The Headless Lady

Chapter Three Gun Talk

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 way 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. Come on. Let’s go ask questions.” (A punk is anything young, as a boy.)

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—”

Before the side-show top and the line of violently colored, somewhat Dali-esque banners that pictured a “positively unequaled display of Believe-It-or-Not freaks and oddities from the four corners of the earth” stood a raised platform, flanked on either side by an umbrella-covered ticket box. A talker walked back and forth on the platform, mopping his brow with a damp handkerchief and trying with little success to get a reaction from the scattered groups of townsfolk who stood stolidly watching him.

“Lot-lice,” Merlini said. “Folks who stand around with their hands in their pockets and don’t buy.”

On the opposite side of the midway, reading from left to right, were a frozen custard stand, a grab joint, the ticket wagon, a grease joint, and a juice joint. In the center of the midway on the left a pitchman was selling balloons, whips, and replicas of Charlie McCarthy. We turned right, toward the canopied marquee above which, in ornately serifed letters, were the words, Main Entrance, THE MIGHTY HANNUM COMBINED SHOWS.

“This,” Merlini said, determined to see that I was properly educated, “is the front door. And the performer’s section of the lot behind the big top is called the back yard.”

As we came up to the entrance, 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 hippopotamus gave us a sour and speculative 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 grew 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 pattered 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 midair. 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.”

“Remember the mountaineer boy who showed up in Hillsvale, Kentucky, wanting a job?” asked. Merlini.

Wiley grinned all over. “Will I ever forget him,” he said, chuckling. “Tell them about it.”

Merlini addressed Atterbury and myself. “Old man Hagen had bought a lion from the Robbins show at the start of the season, sight unseen. They guaranteed him to be as gentle as a lamb. That was an exaggeration; he was as mild as a full-grown typhoon. The cat would hardly let an animal man on the lot get near enough to the cage to feed him. When the hillbilly arrived asking for a job, Hagen, whose practical jokes were famous, said, ‘Why, yes. Guess I could use a young fellow like you. Tell you what. You go over and clean out that lion’s cage. If you do a good job, I’ll put you on.’ The kid went off and then — nothing happened at all. Finally Hagen began to worry. He was afraid that perhaps the kid had tried to enter the cage. So he investigated. He found the boy actually in the cage, and calmly doing a good workmanlike job of cleaning it out. But the door was wide open and the lion was gone!”

“Luckily we cornered the cat,” Wiley added, “before it chewed anybody, though we had to shoot it to get it. Hagen didn’t as much as think of another practical joke for nearly a month. Reminds me of the time—”

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 introduction 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 chameleonlike 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.” (Merlini’s formula for clown-white dates from his own circus days; it now is usually compounded of zinc oxide, olive oil, and glycerine.)

“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 Lovejoy, 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? Suppé’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. Merle Evans played it once on the Miller Bros. 101 Ranch Outfit. I was there. We had a blowdown and thirty-eight killed. He played it just once after that, and a cornet player died soon’s he’d finished. I got a damn good notion to blow right now.”

“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 a Johnny-Come-Lately. 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 scowled, then said almost inaudibly, “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 Cadillac, 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 if we do have all the blues up and are putting the customers in the straw you worry because one of the bulls looks like he might run wild or—” (Blues are unreserved seats at the arena ends, traditionally painted blue. Overflow customers are seated “in the straw” spread around the hippodrome track.)

“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. 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. Talking to one of his stalls. Probably waiting to work the connection after the blow-off.” (The blow-off is the finale.)

“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 professionals still use it. Gun, from the Jewish gonnif, meaning thief, is preferable, or even the more recent variant, cannon. The gun who does the actual picking of the pocket is called a wire, tool, or hook. Guns work in mobs, the wire being assisted by stalls, sometimes called pushers-and-shovers, which is what they do. One of them prats the mark in, and as soon as the wire gets the okus he weeds it to another stall so if he’s tumbled he wouldn’t get sneezed with it on him.” Merlini grinned. “Is that clear?”

“To another gun, maybe,” Atterbury said. “There are some new ones on me there.”

“It’s thieves’ argot rather than circus,” Merlini explained. “You’ll find that the grifter and circus argots overlap considerably. You hear less of the former on a circus now than in the good old days.”

“Prat the mark in?” Towne asked. “Okus, weed? What—”

“Okus and its older synonym, poke, mean pocketbook. Poke was once pokus, and both terms obviously derive from a term connected with my own profession, hocus-pocus. Weed, as I used it, means to get rid of the okus by passing it along to a stall; and prat the mark in — here, I’ll show you.” He took up a position behind Towne. “You’re a mark 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 pocket-picking on other occasions and knew what was required. I stood in front of Towne and edged back against him, shoving impolitely with my fanny 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. And usually a second stall is so placed that he shades the duke and prevents any bystanders from seeing the action. Duke is, of course, hand. A kick is a pocket, and specifically a coat pocket. A breech kick is a trouser pocket; a prat kick or a prop is a hip pocket. The fob is the watch pocket, and the insider is self-explanatory.”

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 prat.” 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 I 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.”