Death from Nowhere

by Clayton Rawson

  “They’re poisoned,” the Captain gasped. “Careful. The smallest scratch means …”

  “Poison,” Diavolo repeated. “Poison from India, Land of Magic, Mystery and Leopard Men.” He waved a third arrow menacingly. His voice was cold and deadly. “The poison that killed Hagenbaugh and two others. If I’m the homicidal maniac you think I am, you’d better keep your distance. I’ve got one or two things to say.”

  Church pointed a heavy forefinger. “Put those things down!”

  Diavolo shook his head stubbornly. “Not just yet, Inspector. My speech first. Subject: What Every Policeman Should Know. Had you heard that there has been a third murder?”

  “No,” Church said, his voice tense, his jaw out. “But with you here it wouldn’t surprise me none. Is this a confession?”

  “It is not. But, with luck, we may get one. Juan Belmonte fell off his highwire tonight. Someone had greased the wire. When he ran out on it he took an unexpected header. But what really killed him was poison off these arrows. The same scratches — the clawmarks of the phantom leopard — were on him that were on Hagenbaugh and the man nobody knows. Or do you, by now?”

  Church eyed the arrows in Diavolo’s hand calculatingly. “Is this speech going to take long?” he growled.

  “No, not very. You aren’t bored already? I thought that was a nice start. Maybe this is better. Since you don’t seem to know, I’ll tell you who the unidentified man is and how the killer got out of Hagenbaugh’s office.”

  “I’d like to hear that,” Church answered. “You should know.”

  Don Diavolo abruptly dropped his half-joking manner and his words came fast and serious, spraying like machine gun bullets.

  “The murderer you want, Inspector, went to Hagenbaugh’s office this afternoon at a quarter to five while the matinee performance here in Lakewego was still going on. He had concealed his face with bandages. He was armed with an odd clawing weapon whose points were tipped with poison taken from these arrows.

  “The poison is lightning fast and it is quiet. The victim is paralyzed, helpless and unable to move, before he can cry out. That is why Miss Skinner, in the outer office, heard nothing. Death comes because the paralysis affects the muscles of respiration, making it impossible to breathe.

  “Once Hagenbaugh was done for, I imagine the killer intended simply to walk out, telling Miss Skinner, perhaps, that her boss had said he didn’t want to be disturbed. That would give him time to make the elevators. But he had a spot of tough luck. There was another man in the office — or rather just outside the window behind that screen.”

  “Outside that window?” Church broke in. “No. I’m not having any tightwire walkers. And besides, Belmonte is—”

  “I’m not giving you a tight-wire walker,” Diavolo contradicted. “I’m giving you The Man Nobody Saw. And notice all the loose ends it gathers up — the mysterious water on the floor, the incongruous sponge, the damp clothes on the second body.

  “The man outside the window stepped in just as Hagenbaugh died and came suddenly around that screen face to face with the murderer and his victim. The killer had only one alternative. He dove for the man who had witnessed his crime, his poisoned weapon in his hand. The witness had a pail of water. He threw it at his assailant. But it failed to stop the murderer’s rush. The poison did its work again.”

  Inspector Church began to see the light. “I’ll be damned!” he exclaimed. “Are you saying that a window washer—”

  “Exactly,” Don said. “A window washer. Those two words explain the whole mystery of that office. And notice now what a spot the murderer found himself in. He had two bodies at his feet and his clothes were soaked. He couldn’t walk nonchalantly out past Miss Skinner in that condition without arousing her suspicion. He needed dry clothes. So he traded with the window washer, safety belt and all. That explains the bare footprint on the floor. And then, to conceal the fact that an exchange had been made, to complicate an investigation, and to delay proper identification of the window washer, he put his own wet clothes on the workman. The scratches on the man’s face, if you remember, were under the bandages. And, to make it still harder and so he would be sure to have sufficient time for his get away, he hid the body under the desk. The first hue and cry that was raised would center about a missing man with a bandaged face.

  “It wouldn’t be until much later — if Miss Skinner ever remembered the window washer at all — that the police would begin looking for a person of the right description. I think he realized that the odds were against Miss Skinner’s remembering. Window washers, you see, are like mailmen and waiters. No one ever pays any attention to them. He picked up the pail and prepared to ease out as inconspicuously as possible. The sponge had rolled behind the screen and he missed that. Then I had the misfortune to barge in.”

  “Not bad,” Church said, edging forward, “but it won’t do. You forget the chair against the door.”

  Diavolo’s right hand jerked. A third arrow came within inches of the Inspector’s toes. He jumped.

  “Watch your step, Inspector,” Don warned. “The next one won’t be aimed to miss. I haven’t forgotten the chair. But you’ve forgotten the missing shoelace. Remember? Miss Skinner’s back was toward the door when she was typing. The killer stalled a moment until he heard her at it.

  “Then he looped the lace around the top slat of the chairback and carefully threaded both ends through the keyhole. He opened the door quietly and backed out. Miss Skinner probably glanced around, saw the safety belt he wore and the pail on his arm — and thought nothing more about it. Why should she, then?

  “The murderer pulled the shoelace tight and closed the door. The chair, its top edge pulled up under the inside knob, came along with the door. And then he merely had to release one end of the shoelace, pull on the other end until the lace came clear of the chair and through the keyhole, and walk to the corridor. After that he could, and probably did, run. Like it now, Inspector?”

  “But the secretary,” Church objected, “swore no one—”

  “Ask her about window washers. She’ll probably clap one hand to her brow and exclaim, ‘Oh, my goodness, Inspector, of course!’ I’ll cover any bet you want to make. I know what I’m talking about. The next time you see a magician work, go back a second time and catch the same act. And don’t pay any attention to the performer; watch his assistants. I guarantee that you’ll see them on the stage in full view a half a dozen times when you’d have sworn they weren’t there before. You probably noticed them the first time too, but, because they seem so unimportant, you forgot them. And right before your eyes they get away with murder.”

  “And who did all this? Are you telling that too?”

  “Yes. I’m coming to it. That’s why I’ve been throwing these arrows your way. If I let you jump me and take me in to the cooler, the murderer might think that was a good chance to take a runout powder. He’s here; on this lot, now!”

  “I’m listening,” Church said. “But make it good — damned good.”

  “I’ll try,” Diavolo promised. “The next item is a difficulty, though if you look at it long enough and in the right way, it solves the case. I hurried out here as soon as I could induce you to let me go. I found all the eligible suspects but one sitting pretty with a nice tight alibi. The circus performance overlapped the time of the murder and there were no absences on the show at all this afternoon. The only performer who finished his stunt in time to have made New York before four forty-five was The Great Belmonte. It began to look as if the tight-wire walking theory, which I hadn’t been too sold on myself, was the right one after all. It did until Belmonte took his fall. That queered it.

  “Nearly anyone, of course, could have climbed up and greased that wire between shows. The unnoticeable working-man gag would work again there. That’s another person you never notice — the flunkey in the circus who rolls out the barrels for the elephants and changes the props. He’s not interesting and too commonplace.”

  “
Get on with it,” Church ordered impatiently. “Never mind so damn many examples. I went to high school. The wire was greased. Then what?”

  “Why then Belmonte falls, and none too soon either. I was out in the backyard clamoring to have words with him. That presented two questions, both sizzlers. One: Why was he killed? The only man without a decent alibi — except me, of course. And two: The claw marks — how did they happen? They couldn’t have been made before Belmonte climbed up to his platform — the paralysis comes too quickly. It had to be afterward, when the murderer found that the fall hadn’t killed.

  “The most obvious and first motive to be considered, of course, was that Belmonte, like the window washer, might have known too much. I kicked that idea around a bit. Suppose Belmonte had gone into town trailing his wife, perhaps because he suspected her of two-timing him. He might have seen the murderer. That wasn’t bad, but it meant breaking down somebody’s gold-plated alibi. There was another possibility.

  “Suppose Belmonte had merely taken some other performer’s place for the rest of the show so that that person could make a secret trip to town. There were difficulties there too. Was there anyone on the show whom he could impersonate, and hope to get away with it? That had me stumped until just now when someone did a spot of eavesdropping at this trailer window. I didn’t catch him, but he left a calling card. There’s a smear of clown white by the window. That tore it. A clown is the one other type of performer on this show whose place Belmonte might have taken!”

  The little wheels that were whirring madly beneath the Inspector’s hat were almost audible. “Hmmph,” he grunted, half convinced. “And how does that tie in with the impossible scratches?”

  Don Diavolo smiled as he drove the last nail into his solution. “The two men who carried Belmonte’s body from the ring were: Woody Haines — and a clown!”

  Church turned to Schneider. “Which of them was it?”

  “Fellow named Mike Hailey.”

  “Get him! Brophy, you and Gianelli go along.”

  But the two detectives never got started. From the gaping, silent crowd of watchers that had gathered behind the Inspector’s back, the clown himself stepped forward.

  “I’m right here, Inspector.” He nodded toward Diavolo. “I don’t know who that guy is but he can dish out some high, wide and awfully fancy deductions. Reads too many detective stories probably. You’d better take a look at these.”

  The clown handed the Inspector several official-appearing papers and a small metal object that glinted gold in the light and had the shape of a shield.

  Church, after a hasty startled glance, exclaimed, “Michael Hailey! Special investigator, Federal Narcotics Division! I’ll be—”

  Don Diavolo was wishing with all his heart that he were home, curled up underwater locked in his nice safe Double Crystal Water Casket.

  Leatherlung Mike’s voice over on the midway could be faintly heard shouting: “—Thrills! Chills! And amazement! Hurry, hurry, hurry!”

  CHAPTER XIV

  River of Death

  Don Diavolo had played his last card from his sleeve and it had turned out to be a joker.

  Inspector Church repeated, “Federal Narcotics Division. What, for gos-sakes, are you doing on this show as a clown?”

  “I’ve been trying,” Hailey explained quickly, “to find out how it is that a regular flood of narcotics has been flowing in past the customs on the Canadian border for the last year or two now. We know where the stuff comes from. We’ve managed to trace the shipments right up to the border. Then it disappears on us and about three or four weeks later it hits New York.

  “There’s been so much gow around — snow, junk and witch hazel mostly — that the price per piece is down to about a C and a half. Usually it’s twice that. We figured that somebody had invented himself a new way of smuggling it in. Then, we noticed that the Hagenbaugh show routes looked suspicious.

  “They left Canada about the right time and came down close to New York just before the drugs showed up in the peddlers’ hands.”5

  “Have you turned up any evidence?” Church asked.

  “No, dammit. Not yet. But I’ll swear there’s a shipment of it someplace on this show. The customs men went over it with a fine toothcomb this trip, but they didn’t find a thing. And I haven’t had any better luck. But I had hopes. This is the closest stand to New York and I was figuring to catch the transfer.

  “Now we get a murder and this guy—” he pointed at Don— “has to catch me doing my daily eavesdropping and frame me for a murder. I shouldn’t wonder if he gets the delivery.”

  As he said that Don Diavolo acted. He stepped backward into the trailer and slammed the door. Inspector Church, hearing that, was reminded of the sound a certain elevator door had made that afternoon when it slammed.

  “Surround that car!” he roared. “Hurry, dammit!”

  The detectives jumped, but as they did so they heard the crash of breaking glass that came from a window on the trailer’s other side. They split into two groups and rounded the trailer on both sides. They heard the footsteps before them, running wildly.

  “He’s making for the car!” Butterfield’s voice shouted.

  The detectives ran, cursing as they connected with the guyropes and tentpegs that tripped them in the dark. Ahead of them someone cried, “I’ve got him! I—” the voice stopped abruptly. When the pursuers reached the man he was on his knees, holding his head.

  “That way!” he said, pointing, then fell face down on the grass.

  Then, from ahead, close by the sideshow tent came the roar of a starting motor. Two bright headlights shot out across the ground as the car plunged forward, turned and curved toward the street.

  A half dozen revolver shots cut the dark with flashes of orange flame. Another motor roared and a police car leaped forward, then a second.

  Inspector Church lagged behind his men. He had learned by now that it was wise to be skeptical were Diavolo was concerned. He had not circled the trailer with his men but had remained behind a moment suspiciously eyeing the trailer door. It wasn’t until he heard the breaking window and the running footsteps that he followed, still somewhat doubtfully after them. He broke into a run when he heard the car start and saw its headlights move. But then he stopped dead. He saw the man who had tried to stop the quarry and who had been knocked out, get quickly up from his prone position on the grass and start to move off.

  Church, thinking he recognized the figure, dove for him in a flying tackle. Both men went down together. The Inspector who knew what he was about when it came to this sort of thing rolled free and drew his gun. But his opponent made no move to resist him.

  Instead his voice said, “That wasn’t necessary, Inspector. I never argue with a cop.”

  It was The Horseshoe Kid.

  “I thought so,” Church growled. “Brophy, Gianelli, Schultz!”

  Chief Butterfield, who had done an expert but unexpected forward flip from feet to fanny over a guyrope nearby, picked himself up and answered Church’s call for help.

  Church howled, “Watch this guy!” Then he turned and raced back toward the trailer.

  He found the closed door open, the trailer empty.

  Church knew then how the hocus pocus had been worked. The mind reading routine again. Church remembered that Pat Collins had been in the crowd by the trailer — and Chan and Horseshoe. One of Diavolo’s feature tricks was the apparent way he was able to transmit his thoughts to Pat Collins. Church hadn’t the vaguest idea what sort of trickery was used, but he knew Diavolo could do it — he’d seen it happen before now.

  The magician must have cued her somehow that he was going to make a break and added a hint as to the assistance he wanted. She had relayed it to Horseshoe, who had slipped away, stationed himself behind the trailer, and on the signal of the broken window, ran like hell as noisily as possible. The man who drove the car Church was willing to bet a week’s pay, was Chan Chandar Manchu.

  The Inspector’s
deductions were correct enough. Don Diavolo, at that moment, was watching the Inspector from the darkness a dozen yards away.

  He saw two detectives return, men who had taken headers like Chief Butterfield and who hadn’t reached the police cars before they roared off the lot. He heard the Inspector’s angry orders and knew that in another few minutes, with the aid of the Lakewego police, Church would have a cordon of men around the lot and would be conducting an efficient search through it.

  Don could leave, he knew, in the meantime; but once the Inspector had his reinforcements he might have trouble getting back on the lot again and that was going to be necessary. There was one thing that shouted for investigation, one thing that might yet pull the chestnuts from the fire. He had to find some way to evade the Inspector’s search — and find it fast.

  He could do that for some time yet just by keeping on the move. But the big show had been over fifteen minutes now and the Wild West after-show was nearly finished.

  Church would examine every member of that audience as it left the lot and then begin on the performers and working-men. After that he’d take the trailers and trucks. Diavolo knew how thorough the man was. He could visualize the Inspector searching the menagerie and eyeing even the monkeys with dark suspicion.

  A stolen clown costume and some makeup would get by but not for long enough. The other clowns would dash up and change once the show was over. One lone clown wandering about in his working clothes an hour or so after the performance was over would be far too suspicious a character. No — but wait. There was one clown.…

  Don chuckled, turned on his heel and hurried quickly along behind the line of trailers keeping back where the darkness was deep. He found the truck fitted inside with double decker berths that served on a truck show like this as clown alley. It was at the moment, deserted, one or two of the Joeys were still working in the concert, the others had hurried up front to investigate the excitement and the shooting.