Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 139, No. 6, September 14, 1940

Presenting, for the first time in any magazine, the Great Merlini. Mystery readers may remember the magician-detective from Death From a Top Hat and The Footprints on the Ceiling, but they’ll never be able to forget his adventures with the headless lady and a three-ring murderer. A thrilling new novel by one of the greatest detective story writers of today.

Performing Cast

Major Rutherford B. Hannum — Owner of The Mighty Hannum Combined Shows.

Pauline Hannum — His daughter. Wire-walker and high perch performer.

Joy Pattison — The Major’s niece. Wire-walker and aerialist.

J. Macallister Wiley — Legal adjuster.

Keith Atterbury — Press agent.

Irma King — Elephant trainer and equestrienne.

Tex Mayo — Featured Wild West performer and ex-movie star.

Matt Garner — Tramp clown.

The headless lady — Featured side-show attraction.

The Great Merlini — Professional magician and amateur detective.

Burt Fawkes — His assistant and factotum.

Ross Harte — Free-lance writer and the narrator.

Stuart Towne — A detective-story writer.

Chief Inspector Homer Gavigan — of the New York City Homicide Bureau.

Captain Leonard Schafer — of the New York State Police.

Chief of police Sam Hooper — of Norwalk, New York.

Sheriff Weatherby — of Waterboro, New York.

Detective Lester Burns; Troopers: Palmer and Stevens; Officers: Robbins and Crossen; Detective Brady.

Chapter I Two-Headed Girl

“Ladees and Gentulmen: In just about sixty minutes or one hour tickets to the big show will go on sale in the red ticket wagon directly across the show grounds. In the meantime, the management presents for your edification, mystification and amusement...”

During the night, Manhattan Island had apparently slipped its moorings, drifted southward with incredible speed, and come to rest somewhere off the coast of Equatorial Africa. The great city lay submerged like a lost Atlantis beneath the heavy waves of hot moist atmosphere that all day had moved slowly in from the steaming ocean. The blazing tropical sun was nearer. Even the tall solidity of the buildings seemed limp and jelly-like as their outlines wavered in the damp haze. The nervous and excited rumble of the traffic had slowed to a fitful murmur of protest. Policemen growled; truck drivers cursed languidly; pedestrians mopped hot faces. New York was enduring the first heat wave of summer.

I called up a final spark of energy and pushed at the door of The Magic Shop, that curious commercial establishment in which the Great Merlini carries on his business of supplying miracles for sale.

“If you really were a magician,” I announced, “you’d do something about the weather. You’d make a pass or contrive a spell and—”

I stopped. My only audience was the shop’s mascot and living trademark, the white rabbit that stretched lazily on the counter, a look of vast boredom in his round pink eye. Even his ears drooped disconsolately; and he paid no attention at all to my complaint.

Neatly lettered on the wall above the cash register was Merlini’s business slogan: Nothing is Impossible. The annoying confidence of that statement had aroused my skepticism before. I decided now to give it the acid test. I dosed my eyes and intoned loudly.

“Hocus pocus. Abracadabra. Fe-fi-fo-fum. I want a long cool drink, an ice cold shower, an electric fan, a lot of air conditioning, a—” My eyes jerked open.

This really was fast work! I looked around apprehensively, still hearing the sound of ice clinking in a glass and the rushing siphon-swish of soda.

Then Merlini’s voice came from beyond the doorway that connected the outer salesroom with the workshop and office in the rear.

“Come and get it!”

For the first time that day I moved with some degree of haste. There was a Santa Claus after all; the age of sorcery was not yet dead. In the back room, Burt Fawkes, Merlini’s shop assistant, reclined at full length on a long, low box that had the sinister shape of a coffin. Beside him on the floor stood a container of ice cubes from the corner drugstore, a soda siphon, and a none-too-full bottle of Scotch. In one hand Burt held his own half-finished drink; in the other, a nice fresh one that he held extended listlessly in my direction. His remarkable lack of animation was so complete that I was about to diagnose a seriously advanced state of cataleptic trance when he spoke.

Merlini is the one who usually quotes from his favorite Gilbert and Sullivan, but on this occasion Burt beat him to it. Lazily he sang:

Then he added, “Hurry, Ross. It’s slipping.”

I rescued the glass from his limp grasp and turned to find two more bodies laid out on the surface of the long workbench. Merlini’s lank frame, in an undignified half-lying, half-sitting sprawl against the wall, had, like Burt’s, apparently settled there for the duration of the summer. He was in his shirt sleeves, tieless, his collar open. The keen, forcefully cut lines of his face were utterly relaxed; the interested curiosity that is ever present in the sharp glance of his black eyes was concealed behind closed lids. The buoyant vitality that bubbled in his personality seemed to be almost completely turned off — but not quite. It appeared in the voice he used — though the voice was not his. It was, instead, the youthful alto of a brash, irrepressible child; and it came not from Merlini, but from the grinning, red-haired ventriloquial dummy that lay beside him trying vainly to match the example of immobility that Merlini had set.

The dummy’s hinged lower jaw moved slowly. “Simple as that,” he said. “Just name it and there you are. We stock only the best grade of witchcraft, every item fully guaranteed or your money back.”

On a raised dais near by was a great thronelike chair whose curving design and brightly gilded, grimacing dragons bespoke an oriental and ancient origin. Carefully I tested the seat for trap doors, and, finding none, sat down.

I gave some attention to my drink and then inquired, “What about that shower, the fan, and the air conditioning?”

“Be reasonable and settle for the drink,” the dummy retorted lazily. “The Dijinn-of-all-work hereabouts has had a hard day. We were just about to let him knock off and go home.”

“That’s a new excuse,” I said. “What kept the Dijinn so busy, and why do your boss and Burt look as if the referee had just counted ten? I thought that all the Great Mysterioso had to do was wave his hand — simple as that — and the Dijinn did all the work? Big husky fellow like that didn’t need help, did he?”

“Those cases and cartons over there,” the dummy’s head inclined toward a stack of boxes in one corner, “had to be packed. It took a great many mystic passes.”

I eyed them, noticed a suitcase or two in the lot, and sat up suspiciously. I ignored the dummy and addressed Merlini. “You’re not leaving town again?”

Merlini tilted his glass and drank long and deep, a procedure that did not prevent the dummy from answering, “Give me just one good reason for not leaving a place that has weather like this.”

I banged my glass down on the chair arm. “I’ll do exactly that! Where do you think you’re going?”

“Albany. New York State Convention. Society of American Magicians. Driving up tonight through the cool countryside. Won’t you come along?”

“Merlini,” I said heatedly, “stop fiddling with that dummy and be reasonable.” I held up the roll of galley proofs I’d brought along. “This is the second set of galleys on your ‘Footprints’ case.[2] You were so involved in constructing a new levitation you couldn’t check the final typescript. You chased out to Chicago to attend a National Convention of Witches, Warlocks, and Banshees or something when the first proofs came through. And now, if you think—”

Merlini spoke for himself this time. “But it’s business, Ross. I’ve planned a mouth-watering display of the very latest conjuring—”

“What do you think this is?” I waved the proofs feebly. “You signed a contract.”

The sound of a buzzer indicated that a customer had entered the shop outside.

Burt finished off his drink, pulled himself up onto his feet, and went out, moving at about half the speed of a sleepy snail who hasn’t made up his mind.

“And,” I continued dyspeptically, “when I try to tell them how busy you are, they always counter with, ‘Well, he’s a magician, isn’t he? Have him wave his wand or something.’ I’m sick and tired of that crack. I don’t know an answer for it, if any. Why haven’t you done something about a science of practical and applied magic? I’d take a course myself if I could say ‘Hey Presto’ and have something useful happen. Rabbits from top hats, ladies sawed in half, ducks that vanish! Why? Who cares? Phooie!”

“Not so fast,” Merlini rebutted. “You got the drink, didn’t you? Have another. Some liver pills, too. But, seriously, I will make a deal with you. Drive up with me tonight. Burt has to stay on the job here, and I’d love company. After the convention is out of the way, we’ll vanish into the Adirondacks beside a mountain stream for a day or two — I know just the spot. We’ll cool off, and I’ll give some attention to those proofs.”

“Well,” I said, “I would like to see a tree again for a change. But no soldiering, understand. If you cross me up—”

Burt returned from the shop, walking a shade faster.

“Customer outside,” he announced. “Wants to see a headless lady. Looks like a sale. I think you’d better see her.”

“Headless lady?” I asked, suspecting a gag. “Now what? Has the firm added a body-snatching department?”

“Yes,” Merlini said. “We’re changing the name to Ghoul & Co. Who is it, Burt?”

The latter shook his head. “Don’t know. Girl who won’t take no for an answer. In a hurry, too.”

He was right about that. The door from the shop swung inward abruptly, and she came toward us moving with a graceful but determined stride and a display of energy which in that temperature was almost foolhardy. She was as interesting and — as we were about to discover — as tantalizing a young woman as had ever set foot on the premises. She was in her middle twenties, tall, dark-haired, undeniably good-looking — and as nervous as a cat. Nervous in the same way — outwardly poised, self-assured, sleek — but jumpy. Beneath the deep outdoor tan of her complexion there was a hard, taut quality that was also present in the deep-throated voice.

She gave me a glance whose briefness was no compliment, decided I wasn’t it, and turned to face Merlini as that gentleman, finally coming into action, swung down from the workbench.

“Mr. Merlini?” Her tone was polite but businesslike.

“Yes,” he nodded, taking her in.

“I need a headless lady,” she said. “I have to have it at once. This gentleman says—”

“That at once is too soon,” Merlini finished. “I know. That particular item has been selling faster than twenty-dollar bills wrapped around cakes of soap at two for a quarter. It’s a good pitch. Everyone wants a headless lady.”

“Except me,” I corrected quietly but firmly.

The girl went on, “He says you have one here. A demonstrator.”

Merlini nodded. “Yes. But I can’t display it for you at the moment. The Merlini Super-Improved Model with the visible, circulating blood feature and the respiratory light attachment, built to last a lifetime, takes down quickly, easily, and packs for carrying in two suitcases. Those.” He pointed toward two squat squarish cases that were with the others in the corner. “It’s there now. I’m taking it to a magicians’ convention in Albany tonight.”

“I don’t need a demonstration,” the girl said. “I know what it’s like. The price is three hundred dollars, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Cash discount, two percent.”

“We’ll skip that,” she said, flipping open her purse. She took out a folded packets of perhaps a dozen bills, dealt off three, and handed them to Burt. They were hundred-dollar bills. Burt’s response was automatic and prompt. He procured a receipt pad in about the same length of time it takes Merlini to produce a coin from thin air.

“Name?” he asked, pencil poised.

She scowled. “Is that necessary?”

Burt nodded, “Yes.”

She looked at him thoughtfully for a moment longer, then said suddenly. “Christine — Mildred Christine.”

“Address?”

“Wait,” she said. “You don’t understand. I’m taking it with me.”

Burt looked at his boss. Merlini absently took a playing card from the workbench and balanced it impossibly on one edge on the back of his hand. “I’m sorry, Miss” — he paused noticeably — “Christine. I can’t let you have this one. The factory is a week behind on orders. I couldn’t possibly make delivery before — well, I might get them to rush an assembly by Monday. Today’s Thursday. Will that—”

“No.” Miss Christine was quite certain. “I’m leaving town tonight. I have to have it now.”

“I’m sorry.” Merlini was equally definite. “Perhaps an Asrah Levitation, a ‘Burning a Woman Alive,’ or a nice fast trunk-escape at one half off, or—”

The girl took a step or two toward Merlini, restlessly. “Look,” she said. “You’d sell the demonstrator at a price, wouldn’t you?”

Merlini considered that for a moment, frowning. His dark eyes met hers intently. “I might,” he said finally. “It would be more, of course.”

“I realize that,” she said.

Merlini still hesitated, his frown deeper. Then he said quickly and flatly, “It would be three hundred more.”

Burt gave a surprised start that was almost a jump, but Mildred didn’t as much as blink. The corners of her mouth even curled upward slightly. She promptly repeated her production trick with the purse, and three more hundred-dollar bills passed across to Burt.

“My car is down the street,” she said. “I’ll be back in half an hour. Will you have the cases taken down for me, please?” She turned on her heel, and started for the door.

“Just a minute,” Merlini said hastily. “This has gone far enough.”

She stopped in the doorway. “What do you mean?” Her eyes snapped. “You named your price. You got it. You can’t—”

“I know.” Merlini took a cigarette from his pocket and hunted thoughtfully for a match. “I wanted to see just how badly you did want it. You surprised me. But I’m not a shakedown artist. You may have it at the regular list price — on one condition.”

“Yes?” She scowled.

Merlini lit his cigarette, leaned back against his workbench, and observed calmly, as if he were thinking aloud, “You don’t need the apparatus so quickly because it means a job. You’ve got too many of those century notes. Possession and exhibition of the illusion four days sooner than I can supply one from regular stock will hardly net you the extra three hundred you’re willing to pay. If you’ll explain this curious haste and tell me why the monogram on your purse is an H rather than a C — you can have it.”

Mildred wasn’t exactly overjoyed. “You mean that?” she asked, frowning.

Merlini nodded.

She unsnapped her purse again. “I’ll make it seven hundred.”

Merlini shook his head decisively.

The girl looked at Burt. “Is he always like this?”

Burt glanced at the money he held. “You can expect anything, Miss. He’s stubborn, too.”

“So am I.” She took the bills. “But if I should change my mind... How much longer will you be here?”

Merlini consulted his watch. “Not long. But you can reach me at my home until about eight o’clock.”

“Thanks.” She put the bills in her purse, turned and strode through the door into the shop. We heard her footsteps cross the floor beyond, heard the buzzer as the outer door began to open, and then heard it gently close again. She came back at once. Merlini smiled — but only temporarily.

Miss Christine was agitated. “Is there a rear exit here?” he asked. “I’d rather not—”

Then she saw the open window and the fire escape beyond. She took half a dozen steps, put one hand on the window sill, and went through the opening with the fluid grace of an acrobat. Before any of us had recovered enough to speak, she had gone. It was rather like one of Merlini’s tricks.

Merlini raised an eyebrow at me and then moved quickly to his desk in the corner, picked an envelope from a pigeonhole, sealed it, and scaled it at Burt. “Take this out and drop it in the mail chute. Keep both eyes open. And report back as to the nature of the menace that seems to be lurking in our corridor.”

Burt asked, “Why pick on me?” But he went.

The back issues of Billboard Magazine, the showman’s bible, were stacked high on the filing cabinets by the desk. Merlini took down the top half-dozen copies, separated one, and flipped through it rapidly as if he knew what he wanted.

I crossed to the window, leaned out, and looked down. Mildred Christine was just vanishing through another window four flights below.

“Can’t I do something?” I asked. “Tail the gal, perhaps?”

Merlini was preoccupied. “What?” he said.

I repeated my question.

He gazed thoughtfully at his magazine for a moment, and said, “No. That won’t be necessary.” He removed the page that had caught his interest, folded it carefully, and placed it in his billfold. “I think I know — yes, Burt?”

“Corridor peaceful and deserted,” the latter reported, “except for the guy that ducked into the men’s washroom down the hall just as I went out. The door didn’t quite close behind him, so I figured maybe I was being watched. I proceeded to go powder my nose, but he took cover just as I got there. So I didn’t get a look at much except his feet. Number nines or thereabouts. I don’t suppose that’s a lot of help?”

“It’s a beginning,” Merlini said. “We’ll go on from there, and we’ll give him something to think about. We’ll close up shop — nearly time anyhow. Burt will go first, wait in the lobby downstairs, and sit tight. Ross and I will stall a few minutes, then lock up and follow after. That will give him a vanishing lady to worry about. Burt will see what he does about it. Tail him when he comes down.”

Burt put on his tie and went out. Merlini and I locked up and followed a few minutes later. I glanced along the corridor out of the corner of one eye. The washroom door was suspiciously ajar. Merlini didn’t appear to notice, but he gave me a wink and said, for the benefit of any listening ears, “That vanishing cabinet will have to be worked over. It’s impractical as it stands. We put the girl in; she disappears and then doesn’t come back. Won’t do at all. Can’t use a new girl every time.”

He kept that up until the elevator door had closed behind us.

We took a taxi, made a stop at my apartment on East Forty-first Street while I packed a toothbrush, and then went on to Merlini’s at 13½ Washington Square North. The schedule we planned consisted of a cold shower apiece, a change of clothes, cocktail, dinner.

Merlini was in the shower, and I was working with the cocktail shaker when the phone rang. I took it.

The phone said, “Burt speaking. Ask the boss what I do now. I’m at the drugstore, Eighth and Fifth, just around the corner. The subject tailed you and I tailed him. All we lacked coming down Fifth Avenue in our three taxis was a parade permit, confetti, a band, and Grover Whalen. He’s in the park across from you.”

“Who, Grover?”

“No, you dope. The mystery man.”

“Hold everything.” I put the phone down, stepped to the window without going too near, and peered out between the curtains. The running splash of the shower had stopped, and Merlini asked, “Yes, Ross?”

Across the street, not directly opposite, but somewhat to the left, a man sat on a park bench. He held a newspaper spread before him that concealed all the upper part of his body except the dark felt hat that projected above its top edge. I suspected that his eyes were not on the print, but rather were aimed in my direction, surveying the house through the narrow space between the paper’s top and the lower edge of the hat’s brim.

I told Merlini what Burt had reported and what I saw.

“Perhaps he thinks we cut the girl up in little pieces,” Merlini said, “and brought her—”

I interrupted, jumping for the phone. “He’s shoving off. Want Burt to carry on?”

Merlini hurried from the bathroom, toweling himself and leaving wet tracks across the carpet. He looked out the window. “Yes,” he said, “have him do that.”

“Step on it, Burt. He’s coming your way.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” Burt said. The receiver clicked.

A half-hour later, as we were about to leave in search of a restaurant, Burt phoned again. “Operative Q-X9 reporting,” he said. “The subject proceeded to 19 West Thirty-first Street. Business building. Small.” The lobby directory lists the following: “The Sylph Brassiere Co.; Gerald L. Kaufman, Architect; A. Shapiro, Dresses; and The Acme Detective Agency, Martin O’Halloran, Prop. Tell Merlini I think so, too.”

I relayed that and added, “Burt thinks our man is a brassiere salesman. Now what?”

“Tell him to eat and then wait for us at the shop. As soon as we’ve dined, we’ll pick up the car, load the luggage, and head for Albany.”

That wasn’t at all what I expected. Merlini saw it on my face. “Go on, tell him,” he repeated.

I did.

Burt didn’t get it either. “Doesn’t sound right to me,” he commented. “Merlini not feeling well?”

“Too well. He’s master-minding again, pretending he’s way ahead of us. Wants us to think he’s solved the curious case of the Vanishing Lady and the Disappointed Shadow. But don’t believe all the rumors you hear. We’ll be seeing you.”

Merlini grinned. “Your tactics are crude. I’ll tell you one thing, though; I’ll tell you who the real Millie Christine was. Knowing that, you may be able to figure out who Miss H is. I did.”

“Well?” I said suspiciously, afraid with good reason that any information he gave away free at this point was going to be cryptic.

“The real Millie Christine,” he said, “was one person who would have had a really practical use for a Headless Lady Illusion. She was a freak in Barnum’s Museum — a two-headed, girl.”[3]

It wasn’t until dinner was over and we had started uptown in Merlini’s car that I was able successfully to get him back on the subject.

“Why don’t you send Burt to the convention with your bag of tricks?” I said. “We’ll stay here and snoop.”

“I thought you wanted those proofs checked?”

“Hell with ’em,” I said. “I wanted to know—”

“So do I,” he grinned. “Convention first. Check proofs on Monday. And Tuesday we snoop. In Waterboro, New York.”

“Waterboro, New York. Oh, I see.”

Merlini grinned again. “You do not,” he contradicted.

We parked the car and went on up to the shop and the remaining surprise that lay in wait for us that night. Burt supplied it the moment we entered.

“Thriving little business we have here,” he said. “It flourishes even while we sleep. Like an automat.”

“What,” Merlini asked, “does that mean?”

Burt led us to the inner room and pointed a finger at the window on the fire escape. Merlini, I remembered, had closed and locked it before we left. But it was open now, and there was a jagged hole in the pane above the window catch.

Merlini sent a swift glance around the room. “Miss Christine,” he said then, “is undoubtedly one of the most determined young ladies I’ve ever encountered.”

Three hundred-dollar bills lay beneath a paper weight on the desk. The cases that contained the Headless Lady apparatus were gone.

Chapter II Side Show

“...this great combined outside show and international congress of weird people, the most amazing, Gargantuan, awe-inspiring, cataclysmic collection of strange oddities, living freaks, and curious wonders ever assembled under one canvas! The show starts right away! No waits. No delays. No extra charge on the inside. Step right up to the ticket boxes on either side!...”

Conventions are uninhibited, haywire affairs. I imagine that even the annual conclaves of the Society of Ancient Historians, the United Association of Embalmers, and, possibly, the left wing section of the D. A. R. have their moments. But a convention of magicians, coin kings, card manipulators, illusionists, mind readers, hypnotists, and ventriloquists is an experience.

The nimble-fingered delegates practiced their receptive skill in the corridors, the elevators, and at the table. I think I saw every accepted scientific axiom of physics and logic shattered beyond all mending. The effect was rather like living in a room paneled with the curved distorting mirrors from an amusement park’s Fun House. After two days and nights of concentrated trickery I essayed a little vanishing act of my own. At 3 A.M. on Sunday morning I sneaked quietly off to the room Merlini and I shared, locked the door with the only key, and went to bed.

There were more tricks on Sunday, and a banquet. I met a blonde who is sawed in two twice a day for living, discovered that she didn’t require more than the usual amount of care in handling, and had a pretty good time. Monday morning we caught up on sleep, and in the afternoon Merlini packed what miracles remained unsold and we took them to the Express office.

Monday night we had a session with the proofs. Merlini’s job was to check them for facts, but I had the devil’s own time trying to keep him from adding a lot of fiction. On nearly every other galley he’d say, “Of course, I know it didn’t happen just that way, but don’t you think it would have more punch if—” I managed to stop some of his “improvements”; but at that there were enough so that I spent most of Tuesday madly rewriting. I finished just in time to make the post office before it closed, and sent the proofs off by registered mail. Then, finally, after giving the car a feed of gas and oil, we pulled out and headed west on Route 20 — smack into trouble.

Waterboro, according to the road map, is a wide spot in the road (Pop.: 5,000 to 10,000) some seventy-five miles out of Albany in the middle of nowhere, and noted as far as I knew for exactly nothing at all. I’d never heard of the place until Merlini had pulled it out of his hat on Thursday night, and I’d long since given up trying to figure out how the mysterious Miss H—, her unholy desire for a headless lady, and her use of the name of a two-headed freak had suggested it.

I said as much, and insisted, with some annoyance, on an answer.

“Circus,” Merlini replied. “The Mighty Hannum Combined Shows is playing Waterboro today. And I’ll drink all the pink lemonade on the lot if we don’t find that headless illusion of mine working in their side show.”

“A particle of dried mud that I didn’t notice on Miss Christine’s left shoe, I suppose,” I said. “An unusual type of red clay that you immediately recognized as coming from nowhere else but the northeast corner of the circus lot in Waterboro, New York.”

“You don’t know my methods, Watson,” he paraphrased. “No. Hardly that. The show plays one-day stands. Last Thursday when Miss H, as I prefer to call her, made her brief appearance, the show was playing Newark, New Jersey.”

“Take it from there,” I said. “I’m listening.”

“The Headless Lady is this season’s wow exhibit in the open-air amusement world. Miss H’s healthy tan, her too-contrasty make-up, and her athletic manner taken together, suggested outdoor show business. Circus, carnival, or exposition. There were half a dozen playing within a two-hundred-mile radius of New York City. Then, when Burt asked her name, she gave a phony. She’s too quick-witted to give out something like Mary Smith or Jane Johnson, but she found herself hesitating, and she popped out with the first other name that entered her head, Mildred Christine. Simple matter of association. We were discussing a headless lady, and she thinks of a two-headed girl.

“My deduction that she knew her circus history was elementary. I consulted Billboard for circus routes. There were three shows in the neighborhood. One, I knew, had the illusion; one was a dog-and-pony show that couldn’t afford it; and the other, the one nearest New York at that, was the Hannum show. It looked possible.”

“Then you added in the H monogram on her purse, I suppose?”

“Exactly. At the beginning of the season, Billboard prints list of the personnel of the various shows as they leave winter quarters. Major Rutherford Hannum, an old-time circus man who dates from the wagon-show days, owns the show, and one of its featured performers is his daughter, Pauline. I haven’t seen the Major for years, and I failed to recognize Pauline because the last time I saw her she was in pigtails and short dresses. She’s changed.”

“She performs, you say?” I asked.

“Wire-walker,” Merlini replied.

We reached Waterboro at eight o’clock and, as I braked before the town’s one traffic light, I hailed a boy on the corner. “Which way to the show grounds?” I asked.

Merlini’s voice beside me answered. “Turn right, here.”

“Oh. You know the town then?” I asked, turning.

“No. Never set eyes on it before. Now turn left.”

“Clairvoyance?”

“Something like that,” he said. “Just give the car its head. I’ve had it so long that it turns in at circus lots automatically. Force of habit.”

I could believe that. Merlini, as I should have explained before now, was born to calliopes, elephants, spangles, and sawdust. His mother was turning somersaults on a resin-back as late as five months before he was born and within a couple of weeks after. At one time or other when you were in knee-pants or short dresses you probably saw the Riding Merlinis, an equestrian act that circus people still talk about. Merlini, himself, began his career of mystification as a side-show sorcerer, and he still has a very warm spot in his heart for the whitetops. I’m fairly certain that he’d have found himself at Waterboro that night even though the headless lady incident had never happened.

We made one more turn at his direction and came onto a street at the town’s edge, lined on either side with parked cars. At its further end there were lights and music, the gay, thumping, nostalgic sound of brasses that held all the old gala promise of excitement, color, and pageantry. As we came closer, I glimpsed the bellying, pennon-topped silhouettes of the tents rising above the brightly lighted side-show banners with their hot, garish splashes of color. We were downwind, and all at once I got the first whiff of that inimitable circus odor, the complex blended smell of elephants, cats, horses, hay, sawdust, cracker jack, hot peanuts, and candy floss.

“Is that your secret?” I asked. “Hypersensitive sense of smell?”

“The telephone poles were chalked,” he explained, sitting forward expectantly in his seat. “When the show moves, the crew on the first truck out puts arrows on the poles, marking the turns so that the following drivers can dispense with maps or having to ask questions.”

We turned right, up over the curb and onto the lot, pulling in and parking near several trailers behind the sideshow top. Merlini got out at once.

He didn’t bother to circumnavigate the tent, but went directly to the side wall. His tall figure, silhouetted against the lighted canvas, stooped as if to lift its lower edge, then stopped. I hurried toward him as he picked something from the grass at his feet.

“Well!” he said in a faintly surprised voice. “A grift show.”

He fanned the three purses and then flipped them open one at a time, looking at the identification cards behind the celluloids. As he glanced at the second, his voice showed real surprise.

“That,” he said, “is definitely a bloomer. I wonder...”

“Now what?” I asked. “Not clues already?”

He stuffed the billfolds into his pocket, bent quickly, lifted the side wall, and said, “Come on.”

He held the canvas up as I ducked in behind him. We emerged between two of the dozen or more low platforms that were set at even intervals around the interior. A tall square-shouldered man in an ankle-length, gaudy, somewhat soiled red and yellow robe, was arranging, on the table before him, a glittering assortment of long knives and swords. He turned, hearing us, and scowled ill-naturedly. His forehead had a Neanderthalian slant, and his bony under jaw projected belligerently.

“Where the hell duh ya think you’re going, Mac?” he growled.

“Nowhere,” Merlini said calmly. “We’re here. We’re with it.”

The reception committee was skeptical. “Oh, yeah? Since when?”

“Since now.” With his customary deftness, Merlini produced a cigarette from thin air, reached again, and got a paper of matches. “Magician,” he explained somewhat unneccessarily. “Where’s the mitt camp? I’m looking for Gus and Stella Milbauer.”

The sword swallower’s suspicion melted slightly. “Over there,” he said, jerking his head to the left. We stepped out from between the platforms and saw a small tented structure of awning-striped canvas down the line. Above its entrance hung a large drawing of Cheiro’s chart of the hand. Merlini started toward it.

There were twenty or thirty customers within the sideshow tent, mostly gathered in a group at the far end listening to a five-piece Negro band that was playing with more fervor than harmony, and watching a buxom, coffee-colored and undulant wench who shouted a faintly off-color lyric.

Just beyond the band there was a platform surmounted by a square boxlike enclosure formed of dark red drapes, the front curtains tightly drawn.

Merlini nodded toward it. “Success,” he said. “That’s it.”

The singer stopped just then, and the band music faded. From outside on the midway came the leathery exhorting voice of the opener shouting, “...and the weirdest sight of all, my friends, the sci-un-tific mahvel of ouah time — Mademwahselle Christine, the lady without a head! Positively living and buh-reathing! While the big show is going on you see it all for the one price — fifteen cents! Step right up...”

Gus, standing by the platform, greeted Merlini with pleased surprise. He was a skinny little man with a scrawny neck, thinning gray hair, a black-rimmed pincenez, a rather hammy dignity, and a warm smile.

“Stella,” he exclaimed, turning. “Look who’s here!”

A middle-aged, completely ordinary-looking woman sat on a camp chair before the tent. She wore a black evening gown, too much eye shadow, and an abstracted air. She looked at Merlini with faded blue eyes and nodded politely but with little enthusiasm.

Gus and Merlini, however, burst into a rapid-fire exchange of reminiscences.

I looked interestedly around the tent at the silent gapping crowd and at the blasé, matter-of-fact freaks and performers who were awaiting their turns. Hoodoo, the Headhunter from the Amazon, an inky-black, fuzz-topped, colored man with war paint on his face sat on a campstool before his collection of war clubs and shrunken human heads, cleaning his fingernails with a jacknife. One of the glass-skirted cooch dancers was knitting busily at a small pink sweater.

My attention shifted suddenly back to Merlini and Gus, as I heard the former ask, “When did the Headless Lady join up?”

“Friday, I think,” Gus replied. “Wasn’t it, Stella?”

Stella, the woman who, according to the inscription on the chart behind her, knows all, sees all, and tells all, answered, “I guess so.”

“Who is she?” Merlini continued offhandedly. “Anyone I know?”

But Gus didn’t get to answer just then. A lean, lantern-jawed gentleman with a pair of innocent brown eyes and his hat brim turned up all the way around, stepped from the crowd and touched Merlini’s arm.

“Pardon me, brother, but can you tell me how soon the big show starts?” His voice was that of the country yokel, but there was a knowing grin on his face.

“Holy jumping camelopards!” Merlini exclaimed. “Farmer Jack!” They shook hands energetically. “Ross, step over here. I want you to meet the best three-card monte man in the business. If he offers you a little bet on a sure thing, run for the nearest exit! Tell me something, Farmer. Last I heard this was a Sunday School show. When did the grift come back?”

Farmer grinned. “It’s coming back on a lot of shows. Last season was a bloomer for one thing, and the grift’s a sort of insurance. And then, too, when the fixer walks into Johnny Tin Plate’s office and says, ‘No grift at all this year, Chief,’ for an answer he gets, ‘Oh. That’s nice. But how the hell do I get mine?’ And the fix has to be paid off anyway. So why not frame a store or two?”

“I can’t think of a real good answer for that one, Farmer. You’re on the payroll then?”

“Yeah. I think so. But maybe I’m wrong. Orders came through to lay off a few days. But if I don’t get the office soon, I’m blowing. Seems like every time I take a vacation the chumps walk right up asking for it.”

“Why the layoff? Too much heat in these parts?”

“No. There aren’t many beefs the way I dust ’em off. Don’t know what it is. Something goin’ on around this outfit that I’m not hep to.”

“It’s the advance crew for one thing,” Gus put in disgustedly. “Kelley and Edwards. They’ve gone nuts. Here, look at this route card. Eighty-ninety-mile jumps every day, and a lot of wrong towns. Waterboro’s a grass town. Show this size hadn’t oughta be here. We won’t come close to making the nut. Norwalk tomorrow, and that’s worse. I don’t get it. We even played Bridgeport less’n two weeks after the Big Show.”

“And,” Farmer added, “we just got out of mine-strike territory in Pennsy, and we’re heading smack into a milk strike upstate. But it’s not the advance crew, Gus. They don’t know no more about it than we do. Couple of them back on the lot Sunday and crabbin’ about it. It’s orders from the old man.”

“Salaries paid up?” Merlini asked.

“Yes,” Gus said, “but that’s funny, too. We were six weeks behind up until Saturday. Lots of folks were all set to blow. Three or four big top acts did leave. Then we got the whole thing up to date, all at once. Like that.”

“The Major land an angel?” Merlini asked incredulously.

“Looks like it,” Farmer answered. “High-class sucker, too. I’d like to have his phone number. But say, hasn’t anybody told you...”

The lecturer’s voice cut in above Farmer’s. “Over here, ladies and gentlemen — the strangest, most startling scientific exhibition ever shown, Mademoiselle Christine, the Headless Lady.”

Merlini gave me a glance. “Christine,” he said. “Perhaps we’d better watch this.” He started toward the crowd that stood before the speaker.

“Two years ago,” the lecturer stated in a brisk clinical tone, “a terrible railway accident occurred near Paris, France. Many of you doubtless read about it. Mademoiselle Christine, who you are about to see, was in that accident. They found her among the dead and dying in the twisted wreckage with the bony structure of her skull horribly crushed. But she still lived! By a fortunate chance, the accident happened close to the private villa and research laboratories of the great surgeon, Dr. Josef Veronoff, world famous, as you all know, for his wonderful experiments in keeping human and animal tissue alive in chemical solutions.

“He saw at once that Mademoiselle Christine’s head injuries could never be repaired by any surgical means. He kept her alive for three days with adrenalin and serum injections, while his technical assistants hastily constructed the marvelous apparatus you are about to see. Then Dr. Veronoff completely amputated the young lady’s head! And substituted his astounding machine!”

The lecturer pulled a cord; the curtains drew apart. “Ladies and Gentlemen, may I introduce Mademoiselle Christine, the Lady Without a Head! The eighth wonder of the world of science!”

The display was obviously the lecturer’s favorite. He really went to town and put oomph into his buildup. He did it well; the spectators, up to this point, had expected to see something falling as far short of the painting on the banner outside as did some of the other exhibits. But they were fooled. The sideshow banner artist had, for once, found it impossible to gild the lily. The Headless Lady was exactly that.

Her body, dressed in brief shorts and brassiere, sat on a high hospital stool made of metal tubing. Her figure was Grade A plus in all respects — except that it simply stopped short at the base of her neck. A cup-shaped rubber attachment was fixed between her shoulders, and six slender glass tubes rose upward from it, curved in a half-circle, and terminated in six descending tubes of rubber. Three of these were attached, on the left, to a radiolike apparatus, the front panel of which was covered with rheostat dials and electrical switches. The other three tubes led off to a chemico-electrical apparatus on the right, fitted with pressure gauges of strange design, an electric motor with visibly moving eccentric parts, and a complex hookup of chemical glassware — beakers, retorts, and flasks in which a red fluid bubbled. The same liquid could also be seen circulating through the glass tubes that led into the body at the base of the neck. A green light pulsated at a respiratory rate.

Above the girl’s shoulders there was simply nothing but the curved glass tubes and empty space!

The lecturer continued, “Many people, when they see Miss Christine, are skeptical. They have said that her body is merely a cleverly constructed dummy. I’ll let you decide that for yourselves.” He lifted a limp arm and pressed his thumb for a moment against its flesh. He removed his thumb, and we saw that its pressure had left a white spot on the arm which gradually faded away as the blood returned.

“I will now,” he said dramatically, “turn on the nerve exciter.” He threw a switch and moved several of the dials on the electrical equipment. A four-inch spark suddenly spit and leaped with a bright flash between two copper electrode terminals.

The body moved for the first time. The fingers of the hands twitched. Slowly the lecturer turned a rheostat, and slowly the sputtering, intermittent crackle of the spark grew faster. The girl’s arms moved upward from their position on her thighs; her fingers jerked spasmodically in a clawing, galvanic movement that accelerated with the spark’s increasing frequency. This continued for half a minute; then the crackling subsided; the finger jerks slowed; the arms settled again into their former position, and finally came to rest. The spark ceased abruptly.

“Her arms always return to their former position,” the lecturer explained, “because, having been in this condition now for nearly two years, Mademoiselle Christine’s muscles have become set to a certain extent. If any of you have any questions to ask I will be happy to try to answer them for you.” He stepped forward and drew the curtain to behind him.

“Do you have any questions?” I asked Merlini.

“Yes,” he said, “I do; but I doubt if the lecturer is the man to ask. I still want to know who the girl is. I’ve a feeling in my bones that this Millie Christine is not the one we had the pleasure of meeting. Did you like the illusion?”

“If I didn’t know it as an illusion, and if I failed to realize, as many of this audience seem to, that no bona fide scientific marvel of this caliber would ever be on tour in a side show, it would give me the creeps, the fantods, and the willies. Look at that woman over there. She’s a kind, sympathetic soul; and it’s obvious that she is feeling sorry as hell for poor Miss Christine. It’s a bit thick, isn’t it?”

“I know,” Merlini said. “He played it straight from start to finish. The illusion is so perfect that it would still be a socko draw if it were announced as an illusion instead of as the real thing. But the lecturer is a circus man and a showman. The townspeople, to him, are chumps, linguistically and literally. It hasn’t occurred to him that he’s doing his bit toward making science our modern superstition. If it did, he’d say, ‘What the hell! My job is to pack ’em in.’ He has, of course, a notable precedent in Phineas Taylor Barnum.”

Gus, who stood beside us, said, “You haven’t heard that you won’t be seeing Major Hannum this trip — or any other.”

Merlini turned on his heel, sharply. “Why not?” His words were definitely apprehensive.

Gus said, “They shipped his body back to Indiana this afternoon. He was killed last night. He—”

The lecturer led the crowd in our direction. He spoke to Gus. “Let’s go. You’re next.”

“Right,” Gus said, and to us, “Sorry. See you later.”

“The woman who sees all, knows all and tells all,” Merlini commented thoughtfully. “I do wish that wasn’t just another snare and delusion.”

Chapter III Gun Talk

“If he’s old enough to enjoy the show, lady — he’s old enough to need a ticket.”

Merlini watched Gus mount the low platform before the mitt camp and stand waiting beside his wife as the lecturer rattled off his introductory talk.

“Ross,” he said after a moment, “the Mighty Hannum Shows have attractions that aren’t mentioned in the advertising.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “The ways things are shaping up, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised but what I’ll have to report to your wife that you’ve run off and joined a circus for the duration of the summer.”

“That’s quite possible,” he said seriously. “The side show could use a magician. And you can sign on as a punk around the elephants.[4] Come on. Let’s go ask questions.”

We turned toward the entrance and went out just as Gus tied a blindfold over his wife’s eyes and launched into the second-sight act that sold Madame Stella as a seer and preceded the later request for “the small sum of twenty-five cents more that entitles each and every one of you to a personal horoscope, a private reading, and a full and complete answer to any question concerning the Future, Love, Travel, Business—”

As we came up to the entrance of the Big Top, we were accosted by a short and extremely wide man who had been constructed, through some error, according to architectural specifications intended for a hippopotamus. He held out a large hairy paw and said, “Tickets, please. You’ll have to hurry. The big show is now going on.”

“Is Mac Wiley around?” Merlini asked.

The man gave us a sour once-over.

“No,” Merlini said, apparently reading the man’s mind, “no attachments, no damage suits, no shakedowns. I just want—”

One of the two men sitting inside the enclosure on folding camp chairs suddenly hopped to his feet and stepped briskly forward, hand out. “Well, you old son of a gun! Come in! Come in! Been wondering why you hadn’t showed up before now.” He took Merlini’s hand in both of his own and pumped at it enthusiastically.

He was a lean, wiry individual with graying, brittle hair and bushy black eyebrows that jutted out with a Mephistophelean twist above a knowing and extraordinarily penetrating pair of small bright eyes. The hard muscles of his face were covered with a tough and weatherbeaten hide that had seldom been indoors, the leathery tan of which was spotted with an overlapping accumulation of darker freckles. A limp felt hat was pushed far back on his head.

“You couldn’t keep me away, Mac,” said Merlini. “How are you? Meet a good friend of mine, Ross Harte. This is J. MacAllister Wiley, legal adjuster extraordinary, technically known as the fixer, or the patch.”

“Glad to know you. Any friend of Merlini’s...” Mac nodded at the other man, who had risen from his chair, a hatless young man with a rumpled thatch of sandy hair and an intelligent, worried face that I noticed drew suddenly intent at that first mention of Merlini’s name.

“Don’t think you know Atterbury, here, do you?” Mac said. “Keith Atterbury, press agent on the lot. Young squirt. Since your time. But he writes a nice notice. Sit down, Merlini, and tell me about yourself. It’s been years.”

Atterbury acknowledged the introductions somewhat perfunctorily and pulled up two more chairs. He lit a fresh cigarette from the end of the butt he held and watched Merlini with a nervous and calculating air.

“Last time I saw you—” Mac said rapidly. “Wait. I know. Night of the blowdown on the Hagen show.” His thin-lipped mouth spread in a wide grin, and he addressed me. “The Great Merlini was working the kid-show and the blow hit us before the boys could finish double-staking. The top came down while Merlini was floating a lady in mid-air. One of the customers that I had to argue out of a damage suit — he got conked by a falling quarter pole — said afterward, ‘Why in hell didn’t that damned magician use some levitation on the tent?’ Ho! Ho!”

Merlini grinned. “I couldn’t let the lady down, Mac. That was a night, wasn’t it?”

“It was. The bulls stampeded into the next county, and when the attachments and damage suits began to come in, the show folded then and there. Don’t know what either of us was doing on it. It was a traveling crash-pile anyhow.”

For the next five minutes Merlini and Wiley, ignoring Atterbury and myself, exchanged a rapid barrage and counter-barrage of reminiscences. It was interesting, but largely historical; and there were several times when, in spite of the glossary of circus terms Merlini had already shoved at me, I got completely lost. Finally, their cavalcade of memory returned to the current date, and Merlini asked, “Good show this year, Mac?”

“I dunno. Ask Keith. He’s the P. A. I haven’t seen anything but small pieces of a circus performance in fifteen years.” He glanced at me, saw the incredulous look on my face, and added, grinning, “Nothing odd about that. I knew a clown once who never saw a complete show until after he retired at seventy-three.”

A neatly dressed stoutish man came in from the midway and approached us with a smile. “I just picked up a couple of dandies, Keith,” he said. “Seam-squirrels and circus-bees. Nice.”

Mac grinned. “I’d say they were lousy myself. When you hunt for them it’s called ‘reading your shirt.’” Mac turned to us. “This is Mr. Stuart Towne, a First-of-May visiting author. He’s spending a week or two with the show. Says he’s going to do a circus murder mystery, but he spends most of his time collecting words. The man with the high pockets, Towne, is the Great Merlini in person, and this is his friend, Ross Harte.”

Towne acknowledged the introductions and then turned back to Mac. “The words will come in handy,” he said, “but I’ve been picking up murder material too. That single-edged grub-hoe the working men use would be a nice original weapon. Never saw it used in fiction.”

“I’ve seen it used in real life though,” Mac said. He rattled off an account of a circus murder by a drunken prop-man while I noticed that Towne, like many another author, didn’t look the part. He was middle-aged, blue of chin, and altogether too ordinary-looking. You wouldn’t have given him a second glance in a crowd, though once you had talked to him you did just that. Behind the commonplace, rather trite face, you soon detected the busy clockwork of a clever and active brain. His character at first seemed as colorless as his face; but as I came to know him, I found that it had an annoying chameleon-like way of appearing to change, as soon as you were on the point of defining it, into something quite different. He chewed gum incessantly.

When Mac had finished, Merlini, whose interest in murder since he went in for a sideline of crime has been boundless, said, “The grub-hoe’s a weapon, Mr. Towne. And here’s a method. You can use it nicely on a clown. Clown white, a preparation of pre-Elizabethan origin, is a mixture of zinc oxide, lard, and tincture of benzoin, dusted over with talcum. The great Humpty-Dumpty pantomimist, George L. Fox, and others are said to have died because they mistakenly used bismuth in place of benzoin. Use any poison that can be absorbed through the skin, and there you are. No charge.”

“Thanks,” Towne said. “There’s another thing you could give me, if it’s etiquette to ask. I saw you vanish an elephant at the old Hippodrome ten years ago, and I’ve been annoyed ever since. I might be able to use the method to vanish a murderer sometime.”

“That trick was designed to vanish an elephant,” Merlini smiled evasively. “Vanishing a murderer by that particular method would be like killing a fly with a sledge hammer. And besides, you do pretty well on your own. You got off a very neat vanish of a corpse in The Empty Coffin.”

“He gave me an autographed copy of that,” Mac put in. “I’m looking forward to reading it this winter. There’s a circus saying, Mr. Towne, that circus people do their sleeping in the winter. That goes for reading, too. There never seems to be time for it on the road.”

“By the way, Mac,” Merlini put in, “that book title reminds me. What is this that I hear about the Major?”

Mac sobered a bit. “Auto smashup. Tough break for the show. Happened last night just outside of Kings Falls; his car hit a bridge abutment. Pretty bad smash. He was dead when they found him.”

The fat ticket taker behind Mac, engaged in counting a pile of ticket stubs, muttered something half under his breath. Mac turned.

“Oh, sorry, Cal. Merlini, this is Everett Love joy, better known as ‘Calamity.’ Our front-door superintendent. Pay no attention to him at all. He thinks the show is jinxed — as always. Every cloud has a black border.”

“Well,” Calamity scowled, “what would you call it? First it’s mine strikes, then the Major, and now... you hear that band in the big top? Suppe’s ‘Light Cavalry March,’ for God sakes! Where has that boss windjammer been all his life? You know as well as I do, first time that was played on a circus lot they had a train wreck and sixteen people killed.”

“Forget it,” Mac said heavily. “You’re twice as superstitious as a tribe of Ubangis.” He frowned. “That is a little thick, though. Our bandmaster’s new. Maybe he doesn’t know. I’ll speak to him. Some of the performers are apt to get a mite nervous.”

“Sure, that’s just it,” added Calamity. “And break their necks. Accidents always come in threes. We’ve had the first. That leaves two to go.” He turned back to his tickets, and added almost to low to hear, “If it was an accident.”

Mac caught it, though. “What,” he said with a sudden sharp bite in his voice, “do you mean by that?”

There was a short uneasy silence until Calamity answered, “Oh, nothin’ at all. I just don’t understand why the Major left the lot at that time of night with a blow comin’ on, where the hell he could have been goin’, and why he piled up — a cautious fussbudget like him. With that bum ticker of his he never drove faster than a trot, and he was so afraid he’d scratch the cream-colored paint job on that new sixteen-cylinder Packard, he moved it around like he was truckin’ a load of eggs. He musta been goin’ sixty-five to—”

Mac threw up his hands. “You can think up the damnedest things. If somebody sneezes you’re afraid of a blowdown. Business is always lousy.” “And what happened this Friday morning this side of Bridgeport?” Calamity sputtered. “The elephant truck lands in a ditch, Rubber and Modoc get away and it takes all morning to round them up. I suppose you don’t count—”

“No, I don’t. The publicity we got packed the house in Peekskill that night. Forget it, Cal. You’ve been jumpy ever since the fuzz came on the lot tonight.”

“The fuzz, Ross,” Merlini footnoted, “is the local constabulary. Cal might be right at that, Mac. Sheriff Weatherby is going to be howling in your ear before long. That’s a prediction.”

Mac looked startled. “What do you mean? Do you know him?”

“No, never saw him; but the cannon mob that’s working tonight pulled a boner. They should know better.”

“What do you mean? There aren’t any pickpockets on this show.”

“No?” Merlini produced the billfolds. “You wouldn’t kid me would you, Mac? Someone weeded these leathers and ditched them behind the kid-show top. And this one belongs to Sheriff Jonas Weatherby. Don’t the boys know enough to lay off the law?”

Mac grabbed it. “I’ll be damned! It’s a local mob. I’d better see about this.”

“I think I’ve spotted them for you. Skinny guy over there this side of the ticket wagon is the wire.”

“Excuse me,” Mac said hastily, “while I go cause a little trouble. Come on, Cal. Keith, you watch the door.”

Towne spoke up. “Cannon mob, wire, stall? I don’t have those. Dip is the word I know.” He took an envelope from his pocket and made a notation.

“Dip is a winchell,” Merlini said. “A sucker word. It’s so well known to the layman that only the old-timers among the professional crooks still use it.”

He took up a position behind Towne. “You’re out in front of the bally platform listening to an opening. You stall for me, Ross.”

I had seen Merlini demonstrate the gentle art of pocketpicking on other occasions and knew what was required. I stood in front of Towne with my back to him and edged against him, shoving impolitely and stepping on his toes a bit, to make him give way.

“Here,” he started to object. “What the—”

“You see,” Merlini explained, stepping out from behind him. “It’s the old story again. Misdirection and distraction of attention. The chump’s attention is all on the clumsy oaf in front of him. He doesn’t feel the duke slip into his kick at all.”

Towne was investigating his pockets. “Do you mean that—?”

“Sure.” Merlini held out a billfold. “From your left breech. I don’t know if you realize it, but that’s the smart place to carry it. Except for the fob, it’s the most difficult one to beat. Of course, if a wire had trouble with it, he’d resort to rip-and-tear methods — cut the pocket open.”

Towne hurriedly took back the billfold and began exploring another pocket. His face was annoyed. “Very educational demonstration,” he said. “May I have the other—”

Merlini nodded. “Hope I’m not embarrassing you.” He held out two objects. “Right kick,” he said, passing over a pack of cigarettes. “And left back pocket.” Merlini looked curiously at the ivory-handled revolver in his hand. “Metzger .32-caliber. Do all detective-story writers carry heaters?”

Towne took the gun and replaced it in his pocket. “I’ve got a collection of firearms,” he said quickly. “Picked this up in Bridgeport the other day.”

Merlini said, “Now I know why the ballistic dope in your stories is so well done. I liked that trick you used in The Phantom Bullet where the victim was killed with a shotgun loaded with water.”

Towne nodded. “Yes. There was a real case of that several years—”

Mac returned and interrupted. He was replacing some bills in the sheriff’s wallet. “I got his dough back. Guess I’d better rig up a story about someone finding it on the lot and turning it in.”

“If you want him to believe that one,” Merlini said, “you’d better get it to him quickly, before he misses it. Want me to slip it back in his kick for you?”

“No,” Mac said. “If he caught you, he’d think you were taking it out and I don’t want any trouble.” Mac started into the tent. “Coming?”

Merlini nodded. “Yes, I want to get a look at the performance.”

Towne and myself followed them, and Calamity took his stand again at the entrance. Atterbury said, “See you later.” He went out toward the midway.

As we walked through into the menagerie, Merlini asked, “By the way, Mac, I understand the eagle screamed hereabouts on Saturday in a big way. And business has been spotty. How does that happen, or am I being nosy?”

Mac turned his head and squinted at Merlini sharply. “You heard about that? Um. If you find out, let me in on it. I asked the Major if his rich uncle had died and he said ‘Yeah.’ Nothing wrong with that except he didn’t have one.”

“Who owns the show now? Daughter Pauline?”

“Uh-huh. And I hope she knows the answer. We might need more dough any day. She has a lot of stubborn notions about how to run this outfit, and some of them ain’t too hot. Expecting a purge around here most any time. You showed just in time for all the excitement.”

“Yes,” Merlini agreed, “I’m beginning to think I did.”

Chapter IV Suspicion

“...You have ample time before the big show starts to inspect this amazing traveling menagerie with its priceless specimens from every clime, its strange and wonderful array of curious beasts and zoological wonders... get your peanuts for the elephants... hot buttered popcorn... soft drinks... souvenirs...”

The animal cages, parked end to end, lined half the interior of the menagerie, not the gay and gaudy gold-encrusted parade wagons of memory, but great, simply painted, red and white trucks and trailers. They held a pair of lions with cub, two leopards, a brown bear, a hyena, a colony of chattering monkeys, and a trained chimp. The lead and ring stock was lined up on the opposite side; two bored but supercilious camels, a bright-eyed zebra, a sleepy ibex, and the horses — broad-hipped resin-backs, high-school and liberty horses and cow ponies. Near the entrance that led into the big top itself, just beyond the stand that sold Coca-Cola, popcorn, and peanuts, were four elephants, their trunks moving in restless exploration. An attendant was sweeping the broad back of one of them with a broom.

Near the horses stood a lanky figure in an especially resplendent costume of tight white trousers, high-heeled boots, bright blue shirt, and ten-gallon hat, coiling a long lariat. His hard, angular face had a very familiar look.

“Tex Mayo,” Mac said. “The movie star. Featured in the after-show with Blaze, his educated pony. Fancy roping, riding, shooting, and bull-whip snapping. You must meet the horse.”

“What’s wrong with Tex?” Merlini asked.

“Prima donna,” Mac said. “He was a big shot in Hollywood until the singing cowboy came in; Tex is tone-deaf. Made a lot of dough in his time and spent it all on swimming pools. He gets a bigger salary than any other performer on the show, but to him it’s still peanuts. The Major was ready to put the skids under him, too — he’s been liquored up pretty much lately, and it interferes with his marksmanship. But he’ll be around awhile longer now, I guess. He’s been making a play for Pauline — and she likes it.”

Mac went on into the big top; and Merlini, Towne, and I stood just within watching the clowns, who were slapping each other down with oversize gloves in that perennial bit of circus tomfoolery, the clown prize fight.

Merlini watched it a moment and then asked, “Just what did happen to the Major, Towne? Mac rather shies from the subject.”

Towne turned to look at him and raised a questioning eyebrow. “You don’t think Calamity’s remarks have any foundation, do you?”

“I don’t know,” Merlini said. “That’s why I asked.”

Towne shrugged. “Don’t know a lot about it,” he said. “They found him around midnight last night, quarter of a mile or so from the lot at Kings Falls. He’d piled up against a concrete bridge abutment at the foot of a hill. Nearly threw him through the windshield. I missed all the excitement. I heard about it when I got on the lot this morning.”

“What do you do, tag along in your own car and stop at hotels?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t agree with Calamity, then?”

“I hadn’t considered his remarks very seriously. I’ve heard him do a lot of grousing since I joined up Saturday. I don’t know what he thinks it is, if it wasn’t an accident. Suicide’s not very probable by that method, and it’s a damned impractical murder method. You could drug a man or knock him out, then put him in the machine and pull the throttle out at the top of the hill; but you couldn’t be at all sure you’d kill him.”

While Towne was speaking, the clowns finished and ran off, and the announcer’s voice came from the amplifiers: “The Mighty Hannum Shows now take great pleasure in presenting an outstanding feature of the circus world, those two amazing dancing queens of the tight wire, Pauline and Paulette, in their death-defying, somersaulting feats of grace and impossible skill!”

“Oh,” Merlini said. “Miss Hannum is working tonight?”

“Yes,” Towne replied. “Looks that way. It takes a lot to stop her. Very determined young lady.”

Merlini glanced at me. I knew he was thinking that the phrase had a familiar sound.

Two girls in Spanish costume, flaring trousers, bolero vests, and wide-brimmed, scarlet hats took their bow in the center ring and ascended swiftly to the small platforms, ten feet high, between which stretched the thin steel wires. At this distance they were merely two dancing figures, either of whom might be the girl we were looking for.

Singly at first and then together they ran and postured on the slender, bouncing wire in a sort of two-dimensional dance, a routine that was such an expert and unusually graceful exhibition of balance that even my layman’s eye tagged it at once as big-time.

The announcer broke in again for a moment: “Pauline will now attempt a feat equaled by no other woman on the wire, a backward somersault from feet to feet! Watch her!”

One figure ran lightly to the center of the wire, balanced slowly, stood perfectly still with arms outstretched, held it, waited, and then repeated the maneuver, taking short, calculating steps as she watched the wire, building up to her climax. She did it finally — a sudden rising lift, a backward swirl of color, and a precarious, shaky landing, the wire vibrating from side to side beneath her feet. It seemed for a second impossible that she could maintain her balance; and then suddenly she stood straight and still, and walked without haste to her platform.

“The announcer exaggerates,” Merlini commented. “She’s not the only woman to do that, but she is good. Let’s get a look at her as she comes off. Under the side wall there and around—” He stopped suddenly, his gaze fastened on the center ring. “Towne,” he said, “does that happen at every performance?”

“What?”

“The other girl. She just completed as nonchalant a forward somersault on the wire as I’ve ever seen.”

“Yes. She’s done it each time I’ve seen the act.”

“And the only special announcement was the one Pauline got, like now?”

Towne nodded. “Uh-huh. Why?”

“There’s a story for you,” Merlini answered. “The forward on the wire, any place for that matter, is far more difficult than a backward. Try it sometime. Find out why the wrong girl gets the announcement and you should have a story. Come on, Ross. See you later, Towne.”

I followed Merlini as he ducked under the side wall on the left and out into the back yard. Star Avenue, or Kinker’s Row, as it is sometimes called, lay before us, an orderly line of autos, trailers, sleeping cars, and prop trucks drawn up paralleling the big top. Halfway along the side wall were two openings, the entrance and exit used by the performers in entering the arena, called the back door. Walking in the space between the cars and the tent, we started toward it.

We had gone only a short distance when Keith Atterbury came from the dark between two trailers and stopped us. There was a seriously worried expression on his face.

“Could I see you a minute? I’ve got something I’d like to show you.”

Merlini nodded. Atterbury moved to the nearest trailer and, standing in the light from its window, opened a large manila envelope. He took out three glossy 8x10 photos and gave them to Merlini. I looked over his shoulder. A strip of copy paper pasted along the lower edge of the first photo bore the typed caption: Circus owner killed in auto crash near Kings Falls, N. Y. The photographer had done a professionally competent job. The shot, although taken at night with flashlighting, was clear and sharply focused. But it was not the sort of picture you would enter in a salon exhibition or care to look at during a meal.

Major Hannum was a heavy-set man with an almost totally bald head. His body was lying halfway through the shattered windshield of the car, the front end of which, jammed against a concrete bridge abutment, resembled a battered accordion. His face was badly lacerated. The second photo was a close shot from another angle and the third a long shot.

Merlini looked up and gave Atterbury a sharp glance. “Why,” he asked, “are you showing these to me?”

Atterbury tapped a cigarette nervously against the back of his hand. He spoke hesitantly, jerkily. “I know Sigrid Verrill and her father. I was on the Webb Show with him last year. He told me about that Skelton Island case you solved. I don’t like that photo. You know about such things. I want to know if what I see in it means what I think it does — before I stick my neck out. You—”

Merlini broke in. “Do you have anything more than just this?”

“You do see it then,” Atterbury said. “I’ve been hoping all day that I was wrong. Yes, I’ve got more.”

“I see enough to want to know a lot more,” Merlini replied. “Let’s have it.”

I took the photos from Merlini and gave them a closer look. I didn’t get it.

“You heard Calamity,” Keith began. “There’s more of the same. I went back to Kings Falls this morning, as soon as I heard about the accident. They hadn’t moved the car yet. I didn’t like what I saw. Then, at the newspaper office, I happened to see the photos.”

“What didn’t you like?”

“Well, for one thing, the Major put nine or ten thousand miles on his car every season. He’s never had as much as a dented fender before. The cops figured he was drunk and speeding. But he had a bad heart, he never drank, and no one ever saw him go faster than forty-five on a straight stretch. We kidded him about buying a sixteen-cylinder speed-wagon and then driving it like a horse and buggy. He was as proud as Punch of that shiny cream and chromium. Afraid he’d scratch it. Then, suddenly, he smashes it all to hell.”

“Where was he going?”

“That’s funny, too. Nobody seems to know. He couldn’t have been headed for the town ahead. He always moves with the show the next morning, for one thing; and the road he was on was headed south. Waterboro’s north of Kings Falls.”

“Picture taken at night,” said Merlini. “Just when did the accident happen?”

“They found the body at midnight. He’d left the lot in Kings Falls at 10:45, during the concert.[5] I’ve checked that. The kid stationed at the lot entrance to direct parking saw his car leave, driving like hell. Almost ran the kid down. But the queerest thing is that the Major would even think of leaving the lot at a time like that. Just before the main show blowed, he gave orders to have the menagerie top double-staked for the night. It was getting damn windy, and it looked like blowdown weather. The Major told ’em to run through the concert on the double-quick so we could get the customers out and the other tops sloughed[6] before we had trouble. Then, just as the customers that didn’t stay for the aftershow were coming out, he says he is going to his trailer for a slicker. That was ten-thirty. He never came back. That’s what made me wonder in the first place. He wouldn’t leave the lot in the face of a possible blowdown.”

“That a first-hand account?” Merlini asked. “You were on the front door when he left?”

Keith nodded “Yes. I’d been there all evening, and I stuck around with Calamity until the concert was all out and all over about eleven, when I left to go ahead to Waterboro. I usually make my jump after the night show so I’ll be on deck in the next town early to contact the papers.”

“And you think that this photo—”

“Cinches it. Yes.”

“Newspaper photo. Who took it?”

“Photographer on the Kings Falls Gazette, Irving Desfor. He had a lucky break. He was the guy who found the body.”

“He took his pictures before anyone had touched the car or body?”

“Yes. First thing he did. Even before he reported it.”

“The paper hasn’t printed these shots?”

“They used the long shot. Not so much detail in it. The others are a bit strong for public consumption.”

Merlini looked at the photos again. “Judging from the matter-of-fact caption, neither the photographer nor his editor saw in the pictures what you think you do? And the medical examiner—?”

“They’d have spread it all across the front page if they had. The medical examiner hasn’t seen the photos, as far as I know. And he didn’t see the body until it was in the undertaking parlor in Kings Falls. I checked that.”

“Going to show it to him?”

“I don’t know. Should I? Have I got enough evidence? The medical examiner’s an old stuffed shirt, and now that he’s given his verdict of accidental death, he won’t want to back-track without some damned good reason. Besides, he’s nearly a hundred miles behind and in the next county. Tomorrow we’ll be eighty miles further away.”

“That’s awkward,” Merlini admitted. “Who else have you shown these to—”

“No one — yet.”

Merlini looked surprised. “And you’ve had the pictures all day? Why not? Shouldn’t Mac see them?”

Atterbury shook his head. “It’s dynamite. You saw Mac’s reaction when Calamity aired a few doubts. Hush, hush. A police investigation on a circus is poison. They might hold up the whole show while they nosed around asking questions. We’d maybe blow the next stand, and the fuzz on the route ahead might make trouble.”

“Dammit!” I exploded impatiently. “What is it in these pix that I don’t see? Mind?”

“Something you can’t see because it isn’t there,” Merlini answered. “Something that isn’t there but should be. That it, Atterbury?”

“Yes. Blood.”

“Blood?” I looked at the prints again.

Merlini said, “Those cuts on the face, Ross. And that whopping big gash along the neck. His head and shoulders are lying out on the engine hood. That cream-colored paint job should be well smeared with blood. But it isn’t. There’s just one small dark streak across the top of his head that might be blood. That’s not nearly enough.”

I got it then. It hit me like a ton of high explosive. The cuts had been made after death — some time after. The accident...

Merlini was speaking. “Why haven’t you shown these to Miss Hannum? After all, he was her father. Even though it may affect the show, if the accident is suspect she has a right to know — and to decide if the police had better know about it...”

“That,” Keith said, “is the trouble. You see, just as the Major left the front door last night headed for his trailer, I saw someone come from the back yard and follow after him. They went into the trailer together. The last person to see the Major alive was Pauline Hannum!”

For a moment no one said anything. Then Keith added, “And, unless we do something about it, there’s another murder to come.”