“You mean…Dodo murdered Anton?”
“That’s right. And you’d better get out of the road. Here’s the local Superintendent.…”
Superintendent Padgeham rushed up considerably worried. He had just received a rather wild report to the effect that Mr. Minto had mauled one of the tigers, and he was anxious to find out the truth.
“Glad to see you, Padgeham,” said Mr. Minto. “You’re just in time. You can make those arrests now. There won’t be any performance tonight.”
“Are you all right, sir?”
“Good heavens!” said Mr. Minto. “I believe the man’s human. Just imagine that—a superintendent worrying about the life of a Scotland Yard upstart! I’m all right, thanks, Padgeham. Is the clown dead?”
“No. Badly mauled about—but still living.”
“Good!” said Mr. Minto. “I don’t want him to die—just yet. Padgeham, do your stuff. Arrest Joe Carey for being the head of a very efficient organization for the smuggling and selling of dangerous drugs all over the country. Arrest the Winters for allowing the pawnshop to be used as a clearing-house for the drugs, and for aiding and abetting in the distribution of the stuff. Arrest young Briggs for acting as one of Carey’s agents, and that young attendant who goes round with the chocolates and cigarettes for the same thing. There’ll be a lot more, but that’s enough to be going on with. Oh—and your dirty old magistrate for receiving illicit drugs and having the nerve to sit on the bench on the same morning.”
“And the clown—Dodo?”
“You can arrest what’s left of him for the murder of Anton and the attempted murder of Lorimer,” said Mr. Minto. “And take good care of him, Padgeham. Nurse him well. He’s got an appointment with the hangman, and he’ll have to be back in his usual health for that.”
Chapter Eighteen
Mr. Minto came down to his breakfast at the Station Hotel feeling—apart from the lump on the back of his head—at peace with the world. He sat down at his usual window-table, removed the vase of carnations which always got in the way of his food, folded his Times, and beamed kindly on the aged waiter as he shuffled wearily across to take his order.
“Good morning, sir,” said the waiter. “And what shall it be this morning, sir?”
“This morning it shall be porridge,” said Mr. Minto.
“You said you didn’t trust the chef with porridge, sir.”
“This morning I would trust him with arsenic,” said Mr. Minto. “Porridge it is, lumps and all. With a little boiled cod, double bacon and eggs, with fried tomatoes, black coffee, toast and marmalade to follow.”
“Yes, sir,” said the waiter. “Will the other gentleman be coming down, sir?”
“The other gentleman?” said Mr. Minto, and realized that the waiter was referring to Dodo. “No…he’s left the hotel.”
“Nothing wrong, I hope, sir?”
“He’s been called away on some legal business, I understand.”
The waiter shambled off to the serving-hatch and relayed Mr. Minto’s order.
Mr. Minto studied his morning paper. Wars and rumours of wars; revolutions and uprisings; the breaking-up of conferences and the hatching of new ones to take their place; most important of all, Yorkshire out for less than a hundred runs on a sticky wicket. What hope of fame had a little affair like the death of Anton in the face of such competition? But Mr. Minto found it at last—Illicit Drug Organization Exposed. A neat little paragraph, ending up by congratulating Superintendent Padgeham and the local constabulary on a smart capture. Mr. Minto had, of course, bought the wrong newspaper. In all the others there would be inch-and-a-half headlines and blotchy photographs of the Superintendent. He read the paragraph through, and then passed on to the more sensational news about Yorkshire.
He was in the middle of the cricket crisis when Robert arrived.
“Sit down,” said Mr. Minto. “How’s Claire?”
“She’s much better this morning,” said the priest. “I think she realizes her—um—escape. Did everything go well last night?”
“Splendidly. I was hit on the head with a piece of lead piping—and very nearly attacked by the tigers.”
“Good gracious!” said Robert. “What on earth happened?”
“Have some coffee, Robert. It’s always considered correct for a detective to explain the crime and solution once the thing’s over. So have a cup of coffee, and make appropriate remarks whenever I pause.”
“What sort of remarks?”
“You could say ‘How clever of you!’ every now and then,” said Mr. Minto, attacking a particularly obstinate lump in his porridge.
“I see.…”
“The awkward thing about this business,” said Mr. Minto, “was the fact that there were two crimes to solve. The murder of Anton and the drug-smuggling racket. They were mixed up with each other, of course; but the drug part of it didn’t come to light until fairly late on in the case. We seem to have hit on one of the most complete organizations for the smuggling of drugs that’s been known for a long time. When you come to think of it, a circus was an ideal place from which to distribute illicit drugs. Always on the move—personnel unknown to the police—every facility for getting the wretched stuff broadcast. Padgeham and I had a long chat with Joe Carey last night. He wasn’t inclined to talk at first, but after a while he got quite conversational.
“He started this business in a small way; he’s built it up to an enormous concern. Until a year or two ago he distributed the stuff only on his own. Whenever the circus visited a town, he sold a supply to the poor wretches who were ready to buy it. The business prospered—Carey found himself making almost as much out of the sideline as out of the circus. He took Dodo into partnership. He established a number of depots for the distribution of the stuff in towns where there was a big demand—small businesses which no one would possibly suspect of having anything to do with the smuggling of drugs…a tobacconist’s shop in Liverpool, a pawnshop here, and so on. He even went the length of having personal representatives, going round with the circus to help distribute the stuff. Young Briggs was one. He seemed a perfectly ordinary vacuum-cleaner canvasser. I don’t expect he knows one end of a vacuum-cleaner from the other. Wherever the circus went, young Briggs was there with his little case, calling on customers.
“Believe me, Joe Carey had it all worked out to a nicety. You could get the stuff in all sorts of different ways…collect it late at night at his own caravan, get it through the pawnshop in Bank Street, have a visit from young Briggs, or get it smuggled to you by one of the circus attendants during an actual performance. A really efficient organization. Waiter!…”
The waiter dragged his body across.
“My cod, please,” said Mr. Minto. “Well, business got so bright in the drug line that Carey decided to give up the circus. He planned to sell out to Anton, who’d always been hankering after running a show of his own. The drug sideline was to continue, of course. Dodo was to run that, under Carey’s supervision. The deal was just going through when Anton—I don’t know how—found out what was going on. He refused to have anything to do with the deal, and threatened to spill the beans to the police. Very awkward for Messrs. Dodo and Carey.
“I believe Anton found out about the drugs on the day the circus arrived here—last Sunday. At any rate, on the Sunday night he visited Carey in his caravan and the pair of them had words. Fortunately for us, Lorimer—the trapeze chap—heard the words, or some of them. Anton, I expect, threatened to tell the police next day. Carey told Dodo what was going to happen. They watched Anton all the next day like a couple of hawks and didn’t let him get a chance to pass on his information. They got to know that Anton was going to tell Lorimer what he’d found out. And Dodo took the matter into his own hands and decided that Anton must be silenced. He murdered him. Ah…thank you, waiter.”
Mr. Minto took a peck at his cod and then loo
ked across the table at his brother.
“He did murder Anton, didn’t he?” he asked.
“I believe so,” said the priest. “It was Dodo who confessed in the church that morning.”
“That’s a relief! The way you’ve been carrying on this week, I wouldn’t have been at all surprised if you’d said, ‘No—it was someone else altogether.’ Dodo murdered Anton that night during the supper-party. He planned the thing very carefully. He knew that two other people at least beside himself were going to leave the supper-tent, and he arranged things so that suspicion could fall on either of them. He had me all tied in knots for quite a while, the little swine!
“Joe Carey had told Lorimer that Anton was having an affair with his wife…I don’t believe there was a great deal of truth in that, but it was enough to make Lorimer mad with jealousy. As a matter of fact, he says he set out that night with the idea of killing Anton himself—which didn’t make things any easier for the poor detective.
“Dodo was going to shoot Anton, and he needed a revolver. He tried to get Lorimer’s, in order that suspicion might be thrown on him; he found that Lorimer had already taken out the revolver himself. The other man who was going to be suspected was Miller—the fellow who made such an outburst during the supper-party. Dodo got hold of his revolver from the ring-master’s tent and used it to kill Anton. He shot him thrice and then dragged his body inside the tigers’ cage. He thought, of course, that the beasts would finish off the job and cover up all trace of the crime. He threw the revolver into that little stream which runs through the field, and then he ran back to the tent and gave the alarm. If ever you commit a murder, Robert, be sure to be the first to tell the police about it. The person who finds the body is the last person they think of suspecting. Waiter…bacon and eggs, please.”
Mr. Minto sat back and glanced once again at the distressing news about Yorkshire while the waiter removed an empty plate and put a full one in its place.
“Now then…Dodo suffered a little damage when he placed Anton’s body inside the cage. He got a scratch across his lip, and a piece of his costume was torn off—a piece which I subsequently found. I asked him about that, and he said that he’d tried to drag Anton out of the cage as soon as he’d found what had happened, and had been set upon by the tigers. Quite a feasible explanation. But then he made the mistake of giving away his torn costume to one of the other clowns—who, in turn, popped it.”
“Popped it?” said Robert.
“Deposited it in a pawnbroker’s establishment. The one at 288, Bank Street, which entered into the affair later on. I don’t know whether Carey knew right away that Dodo had committed the murder; at any rate, he asked me to look into the business instead of getting in the local police. Maybe he thought I was as dumb as I looked. And right away either Dodo or Carey made a mistake…Dodo told me that he went to Carey’s caravan for a drink after leaving the supper-tent; Carey told me that he wasn’t in his caravan at all, but was away in the town visiting friends. They were both suspects.
“But the prime suspects at the time were the other two people who had left the supper-party—Lorimer and Miller. Lorimer asked for trouble by losing his nerve and clearing out. And when Miller was mauled by those tigers, I honestly thought he’d done the deed.
“The thing that had impressed me about the tigers’ behaviour was the fact that they didn’t maul their trainer when his body was chucked in beside them. They respected him all right—maybe it’s going a bit too far to say that they loved him; but, at any rate, they hardly touched him when they knew he was dead. I got it into my head that they wouldn’t treat the man who had killed Anton in the same way. And neither they did. Unfortunately they ill-treated Miller first, and that put me on the wrong scent. It seems that Miller and the tigers had never been on very good terms…and I wouldn’t put it past Dodo to have roused the beasts into a fury before they went on for their act that afternoon. In any case, they killed Miller; and when I found the confession in Miller’s pocket, I thought the case was over and done with. Then you stepped in and said that Miller wasn’t the man. Waiter…more toast, please.…”
“The confession, though…I can’t understand that.”
“Neither could I, at the time. Chiefly because I didn’t use my brain. That confession was Dodo’s second mistake. He wrote it himself, in a fairly good imitation of Miller’s handwriting. He planted it in Miller’s clothes—but he planted it in the wrong clothes. He put it in the suit Miller had been wearing at the supper-party the night before. The wording of the confession indicated that it had been written just before Miller went on to do his act with the tigers that afternoon.…If Dodo had only thought, he’d have put it in the suit Miller was wearing that day. And the other big mistake he made was to use a fountain-pen to write the confession. Have a look at that, Robert.”
Mr. Minto handed a small piece of paper across to his brother, who studied it carefully.
“‘Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party’,” said Robert. “I don’t see what that has to do with the case.”
“I wrote that—with Anton’s fountain-pen. If you notice, the two halves of the nib aren’t true. The pen’s probably been dropped at some time, and one half of the nib is a little out of position. The writing on the confession was exactly the same as this. In other words, it had been written with Anton’s fountain-pen. It couldn’t have been written by Anton, it was written by the person who took charge of Anton’s belongings—Dodo. Waiter!…”
The ancient waiter stopped picking his teeth and threaded his way across to the window-table.
“This coffee’s cold,” said Mr. Minto. “Bring us some more, please.”
“Yes, sir.”
“The first indication I had of the drug business was when I paid a visit to the house above the pawnshop in Bank Street. Joe Carey had told me that he had been there at the time of the murder. I got Padgeham to give me a report on the people staying in the house, and it was such a good report that I got fishy at once. I went to see them—carefully disguised as a housing inspector. They made a great fuss about an invalid sister who was living in the house at the time—said she was very ill and suffering from paralysis, and that I couldn’t go into the room where she was. I went in. She wasn’t nearly so paralysed as that waiter of ours. She was drugged.
“I got suspicious about the people in that house. They told me the stairs leading down to the pawnshop were never used, when it was quite obvious that they’d been used fairly recently. As soon as I heard that Dodo’s costume had been put into pawn in the shop below, I made an excuse and had a look at it. I got severely choked off by the girl who looks after the shop. I couldn’t think how she knew I was a detective, although she made some rather insulting remarks about the size of my feet. It turns out that she was Carey’s illegitimate daughter by the woman Winter, and of course Carey had told her all about me and what was going on. Thank you, waiter.…Some fresh coffee, Robert?”
The waiter made some meek remark about clearing away the table in preparation for lunch. Mr. Minto waved him aside.
“Then Claire’s young man entered into things. On the second night of the circus’s visit, when I was down keeping an eye on Joe Carey’s caravan, I saw someone come up to the caravan and then go off into the town. I followed him; he went to the pawnshop. I was perfectly certain that I’d seen the man before. The next night, when I saw him again, I was even more certain. It was young Briggs. I checked up the dates of Briggs’s visits to various towns—Claire told me that—and found that they coincided exactly with the tour of the circus. Like Mary and her little lamb, wherever Carey’s went young Briggs was sure to go. I spent yesterday morning going round with young Briggs—or, rather, behind him—and I saw him deposit his vacuum-cleaner case in the pawnshop. I got hold of it…the bag of the vacuum contained a goodly quantity of drugs, all ready packed up for distribution.
“And I also got h
old of Dodo’s costume. I’ve had the blood on the costume analysed overnight…there were three different stains of blood on it. Two human stains, and one animal. The animal blood came from the tiger who had a sore paw which was still bleeding slightly. One of the human stains was of Dodo’s own blood, from where Peter had scratched him. The other blood was Anton’s…and if we hadn’t anything else to go on, those three stains are quite enough to get a verdict of ‘guilty’ for Dodo.”
Mr. Minto paused.
“How very clever of you,” said his brother.
“Thank you,” said Mr. Minto. “I was wondering when you’d remember to say that. Now then…I was pretty sure that either Carey or Dodo had killed Anton, but I didn’t know which. I got poor Lorimer to help me find out. I arranged that Carey should get to know that Lorimer had found out about the drug business, and that he was planning to spill the beans to me. I gave Lorimer a revolver to protect himself with and cleared out. I never imagined that they’d do such a filthy trick as they did—altering the length of the trapeze drops and trying to kill him that way. They damned nearly killed the girl; it was only in trying to save Loretta that Lorimer fell and smashed himself up.”
“How is he?”
“He’s all right, thank God. He’s broken some bones but he’ll be all right. Carey evidently told Dodo that Lorimer was going to talk, and Dodo manipulated the trapeze ropes. Loretta thought that Carey had done it himself, but Dodo has confessed to doing it. The funny thing is that Lorimer found out that there was going to be an attack on me, and tried to warn me. In doing so, we found another member of the gang. Lorimer gave a note to one of the attendants—the fellow who sells chocolates and cigarettes in the cheap seats during the performances. The attendant was part of the gang, and naturally didn’t deliver the note. He took it straight to Dodo, and Dodo put Lorimer out of action and prepared to do the same to me. Incidentally, I found out that the attendant sold more than chocolates and cigarettes…I bought a neat little parcel of dope from him myself at the matinée yesterday. Go on…say something.…”
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