“And then—you heard me, Monsieur—I told her a place to hide it. I suggested subtly to her the one place to hide it where, one would think, no one would possibly search. Under the very nose of the chief searcher.
“What is more logical than that she would hide it there, given the presumably innocent suggestion and then, immediately afterwards, the perfect opportunity—the building up of a heavy and luxuriant mustache under the very nose of Aristide Pettit?”
I was overcome with admiration, Senor. “Bravo, Don Aristide!” I said. Gently I reached toward his mustache. “And may I have the great honor of—”
He stepped back quickly. “Please, Don Pedro, not here. Not before all these people. As I have said, I feel naked without it. I shall remove it in your office, and then I shall use my own not inconsiderable powers as a make-up artist to restore it.”
Was that not brilliant, Senor? We of this country learned much from Aristide Pettit. Such a mind! Such subtlety and such daring! What a method!
You will perceive, Senor, why we are particularly interested now in learning more of the detective methods of other countries, including your own. It is more than true that a None Americano, one so well qualified as yourself, can be of the greatest—
What did you ask?
Oh. No. That I regret to say, Senor. We recovered the microfilm, but it was not in the mustache. That, however, was not the fault of Don Aristide, not in the slightest. The police matron at the jail found it. It was cemented to one of the Senora’s toenails, under a false toenail that had been fitted on top of the real one.
So you understand, Senor, that the failure of Aristide Pettit’s plan was in no way his fault. The microfilm was inaccessible to the Senora while she was working on the mustache. She could not, of course, have removed her shoe and stocking and soaked off the false toenail. So no one blamed Don Aristide for that. His method was brilliant and his deductions flawless. And, after all, the microfilm was found as a result of the arrest and the plotters were apprehended.
What more could one ask? The result is what counts.
You ask why Don Aristide is no longer with us?
He is in this very city, Senor, and I promise that you shall meet him. But the moving picture studio, which is able to offer many times what we of the police can offer even to a truly great detective, hired him away from us. They thought, and rightly perhaps, that they could make better use than we of his so great ingenuity. He is now writing and directing moving pictures at a truly fabulous salary.
So you see, Senor, what an illustrious predecessor you have had and how much will be expected of you. Also, perhaps, how surprising may be the rewards of detective work of true brilliance. No es verdad?
A Voice Behind Him
THERE IS A LOVELY LITTLE horror story about the peasant who started through the haunted wood—the wood that was, people said, inhabited by devils who took any mortal who came their way. But the peasant thought, as he walked slowly along:
I am a good man and have done no wrong. If devils can harm me, then there isn’t any justice.
A voice behind him said, “There isn’t.”
*
The Great Raimondi once heard a voice behind him. I do not mean the voice of the cannon; he heard that every day and twice on Saturdays and on Sundays—for, quite literally, The Great Raimondi sought the bubble reputation, even in the cannon’s mouth. The Great Raimondi, The Human Cannon-Ball.
Maybe you saw him at the height of his glory, which, again to speak literally, was ten feet above the top of the ferris wheel, over which the cannon shot him, into a net.
It’s an easy job, as jobs go, and pays two hundred dollars a week. The job is open now. If you’re interested, see Otto Weber of the Dunn & Weber Combined Shows.
You wear padded white coveralls, white gloves, white football helmet, under which your ears are so well plugged with waxed cotton that the deafening bellow of the cannon, as you leave it, is not more loud than the sound of a popgun.
You arc whitely into the sky, over the top of the sixty-foot ferris wheel, and down again into the net stretched fifteen feet above the ground at a precisely measured distance from the cannon’s muzzle.
It’s as safe as houses—unless something goes wrong with the mechanism of the cannon. And Keber, who designed and owns it, says nothing can; it’s a simple coil spring—the bang and the puff of smoke are merely pyrotechnics So if you want to be the third Great Raimondi, wire Otto Weber, care of Billboard, Cincinnati. Oh, yes! You’ll be billed as “The Great Raimondi”; the name goes with the job. What happened to the first two Great Raimondis? Well the first one (his name was Roberts) stubbed his toe on the ferris wheel one Saturday afternoon two years ago. He missed the net.
But don’t let that worry you. Weber adjusted the spring tension and it won’t happen again.
And the second Great Raimondi? He’s the one I’m trying to tell you about, if you’ll quit thinking of that job that’s open and quit asking me questions about it. The second Great Raimondi’s name was Tony Grosz and he was a Sicilian. It’s Tony Grosz I’m trying to tell you about. It’s Tony Grosz who, like the peasant in the haunted wood, heard a voice behind him. But it wasn’t a devil. Or was it?
*
Tony Grosz sat in a tavern that afternoon. Tony wasn’t a drinking man. But Tony had trouble, and he was compromising with his unhappiness by drinking beer.
Tony’s trouble wasn’t money. You can see that yourself; two hundred a week is a lot of dough for a carney. It’s a lot of dough for anybody. Even for a married man. That was Tony’s trouble—he was married and he was in love with his wife. Her name was Marie, and he had been married to her for four months, since the first week of the season. A real marriage, not a carney one, if you know what I mean.
Yes, Tony had married the girl. But in spite of that, his love for her was a flame, a roaring flame.
That morning, that very morning, they had quarreled bitterly.
And now, hunched up on a bar stool, Tony Grosz brooded. You couldn’t call it thinking; he was past that stage.
He picked up his beer to take another sip of it, and caught sight of himself in the mirror back of the bar. It disclosed a not particularly handsome man, thirty-two years old, of only average height and a bit less than average weight, but compact and wiry. His skin was a touch on the swarthy side and just then showed the blue-black beginning of a beard.
There was an old knife scar across his forehead and his nose had once been broken and was not quite straight. His eyes were like hot little coals between the narrowed lids. It was definitely not a handsome face. It was, though, an attractive face when he smiled and his white teeth flashed and his eyes flashed with them. But he hadn’t smiled yet today.
He didn’t now. He glowered at his reflection in the mirror as he put the glass down empty.
This was in a little Spanish place. He’d walked as far as he could from the carnival lot and found himself in that part of town. The town was San Antonio, if it matters.
He said, “Un’ otra cerveza,” which means another beer. It was about all the Spanish he knew, but it was all he needed or wanted. Oh, he knew a few other phrases if he wanted to try to remember them. He’d learned them from Marie, who was part Spanish and spoke the lingo.
She’d taken him for Spanish, too, the first time they’d met. She’d smiled at him suddenly and warmly, a smile that was like a caress and said, “Si, senor?” and he’d said, “Si, chiquita,” and then laughed when she’d come back with a torrent of fast Spanish that he couldn’t get a single word of.
The bartender was picking up his glass. He said, “Si, senor”
For just a fraction of a second Tony thought he was being mocked—and his hand made an almost involuntary movement toward his knife. He jerked his hand back, put it flat on the bar, and stared at it. God, how jittery he must be to react that way to something these Mexicans said a thousand times a day, just because he’d been thinking—
He stared at the window. It
was getting dark outside and he looked at his wrist watch. There was still plenty of time. He didn’t want to get there until just time to change.
He looked at his beer, and wished he hadn’t ordered it. He looked at the bartender, and hated him. He thought of the night outside, and hated it. He saw his reflection in the smeary mirror, and hated that.
He drank his beer slowly.
Marie, he thought. Marie, Marie, Marie, Marie! It was as thought he was saying it over and over to himself, although his lips did not move.
He looked again at the clock. Still lots of tune. Maybe he shouldn’t go. He’d drunk only beer, but he’d drunk lots of beer. He felt it, a little. Maybe his timing, his muscle control, would be off, just enough off to make him miss the net.
Well, that would be all right, too.
She’d feel sorry then, if she loved him. But she didn’t love him. She couldn’t, after the things she’d said.
Of course, he, too, had said things.
No, he’d go away. That was the answer. Go away. Across the fields from the carnival lot was the railroad jungle and the freights highballing out to everywhere.
Un’ otra cerveza.
Then he was out in the night with the moon, bright and enormously big, low in the sky at the end of the street. In the dim area between the street lights it threw his shadow long and far ahead of him and he walked into it. Then it would wane and fade as he neared a corner, wax and darken after he had passed the street light.
Yes, he’d go away. He wasn’t going to the lot tonight, or ever.
Before him was his shadow, growing and shrinking from street light to street light, and then there was bright noise and loud lights and the carney lot. His feet had brought him there. Something in his mind, unknown to him, had timed it, too; he could tell by the feel of the crowd. Just about time for him to be getting into costume.
His fingernails bit into his palms as he turned in between the freak show and the jig show, the passage between the tents that led back to his trailer. Was she there?
No, she wasn’t there. The trailer was dark. He went inside, turned on the lights and dressed for the act. Where was she? But he was glad she wasn’t there. He didn’t want ever to see her again. After this trip out of the camion he’d never see her again. She’d said she didn’t want to see him again.
Well, if that was the way she felt about it, she could damn well have her way. She could have the trailer, too, and what was in it, and any amount of money left over from last week’s pay.
Quickly he unbuttoned the white coveralls so he could get at his pocket in his suit underneath them. There was about forty dollars in his wallet. He didn’t count it, just emptied it on the table. He wouldn’t even come back to the trailer again, lest she be here. To hell with her, he thought, loving her so much that the thought of leaving almost blinded him with anger at her.
Before he buttoned up the coveralls again he took the change out of his trousers pocket, smacked that down on top of the bills on the table.
Then he pulled on the white gauntlets, fastened the white helmet under his chin, and reached for the light switch. He pulled back his hand. A note. He’d have to leave a note, since he wasn’t coming back.
He found the stub of a pencil and a piece of paper.
“Marie,” he wrote. “I’m going away.”…What else? He chewed the end of the pencil…What else was there to say? I love you; I hate you. That would be silly.
There wasn’t anything else to say. “I’m going away” covered it. That and the gesture of leaving every dollar he had.
He scrawled “Tony” under the note and put the paper down beside the money on the table.
He hurried out. The crowd had gathered. The cannon was ready.
Weber nodded at him. Tony climbed onto the cannon. Up to the yawning muzzle. He balanced himself there for that dramatic minute before he lowered himself inside.
He folded his arms and posed there, like a gladiator might have stood in the arena. Inside, of course, he was sick and miserable, but he didn’t let that show on his proud, dark face. He stood dramatically looking up over the high ferris wheel. A figure of white courage—hollow inside with misery.
He lowered himself into the cannon, into position. He counted the seconds steadily, tensed himself. Then the shock of the releasing spring, the impact, the never-quite-believable sensation of falling upward. The ferris wheel below him and the net appearing tiny and a mile away, then growing larger as it came nearer, and the slow half-turn in the air that landed him on his back in the middle of the net.
That was that, and the last time he’d ever do it. Only as he hung from the side of the net to drop lightly to the ground did he wonder why he’d bothered to do it tonight. And it didn’t matter, then.
He pushed through the crowd and hurried between the freak show top and the jig show top, the canvassed aisle that led to the trailer. And then he stopped.
Damn! There was a light on inside the trailer. Had he left the light on?
No, he’d turned it off, and—yes, he could see her inside, through the window. She’d come back to the trailer, as she always did while he was doing his act. She never watched. She never had told him why.
He stood there, his muscles tensing as they had inside the cannon. When he’d left the note and the money, he forgot he’d be going back to the trailer to take off his costume.
But why should he? To hell with the costume. He pulled off the white gauntlets, dropped them and the white helmet on the ground, stripped off the padded coveralls.
The door of the trailer was opening. The light went out.
He had to go past it to reach the fields which separated the carnival lot from the railroad jungles where he could catch a rattler out of town. He had to keep on going, or flee ignominiously back to the midway, or meet her face to face if she came this way. He didn’t want to. He didn’t want to see her again—because with all his soul he did want to see her again, and Sicilian pride is like that.
He kept on going, seeing her—because he didn’t want to see her—out of the corner of his eye. She stood in the doorway, and she held something in her hand. A dim, shadowy figure in the long shadow of the freak show top behind which the trailer was parked.
Just out of the corner of his eye, as he strode past, within six feet of her. His knees turned to rubber with the effort of keeping on walking and his shoulders and neck became rigid as he tried to refrain from looking at her squarely.
And he was fiercely, miserably glad that it had worked out this way—for maybe he was wrong. Maybe she still loved him as he still loved her.
Maybe she would call him back. Maybe she would call, “Tony, Tony, don’t go.”
And then it would be all right; he could turn around.
Suddenly he was past the door of the trailer, and she hadn’t spoken yet. He reached the edge of the shadow of the big tent and the moon threw his own shadow, longer than his height, before him. And still she hadn’t spoken. She hadn’t called him back, and the bitterness within him was blacker than his shadow. His life was ashes, and his love was hate.
His hand—he didn’t remember putting it there—was inside his coat, on the handle of his knife. The thought had come—somebody else will get her.
It was agony. It was unbearable, the thought that she might give herself to another man. And sooner or later she would; she was a woman, she was flesh and blood, made for love. Some time, if not soon, now that she no longer loved him, she would love another.
He kept walking, but his steps slowed down—and his shadow ahead of him on the path across the field slowed, too. And the other shadow, her shadow joined it. She was coming up behind him, sneaking up silently, one arm raised…
“You leave and I’ll kill you!”
It flashed into his mind. That was what she’d said, that very morning, in the quarrel. One of the nicer things, when he’d threatened to leave her. He hadn’t believed her. He’d forgotten it.
Inside him, something laughed. He tu
rned and struck with the knife….
She lay there, face down, in the grass of the field. His blow had been true, to the heart, to the fickle, murderous heart of her. But he was glad—what a word to use, glad— that she had fallen forward so he could not see her face, in death.
There was something he had to do. It had something to do with his legs and feet, moving them, turning around and walking to the tracks where he could catch a freight. He had to go away. He couldn’t quite see why, or why he wanted to, or how it mattered. But something inside him told him to get going—to hurry, to flee.
Whatever it was, it wasn’t strong enough to hurry him, not just yet. Kneeling, to wipe his knife on the grass, standing again, putting it back in its sheath inside his coat, turning away from what he had done, putting one foot in front of the other toward the railroad yards, he moved like a slow automaton, like a man in a dream.
Something inside him screamed to him to hurry, to run, but his body wouldn’t do it. He walked as it he were wading through waist-high water.
He stopped and turned back once, only a few steps away. His eyes drank in the last sight of her. Her slender body lying still across the path, her arms forward in the deeper grass as though she were holding on, holding her body down to earth even though its soul could no longer be held.
He couldn’t see her hands nor the little stiletto one of them must have held, the hand that had been upraised to his defenseless back. Had it not been for her shadow betraying her—ah!
He managed to turn, to take a step and yet another, and then to keep going toward the tracks.
Marie, Marie! It was to the rhythm of his steps and to the beating of his heart and to the pulse beat of the night. She is dead, she is dead. And black aching misery came over him because she was dead—not because he had killed her.
He had been spared deciding whether to go back and kill her so she would never give herself to another man. He had been spared deciding that, and there was no guilt on his soul; she had come after him, silently, to kill, and her shadow in the moonlight had betrayed her.
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