The Headless Lady

Chapter Nine Impossible Arrow

My subconscious mind wasn’t as easily satisfied. Sleep was a long time coming, and when it arrived at last it brought dreams that were anything but carefree. All night long I fled endlessly, like a caged squirrel, around an enormous circus ring, pursued with grim and evil intent by cowboys, bank robbers, sword swallowers, the mummy of John Wilkes Booth, and a thundering herd of madly charging elephants. My escape was blocked on every side by a great audience which filled the seats and overflowed onto the arena track — a silently intent, sadistic, sinister, and impossibly grinning audience the members of which were all quite headless.

Finally Merlini’s voice came, penetrating faintly through the heavy layers of sleep to send the phantoms flying. But as his syllables slowly coalesced to form words and then sense, they only called up a greater menace, a Hydra-headed monster that even Barnum might have shied from.

“The desk clerk,” Merlini was saying, “has been murdered!”

I sat up instantly, fully awake. “Wh-wh — what!”

“Well,” Merlini laughed, his words having had their intended effect, “either that or the service furnished by the Hotel Chesterfield is lamentably lax. We weren’t called at seven. It’s nearly nine, and I’m expecting a busy day. Come, stir yourself.”

Merlini’s powers of divination were not operating with their accustomed accuracy. His prediction of a busy day was far short of the mark. It turned out to be an incredibly hectic day filled with an army of incidents whose advancing shock troops, in the person of Stuart Towne, met us as we left the room a few minutes later. We encountered him in the hall, clad in pajamas and carrying soap and towel. He greeted us pleasantly and with some surprise.

“Hello,” he said. “Staying on for more circus?”

“Yes,” Merlini answered, “I think so. There were parts of last night’s performance that we missed.”

If Towne appreciated the double-entendre he didn’t admit it. “Good. I’ll see you on the lot, then.”

He disappeared into the bathroom and Merlini, as the door closed behind him, scowled at it. Then quickly he took a notebook from his pocket, tore out a sheet, held it against the wall, and rapidly drew on it in pencil these characters:

He hurried with it to the bathroom door and knocked.

“Yes?” Towne’s voice asked.

“Sorry to bother you now,” Merlini said, “but something extremely odd happened last night. It’s just occurred to me that you might be able to explain it.”

Towne unlocked the door and stepped part way out, shaving brush in hand. “Something odd?” he asked.

“Yes. And in your line. Do you think the Hotel Chesterfield could possibly harbor a nest of international spies?” Merlini’s voice was completely serious.

Towne looked vaguely alarmed. He frowned, glanced sharply across at me, and then grinned. “Sure,” he said. “In a Hitchcock movie, but this isn’t that. Or is it? What do you mean?”

“I suspect that most detective-story writers,” Merlini went on, “like their literary ancestor, Poe, have some interest in codes and ciphers. Do you?”

Towne’s slow nod was puzzled. “Yes, I’ve looked into the subject a bit. I know Yardley’s book. But—” His eye caught the slip of paper Merlini held out.

“Some person unknown,” Merlini explained, serious as an owl, “shoved this note under our door last night. It looks distinctly ominous, and I don’t know whether it’s a warning, a threat, a pictographic description of the Army’s newest bomber, or a joke. In any case, it seems to have been delivered at the wrong door. It’s quite incomprehensible. Can you shed any light?”

Towne scowled at the penciled characters, turned the paper over to examine its blank obverse side, hesitated, apparently still not quite convinced of Merlini’s seriousness, and then studied the inscription again.

I waited almost breathlessly. His hesitation was highly suspicious. I knew what three of those symbols meant, and I was very sure that Towne knew, too. I didn’t know why Merlini had set this little trap; but it looked as if he was going to make a catch. Towne was so close to putting his foot in it that I almost uttered an involuntary: Careful!

Then he spoke — and the trap clicked.

“No,” he said doubtfully, “I can’t rattle off a translation for you offhand. It must be a joke of some sort, but I’d like to have a try at it. May I have a copy?”

“You can have the original,” Merlini said. “You’re probably quite right about the joke. I’m incurably romantic. I’ll inquire downstairs if there’s a boy about the place. Age fifteen. One who’s been reading The Goldbug. We’ll see you later, then. If you do make anything of it, let us know.”

Towne nodded, and we left him standing in the doorway, frowning intently at the paper, his puzzled air, I was certain now, completely false.

“His acting,” I told Merlini once we were out of ear shot down the stairs, “is amateurish. But why does he pretend not to know those last three signs, the common proofreader’s symbols for delete, insert quotes, and period? And why did you suspect he might react that way? And what are those other characters?”

“Hobo hieroglyphics,” Merlini answered. “The first means Tough on tramps. Bad dog; the second, Follow this street; and the third is an English criminal sign signifying A buyer of stolen goods lives here. The dot within the circle, the proofreader’s manner of indicating the insertion of a period, is also a hobo mark that means You can count on a thirty-day jolt for vagrancy in this town!”

“Um,” I said. “The intriguing reactions of Mr. Towne. They become more cryptic by the minute. Last night he pretended to know nothing about pickpocket language. Now he won’t admit knowing anything about hobo graphic signs — or, what’s even more amazing — proofreader’s symbols. Yet, knowing them, he must suspect that the note is a phony and that you were trying to test him. But he denies all knowledge just the same. Why? It’s almost as if he were trying to make us regard him with deep suspicion. I don’t get it.”

Merlini looked pained. “Ross, your before-breakfast logic is something to behold. Pythagoras, Hegel, Kant, Descartes, Spinoza, and some others must be whirling like electric dynamos in their graves. I’m reminded of Isadore Cohen, traveling salesman for Cohen, Cohen and Cohen, cloaks and suits. He met a bitter business rival on the train. ‘Ver are you goink?’ he asked. The rival replied politely, ‘Buffalo.’ Isadore grew angry. ‘Buffalo!’ he growled disgustedly. ‘You tell me Buffalo so that I think you’re goink to Schenectady, ven I know it’s Buffalo you’re goink to all the time. Vy do you lie to me that way, Jacob?’”

“Does that little parable,” I asked, surprised, “mean that our author, bank-robber friend—”

“Hist,” Merlini warned, “the desk clerk.”

That gentleman came hastily through the door beyond the desk, his shirt tail inadequately tucked in behind, his fingers fumbling sleepily at a wrinkled tie. Seeing us, he apologized nervously.

“Just coming up to call you. I’m afraid I slept right through my alarm. Four times I got into bed last night, and then something happened. I got up when you arrived. After that another gentleman checked in, and at two this morning when the plumbing in Room 33 sprung a leak, Mr. Goudge, the cream-separator salesman in the room below, was nearly drowned, and—”

Merlini cut in on this tale of woe. “You’re the day and the night clerk, as well?”

The harried man nodded. “Day clerk, night clerk, general manager, bellboy, and some other things. Twenty-four hours a day. Of course most nights we don’t get any business after that 10:40 train, but last night with the circus here and all—”

“The gentleman who checked in after we did.” Merlini was examining the register. “Is he still here?”

“Oh, Lord! And he wanted to be called at six!” The desk clerk scuttled from behind his enclosure and started for the stairs.

“Wait,” Merlini stopped him. “According to the register you put him in Room 26—down the hall from us. This looks like his key with some money here on the desk.”

“Oh.” The clerk looked at the objects. “He must have gone.”

I took a quick look at the register. The name signed beneath ours in a large hasty scrawl was Keith Atterbury’s.

Merlini ignored the look I gave him, calmly tore two dollar bills several times across, neatly folded the pieces, and handed them to the clerk. I turned and followed him out as the clerk started to protest, then stopped, having found that the bills, unfolded, were fully restored.

Merlini, anxious to make up for lost time, wanted to skip breakfast altogether, but I persuaded him to stop at a lunch wagon long enough for orange juice, roll, and coffee. I made an attempt at conversation, but he would have none of it. “Eat,” he said, “and be quick about it.”

It wasn’t until we were some ten miles out on the road to Norwalk, following the arrow-marked poles, that he spoke again.

“Ross,” he commanded, “stop the car. I want out.”

He spoke so suddenly and urgently that I obeyed automatically, jamming on the brakes with an abruptness that made the tires screech.

“Hannum poster on a pole we just passed,” he said, getting out. “I want it for my collection. I won’t be a minute.”

I watched him as he ran back and started to detach the brightly colored “one-sheet” from the telephone pole. He carefully lifted two corners free from the tacks that held them; then, unaccountably, seemed to change his mind. For a space of half a dozen seconds he stood as motionless as a wooden Indian. Slowly he replaced the poster as it had been. He turned, and, suddenly all action, sprinted for the car. He jumped in, slammed the door violently, and barked at me:

“That crossroad just ahead, Ross. Turn right, and step on it!” He sounded as if he meant it.

I let the clutch in and trod heavily on the gas.

For once he explained without prompting. “There’s an arrow chalked on that pole beneath the poster, but the bill-posting crew travels a good ten days ahead of the show, and the arrows are placed the morning the show moves. It isn’t possible.”

“Perhaps some other show”

“No. The arrow is a nice fresh one.”

“But if it’s covered by the poster—”

“It means — and for once I use the phrase quite literally — it means dirty work at the crossroads.”

The car took a corner on two wheels. Mentally I did the same, wondering all at once if the fact had any significance that this road, like the one on which the Major had been found, was a little-used side road. The macadam, in contrast to the smooth concrete of the highway we had just left, was bumpy and the unbanked curves were sharp and numerous. I trod still harder on the accelerator, and we flew, bouncing and swerving like a roller coaster running wild.

I had no time to speculate on what we might find — I was too busy steering a course; but I knew the moment we sighted the roadster and its attached trailer that it was what we hunted. It was parked by the roadside in a lonely spot that offered no apparent reason for stopping, a broad empty meadow stretching away on one side and a wooded hillside sloping sharply up from the road’s edge on the other.

“Queer place to stop,” I said, pulling off the road just ahead of the roadster and applying the brakes, “unless it’s a picnic or a breakdown.”

Merlini had our door open and was out and gone before we stopped rolling. I saw that the driver’s seat was empty, and I heard Merlini knock briskly on the trailer door as I cut the ignition and jumped after him. He waited a moment, knocked again, and then tried the door. It opened, and he stepped in.

He looked around and, as I entered, said, “Nobody home.”

The interior was similar to that of the Major’s trailer, but simpler and without the custom-built features. The table between the two facing seats at the rear had been folded away and the seats pulled out to form a bed. It had been slept in and was still unmade.

Quickly I jerked open one of the two wardrobe doors on my right.

“Looking for something?” Merlini asked.

I looked in the second cupboard. “Bodies,” I said. “Or maybe Joy Pattison. Wouldn’t surprise me.”

The cupboards contained nothing at all but a dozen or so wire coat hangers.

Doubtfully Merlini said, “It could be a breakdown. Suppose you investigate, Ross. Look at the gas gauge, and see if the engine is in running order.”

“That’s a job for you, isn’t it?” I asked. “I can’t pick the ignition lock, and the keys certainly won’t be—”

“They are, though,” he replied. “I saw them on the dashboard. Look for traces of another car alongside, too. We met no one on foot, and the next town’s ten miles on.”

I hurried out. Though lacking bodies, the layout was still promisingly odd. Trailer door unlocked, keys in the dashboard, and, as I discovered at once, an almost full tank of gas and an engine that perked as soon as I put my foot on the starter. I picked up a pair of dark sunglasses that lay on the floor of the car and then examined the roadside. If another car had stopped, it hadn’t left the roadway; the only marks in the soft shoulder that bordered the road were those made by the roadster, the trailer, and our own car.

I went back and found Merlini squatting on his heels contemplating the trailer floor just inside the door. I made my report and exhibited the sunglasses. He nodded in a preoccupied way.

“What do you make of that?” he asked. The linoleum-covered floor was somewhat worn except for a 2x3-foot rectangle that was perceptibly brighter and newer.

I took a closer look. “That’s easy,” I deduced. “A missing rug.” I pointed to several tack holes around the oblong’s edge. “Tacked down to keep it from sliding around en route. Owner leaves car keys but takes rug. Magic carpet maybe. And he flew away on it.”

“She, Ross, not he,” said Merlini. “I found a blond hairpin and some hair combings to match in the waste-basket. When I saw that the wardrobe cupboards were as bare as Mother Hubbard’s, I got nosy. Sinkful of dirty dishes. Orange juice, coffee, buttered toast are indicated. The alarm clock was set for six. There’s a good supply of groceries, a well-stocked refrigerator, plenty of pots, pans, silverware, dishes, bed and table linen. All normal enough. But those drawers beneath the mirror there, where I’d expect to find toilet articles, underwear, and the like, are all quite empty. There’s not a thing in the place that could be called a personal article.” Merlini paused briefly, took a final puff at his cigarette, and dropped it in an ash receiver that stood on the floor near by. “She did more than just step out to borrow a cup of flour. She packed for an extended stay.”

“It’s a Buick roadster,” I said. “A ’35 model. And a Roamer trailer, dark-green paint job. If it hadn’t been so blamed dark on the lot last night, we might know who—” I looked curiously around, wrinkling my nose. I was conscious of a faint disagreeable odor that grew stronger — the smell of burning rubber.

Merlini too sniffed, then pulled open a door beneath the sink and extracted a crumpled square of brown wrapping paper from the built-in trash container on the door’s back. He spread it quickly on the floor, picked up the ash receiver, and started to empty the contents of its neck onto the paper. The still-lighted cigarette butt he had discarded a moment earlier dropped out, but nothing else, although there was a metallic rattle within the ash tray’s base. Merlini turned it right side up again, reached in with two long fingers, and removed the obstruction — a rubber glove.

He reached in again and found another. He upended the ash receiver once more, and this time the contents descended amid a dusty cloud of ash. The receiver was a treasure chest of clues. The metallic object that had rattled proved to be a cheap dime-store glass cutter.

Merlini poked at the remaining debris and collected several torn bits of white paper. One of these he passed across to me. “Clues by the gross,” he said. “No. 1, Extra Fancy, hand-sorted and government inspected. Nothing but the best.”

The scrap of paper was the torn corner of an envelope, and it bore part of a printed return address—The Magic Sh— and below that 1479 Broadw—. It was Merlini’s own business stationery, apparently the envelope in which last night he had placed the fragments of glass that he had found on the floor of the Major’s trailer.

“When that was stolen last night,” I said slowly, “only two women could have known the importance of the evidence it held. Pauline was hors de combat, and Joy—”

From outside, through the open door, came a sound that jolted us both into instant action. I got through the doorway first, just in time to see the stone that had rolled down the hillside come to a stop a dozen feet away.

From above, near the hill’s crest, we could hear the retreating sound of someone running through the brush.