The Great Merlini (Clayton Rawson)

Chap 1: The Clue of the Tattooed Man

THE GREAT MERLINI LOOKED AT HIS WATCH FOR THE UMPTEENTH time just as Inspector Gavigan's car pulled up before the Hotel Astor.

"I've got a good notion to turn you into a rabbit," the magician said as he got in. "I've been waiting here for you ever since eleven o'clock."

"You're a mindreader," Gavigan said in a tired voice. "You should know why we're late."

"I see," Merlini said. "Murder."

"I've seen you make better guesses," Gavigan said gloomily. "It's murder, all right. But it's also attempted suicide, a gambling charge, a vanishing man, a nine-foot giant, a..." His voice trailed off as though he didn't believe it himself.

"And dope, too," Merlini said. "Gavigan, you've been hitting the pipe."

The inspector growled. "Brady, you tell him. I'm a nervous wreck."

Brady seemed just as glum. "Well, it's like this. We get a phone call at 11:40 from a guy who says his wife has been murdered. He's in a phone booth in the lobby near the Garden. We step on the gas getting up there because he sounds like he might have suicide in mind. He does. We find a commotion in the drug store off the lobby and the druggist is scrapping with a tall, skinny guy who bought a bottle of sleeping tablets and then started to eat them like they was peanuts. So we send the Professor down to Bellevue to keep a date with a stomach pump."

"A Professor?" Merlini asked. "What of—romance languages, mathematics, nuclear physics—?"

"I never heard any worse guesses," Brady replied. "His name's Professor Vox. The circus opened at the Garden this week and he's a ventriloquist in the sideshow. So we go upstairs and before we can get into room 816 where the body is we have to wade through a crap game that is going on in the corridor outside—a cowboy, a juggler and three acrobats. I know then I won't like the case and a minute later I'm positive—the ventriloquist's wife is a snake-charmer. And she has been strangled with a piece of cloth a foot wide and about twenty feet long."

"And that," Merlini put in, "gives you a Hindu as a suspect."

"Wrong again. It's a turban all right, but it belongs to a little fat guy who is billed as Mohammed the Magician but whose real name is Jimmy O'Reilly and who makes up like a Hindu with greasepaint. What's more, he has taken it on the lam and so we figure as soon as we catch him the case is solved. But then we question the crap players. And we find that their game starts at 11 P.M., that Zelda, the Snake-charmer, goes into her room a few minutes later and that the magician never goes near her room at all."

"Maybe," Merlini said, producing a lighted cigarette from thin air, "he was already there—waiting."

"I hope not because this is on the eighth floor, the only window is locked on the inside, the crap players insist he didn't leave by the only door, and the only way out is to vanish into thin air."

"It's a good trick," Merlini said noncommittally. "If you can do it."

"Yeah," Brady went on even more glumly. "And pinning it on him in court would be a good trick too because what happens next is that the crap players all agree there was one guy who went into the murder room between the time they last saw the snake-charmer and the time we show up. He went in at 11:15, stays for maybe ten minutes, and comes out again.

They swear his identification is a cinch because his face looks like a crazyquilt. He is Tinto—The Tattooed Man.

"And he's also missing. We send out a call to have him picked up. And while we wait we turn up two more hot suspects—both guys who are scared to death of snakes and hate the snake-charmer because she sometimes gets funny and leaves a snake or two in their rooms for a joke. They both look like I feel at this point—definitely not normal. One is Major Little, a midget who is almost so small he could have walked past that crap game without being noticed—only not quite. The other is a guy who is about as noticeable as an elephant; he's a beefy nine-foot giant named Goliath.

"So now we got murder, attempted suicide, a crap game, a vanishing magician, two freaks with motives and no alibis—they claim they were asleep—and a walking picture gallery who is the only guy who could have done it. Two minutes later Tinto walks in—a tall, underfed-looking egg with a face like a WPA post-office mural. And he says he had a date to meet Zelda in front of the Hotel Astor at a quarter to eleven and waited there over an hour—only she didn't show up. He can't prove it and four witnesses say different. So we charge him."

"Well," Merlini said, "your excuse for keeping me waiting is one I haven't heard before—I'll give you that. There's one little thing I don't like about it though."

"One little thing!" Gavigan exploded. "My God! All of it is—" He stopped abruptly. "Okay, I'll bite. What didn't you like?"

"Your skepticism concerning Tinto's story. I think he was in front of the Hotel Astor at the time of the murder—just as he claims."

"Oh, you do, do you?" Gavigan said darkly. Then suddenly he blinked. "So that's it! Now we got a magician as a material witness. You saw him there at the time of the murder—while you were waiting for me."

Merlini nodded. "Yes, I did. But why so unhappy about it? That should tell you who killed Zelda. Since I myself saw Tinto at the Hotel Astor at the time of the murder," Merlini explained, "it's obvious that the tattooed man seen by the crap players was a phony. In other words, someone was impersonating Tinto—imitating his facial peculiarities the same way Jimmy O'Reilly imitates a Hindu—with greasepaint.

"Who? Well, Brady described Tinto as 'tall and underfed' and that eliminates the fat little magician, the midget, and the hefty nine-foot giant. It leaves only the 'tall, skinny' Professor Vox.

"The motive—his discovery that Tinto was dating his wife—is also obvious.

"There's another way of pinning the guilt on Professor Vox. Since the crap players swore that the tattooed man was 'the only guy' to go into and out of the murder room before the cops arrived, how come Vox knew his wife was dead? Answer: only if he were the counterfeit tattooed man— therefore, only if he were the murderer."