“Missing rug?” Mac asked, bewildered.
“Yes. My hunch is that it was carried away because its presence would have contradicted the theory that she had simply ducked out.”
“How?” Mac asked. “I don’t get it.”
“Suppose,” Merlini said, “that it had blood on it.”
“No, dammit!” Mac exploded. “This is too much! You see murder in everything. That’s the flimsiest—”
Mac’s expostulations ran suddenly aground. He stopped dead, his mouth still open. Then suddenly he emitted blue flames, swearing like—well, like an old circus man.
Two state troopers in their spruce gray uniforms, Stetson hats, Sam Brown belts, and shiny boots were coming toward us across the back yard with purposeful determined strides. Somehow they didn’t look as if they merely wanted passes; they acted as if they were on a job—a serious one. With them there was a round-eyed excited boy of about twelve and a middle-aged nervous man whose appearance was that of a farmer. Another man, Stuart Towne, followed interestedly in their wake.
The trooper with the captain’s stripes, a bronzed, square-jawed individual with a direct no-nonsense air about him, addressed Mac.
“We’re looking for a man named Wiley. They said he’d be back here.”
“Wiley?” Mac asked innocently. “Wiley. Oh yes, saw him an hour or so ago over by the cookhouse. That way. Tall man with a squint.”
“Mac,” Merlini objected, “for Pete’s sake! That won’t—”
The boy who accompanied the troopers was pointing at Merlini and myself and saying, “That’s them! The ones I saw in the trailer after we heard the shot!”
Chapter Thirteen
Clown Alley
“THE MARINES HAVE LANDED,” Merlini said wryly. “And with the usual fanfare. Mac, where can we hold a conference?”
Mac knew when he was licked. His scowl was black, but he gave in like a good loser. “Major’s trailer,” he said helplessly. “Come on.”
On the way Merlini asked, “The shot. What time did that happen?”
“No you don’t.” The trooper shook his head. “Your story first.”
At the trailer Merlini made a few introductions, and we discovered that the trooper was Captain Schafer, of the New York State Police. His companion was Trooper Palmer.
Rapidly Merlini gave them the works. His swift summary was concise, stripped of irrelevant detail and yet complete in all the essential points. Mac listened wearily as Merlini paraded one suspicious circumstance after another, pyramiding the little evidence we actually had, but cementing it with enough deduction to make it hold together remarkably well. Well enough so that Captain Schafer’s eyes were popping before Merlini was half finished. The Captain interrupted just once, to send Palmer on the run for the nearest phone and reinforcements.
Merlini held back only one thing, the mysterious clown; evidently with the intention of saving that piece of investigation for himself. He soft-pedaled the objections Mac and Pauline had raised at nearly every turn and offered the lack of concrete evidence as an excuse for not informing the authorities sooner. The Captain wasn’t greatly impressed.
When Merlini had described our discovery of the trailer that morning, told where it was now, and handed over the garage ticket, Schafer let us hear the boy’s story. Buddy and his father were brought in to repeat it. At seven that morning the boy had been doing his chores on the farm which lay behind the hill out of sight of the road. He had heard what he thought was a shot and, since it was not hunting season, had wondered about it. His father, less romantically inclined, had reckoned it was a car backfiring and made the boy finish his work. But as soon as he was free he had set out, a Buck Rogers disintegrator pistol in hand, to investigate. He had found the trailer, occupied a strategic position in the woods on the hillside above, and was holding a council of war with himself when Merlini and I arrived. We discovered now that all the time we were there we had been covered by Buck Rogers’ deadly weapon of the future and in constant danger of instant annihilation. The kid was completely disgusted with himself for his error of the dislodged stone and his subsequent hasty flight, though I’m sure that if I had been faced with a couple of charging interplanetary outlaws I’d have done the same.
“They looked like murderers,” he said, finishing.
His father had again expressed his skepticism, but the boy was persistent. Captain Schafer, recently married to the boy’s sister Ann, ran Buck Rogers a close second in Buddy’s esteem; and finally, behind his father’s back, he had phoned the barracks with his story. The Captain had agreed that it was odd enough to investigate, had checked on the license number the boy had given him, and discovered that the owner of the vehicle was the Mighty Hannum Circus Corporation. The Captain hadn’t, however, expected to scare up anything quite like this. He was by now nearly as excited as Buddy, though he did a fair job of hiding it.
Merlini, as Buddy and his father started out, leaned forward and took a half-dollar from the boy’s ear. “Take that,” he said, “and buy a circus ticket. I’d get you a pass, only I don’t stand in so well with the management just now.”
Merlini finished off his story then and was just laying out the rubber gloves, the torn bits of envelope, and the glass cutter for the Captain’s inspection when the called-for reinforcements arrived, Chief of Police Hooper among them. The Chief, I discovered later, was a deacon on Sundays, a sideline that Mac insisted was merely a vote-getting ruse. I rather agreed with Mac; Hooper was an officious, blustering, overly confident small-town official, quite convinced that any persons without a permanent address, circus folk in particular, were likely candidates for his jail. The sidewise glance he gave Mac when he first came in warned that there’d be trouble if anyone referred to the shakedown of the morning.
Schafer gave him a hasty resume of the situation, sent a man out after Irma King, and announced that he was going to begin at once to verify Merlini’s story by getting the facts from the people concerned at first hand. He started us on our way out.
Merlini, however, had one final suggestion. “Those rubber gloves,” he said. “I wonder if you have facilities for giving them the nitrate test? If you do, I think it might be a good idea.”
“Nitrate test?” Schafer asked. “What’s that?”
“The ballistics man at Center Street told me about it,” Merlini explained. “It’s a test, introduced in this country by the Mexican criminologist, Gonzalez. Once it has percolated through enough police departments, as it is beginning to do, it will make shooting with criminal intent a considerably more hazardous proceeding for the gunman than it is now. The test can tell you which of your suspects has recently fired a gun. The ‘invisible backfire’ of the pistol blows minute particles of nitrate, part of the residue of the powder combustion, back into the skin of the hand. The application of Lunge’s Reagent, dephenylamine and sulphuric acid, makes the nitrate specks, if any are present, visible, turning them a dark blue in color. Since the acid can’t be applied directly to the hands, a paraffin cast is made first, and the reagent applied to that. The paraffin lifts the nitrate specks off the hand. You could do the same with these gloves. I’d like to know if they’ve been worn by anyone firing a gun.”
“Say,” Hooper asked. “Who the hell is this guy?”
“He says he has an in with the New York Homicide Department. I’m checking it.” Schafer turned to Merlini. “Might be a good idea at that. I’ll see what can be done. What’s the reagent formula?”
“I can’t give you that offhand, but almost any library will have a copy of Robinson’s Science Versus Crime. You can find it there.”
Hooper said, “I don’t see that knowing whether or not these gloves were worn when a shot was fired is going to be a damn bit of help. But if you want to get fancy, give hem to Burns to play with. Ever since he went to Washington and took that three-month F.B.I. course, he’s been yelling for microscopes and ultra-violet lamps, and smelling the station house up with chemicals. The cases we get
around here don’t need all that embroidery, and I don’t think this one does either.”
“Got it all figured, Chief?” Merlini asked politely.
“No, but I’ve got ideas.”
I noticed that the look he gave Merlini when he said that also included me, and I didn’t think I was going to like the ideas.
“Wiley,” Schafer said as we went out, “I’ll take you first. Then I’ll want to see Miss Hannum and after that the others Merlini has mentioned, and probably some more.”
I steered Merlini toward the grab joint on the midway and insisted stubbornly enough that he wait while I surrounded two hamburgers and some coffee. He ordered one himself, but didn’t pay much attention to it when he got it. This outdoor life seemed to be giving me a country mouse’s appetite, and I was ordering a refill when he said:
“What are you doing? Studying up to be the fat man in a side show?” He started off impatiently. “I’ll see you later.”
Hastily I grabbed the final sandwich and hurried after him. He was making tracks for the back yard. The afternoon performance was by now nearly ready to blow off. The band music, a waltz, indicated that the flying act was in progress, which left only a clown number and the chariot races to follow.
“We’ve got to work fast,” Merlini said as I caught up with him. “We’ve got competition now, and I’m afraid that once they’ve sorted out the alibis there will be an arrest. I’m not so sure that the person with the least number of alibis is necessarily it. We may have to set some alibis up on a cat rack and throw baseballs at them until we knock a few off—if we want to win any cigars. And that may not be so easy if the joint is gaffed.”
“Gaffed?” I asked. “As in fishing?”
“No,” he replied. “Like ‘gimmicked’ in conjuring. A joint is any game concession. When it’s gaffed, strong or French, it’s set up so that the player can’t possibly score enough to win. Most of them are two-way joints that can be operated either gaffed or fair. They are run fair when the operator or his shill is demonstrating how easy it is to cop a big prize. The signs reading This is not a game of chance are literally correct. The chump has no chance.”
“That the sort of thing the Major’s Carnival Equipment Company manufactures?”
“Yes. Also gambling supplies. A couple of dozen varieties of loaded dice, phony roulette wheels and chuck-a-luck cages, marked cards, holdouts, shiners, even punch boards with the winning numbers keyed so the operator can punch out the big winners before he sets it up. People who buy these sometimes get an unpleasant surprise when they find that the two-way games can also work three ways! I know a grifter who got his hands on the gambling accessory company’s list of customers. He made the rounds and, knowing what sort of crooked set-up was being used, swindled the swindlers! He’d switch the loaded dice for a set that were loaded differently—that sort of thing. When the other man thinks he has the best of it, that’s the time to take him over; he is in no position to beef to the fuzz.”
Merlini stopped by the clown car and waited as the clowns, having just finished their crazy walk-around, came toward us from the big top carrying their props. The tramp wasn’t among them.
“Where’s Garner?” Merlini asked as they came up.
An extremely obese clown who bulged alarmingly both fore and aft started to pull off his costume. As the balloon-padded garment dropped from him, it disclosed a remarkably skinny man who growled:
“That’s what I want to know. He blowed right after the spec, and we haven’t seen him since.” He turned to one of his colleagues, who had also started to disrobe. “Keep your pants on, Mike,” he said. “You’ll have to take his place in the concert.”
Merlini scowled at this information. “How long has he been on the show?” he asked.
“He’s a Johnny-come-lately,” was the reply. “Three weeks or so.” Our skinny friend stood before a cracked mirror that hung on the truck door and swabbed a towel across his face. The transformation that occurred was as astonishing as if he had removed a mask. His grotesquely grinning caricature of a face was wiped away, and a quite ordinary, rather sour face left in its place.
“Was he in the car with the rest of you when you made the jump from Waterboro this morning?”
The clown looked at Merlini curiously. He shook his head. “I guess so. He usually is.”
“But you don’t know for sure?”
“No. I didn’t wake up until we got on the lot here. Why?”
“Anybody else know?” Merlini looked around, but the other answers were all like the first one.
“Thanks, boys,” Merlini said. “If he shows up, let me or Wiley know about it, will you? Some state troopers out front looking for him. Come on, Ross.”
“One alibi down,” I said. “And two to go. He was working the concert when the Major got his, and though he might have doused the lights, he was out in the ring again when the evidence was stolen.”
Merlini didn’t answer. His long legs carried him quickly back the way we had come. At the front door Calamity was sputtering to himself.
“State troopers,” he muttered glumly. “And cops. I knew something like this was going to happen.” He saw us. “Superstitious, am I? That boss windjammer and his ‘Cavalry March’! Might as well have played ‘Home Sweet Home.’”
Merlini didn’t argue that. “Calamity,” he said, “send someone around to see if they can find Garner. If you can locate him, maybe your troubles will be over.”
Calamity nodded. “You’re probably right about that. I think he’s a Jonah too. All the funny business on this outfit started right after he joined up.”
“Another thing,” Merlini added. “Who did Paulette Hannum elope with?”
“Press agent who was on the show then. Young fellow, by the name of Andy Myers. The Major didn’t like him much. And neither of them been on the lot ever since as far as I know.”
“Pauline’s mother,” Merlini asked, “Lucille. What sort of an act was she doing when the Major married her? Do you know?”
“Sure. She was the other flyer in the act with Mac and the Major. Damn good aerialist. One of the first women to do a double somersault.”
“Thanks, Cal.” Merlini started off. “Don’t forget Garner. Oh, by. the way—any Western Union messages come for me?”
“No.”
Merlini made for the Major’s trailer again. Mac, Keith and Joy stood outside talking. Stuart Towne emerged just as we arrived, and one of the assistant troopers put his head out and said, “Miss Pattison, you’re next.” The inquisition was in full swing.
Merlini said, “Wait, Joy. I’ve got news for the Captain.” He shoved in past the trooper at the door and announced, “One thing I forgot to tell you. A tramp clown by the name of Garner needs some questioning. He was hiding in the wardrobe last time Wiley and I talked to Miss Hannum, and what he overheard seems to have scared him off. No one’s seen him in the last hour or so anyway. Looks highly suspicious. He hasn’t been with the show long, and I’ve noticed that his ring presence is none too professional. He doesn’t know how to fall on his face properly, for one thing. Pagliacci’s costume might hide a joker, and that’s not intended as a pun. I—”
“Description?”
“That’s the catch. I haven’t seen him except in his make-up. Better ask Wiley.”
“Palmer, you see to it.”
Merlini was eyeing a revolver that lay on the desk before the Captain. “Atterbury’s?” he asked.
The trooper nodded. “Yeah. And he had no permit, so I guess the Sullivan Law’ll take care of him unless I find something better.”
“The gun’s no help, then? It hasn’t been fired lately?”
“Doesn’t look it. Could have been cleaned, of course.”
“Turn up any other firearms?”
Schafer nodded slowly. “Towne has one. Same condition like this. But he has a permit. And there are quite a few irons in the Wild West department. One of the boys is checking those.”
Chief Ho
oper had a suggestion. “We didn’t frisk the magician.”
Merlini turned to him. “It’s all right with me.”
He held his arms out, and the Sheriff did a thorough job of slapping his pockets. As he finished, Merlini put two fingers into the Sheriff’s breast pocket and drew out a half-dozen playing cards. He fanned them with an expert gesture. “Well,” he grinned. “Aces. All aces! You play poker, Chief?”
Hooper merely growled, “Wise guy!” and set about fanning me, but without any better luck.
Merlini asked the Captain, “No news of any bodies on the teletype?”
“No. But I sent out some men to look over the woods near where that trailer was parked this morning.”
“Good. And what about your inquisition? Is my story holding up?” Merlini glanced at Hooper.
Schafer said, “Yes. It’s doing all right so far. No contradictions. But you certainly had all the dope there was. We haven’t gotten a thing that’s news yet.”
Hooper chimed in. “In other words, you know a hell of a lot too much.”
“No, Chief,” said Merlini. “Not yet. But I hope to before long. Have you quizzed Miss Hannum yet?”
The Captain growled this time. “No. Doctor she had in awhile ago got to her first. He said we’d better hold off awhile. But I wonder. Think she could be playing ’possum?”
“It’s quite possible,” Merlini said. “She alternates between talkativeness and dead silence. When you get at her, put the screws on. Particularly see if you can uncover anything about the mysterious angel who paid off the six weeks’ worth of back salaries here last Saturday. Find out what she knows about the two runaway elephants and the phony wreck near Bridgeport, and why the show’s three-card-monte man was told to lay off. It wasn’t because Tin-Plate-Johnny here”—Merlini nodded at Hooper— “was causing any heat. He got his.”
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