Beyond the dark, lifted silhouette of the big top, I noticed a far-off flickering of light in the sky. Heat lightning. I paid little attention to it at first, but when it came again it was much nearer and brighter. Then I noticed that the hot breeze which had been blowing steadily for some time had increased alarmingly.
“We’re in for a blow,” Atterbury said. “By the looks of it, the sooner they slough that top, the better.”
The wind increased as he spoke, and the canvas top bellied. This time, the flicker of lightning was a sharp bright gash in the dark and there was thunder behind it…
Suddenly, from the dark beyond the edge of the square of light that fell from the trailer window, Merlini’s voice came.
“Ross,” he said, “you had the murderer all picked out Who is it?”
“What are you asking for? Information or corroboration?”
“Are you going to be difficult, too?” he asked a bit wearily. “Come, let’s have it.”
“I’ll make the same deal with you,” I replied, “that Gavigan did. I’ll trade even.”
“That’s fair enough. Talk.”
“No. Just for once let’s hear your answer first. We don’t want to have an anticlimax. This time I think I’ve got the solution that fills in the last chapter.”
“I wonder,” Merlini said. “It’s just possible that this is only the next to the last chapter. I warn you. If you want it to go on record at all, you’d better put it in now.”
I fully intended to stick to my guns, but I didn’t after all. I felt an underlying insistence in Merlini’s tones that seemed to telegraph a warning. Something in the swift, sharp glance he threw at me contradicted his easy manner and told me that he had a definite and important reason for wanting me to lead first. I thought: Okay, Mastermind. Here goes, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.
The canvas superintendent hurried past, pulling on an oilskin. A single swollen raindrop plopped against my face and ran down the side of my cheek. Someone within the tent shouted, “Get those flats on that truck, dammit! I’m striking this top now!” The tent rigging creaked and groaned with the strain of the flapping wind-swept canvas.
“Inspector Gavigan,” I said quietly, “was half right. The murderer is the unlikely invalid. Only, it happens that the woman on the bed in Pauline Hannum’s trailer is not an invalid—and she’s not Pauline!”
The reaction that got me was pure disbelief all the way around—except for Merlini, whose poker face was about as revealing as those on the statues of Easter Island.
“That is the reason the head was cut off,” I went on. “It was removed to conceal the fact that the body was not the one the clothing labels said it was. The headless corpse, like the invalid, is a timeworn fiction device too. Rule number four for readers says: ‘When the corpse has no head, it’s always the wrong corpse.’ I should have thought of it sooner, Merlini, but I didn’t, somehow; not until you made the statement that this case had a headless lady and a headless man. I realized then that it was far worse than that. There are two headless women! Pauline’s been as good as headless for the last twenty-four hours. No one has seen the face beneath those bandages. And she’s upset as hell any time anyone tries to set foot inside that trailer. It’s as plain as a twenty-four sheet. The woman on that bed is not Pauline, but her twin sister, Paulette, the much-wanted Paula Starr!”
Keith Atterbury shook his head dazedly. “But, Harte, why the devil would she—”
“She had plenty of reasons—good ones,” I answered. “Don’t you see that if you can successfully impersonate the victim of your murder—you’ve already got something? You will have vanished, your victim appears to be still alive, and no one even suspects that there has been a murder? Furthermore, Paula was in a spot. She was wanted by all the cops from here to Cape Horn. And I think she’d recognized Stuart Towne as the private dick who’d tailed her in New York the afternoon she contacted Pauline. She knew he had penetrated her Headless Lady disguise. It was her move. By changing places with sister Pauline, she made it look as if Paula Starr, the Headless Lady, had taken it on the lam. O’Halloran and any other dicks who picked up her trail could be expected to ride off in all directions on a wild-goose chase.”
Joy objected, “Paula wouldn’t have killed her sister for a reason like that. I never met her—but it’s—it’s too coldblooded.”
“All right,” I said agreeably. “If you don’t like that motive, I’ll give you another—the old standby—money. Pauline’s death automatically gives Paula a greater cut of the inheritance. And you’re a very lucky girl not to have had an accident on that swinging ankle-drop of yours before now. It would have come.”
“Are you saying,” Mac Wiley cut in, “that Paula gaffed those lights last night, expecting Pauline would be killed when she fell; and then, when that didn’t work out, finished her off at the trailer this morning?”
“Something like that, yes. Only she didn’t expect the perch fall to kill Pauline. That’s bothered me all along. But Paula and her intended impersonation explains it. It’s the only way we can explain the fact that a circus person would know that a fall of twenty feet or so is not a sure-fire way to kill off an acrobat. No. The fall was to make the bandages necessary so that, with a little hair bleach, the impersonation would be possible. Though they were twins, their faces weren’t greatly alike. But their voices were.”
I paused a moment. The neatly dovetailing facts were beginning to bring some of my audience over. But there was one reaction I still wanted. I went on.
“The brain behind these accident-murders is a diabolically clever one—so much so I’m not sure Paula gets all the credit. Detail after detail has been carefully planned and executed. Every—”
That did it. Tex Mayo pulled himself to his feet. He wavered a bit. “I guess I know my name when I hear it,” he said thickly. “I drove Pauline over from Waterboro this morning. But damn you, Harte; we didn’t make any stops on the way!”
I pulled my feet back under my chair and sat up a bit straighter, ready for action. Tex started toward me.
“It won’t do, Tex,” I said flatly. “Paula Starr made a few movies in Hollywood two years ago. That’s your bailiwick. Unluckily Paula was already married to the Duke. And you weren’t going over so well in the horse operas any more. You can’t sing or play a guitar. You needed money to keep Paula in the style to which the Duke had accustomed her. Just who thought of what and just who did what, I don’t know; but between you, you rubbed out the Major so Paula would get a piece of the show. Then you went after Pauline so the piece would be bigger. And you finessed that gambit in such a way it served to get Paula out of a tight spot as well. When you two start throwing stones you always try to get the whole flock with one rock. You’d have taken care of Joy next, and the Hannum circus would have served you as old-age security. The Duke was on the list too, of course. I should have thought you’d have seen to his untimely end first. Or was it because a clown’s job isn’t so dangerous and you had to wait for a good chance to fake a plausible accident?”
Tex doubled his fists and came at me with his arms swinging. “Damn you to hell,” he roared. “You don’t frame me that way. I’ll—”
Schafer suddenly stepped between us. “You’ll what?” he asked, his jaw sticking out a mile.
Tex started a haymaker, but the arc was too long. The Captain’s fist drove swiftly upward in a short, hard punch and hit bone. Tex folded up. Behind him the canvas spread of the big top mimicked his action. It settled quickly to the ground, the metal bale rings sliding rapidly down the center poles. Moving figures carrying lights ran in and began unlacing it.
“Thanks, Captain,” I said. “I’m sorry about that little fuss at the jail. I don’t deserve such—”
“This,” Merlini said hastily, “is getting way out of control. I think we’ve had enough patchwork solutions for now.”
I didn’t like the confident way he said that. I could feel the watertight spread of canvas that was my solut
ion sink and lie flat on the ground like the big top, ready to be rolled and carted away.
“It’s good, Ross,” he added. “Ingenious as anything. But it doesn’t explain the arrow on the pole, for one thing. And besides, I’ve just come from questioning Headless Lady number two. Your theory had occurred to me as a possibility. Just to make sure, we had her bandages off and got a look at her face. The flaw in your solution is the fact that she is Pauline after all. And she’s going to wind up this case. Her nerves are pretty well shot with what she’s gone through today, and she passed out on us before we’d finished. But she has told us that she knows who killed her father! She listened at the broken pane of the trailer window when she saw Irma King go in. A little later, when the elephant goad struck the Major, she saw the person who wielded it. And she was watching when that person moved the body to the Major’s car and drove it off the lot to set the accident.”
Irma King’s face was white. “But I tell you I didn’t—”
Merlini disregarded her. “Pauline fainted just before she could finish. There’s a doctor working on her now. The murderer might as well turn in his chips. We’ve got an eyewitness. Anyone want to say anything?”
The silence was short, tense. Then Mac Wiley spoke. “I don’t believe it. Why wouldn’t she have told us that before now?”
“She had an excellent reason, Mac,” Merlini said. “You see—”
Inspector Gavigan came out of the darkness. “Okay, Merlini. Let’s go. The doc says we can see her now.”
“Good.” Merlini’s eyes moved around the circle, resting for an instant on each of us. Then he turned abruptly and started off.
I slid out of my camp chair and went after him.
“I’m in on this,” I said flatly. “And don’t give me any back talk.”
“Okay, Ross,” he said ominously. “But remember that you asked for it.”
O’Halloran caught up with us. “You still insist it wasn’t the Duke?” he asked.
“I’m not insisting on anything at the moment,” Merlini answered. “The anti-aircraft guns have bagged too many high-flown theories in the last hour. I’m keeping my fingers crossed until after Pauline has said her piece. Inspector, I want a man at each window and one at the door.”
Gavigan issued orders. “Windows, Brady, Stevens, and you,” he indicated Robbins. “Schafer, where are the rest of your men?”
“Up front with Hooper. Working on the you-know-what.”
“Okay. O’Halloran, you take the window on the other side. Schafer, take the door. Let’s get this over quick. I don’t like it.”
He ducked his head and went through into the lighted trailer. Merlini and I followed. Pauline’s figure lay stiffly on the bed with the covers pulled high about her neck. The new bandages on her face hid her features even more than before. There was the thin black slit where her eyes were, but their cool black stare was lost in the shadow which the edge of the near-by lampshade threw across the upper part of the white mask of gauze. The edge of the yellow light circle touched the bandage-swathed point of her chin as if the light man had centered his spotlight badly.
Merlini knelt at once by the side of her bed and as he did so her jaw moved slightly and her voice, half hysterical and thin with effort, said:
“I’m sorry. I’m better now. I’ll try—”
Gavigan’s hand fastened on my arm above the elbow in a tight, motionless grip.
Merlini said; “Your father opened the wardrobe door to get his raincoat. The elephant hook struck him and you saw—”
Again the bandage over her jaw moved. “Yes.” Her voice rose in a high tone that I hadn’t heard before, a frightened, horror-stricken tone. “The murderer is—”
I half expected it. From beyond the window above the foot of Pauline’s bed a sharp cry came; then the words, “Damn you, get back …”
Something bumped against the trailer’s side.
The sound of the pistol shot within the narrow trailer room was deafening.
I saw the sharp spitting rush of flame that came through the window; and, when I jerked my head toward the direction in which it spurted, I saw the ugly black hole that had appeared as if by magic in the center of the white mask of gauze above the eyes.
I stared at it and wondered with a strange clarity of thought why I was having none of the sensations I would have expected.
The interval before Gavigan’s hand yanked downward on my arm, pulling me floorward, seemed long. I know now that it was less than a second.
We hit the floor together; Merlini had moved like lightning back against the wall beneath the window. I waited for the second shot.
But the momentary stillness was followed instead by the sound of shouts and running feet. Then, with the sudden rush of a bursting dam, the rain came in earnest, pounding on the trailer roof.
Merlini started up, and moved quickly toward the door. “I think we can go now,” he said.
Gavigan pulled the door open and tumbled out into the driving swirl of the storm. I plunged after him. Schafer was not at his post.
We circled the trailer. O’Halloran lay by the window on the ground, half propped on one elbow. Stevens’s torch spotlighted him. Gavigan and Schafer stood over him. The blood on O’Halloran’s forehead mingled with the streaming rain.
“He ran behind the trailers,” O’Halloran said. “That way. For God’s sake, get him! He took my gun.”
Schafer, bellowing orders, ran. O’Halloran rolled over and lifted himself shakily to his feet. Gavigan put a hand under his arm and helped him.
Mac Wiley, Keith, Joy, and then Tex appeared on the edge of the circle of light. Others crowded behind them. Irma King pushed through.
“Sure it was a man?” Merlini asked quickly.
O’Halloran shook his head, dazedly, “I—I think so. I couldn’t see too well, but—”
Merlini said evenly, “It’s all out and all over now. The person who fired that shot didn’t go far. Misdirection again. But the gunman might be interested to know that the shot didn’t do its work. The figure in the bed now is not Pauline Hannum! We substituted the mummy of John Wilkes Booth! With a length of white cotton thread to make the jaw appear to move and a little ventriloquism—Gavigan, watch it!”
Gavigan swung, his whole body behind the blow. The first blow landed in the pit of the stomach; and, as the murderer doubled up, Gavigan’s other fist found the skull behind the ear.
Merlini bent above the figure on the ground. When he stood up he held an object wrapped in his handkerchief. He placed it under his coat quickly to shield it from the pouring rain.
“O’Halloran’s gun,” he said. “That does it. There’ll be prints on that ivory handle.”
Chapter Twenty-one
Blow-Off
“Ladeez and Gentulmen, the big show is all out and all over! We now present the last performance of the evening, the Oriental Dancing Girl Revue! They shake it in the East and they shake it in the West, and then they’re going to shake it where the shaking is the best. If you can stand to hear the old cannon roar, smell the smoke, and see the flame, here’s the place to go. It’ll clean and press your suit, curl up the brim of your hat, restore your hair, and put ants in your pants. The boys like it and the girls learn. The red-hot jamboree is stahting ri—ght awaaay…”
CHIEF OF POLICE HOOPER was still not completely sold on Merlini’s innocence. However, after he had been assured that the next day’s headlines would give credit for the murderer’s apprehension to the local authorities and would contain no whisper of anything concerning a jail-escape, he led his captive off.
The rest of us crowded into Pauline’s trailer. We were a dripping, water-soaked crew; but the story Merlini had to tell made us forget that. He pulled back the covers on the bed and exposed the mummy of John Wilkes Booth. He showed us the length of white thread attached to the bandages covering the chin, and, kneeling by the bed as he had done before, demonstrated how the thread led invisibly down across the bed covers and ended
in a loop around his right forefinger. When he pulled the thread the gauze over the mummy’s chin moved and Pauline’s voice, not nearly so illusive now that we knew it came from Merlini’s mouth, said:
“The principle of the ventriloquial dummy. The thread pulls the bandage down, and a rubber band beneath pulls it back again so that in the half-light enough apparent chin movement is created to attract the attention and complete the illusion. Ventriloquists, as I’ve said before, don’t throw their voices; they simply create that appearance.
“The joker in the whole business is, of course, the fact that Pauline never was an eyewitness to her father’s murder. She didn’t know who the murderer was until I told her when we were moving her over into Tex Mayo’s trailer. She not only didn’t stay behind to listen at the trailer window, but she admits now that Irma King did not go to the Major’s trailer Monday night. When Pauline accused her of that, she did so because she was burned up by Irma’s attempt to grab the show and by Irma’s public accusations of illegitimacy.”
“Well, anyway,” I said disappointedly, “I was right about the girl in the bandages not being Pauline. If only she had turned out to be Paula instead of a mummy my theory would have crossed the finish line. I still want to know why you were so sure Pauline wasn’t the culprit. Tex may not have been in love with Paula, as I had it, but he is in love with Pauline. Together they could have done it all.”
Merlini shook his head. “They couldn’t have accomplished Pauline’s fall from the high perch, Ross. With Tex’s presence at the back door established, it would have meant still another assistant to douse the lights. You can always solve a crime if you parcel out the various bits of dirty work to enough different people. But that’s not only bad fiction; it’s also bad practice from the murderer’s viewpoint. Too many criminal accomplices are dangerous because one of them might trip and get caught out, or might break down and confess. If you want to see that murder is done right, don’t delegate your dirty work—do it yourself.”
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