time Keeler left the Oyster Bar and that none of the detectives had seen hide nor hair of him since.

“Those men stay there until further notice,” Gavigan ordered. “Get more men – as many as you need – and start searching this place. I want every last inch of it covered. And every phone booth, too. If it was Keeler’s voice Malloy heard, then he was in one of them, and-”

“You know, Inspector,” Merlini interrupted, “this case not only takes the cake but the marbles, all the blue ribbons, and a truck load of loving cups too. That is another impossibility.”

“What is?”

“The voice on the telephone. Look at it. If Keeler left the receiver in this booth off as Malloy and Hicks found it, vanished, then reappeared in another booth and tried to call this number, he’d get a busy signal. He couldn’t have made a connection. And if he left the receiver on the hook, he could have called this number, but someone would have had to be here to lift the receiver and leave it off as it was found. It keeps adding up to two invisible men no matter how you look at it.”

“I wish,” Malloy said acidly, “that you’d disappear, too.”

Merlini protested. “Don’t. You sound like Zyyzk.”

“That guy,” Gavigan predicted darkly, “is going to wish he never heard of Judge Keeler.”

Gavigan’s batting average as a prophet was zero. When Zyyzk, whom the Inspector ordered brought to the scene and who was delivered by squad car twenty minutes later, discovered that Judge Keeler had vanished, he was as pleased as punch.

An interstellar visitor from outer space should have three eyes, or at least green hair. Zyyzk, in that respect, was a disappointment. He was a pudgy little man in a wrinkled grey suit. His eyes, two only, were a pale, washed-out blue behind gold-rimmed bifocals, and his hair, the colour of weak tea, failed miserably in its attempt to cover the top of his head.