Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 5, No. 2, July 1959

Magicians who perform startling feats do not as a rule wind up murdered. But Mike had some grave and dangerous misgivings on that score.

I

Her voice was cold, hollow, disembodied, like an echo in a mausoleum. “I have come to warn you, Michael Shayne,” she said. “If you ignore what I have to say you will be guilty of murder,”

Had Miami’s lanky, broad-shouldered, redheaded private investigator not been blessed with an immunity to hangovers, he would doubtless have jumped to the ceiling. He distinctly remembered having closed the office door earlier in the morning before seating himself at his desk.

The door, leading into the small outer office of his absent secretary, Lucy Hamilton, was still closed, and he was so alert and sensitive to its familiar click that it could rouse him out of the deepest slumber.

“Who are you and how did you get in here?” yelled Shayne at the apparition.

Only her lips moved when she spoke. They were crimson lips, moist, voluptuous looking, and the redhead’s experienced eye noted that, oddly enough, they were not made up. The words did not seem to come from her. An automaton, ghastly beautiful, a soiled wax figure from Madam Tousseau’s, yet with piercing dark eyes that were the opposite of wax-like.

“I am Kara,” she said. “A Gypsy. Also, I am a clairvoyant.”

Shayne fumbled through his pockets for his cigarettes.

“You won’t find any there,” said the Gypsy absently. “Look in the upper right drawer of your desk, behind the gun.”

Shayne did so, without thinking. He drew forth a fresh pack, still almost automatically, but with slowly dawning amazement. He glared at it for a moment, then banged it on the desk. He swiveled back in his chair almost at right angles, tugged his left earlobe, and probed the Gypsy girl with hard gray eyes.

Girl, hell. She could be any age — twenty, thirty, forty. Her pale, copper-hued face gave no clue at all as to her age. Her hair, black and much too greasy, was cut short and chunkily. She wore enormous brass earrings, and her wrists and forearms were heavily festooned with bracelets. A faded red silk shawl hung loosely over her bare shoulders, and her cheap black cotton dress was cut so low in front that the redhead winced — not from embarrassment, but from a kind of vague, hard-to-define disapproval.

He reached for his wallet, extracted a crisp, fresh dollar bill, crumpled it with one hand, and tossed it to her. She caught it deftly, yet with scarcely a perceptible movement of her body.

“Thanks for the fortune,” he said, lazily swinging back to an upright position. “And I promise not to murder anybody. Now if you don’t mind, I’ve work to do.”

Kara’s eyes were daggers. Her body was actually becoming alive. Her face, too, became less mask-like and a faint pink flush crept into her cheeks and dispelled the ghastly pallor. Her hand rose to her forehead, and she said tensely, “I see him now... lying there... his face covered with blood.”

“Anyone we know?”

“Voltane.”

“Don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.”

“My husband. The greatest magician, the greatest human being who ever lived!”

She leaned over the desk, letting the crumpled bill drop from her fingers. “You have beautiful hands. Michael Shayne” she whispered. “So strong, so powerful. They are the hands of a good man, a kind man. It would be sad to see them become the hands of a murderer.”

Shayne said, “If you have any sane reason to believe that your husband will be murdered, why don’t you go to the police?”

“Police?” She laughed scornfully. “I despise them.”

Shayne banged his fist down on the desk. “What do you expect me to do?”

She was again the wax figure. “Be at the main gate of the Biscayne Arena tonight at nine. Voltane is the star attraction. You will be met by a man in Voodoo witch-doctor’s costume. Follow him.”

The redhead pulled his sprawling bulk together, arose, strode around the desk and faced her. “Sorry, Kara,” he said solemnly. “If you have any more murder tips give me a ring. Only, please make sure they’ve already been committed.”

He was leading her out gently, but she saved him the trouble. Miraculously, with neither rush nor sound, she arrived at the door, hand on knob. He listened for the familiar click. When it came he was annoyed with himself because it somehow grated on him.

With a final, mocking look, she eased backward out of the office, closing the door silently after her.

Shayne turned back to his chair and tore open the pack of cigarettes on the desk. He lit one, inhaled gratefully, then hauled out a bottle of cognac from the lower desk drawer. Uncorking it, he drank heartily.

But, dammit, he never kept cigarettes in that drawer!

Then he noticed the dollar bill he had given Kara lying crumpled on the desk. He put down the bottle, picked up the bill. As he smoothed it out for its return to his wallet, a written message stared up at him from its surface. It was a single line in capital letters, crudely scrawled in red crayon: YOU HAVE NO CHOICE

It was a switch on the Gypsy switch, all right! But then... suppose he had given her an old worn dollar bill? Or a five, or a ten? This was a single buck, and though crumpled, was as fresh and crisp as if it had come straight from the mint.

Kara... ham or devil? Ham, undoubtedly.

But what a ham!

II

Things had promised to be slow in the office this morning, and Michael Shayne had drifted in only to check the mail. Besides, it was Lucy’s birthday, and he had vowed to himself that for once nothing was going to interfere with their being together. It was agreed that she was to make all the plans herself, surprise him, and that he would bow to her craziest whim, cheerfully and without question. The whole idea was a little wacky and might wear him down, but the prospect was at least novel enough to make him feel like a schoolboy embarking on his first date, so what harm could it do?

It was shortly before lunch time when Lucy burst into the office, looking very mysterious, very trim, and very pretty. Her soft brown eyes opened wide at the sight of her employer. “Why Michael, what on earth is so funny? If we start off with a secret you won’t share with me, the whole day will be spoiled.”

Shayne swallowed a final chuckle. “I’ll explain later, Angel. Meanwhile, when do we sail forth under sealed orders?”

“As of this very moment. Anchors away! I’m starved”

“So am I, Commander,” he said, rising with an exaggerated salute. She returned it snappily. “I suppose,” he grinned, “I’d be put in irons if I dared ask what destination?”

Lucy smiled indulgently. “Destination — a rosy-tinted childhood. First, a picnic in Biscayne Park. Wait until you see the lunch I’ve packed — it’s in your car now. Then you’re going to take me rowing. And dinner?” She was giggling like a little girl. “Hot dogs, hamburgers, popcorn, ice cream cones, absolutely lousy coffee—”

“Acute indigestion. Do we have to take all of this quite so seriously?”

“Of course we do. Won’t it be fun, Michael darling? Look—” She produced a printed envelope from her handbag and waved it at him. “Ten-fifty each, but I got them!”

“Got what?”

“The tickets, Michael darling.”

“Tickets for what?”

“For the Arena tonight, and stop yelling. It’s the last night of the Shriners’ Charity Carnival.”

The gigantic oval bowl that had been the Biscayne Arena on South Miami Avenue and Fourth Street was now a dazzling, boisterous, carnival midway, with monster trimmings. Through the tawdry splendor spun the song of Sweet Charity, notably at the bar — probably the most unlikely, and preposterously formidable structure of its kind ever assembled at short notice, even in the state of Florida. It ran the entire length of the Arena, and it was jammed.

High bosoms and stuffed shirts, red-fezzed Shriners and TV celebrities, Broadway columnists and multi-married millionaires and heiresses — the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker — jostled one another on the sand-barked floor, agape and agog, as eager to be clipped as the ripest hayseed.

Mammoth banners hanging from the top row of tiers luridly proclaimed sword-swallowers, fire-eaters, freaks and hula girls, and a merry-go-round whirled giddily to the thump of a wheezy music machine over which a brass band stubbornly refused not to be heard.

At the far end, directly opposite the bandstand, stood a wide stage with center steps leading down to the foot of an aisle dividing roped-off rows of wooden benches. The red plush curtains were closed, and overhead, lengthwise, a banner gloated: THE GREAT VOLTANE

It was the first thing that caught Michael Shayne’s eye when he and Lucy entered the Arena a little after eight, following an exhausting, mad and, to Lucy at least, heavenly childish day. She had squealed with delight at the redhead’s account of the Gypsy’s warning that morning, and how she had flimflammed him with her tricks of magic. Both agreed that whatever the gypsy’s angle had been in wanting him present at the show tonight, Lucy had given her more than an even break in just happening to buy the tickets as a last-minute whim.

By the time they fought their way to the bar and downed two brandies they were hungry again. They elbowed over to the nearest hot dog stand, close to the main entrance, and ordered both frankfurters and salt water taffy. Suddenly Lucy lifted her little-girl, mustard-smeared face from a pink cloud of candy floss, and yipped.

Shayne turned. Mr. Witch-doctor, all right, fearsome in hideous horned mask and tattered burlap, a glistening python draped over his huge shoulders.

It was exactly nine o’clock. The music stopped, and over the loudspeakers a voice announced that the world famous Master of Mystery was ready for their approval; those who did not have reserved seats could see by facing the stage.

The houselights dimmed, drums rolled, and Voltane’s red curtains flamed in the glare of a battery of powerful overhead spotlights. The snake served amply as a motorcycle escort, and in no time Mr. Witch-doctor had the redhead and his secretary seated on the aisle, second row center.

Sleek, white-haired, impeccable, Voltane cavorted back and forth across the stage like a ballet dancer. Applause greeted his appearance in a puff of smoke. Clusters of doves burst in midair at the snap of his fingers, showers of playing cards descended from everywhere; then, from nowhere, with the whipping away of a large oriental cloth which he had held for an instant over a small stool, sultry, smouldering, Kara the Gypsy.

Time moved breathlessly as miracle topped miracle, and such was the artistry of Voltane that, despite his allergy to magic, the redhead unknowingly had joined his secretary in the paradise of childhood. He squeezed her hand, and she snuggled close.

Now came the Master’s Masterpiece, the Ultimate in the Impossible, with which he had been astounding the world for more than thirty years, the feat which even Houdini had been too terrified to attempt.

Voltane gripped the microphone, and smiled satanically down at the front row. “Corporal, are you ready?” he asked.

A good-looking young man in marine uniform arose, sprang up the steps leading to the stage and shook hands with the magician. He had intelligent blue eyes, close-cropped blond hair, and as he spoke through the microphone, his voice rang firm and clear, “Corporal Burton Adams, United States Marines, MAG-Thirty-one, Miami.”

Applause.

“Also,” beamed Voltane, pointing to the glitter of medals over the left pocket of his snug-fitting tan shirt, “are you not the champion marksman of your outfit?”

Blushingly the young man conceded that he was.

There was more applause, followed by an expectant silence.

“Here is a standard thirty-caliber rifle. Will you inspect it, please?”

The marine caught it from a turbaned male assistant. He balanced it in his hand, twirled it expertly, opened the chamber, peered down the barrel, sighted it. He nodded. “Good enough for me, sir,” he said.

“And you have brought your own bullet?”

The young marine produced one from his shirt pocket.

“You will notice,” emphasized the magician as Adams dropped it into a plate held out by Kara, “that at no time do I or any of my assistants ever touch that bullet. Now, would someone in the audience kindly mark it for identification?”

Kara glided down the steps. A man, far to her right, his features indistinguishable to Shayne, dug into the nub with a small knife. Then he nodded and dropped the bullet back into the plate.

Returning to the stage, Kara was elaborately careful to keep the bullet in view as she took her place by the marine’s side. He plucked it from the plate, inspected the mark, inserted it into the chamber of the rifle, locked the chamber, then port-armed smartly.

“You have your instructions,” said Voltane ominously, whereupon the youth dove off the stage into the dazzling pool of light that suddenly beamed from sharp, monster spotlights. He charged down the long, narrow, surging aisle held open by struggling uniformed Arena guards until he reached a tall, tower-like structure directly in front of the bandstand.

He climbed nimbly to the top, and over the roll of drums his voice came tensely, “Ready!”

All eyes darted back to Voltane, who was now mopping his face with a white-silk handkerchief handed him by Kara. “The corporal will now aim at my mouth. I shall release this handkerchief. When it reaches the floor he will fire. His own bullet, marked by a total stranger, I propose... to catch in my teeth!”

Even the bar was as still as a tomb. The drum roll became louder and more menacing, and the audience shifted uneasily. The Turbaned One whisked away the microphone, and Kara slithered to the side of the stage opposite Shayne and Lucy.

“Corporal Adams... take aim!”

Head high, shoulders back, the magician dropped the handkerchief which he had been holding at arm’s length, and Lucy Hamilton’s fingernails dug deep into the redhead’s arm.

But in this split-second Shayne was aware only of Kara’s eyes. As the handkerchief billowed to the floor they were spitting hate at him, and her body seemed to be swaying.

The report blasted the Arena. Shayne saw the Great Voltane suddenly a grotesque heap on the floor, blood spouting from his mouth and from a hole where his Adam’s Apple should have been. Nearby, Kara lay slumped in a dead faint, her face ashen.

III

The curtains closed in quickly behind Shane as he vaulted to the stage, dragging Lucy after him. The band, with futile heroism, was trying to down the roar of panic. He bolted to the prostrate magician’s side as stagehands, firemen, assistants, rushed from the wings.

The Turbaned One was hovering over Voltane’s body. Shayne slammed him back, fell to his knees and ripped open the blood-drenched evening collar and shirt. He searched desperately for some sign of life... then noticed something lumpish — it was too large for a clot — oozing from the dead man’s gaping mouth.

He leaned closer, whipped a handkerchief from his breast pocket and under its cover plucked the object from Voltane’s lips. It was the nub of a bullet. He quickly slipped it into the folds of the handkerchief, and wiped the blood from his fingers. Then he quickly returned the handkerchief to his outer breast pocket, and arose.

Lucy Hamilton, flanked by two weeping girls in devil costumes, was vigorously massaging the hands of the unconscious Gypsy when she felt the redhead’s grip on her shoulder. Pale and still trembling, she looked up at him without rising. Her lips were set very tight.

Shayne whispered almost savagely into her ear, “Get out of here fast! Grab a cab home, and type out in duplicate as much as you can remember of everything that happened here tonight! Every tiny detail! I’ll check with you later.”

As she left, a tall, distinguished-looking man in dinner clothes and pince-nez glasses rushed to Voltane’s side, but Shayne turned away at the sound of a familiar voice behind him.

“It’s a mighty good thing you’re here, Mr. Shayne,” exploded Jim O’Leary, chief of the Arena guards. “All hell’s broke loose out front. The fire department—”

“Get that marine back here fast!” yelled the detective over the din.

“Sure, if you say so — and if he isn’t already trampled to death.”

Shayne turned back to the corpse. The tall man in dinner clothes rose stiffly, and with a faint suggestion of a smile hovering unpleasantly around the corners of his mouth. “He must have died almost instantly,” he said. Then he added coldly, “I am Dr. Vogle.”

“Dr. Herman Vogle, the psychiatrist?” asked Shayne, dimly recalling that the man was equally famed as an amateur magician and authority on psychical research.

“I’m Michael Shayne, private investigator,” the redhead said. “Could you tell me anything about how this trick was supposed to have worked?”

The doctor’s eyes bulged at him through his pince-nez glasses like some fabulous fish. “I think,” he snapped, turning, “I’d better take a look at the girl first.”

Ten minutes later, Will Gentry, Miami’s Chief of Police, cigar in hand, hurried into the scene trailed by the usual battalion of uniformed policemen, detectives, photographers, and Medical Examiner, Dr. Cantrell. He bustled over to the redhead, his eyes mock-reproachful. “Do you always have to be ahead of me, Mike? What happened here? Just from the look of things — I’d say it was on the unusual side.”

Shayne grinned. “I just committed murder.”

“Wouldn’t put it past you. How’d you manage it?”

While cameras flashed and Cantrell was leaning over Voltane’s corpse, Shayne told his old friend the story, omitting any mention of Kara’s visit to his office that morning, or the bullet hidden in his breast pocket.

Gentry scowled. “Sure that’s all?”

“Isn’t that enough?”

“Enough to inconvenience you by making you the number one material witness! I’m sorry, Mike but that’s what I may have to do. Now where’s the marine and who was on the stage with the magician when he was killed?”

“O’Leary’s bloodhounds are after him now,” said Shayne. Then he pointed to the Turbaned One. “He was standing to Voltane’s left, and—” he gestured toward Kara — “she was on his right.”

Kara was still out cold, her prostrate body now covered with the oriental cloth behind which she had mysteriously appeared at the beginning of the show, and Dr. Vogle, on his knees, was holding something to her nose.

The Turbaned One’s ugly, pock-marked face contorted in a sneer as Gentry, followed by Shane, demanded his name. Finally he grunted, “Kling.”

“Kling what?”

“Willie Kling.”

Gentry re-lit his cigar with stubby fingers. “How long have you been with Voltane?”

Willie shrugged. “Five — six years.”

“Did you always assist him in the bullet act?”

Kling nodded, his eyes still hostile.

“Exactly what did you do to assist him?”

Willie slowly removed the turban from his head. With it wiped his face, which was gleaming with sweat and grease-paint. “Not much. Just stand by, see nobody jobbed him.”

“What do you mean ‘jobbed’ him?”

“Frame him,” replied Willie in a bored tone. “Gimmick the gun, mebbe. Or the bullet. Some wise guy.”

Shayne moved in harshly. “How does the trick work?”

Willie didn’t even bother to look at either inquisitor. “If I knew I’d have done the damn thing myself!” He pointed at the sheet-covered corpse now being carried out on a stretcher. “Ask him,” he said, still glaring.

Medical Examiner Cantrell had joined Vogle by Kara’s side. He shook his head as Gentry and Shayne arrived. “It is more than just a faint, Will. Something funny. Her heart seems sound enough, but damned if we can hear it. And there’s no pulse. I agree with the eminent Dr. Vogle. She should get to a hospital fast.”

“With the Chief’s permission,” said Vogle suavely, arising and extending his card, “I’d be glad to take her to my sanitarium.”

Gentry nodded vaguely, then signaled a nearby officer to call an ambulance. Aside, he muttered to Shayne, “That leaves the marine.”

Shayne grinned. “It’s the other way around, Will. Probably the marine has left us. Better call the base and have the shore patrol pick him up. Corporal Burton Adams.”

As Gentry shouted the order, a red-faced, heavyset man with graying temples tapped him on the shoulder. “I’m Mack Eiler,” he said in a raspy voice, “manager of the Arena and president of the Showman’s League. I’d have been back sooner if it hadn’t been for that crazy mob.”

Gentry turned and puffed hard at his cigar, frowning into the cloud of smoke. “Tell me, Eiler, know anything about Voltane’s stooges? The men he got to shoot at him?”

“He didn’t use stooges, Chief. Each one was a legitimate volunteer and known to me personally. I contacted them myself and briefed them according to Voltane’s instructions every night — he only did the tricks nights, you know — and they brought their own rifles and bullets. That’s what made it so sensational. He even had the magicians half off their rockers trying to figure it out.”

“Did you know the marine?”

“No,” replied Eiler thoughtfully. “He was a stranger to me. I wondered about it at the time, don’t think I didn’t. I had a friend of mine all set, and then, at the last minute, Voltane sends out an assistant to tell me he’s got somebody else.”

“Who did he send?”

“Willie Kling.”

“Know anything about Kling?”

“Only that he used to be an escape artist. He worked for me in the old days when I had my own big carny. Nothing Houdini did that he couldn’t do better. Only he couldn’t sell it. It made him bitter. He hated everybody.”

Shayne cut in pointedly. “Eiler, did you see the act tonight?”

Eiler shuddered. “I did. I watched that damn trick every night. I’ve done a bit of magic in my day, but this really had me stumped,”

Shayne regarded him closely.

“Think carefully. Did you notice anything that departed from the usual stage procedure tonight? Anything added or omitted, any change, no matter how slight?”

The showman’s weather-beaten face furrowed in concentration. “I almost know the presentation by heart,” he said, “from the pitch right up to where he catches the bullet in his teeth and the mark is identified by the man who made it. Outside of the marine seeming a little too well rehearsed, I’d swear everything was just the same.”

“Thanks, Eiler,” grumbled Gentry, then hurled himself valiantly at the wilted members of Voltane’s company. He was getting nowhere fast when a detective appeared and handed him the marked bullet. “Found it on the floor near the back wall, Chief. I traced it through a hole in the asbestos backdrop — eight inches thick.”

Gentry squinted at it with puffy eyes, then handed it to Shayne. “Can you make out the mark, Mike?” he asked.

Shayne peered at the bullet intently, angling it around in his fingertips. “Right now I’d say it was the capital letter N,” he said. He returned the bullet to Gentry.

The Police Chief wrapped it in his handkerchief. As he thrust the bundle into the pants pocket of his ample rear a second detective rushed up with: “No record of any Burton Adams at Marine Headquarters, sir, and everybody present or accounted for.”

A very strong aroma of Bourbon suddenly assailed Shayne’s nostrils over his shoulder. He didn’t have to turn around to suspect it came from Timothy Rourke, fabled crime reporter of Miami’s Daily News. But turn he did, grabbing the skeleton of a man by the collar and yanking him aside.

“Listen, Tim,” he whispered into the reporter’s ear, “I’ve never given you a bum steer, have I?”

“On stories, no,” conceded Rourke, grinning. “On dames, yes.”

Shayne sighed. “If you want to shoot for a second Pulitzer Prize, play it my way. Have your New York man check with the magic editor of the Billboard and the Daily News morgue, but fast! Get me all the dope you can get on this guy Voltane. But keep your trap shut!”

Rourke’s slaty eyes grew slightly animated. “Sure, Mike, if you’ve really latched on to something big.”

IV

The Biscayne arena’s emergency lights cast eerie shadows in the dead magician’s off-stage dressing room. It was close to midnight, and no sign of life remained in the building other than the handful of uniformed policemen left on guard by Gentry — and Michael Shayne.

A solitary gaunt shadow himself, he had a distinctly unpleasant feeling of unreality as his narrowed eyes pierced the gloom. Through the vast silence he could hear the cooing of doves, nothing more. A human hand lay on top of a small trunk, gruesomely convincing even at close view. Other phantoms of the magician’s art loomed ghostly and mocking, and from a leather picture-frame beside a crystal ball, Kara’s oblique black eyes were fixed on him hypnotically.

Shayne stared back. A faint stir of air lightly caressed the back of his neck, and the Gypsy’s eyes seemed to be telling him to search further.

He turned toward a huge battered wardrobe trunk. It was open wide, and the right half held Voltane’s shirts and street clothes in neat array. The left half consisted of a bureau-like series of drawers. He pulled out the top drawer. It was filled with evening ties, collars, handkerchiefs and unopened packs of playing cards. He was about to close it again when his eye caught something odd.

Perhaps it was only an illusion due to the way the shadows struck it, but to Shayne it seemed that the face and sides were a good three inches or more deeper than the inside.

His hand darted within. He rapped sharply, his strong, firm fingers eliciting a hollow sound. He snatched a nail file from the makeup shelf. As he was about to pry open the false bottom he was blinded by a sudden flash of light, accompanied by a sharp pain at the back of his skull.

He fell forward into a darkly swirling sea of nothingness...

It was nearly ten the next morning when he awoke in Lucy Hamilton’s bed. A throbbing, nauseating pain was shooting from the back of his head down his body to the tips of his toes.

Police Chief Gentry was seated by his side, and Lucy was staring at him with bitter reproach. There was concern in her eyes too, but her anger made her speak sharply. “You almost had a concussion! Will phoned me the minute he got the report from the Arena, and I brought you back here from the hospital in a cab. I slept on the couch.” She handed him a cup of steaming black coffee. “Drink this.”

Shayne put his hand gingerly to his head, felt the bulky gauze dressing and winced. “Put a shot in it, Angel,” he groaned.

“I already did,” she said. “Two. But if you had any sense you wouldn’t need spiked coffee.”

Gentry helped him up to a sitting position. “They found a monkey wrench in Voltane’s dressing room after you got conked,” he rumbled. “It had bloodstains on it, but unfortunately the handle was wrapped in a towel. So — no finger prints.”

Shayne sipped the coffee royal gratefully, slowly coming out of the fog. “What else did they find?” he asked.

“That you had pried open the false bottom of a drawer in Voltane’s trunk,” replied Gentry pleasantly. “The boys figured you swiped something. So they frisked you and found the nub of a thirty-caliber bullet wrapped up in your handkerchief.”

“It didn’t come from the trunk. It came from Voltane’s mouth. I found it there just a few seconds after he got shot. Go on.”

Gentry scowled at the dead cigar butt in his slightly unsteady fingers. “I don’t like saying this, Mike, but I’m giving you fair warning. If you’re holding anything back, if this bullet should turn out to be an important bit of evidence in what might — I say ‘might’ — just happen to be a case of murder, you’re in hot water. And this time don’t count on friendship!”

Shayne downed the last of the coffee royal. He felt his strength returning, poked his long legs out from under the bedcovers, thumped his bare feet on the floor, and sat upright. Lucy stuck a cigarette in his mouth, held a lighted match to it.

“Angel,” he said, “bring in your notes from last night.”

He turned to Gentry. “You’ll find a detailed, eyewitness account of everything that happened from the beginning of Voltane’s pitch up to the moment Lucy and I hit the stage. You’re not going to get very far, Will — unless you find out exactly how that trick would have been pulled off if nothing had gone wrong with it.”

Gentry dropped the wet cigar butt into a dainty pink-and-white porcelain ashtray on Lucy’s bed-side table. “I’ll know a lot more,” he growled, “when I lay my hands on that phony marine! And I’ll get him — even if I have to call out the marines themselves!”

Shayne was on his feet, his lean, muscular body enveloped in a sheet, when Lucy returned with five neatly-typed pages. He checked them briefly. “Good girl,” he said, and handed them to Gentry. The latter folded them carefully, slipped them into his inside coat pocket, arose, put on his cap and looked very official.

After he departed Shayne, still wobbly, took a quick shower in Lucy’s bathroom, wearing her green rubber cap to protect the wound on his head. Over her protests he staggered into his clothes, downed two fast shots of brandy, and kissed the tip of her nose.

He called out as he left, “Thanks, nurse! I’ll check with you later at the office. Watch for an important call from Tim Rourke.”

“Michael, darling! Take care!”

The combined residence and private sanitarium of Dr. Herman Vogle loomed hugely as Shayne drove through the main gate, swirled along a winding graveled road flanked by neatly landscaped palm trees, and parked alongside the building.

Vogle was leaning over a massive mahogany desk, scribbling on a pad, when the detective was ushered into his book-walled private office by a thin-lipped, slightly annoyed nurse. He did not look up, even when Shayne seated himself in a comfortable leather chair, crossed his legs, lit a cigarette and blew clouds of smoke across the desk. Shayne’s head was killing him.

Finally Vogle raised his eyes. “I’m very busy, Shayne. What do you want?”

The redhead took his time. “I’d like to talk to Kara.”

“Impossible. She cannot be disturbed. She must remain here with me until I see fit to discharge her. When that will be, I cannot predict. Good-day, Mr. Shayne.”

“Doc Cantrell said there was something queer about her condition. What is your diagnosis, doctor?”

Vogle banged his pencil down on the desk. “Are you a relative, sir?”

“Sorry,” said Shayne, “but this happens to be a police matter. Kara, just like you and everybody else involved, is under technical arrest pending investigation of murder.”

Vogle whipped off his glasses, wiped them with his handkerchief, perched them back on his nose. “The patient,” he said irritably, “seems to be in a state of catalepsy. Strictly speaking, though, it’s not a true cataleptic state. More of a ‘trance,’ as we say in psychical research. Sometimes it is caused by traumatic shock; sometimes, as in the case with certain types of spirit-mediumship, it is self-induced.”

Shayne ground out his cigarette in a bronze ashtray shaped like a striking cobra. “I understand you have quite a collection of magic books. Mind if I look at them?” he asked.

Vogle nodded stiffly. “They won’t help you,” he said. “They were intended for the trade only. They’re guardedly written, and in highly technical terms. You could spend a year studying the Houdini collection in the Congressional Library and still know nothing about the bullet trick. He knew about it, of course, but—” Vogle shrugged, letting the sentence hang.

“Isn’t it just barely possible that some member of his company would know?”

“Not necessarily. He was a diabolically clever man, and he trusted no one.”

Shayne rose unsteadily, his head throbbing. Then he saw the smile suddenly vanish from Vogle’s face. He was staring across the room, his expression cold as ice. Shayne turned — blinked.

Vogle remained motionless.

Posed on the stairway in the same lurid evening gown she had worn during the performance, was Kara. Her black, oblique eyes were searing him, not with hate now, as they had from the stage the night before, but with appeal and a half-accusing desperate kind of helplessness.

Her silver-slippered feet seemed scarcely to touch the floor as she moved toward him. “I warned you, Michael Shayne,” she said huskily, “but you would not believe me. Please take me away from here.”

Vogle’s face purpled with rage. “Kara! Go back to your room at once! I won’t warn you again.”

She seized Shayne’s arm, her lips tightening. “My will is stronger than yours!” she said, glaring defiantly at Vogle. “I am leaving. Come, Michael Shayne.”

Vogle jumped to his feet, “You heard what I said, Kara. If you disobey me I promise you the consequences will not be to your liking.”

“That’s for her to decide, Vogle,” Shayne cut in harshly, leading Kara to the door. “And what’s more, you’re committing an illegal act by attempting to hold her against her will. She hasn’t been certified as insane.”

V

During the drive back to the Edgemont Hotel, where she had been living with her late husband, Kara maintained a strange silence. She just stared ahead vacantly, not crying, but with tears steadily trickling down her high-boned cheeks.

At the hotel she insisted on changing back into the Gypsy garb she had worn when she had visited his office the previous morning — brass earrings, bracelets, baubles and all.

Shayne helped her check out and into a comfortable residence hotel room around the corner on Northeast Second Avenue and Eleventh Street, then took her to a nearby restaurant.

In the curtained-off privacy of a booth, Kara devoured a steak while Shayne toyed with scrambled eggs and toast. He ordered a brandy and soda for himself, and coffee for Kara at her request. When the waitress had cleared away the dinner plates he spoke sternly.

“All right, let’s have it. What made you so sure your husband was going to be murdered?”

She regarded him with swollen, red-rimmed eyes. “I told you. I am clairvoyant.”

“So you’re clairvoyant. But you knew something. What?”

A faint, disdainful smile played around the corners of her mouth. “Are you not often helped by what you call ‘hunches?’ A sudden intuition — the flash of an idea from nowhere — something that explodes in your subconscious and makes no sense at all at the time?”

“We won’t argue about that. What I don’t understand is why didn’t you warn your husband instead of me?”

“But I did!” she cried. “I did! I even threatened to leave him! But he only laughed at me.”

Shayne offered her a cigarette, which she refused. He lit one for himself, studied her through a cloud of smoke, then switched his line of attack. “Did he have any enemies?”

“No, not really. He didn’t have many friends, either.” She stirred her coffee slowly, half smiling. “He was very jealous of me.”

Shayne tugged at his left earlobe. “Tell me how he did the bullet trick.”

She leaned back with half-closed eyes. “If I only knew, Michael Shayne, if I only knew. As close as we were, he kept it a secret even from me.”

He drained his glass slowly, then spoke in an offhand manner. “Did your sixth sense tell you your husband had a bullet in his mouth when he was murdered?”

The color slowly ebbed from Kara’s face.

Suddenly she was the Gypsy woman with the tawdry aura of mystery about her again, her eyes darkly veiled. “The bullet that killed him!” she whispered. “Did you see the mark?”

Shayne decided to ignore the evasion. Let her play it her own way. She was holding back something, but perhaps it would all come out if he let her talk. Perhaps this was her way of telling him. Perhaps she had become so steeped in her own particular brand of hocus-pocus that she now firmly believed her own line.

“What about the mark?”

Kara leaned closer to him. “Stop fighting me, Michael Shayne,” she said. “Copy that mark down on a piece of paper, fold it up, and I will do the rest.”

Grudgingly, the redhead took a letter from his pocket, and tore off a small piece of the envelope. On it he jotted down the capital letter “N,” folded the paper in halves, then quarters. He placed it in the palm of her outstretched hand.

He watched her closely as she closed her eyes, and pressed the slip of paper to her forehead. Suddenly she froze. “Quickly, the car!” she exclaimed, her voice rising. “There is not a moment to lose.”

Miami’s midtown traffic was at its usual worst, and it seemed even more so to the redhead because Kara was directing him, and admittedly had no more idea of where they were going than he had.

Her eyes were closed, and she was clutching the slip of paper tightly in her right hand as she pointed straight ahead on Northeast Second Avenue. He wheeled out of the parking space, cursing inwardly, and nosed into the thick, honking traffic.

As they approached the third intersection Kara cried, “Turn right.” Four blocks further she spoke again, more quietly this time.

Left, right, left again, until they were out of the city limits and clipping along south on Flagler Highway. As they reached the outskirts of Leisure City, a bright, crisp little town some thirty miles from Miami, she told him to slow down. They made two more turns before she stopped him in front of a liquor store on the ground floor of a nondescript but tidy two-storied building a short distance from the beach.

She opened her eyes for the first time. “You thought you wrote the letter N,” she said, her eyes shining. “But when you hold it this way—” She unfolded and reversed the wad of paper — “it’s the letter Z!”’ She pointed to the sign over the store window. It read: GEN. ZAMBONI — Prop.

Vaguely irritated, Shayne followed her to the door. It was locked. He rang the bell, long and hard. Finally he heard footsteps from within the house, slow and ponderous. A bolt clicked and the door swung open.

Kara stiffened and cried out, her voice shrill and accusing. As Shayne took a quick step toward her she pointed without hesitation at the figure in the doorway.

“He... he marked the bullet that killed my husband!”

Shayne saw a tall, florid, handsome man, possibly in his late sixties, but with the carriage of an athlete. He had bristling white hair, a black mustache, and his mournful brown eyes were extraordinarily alert.

“Sure, sure,” he said in an Italian accent, “I marked the bullet all right.” He appeared visibly shaken. “The death of this lady’s husband was a terrible thing.”

Shayne said, “I’m Michael Shayne, private investigator.”

“And I am General Zamboni. Come in if you like, please,” he led them through the store into a back living room. An array of rifles stood in double rows in a wide, glass-doored cabinet by a narrow, ascending stairway at the far end, and on the mantlepiece, in an ornate gilt frame, stood a faded photograph of a strikingly beautiful woman, a theatrically coquettish smile on her lips. Something about the eyes seemed dimly familiar to Shayne.

He said sharply to Zamboni, “You say you marked the bullet that killed Voltane. Exactly what kind of a mark did you make?”

“My initial,” Zamboni said. “The letter ‘Z’.”

“Why didn’t you report that fact to the police immediately?”

Zamboni looked at him forlornly. “Is it really important?”

“You ought to know it’s important! Your failure to report it could get you into trouble. It’s even worse to run away from the scene of a crime, when you’re in any way involved.”

“I will report it,” said Zamboni wearily.

Shayne lit a cigarette with slow deliberation. Suddenly he asked Kara, “How long have you two known each other?”

Kara was sitting grimly on a hard, straight backed chair, “I never saw this man in my life before last night. That was when I went into the audience and he marked the bullet.”

“She is speaking the truth,” said Zamboni.

Shayne eyed him coldly. “Did you know Voltane?”

“No, I did not know him either.”

Shayne tugged at his left earlobe, then remarked casually. “I’m curious about your arsenal, general.”

“Shooting was my business,” Zamboni said. “Forty years ago I headlined every vaudeville theater in the world. They called me an even greater shot than Annie Oakley! I still am. Every day I go out on my beach and practice.” He started to get up, his eyes flashing. “Come, I show you—”

“I believe you,” Shayne said. “There’s no need for a demonstration.” He arose a little wearily. “Better report that bullet marking to the police. I may want to question you again, but you needn’t let it worry you.”

Five minutes later he was driving back to Miami with Kara at his side.

Kara slept peacefully all the way home.

VI

Police headquarters was a three minute drive from Kara’s residence hotel, where Shayne deposited her. He found Chief Gentry at his desk, thumbing through a large volume of MAGICIANS’ SECRETS by Fred Keating, his face ludicrously distorted in puzzlement. Similar tomes were stacked by his side, and Lucy Hamilton’s type account of last night’s tragedy was spread before him — four neatly prepared sheets.

“Where the devil is Kara?” demanded Gentry as the detective entered, slamming the book shut. “I just left Vogle, and if I meet another such uncooperative headshrinker I may be forced to have myself committed. I’ll be raving and—”

“Easy, Will,” soothed Shayne, sprawling his rangy frame into a chair. “She’s all yours.” He tossed Gentry the slip of paper on which he had noted Kara’s new address. “I helped her move.”

The detective chief cocked a dubious eye. “And?”

“She’s convinced her husband was murdered. But in spite of her occult claims she hasn’t the least idea why or by whom, or even how he did the bullet trick.” He lit a cigarette. “What gave with Willie Kling?”

Gentry bristled. “Enough to bet your badge that he and Burton Adams — wherever he’s hiding — are in on it together.”

“Also,” said the redhead, “that he’s the ugly son who conked me and stole whatever was stolen from Voltane’s trunk. What was ballistic’s report on the slug I took from his mouth?”

“Nothing. It wasn’t marked, it hadn’t been fired. Just dug out of the shell.”

“It begins to look as if he was killed by the wrong bullet,” Shayne said wryly, reaching for the phone. “Mind if I call my office?”

Gentry nodded helplessly as the redhead dialed. Lucy Hamilton answered on the second ring. “Angel, it’s me,” he said. “Any calls?”

The redhead held the receiver tight against his ear, heard his secretary’s voice saying, “...Tim Rourke, three times, about Voltane. Something about a big fight he had years ago with somebody called ‘Zamboni’—”

Shayne hung up. Gentry’s eyes followed him dismally as he strode from the office.

Shayne needed no occult guidance to locate Timothy Rourke. The emaciated reporter was in the usual booth at the usual bar around the corner from the Daily News building, ogling an almost empty highball. He looked up owlishly over his glasses as the redhead joined him.

“Our bullet-catching friend,” he said by way of greeting, “seems to have been something of a ladies’ man, even as you and I. Are you buying?”

Shayne snapped his fingers at the bartender. He ordered a bourbon for Tim, a brandy for himself. “Go on,” he said.

Tim glanced at his notes. “It also seems he got into one helluva jam over a former strip-tease artist when he was working the Ottowa State Fair years ago. She was the wife of another performer also playing the fair — a sharpshooter who called himself ‘General Zamboni,’ and the mother of his baby son. When he found out what was going on between her and Voltane he really sharp-shooted. But he was so blind with rage the bullet only nicked his ear. There was a terrible stink about it at the time. Then everything suddenly blew over, and a few months later La Belle Zamboni died following an abortion.”

“Forget the drinks,” said Shayne, catching the bartender’s eye and tossing a self-explanatory dollar bill on the table. “Come on — we’ll go in my car. This is your story, Tim, and you can write it to suit yourself. But if you break as much as one word of it before I give you the green light—!”

Tim followed, his slaty eyes glinting with anticipation.

It was almost as if Zamboni had been expecting him. He was standing in the half open doorway of his beach house when Shayne and Tim pulled up.

“Good afternoon Mr. Shayne. I got in touch with the police as you advised and—”

“That can wait,” Shayne said, gesturing toward the reporter. “This is Timothy Rourke, a friend of mine.”

Zamboni acknowledged the introduction with mournful eyes, hesitated, and then led them back into the living room. Tim sank into a chair, and Shayne strode to the mantlepiece and studied the face of the smiling lady in the gilt frame. The general was standing directly behind him.

“My wife,” he said sadly. “She was very beautiful.”

“Very,” agreed the redhead. “When did she die, general?”

“Nineteen hundred and thirty-five.”

Shayne could see the reflection of Zamboni’s face over his own shoulder in the oval mirror above the portrait. “That would make Burton Adams about twenty three now, wouldn’t it? He has his mother’s eyes, too.”

Shayne saw the startled look on Zamboni’s face change quickly to one of utter despair. He whirled around. “You’re a fool, Zamboni, both of you! How long did you think you could keep your son hidden with practically the whole state of Florida hunting him?”

Zamboni nodded tearfully. “I tried to warn him to go away Mr. Shayne — out of the country fast! But when you are young and in love—” He sighed. “You are a fool anyway. But Kara made him hide here. She told him that everything would soon blow over, and then they could get married. They are crazy about each other. My boy even wanted to run away with her when they first met, but she was too afraid of her husband. Voltane was a cruel, very jealous man.”

Zamboni fingered his mustache unhappily, and his voice had a frightened tone. “I lied to you this afternoon, Mr. Shayne. Kara has been here many times with Burt — to bring dishonor to my house.”

Shayne cursed himself inwardly for having fallen for Kara’s clever pretense. His face hardened, and he went on evenly, “You also lied about not knowing Voltane. I don’t say without cause. He was responsible for your wife’s death.”

Zamboni stiffened. He turned bitterly to the smiling portrait on the mantlepiece. “My boy’s mother. It was not her fault! The bullet that killed Voltane — Zamboni should have fired it!”

“But his son did,” Shayne said. “The vendetta is satisfied. Now where is he? Will he give himself up of his own accord, or will I have to go after him?”

Zamboni crossed himself, then shuffled slowly over to the foot of the stairs by the rifle cabinet. “Bambino,” he called, “it’s no use. It’s like I told you. Come down please, for Papa.”

A brief silence, then the sound of reluctant, descending footsteps, and Burton Adams, hollow-eyed but youthful and vigorous in T-shirt and faded dungarees, appeared.

Shayne identified him to Tim Rourke, who had been missing nothing. “Why did you stooge for Voltane last night?” he demanded.

Father and son exchanged furtive looks, then the boy fixed his sullen blue eyes squarely on the detective. He did not reply.

“You didn’t do it as a favor to him. You had as much reason to hate him as your father did. Why?”

Silence.

“You’d better talk,” Shayne said sharply. “Who was in on it with you? Willie Kling? Your father? Or was it your girl friend, Kara?”

Adams’ hands clenched into fists. Shayne pretended not to notice. He lit a cigarette, offered one to the boy. The youth refused, scowling.

Shayne went on quietly, “You’re in one hell of a spot, Burt. If there’s anything you want to tell me I’m listening.”

Burt stood silent, his handsome face inflexible. Shayne waited, then went to the telephone and dialed Operator. “Miami Police Headquarters—”

But the sudden wail of sirens interrupted the call, and he hung up. The doorbell jangled loudly, persistently, accompanied by the sound of heavy banging on the front door. Shayne dashed out of the room, unbolted the front door and admitted Chief Gentry and two uniformed policemen.

Gently howled. “Good grief! You again? I might have known!”

“I was just phoning you, Will.”

“You were in a pig’s kinetta! Somebody phoned Headquarters from this town that Burton Adams lives here.”

“He’s in the back waiting for you,” Shayne said cheerfully. “But I’m afraid he’s not in a very communicative mood.”

When Adams saw the policemen he edged slowly back toward the gun cabinet... then dove head foremost toward an open window. He was halfway out when Shayne caught him by the ankles and yanked him back into the room, causing him to land flat on his face with a sharp cry.

Shayne’s right arm locked vise-like around young Adams’ neck. He hoisted him to his feet and gestured to the officers. They pinioned the youth’s arms behind his back, and Gentry moved in close.

“Handcuff him!” he ordered.

Zamboni was clinging to the mantlepiece, staring up at the smiling face of his dead wife. Slowly he took down the frame, removed the picture, and tore it into pieces.

Then he sank into a chair and cradled his head in his arms. His shoulders shook with his sobbing.

VII

The redhead hurried through Lucy Hamilton’s specially prepared dinner of sirloin smothered in mushrooms in the cozy warmth of her second floor apartment, then returned with bleary eyes to the carbon copy of her eye-witness account of last night’s tragedy.

His rangy body was relaxed, but his mind was racing in high gear. So far, the only provable fact he had to go on was that Voltane had been killed by a bullet marked by Adams’ father.

The phone rang. Lucy picked up the receiver. She smiled, then handed it to Shayne. “Tim Rourke. I hardly recognized him. I think he’s sober.”

The reporter’s voice was in such a high pitch of excitement that he didn’t have to strain to hear his words: “Mike, I’m calling from headquarters. Zamboni just confessed! He said he murdered Voltane by switching Kara’s fake bullet and marking one of his own.”

Shayne hung up, frowning, now convinced more than ever that the truth lay in the secret of the trick itself. He had suspected from the beginning a not so simple substitution of bullets, the bona fide marked one for a dummy that could pass as the real McCoy and that would disintegrate when fired. But where murder was concerned, theory was not enough.

He suddenly recalled that his magician friend, Fred Keating, was opening tonight with Beatrice Lillie at the Playhouse in Coconut Grove. He put in a person-to-person call backstage and told the operator to ring back when she had Keating on the line. Lucy handed him a brandy, and the glass was almost empty when the phone rang and he heard Keating’s voice over the receiver.

“Mike, you old Hawkshaw! Don’t tell me — you called about Voltane! It’s a short intermission, so make it snappy.”

Shayne told him how he thought the bullet trick might have been done. Was he on the right track?

“From what I remember of Voltane’s version,” was the reply, “the principle you’ve mentioned is probably the one he used.”

“Which would mean,” Shayne went on, “that after the bullet is marked, it would have to be smuggled off the stage in some way, and the nub extracted from its shell. After that it could be slipped to Voltane to ‘palm’ in his mouth.”

The magician’s voice laughed sonorously. “Marvelous, my dear Holmes! And when the dummy is fired he hams it up properly and bares the marked one in his teeth — chord in G major!”

“Thanks, Fred, and best to Miss Lillie.”

At least that explained the slug in the dead magician’s mouth. The poor fool thought it was the marked one.

But it left unexplained who switched, or didn’t switch, or re-switched, bullets. It could have been Adams, it could have been Kara, it could have been Willie Kling. Even Zamboni’s story might just possibly be true.

If he had guessed correctly as to the principle involved, the answer now hinged on the exact manner in which the bullets had been switched. When Adams dropped his own into the plate Voltane had made a big deal out of: “...at no time do I or any of my assistants ever touch—”

Willie Kling was living in a small furnished room with an outside bath in a dank, creaky building a few blocks from Kara’s new abode. He did not answer when Shayne first rapped on the door. The third time he opened it a few inches, and snarled, “I’m not in!”

Shayne put his weight on the door and pushed Kling back. The man glared at him. “What the hell do you want?” he demanded.

“What you stole from your boss’s trunk last night!”

“What you talking about?”

“I’m in a hurry!”

“I didn’t take nothing, Shayne.”

Shayne looked at him steadily and said, “Get it!”

Kling hesitated, eyeing the redhead’s grim face doubtfully. Then he shrugged and turned to a half-open suitcase lying next to a metal clothes cabinet. It was filled with handcuffs, leg-irons, padlocks, tools and dirty laundry: With insolent deliberation he dug out a greasy, towel-wrapped bundle, and flung it at the detective, his face black with hate.

Shayne picked it up hurriedly, unfolded the towel, and saw — a plate. But the damnedest plate. To the eye it would have passed as one of the common dime store varieties. If it hadn’t been for its weight and thickness to the touch he would have thought Willie was pulling: a fast one.

Accidentally his right thumb touched something on its outer edge. He started at the sudden vibration in his hands, the simultaneous silent and lightning-like whirl of little trap doors in the center of the plate that could... that could have invisibly substituted one small object for another.

Like, for instance — a bullet.

It was now close to midnight, and assembled in Chief Gentry’s office were Willie Kling, Adams and his father, under police guard, Kara and Timothy Rourke.

“It’s not what the murderer did that killed Voltane, Will,” Shayne pointed out, “but what the murderer did not do. Both Zamboni and Adams thought each other guilty, and Zamboni made a phony confession to save his son’s life.”

Gentry bit into a soggy black cigar butt, rumbled, “What makes you so sure it was phony?”

“Because of the way the trick worked, Will. The real bullet is marked first, then switched for the dummy. Obviously he lied when he told you Kara handed him the dummy to mark.”

Comprehension dawned on Gentry’s grim, keenly alert face. “Then Voltane was murdered by someone deliberately not making the switch!”

Shayne nodded, but before he had a chance to speak Kara was on her feet with a shrill cry. “That’s ridiculous! No one touched—”

“Right, Kara!” grinned Shayne, “Not with their hands! But this—” he whipped out the mechanical plate from under his coat, and his face hardened as he strode up to her, tripping the secret spring with his thumb. “This is the weapon you used to murder your husband so that you could marry your lover!”

Burton Adams, his handsome face twisted with horror, sprang to her side, drew her close, and choked, “No! She wouldn’t. It must have been a mistake!”

Gentry shouted for order, and Shayne said harshly to Kara, “Go on, tell him the truth! Tell him how you staged your alibi in my office yesterday morning with your slick mumbo-jumbo! Tell him how you fooled Dr. Vogle with your fake side-show trance, and how you even tried to frame his own father when you saw I was getting wise!”

Kara seemed suddenly to age. Her lips quivered and her whole body sagged. She looked despairingly into Adams’ dazed, tear-filled eyes, and her own told him that what Michael Shayne had just said was true.

Adams turned his face as she was led away. The redhead laid a fatherly hand on his shoulder. “Sorry, Burt, but that’s my job. It isn’t always pleasant.”

The boy blew his nose, looked up at him and gulped. “Mr. Shayne, do you think — could you get Chief Gentry to call off his charges against me? You know, resisting arrest, running away from a crime? I wouldn’t ask, only I’ve — I’ve got a very special reason.”

“Could be. What’s the reason?”

“I’d like to join the Marines, sir.”