“Well?” said Timken.
Rook laid the throwing knife on the desk. “Any way of tracing this?” he asked quietly.
Timken frowned. “Why?”
“Because somebody knocked my hat off with it late last night, that’s why.”
Timken hefted the knife. “Somebody doesn’t like having you around,” he said.
“That’s the understatement of the week.”
“Maybe you ought to go back where you came from,” suggested Mr. Timken hopefully.
“I can’t—and I won’t,” said Rook stubbornly. “What about the knife?”
Timken shrugged. “These things are all alike, and half the boys in the show fool around with them; they all get them from the same supply house. Most of them are pretty good, too; if they’d wanted to hit anything more serious than your hat they probably would have. But I don’t like this sort of thing. I’ve got a pretty good idea that you’re here because of McFarley. Was it—was it murder?”
“Everything points that way.”
Frowning, Timken said, “I can’t believe that it has anything to do with the circus and our people. We live and work closely together under very tense and crowded conditions. Most of our people have been with us for years. Under those circumstances the rough corners get knocked off, and the bad eggs begin to smell. We quickly toss the wrongos out on their behinds.”
“Maybe there’s one that's slipped through,” said Rook. He told Mr. Timken about the elephant dung and sawdust glob found in the murder apartment.
“That could have been a plant,” said Timken hopefully.
“It could,” said Rook, “but I’m beginning to doubt it. Anyway, so now you know why I’m here.”
“Yes. And I’d appreciate it if you didn’t get yourself killed on the lot. The circus likes publicity, but not that kind.”
“I’ll do my best not to,” promised Howie Rook, and made his departure. He grabbed a quick sandwich at the lunch wagon and then—since nobody else seemed to be around the dressing room—decided to try putting on his own make-up. He set up his newly bought paraphernalia before Hap Hammett’s mirror and went rashly to work, smearing zinc oxide over face and neck and ears, drawing the frantic eyebrows and the gaping risus grin. He added a rubber nose and a dash of putty—then he turned, to see that Hap had just come in and was watching him with some amusement. “Okay?” Rook wanted to know.
“Lord, man! You look as if you’d been made up by your own worst enemy!” Hap immediately took over, in spite of Howie Rook’s sputtering; the make-up came off and then went deftly on again. “Make-up is how we tell the real clowns from the hammer-slammers,” Hap said firmly. “There, now you don’t look quite so First o’ May.”
As he got into costume Howie Rook asked casually, “By the way, Hap, just how long have you been with the circus?”
“Twenty-four years come spring,” was the answer. “Started out as a Joey, doing stunts and jumping on and off resin-backs. Only, a horse stumbled, and I slipped and broke a kneecap, so I had to develop another act. Why?”
“Do you happen to remember a girl, a show girl and dancer type, who might have been with it for a season about ten or eleven years ago? Her name might have been Mavis something—a very luscious blonde with greenish eyes and a Marilyn Monroe figure? Only of course she might not have been blonde then, and her name could have been Mabel or anything.”
Hammett was thoughtful. “That’s not easy. Those little Janes come and go. Most of them can’t stand the pressure of these one-day stands; they get married, or something, and drop out of sight. But if she really was that gorgeous I might just possibly have given her a sniff; that was in the days before I got married. But what’s it all about?”
“Put it down to idle curiosity,” said Howie Rook. “Just somebody I know—somebody who seems to know a bit too much of circus parlance not to have once been around one. If she was ever with the show, it would have been for only one season; she got married—”
“Sure, I told you. All the lucky ones do, and the rest wind up with mud shows or doing kootch dances in carnivals or else slinging hash.”
“Yes, this one got married. But she wasn’t so lucky. She married a successful big-shot lawyer by the name of James McFarley. And he’s suddenly been taken dead.”
Even under the heavy make-up, the veteran clown’s real eyebrows went up almost as high as the false painted ones. “So that’s why—” he began, and stopped short.
“He didn’t show up on Thursday because he was dead. Murdered, I think,” Rook said.
“Murdered? But why? Who’d want to?”
“That, as Hamlet said, is the question.”
“And that’s why you’re here?” Hap Hammett swung around on his stool. “You’re with the law? No, of course not. Detectives carry notebooks—they don’t use yellow scratch paper the way you do. That adds up more to a reporter.”
Rook didn't deny it. “Yes, I’m here by special arrangement because I’ve got to try to find out what actually did happen to McFarley. There’s certainly some circus angle to the mystery, though the police originally wanted to write the thing off as a suicide. I think differently, and so do McFarley’s wife and daughter. How did he strike you that last day—Wednesday? Was he depressed?”
“Not that I noticed,” said Hap, frowning. “You actually think he was murdered, and the killer was somebody here with the show?”
“What else?” Rook, having gone thus far, decided to go a step farther. He told about the clown make-up on the dead man, and about the elephant dung and sawdust found on the floor of the apartment.
“That doesn’t prove anything—”
“You’re going to say he could have carried home the dirt on his own shoes? But I gather he wore flap shoes or tennis shoes whenever he was on the Hippodrome track or the menagerie or anywhere around the elephants, and had changed into street shoes when he went home at night. Certainly that night he had.”
Hammett nodded. “But somebody could have planted it.”
“Somebody who had access to the elephants, yes. Which brings us right back here. And why would anybody make him up as a clown after they’d killed him?”
“I don’t think that’s what happened,” Hap Hammett said thoughtfully. “McFarley was nuts about himself in clown makeup; he wore it all day long on the circus lot and, while I didn’t see him leave that night, I’ll bet anything he wore the make-up home to show off to his friends!”
“Driving all the way uptown in clown make-up?" Rook would have liked to see the face of any motor cop who might have been cruising past at the time. But he went doggedly on. “Unless I miss my guess,” he said, “there’s a red-handed murderer among us. You know the circus and the circus people inside out, Hap. Who’s your favorite candidate?”
“Mine?” Hap’s eyes were wary.
“Who’s the most unstable character among you? Who had the greatest reason to dislike McFarley?”
The big clown hesitated, seeming to withdraw faintly but perceptibly within his shell. He shook his head slowly, almost sadly. “McFarley made a friendly nuisance of himself, I’ll admit, but nobody gets to learn to hate a man enough to kill him—not in a few short days. He was an irritant, maybe—but not a menace. Couldn’t it have been somebody out of his past, somebody in the audience who recognized him here and followed him home?”
“Recognized him—in clown make-up? Their own mothers couldn’t recognize one clown from another.”
Hap still insisted that it couldn’t possibly be anybody among the circus people. “The kind of person who would do a thing like that just wouldn’t last with the circus. They’d get tossed out.”
“Maybe not always, not every time,” said Rook. “I’ve read of elephants—I mean bulls—being poisoned, and trains derailed, and an incendiary fire or two—”
“Just screwballs, disgruntled employees who got fired and couldn’t take it,” the clown loyally insisted. “That wouldn’t apply in this case. And just what has this Mavis d
ame got to do with it?”
“I wish I knew. But history proves that beautiful women are often a source of trouble. ‘The face that launched a thousand ships, and burned the topless towers of Ilium…’ Who’s still with the show that might have known Mavis ten years ago?”
Hammett thought. “Not so many. There’s me, and four or five of the older clowns. Bozo is a fixture. Tommy Thompson—the fellow who played poker with us earlier, is an old-timer. Tom Reale has been around a long time. Leo Dawes—they couldn’t run the circus without his cornet. Some of the equestrians, the horse people, but they keep pretty much to themselves. Most of the midgets, some tumblers and acrobats and balancers, the foreman of the black gang…”
“What about Captain Larsen?”
“Sure, Captain Larsen goes on forever.” Hammett looked faintly amused. “You can write him off, though. He’s only interested in females with four legs and big yellow fangs, and he uses the whip on them.”
Rook sighed. He himself could hardly imagine the dour tiger trainer carrying a torch for any woman for ten years, and still have it burning so hot inside him that he’d feel like murdering her husband—especially since, to all intents and purposes, the husband was an ex-husband anyway. “Maybe,” he said, “the key to it all lies in that little black notebook McFarley was always writing in. I found it, down in the lining of his coat—but I can’t decipher it. What do you suppose he wrote in it, Hap?”
“I more or less gathered that it might be impressions of backstage life at the circus—notes for some book he hoped to write someday. By the way, what’s in this whole thing for you, mister? You shooting for the reward?”
“There isn’t any.” But it was an idea, a very good idea. Maybe a nudge in the right place would tip this whole thing over. Rook made a note of it. “But, Hap, the murderer—or murderers, it might have been a two-man job—might just possibly have been missed by somebody around here that fatal Wednesday night. We’ve got to look for somebody who came in late, or who maybe stayed out all night.”
Hammett looked dubious. “Even if you’re right and it was one of us, you wouldn’t get far that way. Whenever we luckily have a two- or three-day stand like this one, it’s not uncommon for the boys and girls to keep late hours, and nobody pays any attention to when they come in, if at all. Leo Dawes often goes out to some late spot to hobnob with the swing musicians, and the midgets have regular clubs in most big towns where they can get together. I myself like to duck out to an auto court or a hotel for a hot bath and a good private bed. It’d be pretty hard to check alibis this much later.”
“Worth trying, anyway,” said Rook doggedly. “In a group that lives and works together as tightly as this one, it seems to me that there’d be somebody to notice if a guy acted differently, if he broke his regular pattern. And murderers are different, they have a burden to carry, they are all jumpy. It’s my theory after a lifetime study—and I’ve got thousands of newspaper clippings to support it—that all killers are temporarily insane.”
“You don’t have to be crazy to be with the circus, but it helps,” Hammett quoted.
“Maybe. Anyway, I don’t need to say that I’d appreciate any help you can give me—and that I hope you’ll keep all of this under your funny hat?”
“It’s practically forgotten already,” promised the veteran clown. But before Howie Rook was down the steps and out of sight, Hap had opened up his trunk and was pulling out old scrapbooks and circus programs. That blonde with green eyes—
8
I see thy glory like a shooting star
Fall to the base earth from the firmament.
—Shakespeare
HOWIE ROOK STOOD OUT in Clown Alley and consulted his watch. It was almost two o’clock, and he had to get to a telephone—which meant breasting the waves of humanity that were now pouring in toward the ticket wagons, filling the Midway. There was nothing else for it; even if Mr. Timken would let him use the telephone in the silver wagon he did not care to have the lady in the pink hair and for that matter Timken himself overhear everything he might have to say.
So in clown regalia and all he went bravely forth, immediately, as he had feared, picking up his faithful entourage, who screamed with juvenile delight. They offered him candy and begged for piggy-back rides and autographs. But he smiled and smiled again and went doggedly on, remembering to waddle duck-footed. Finally, somehow, he made the comparative safety of the phone booth.
He tried the long-distance call—but there was no answer from Vonny McFarley. Next he tried Lou Elder in the Tribune city room. Lou listened, and then yelped with anguish. But Howie Rook talked faster.
“You can have the photographer and everything else for the kid angle,” Lou finally agreed. “But, pop, you’re talking dough, big dough, on the rest of it. The front office—”
“They’ll go for it,” Rook hazarded. “Getting an exclusive on the biggest murder story since the Monahan killing? They want to sell papers, don’t they?”
“Sometimes I wonder,” said Lou bitterly.
“If I can only use your name…”
“I haven’t the authority, pop. But I’ll take it up at the business meeting tomorrow, and see what I can do.” Rook had to settle for that.
He tried the call to Vonny again, and this time he got her. “I was in the shower,” she confessed. “I’m still shivering here in nothing but a towel.”
“The picture intrigues me,” he said. “But not very much. As the man said, ‘Here’s a dime, call me up when you’re twenty-one.’ But seriously—”
“My telegram,” she interrupted. “I just wanted to tell you that Benny and I tore daddy’s apartment to pieces, and no luck on the notebook.”
“I know,” he said. “I found it. Not that it’s any help. It’s all in some strange shorthand. Did your father know shorthand?”
“Huh? Not that I ever heard of he didn’t. Maybe that was one of his new enthusiasms. But I wanted to tell you something while we’re on the phone. Benny and I—” she hesitated.
“Young love, eh? So you fixed things up?”
“We d-didn’t! Just the opposite. He doesn’t seem to believe that there ever was a notebook, or that it matters if there was one. His wonderful masculine ego makes him conclude that I made it all up as an excuse to be alone in the apartment with him. We have rifted, finally and forever.”
“Dear, dear,” said Howie Rook. “Forever is a long time. Young lady, I am on in a matter of minutes. But there’s something I want of you.” He told her.
“Money? But I haven’t anything until the estate is settled. Whyn’t you go to Mavis?”
“Mavis, I understand, is strictly under wraps at the moment, maybe even arrested. But I must have some member of the family to make it look good. Do you or don’t you?”
“I—I’ll have to ask Benny…”
“You see? Forever is over already.”
“I’ll think about it,” the girl said cautiously, “and let you know.”
That was the best he could get out of her. Rook said good-by and hung up.
He hustled out of the booth and made his way slowly back up the Midway, the crowd thinning now. Most of them were jammed inside the Big Top where he could hear Leo Dawes and the band breaking into the strains of “High Riding.” Hap Hammett and Cordelia would be making their first entrance. “I’m on,” said Howie Rook to himself. “I wonder how I’m doin’?” It was the oldest gag in show business, but he needed a smile at the moment, and not a painted one either. He hitched up his baggy pants, lighted a dollar cigar, and went back to the silver wagon to beard Mr. Timken in his den. What he had to say took only a couple of minutes, but it deepened the worry lines in the circus manager’s forehead.
“I’m afraid it’s completely out of the question,” he said.
“It’s completely more out of the question the other way,” Rook said doggedly. “If you do have a killer among your people, and if you don’t make an honest effort to help trap him—”
Tim
ken shook his head. “I still can’t believe that it’s any of us.”
“I can. And if I’m wrong, remember that it doesn’t cost anybody anything.”
The circus manager studied the glowing tip of his cigarette. “Okay,” he finally conceded. I’ll call the boss long distance. That’s the best I can do.”
Rook nodded and left. He too was doing the best he could do, and the best didn’t seem to be good enough. The sands were running out, and as far as he could see he was making progress like the frog in the arithmetic problem who tried to get out of a well by jumping up one foot and sliding back two.
But he came back to Clown Alley, back to where Hap Hammett and Cordelia were standing in the entrance. “I’m sorry I missed the first walkaround,” he apologized. “I was just making a sort of impromptu public appearance in the front yard, because I just had to get to the phone. Never again…”
Neither of them was listening, and after a slow moment he realized just why. The band was playing Mademoiselle du Mond’s music, a slow Viennese waltz—but the girl was nowhere in sight. Leo Dawes repeated the music, led the band into variations, down the side streets of the tune—even swinging it a little. Equestrian acts and dog acts in the three rings faked and stretched their numbers…
“The kid never missed an entrance cue,” murmured Hap. “This just doesn’t happen.”
No, there she was, appearing suddenly in the opposite entrance. But Mary Kelly du Mond moved mechanically instead of with her usual girlish bounce. Now she hesitated for a moment, then took a deep breath and drew herself slowly up hand over hand to the waiting trapeze. Under her heavy mask of make-up and her fixed, professional smile aimed at the paying customers, Rook realized with a shiver that there was something very wrong with Mary Kelly.
“The damn fool!” Hap Hammett said softly. “The crazy, double-damned fool!”
And then Rook realized what was wrong; he saw what the trouble was. This time no faithful Gordo stood below her to watch her with an eagle eye, or to break her possible fall. She was utterly alone, though twenty thousand people watched her.
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