He leaned closer, whipped a handkerchief from his breast pocket and under its cover plucked the object from Voltane’s lips. It was the nub of a bullet. He quickly slipped it into the folds of the handkerchief, and wiped the blood from his fingers. Then he quickly returned the handkerchief to his outer breast pocket, and arose.
Lucy Hamilton, flanked by two weeping girls in devil costumes, was vigorously massaging the hands of the unconscious Gypsy when she felt the redhead’s grip on her shoulder. Pale and still trembling, she looked up at him without rising. Her lips were set very tight.
Shayne whispered almost savagely into her ear, “Get out of here fast! Grab a cab home, and type out in duplicate as much as you can remember of everything that happened here tonight! Every tiny detail! I’ll check with you later.”
As she left, a tall, distinguished-looking man in dinner clothes and pince-nez glasses rushed to Voltane’s side, but Shayne turned away at the sound of a familiar voice behind him.
“It’s a mighty good thing you’re here, Mr. Shayne,” exploded Jim O’Leary, chief of the Arena guards. “All hell’s broke loose out front. The fire department—”
“Get that marine back here fast!” yelled the detective over the din.
“Sure, if you say so — and if he isn’t already trampled to death.”
Shayne turned back to the corpse. The tall man in dinner clothes rose stiffly, and with a faint suggestion of a smile hovering unpleasantly around the corners of his mouth. “He must have died almost instantly,” he said. Then he added coldly, “I am Dr. Vogle.”
“Dr. Herman Vogle, the psychiatrist?” asked Shayne, dimly recalling that the man was equally famed as an amateur magician and authority on psychical research.
“I’m Michael Shayne, private investigator,” the redhead said. “Could you tell me anything about how this trick was supposed to have worked?”
The doctor’s eyes bulged at him through his pince-nez glasses like some fabulous fish. “I think,” he snapped, turning, “I’d better take a look at the girl first.”
Ten minutes later, Will Gentry, Miami’s Chief of Police, cigar in hand, hurried into the scene trailed by the usual battalion of uniformed policemen, detectives, photographers, and Medical Examiner, Dr. Cantrell. He bustled over to the redhead, his eyes mock-reproachful. “Do you always have to be ahead of me, Mike? What happened here? Just from the look of things — I’d say it was on the unusual side.”
Shayne grinned. “I just committed murder.”
“Wouldn’t put it past you. How’d you manage it?”
While cameras flashed and Cantrell was leaning over Voltane’s corpse, Shayne told his old friend the story, omitting any mention of Kara’s visit to his office that morning, or the bullet hidden in his breast pocket.
Gentry scowled. “Sure that’s all?”
“Isn’t that enough?”
“Enough to inconvenience you by making you the number one material witness! I’m sorry, Mike but that’s what I may have to do. Now where’s the marine and who was on the stage with the magician when he was killed?”
“O’Leary’s bloodhounds are after him now,” said Shayne. Then he pointed to the Turbaned One. “He was standing to Voltane’s left, and—” he gestured toward Kara — “she was on his right.”
Kara was still out cold, her prostrate body now covered with the oriental cloth behind which she had mysteriously appeared at the beginning of the show, and Dr. Vogle, on his knees, was holding something to her nose.
The Turbaned One’s ugly, pock-marked face contorted in a sneer as Gentry, followed by Shane, demanded his name. Finally he grunted, “Kling.”
“Kling what?”
“Willie Kling.”
Gentry re-lit his cigar with stubby fingers. “How long have you been with Voltane?”
Willie shrugged. “Five — six years.”
“Did you always assist him in the bullet act?”
Kling nodded, his eyes still hostile.
“Exactly what did you do to assist him?”
Willie slowly removed the turban from his head. With it wiped his face, which was gleaming with sweat and grease-paint. “Not much. Just stand by, see nobody jobbed him.”
“What do you mean ‘jobbed’ him?”
“Frame him,” replied Willie in a bored tone. “Gimmick the gun, mebbe. Or the bullet. Some wise guy.”
Shayne moved in harshly. “How does the trick work?”
Willie didn’t even bother to look at either inquisitor. “If I knew I’d have done the damn thing myself!” He pointed at the sheet-covered corpse now being carried out on a stretcher. “Ask him,” he said, still glaring.
Medical Examiner Cantrell had joined Vogle by Kara’s side. He shook his head as Gentry and Shayne arrived. “It is more than just a faint, Will. Something funny. Her heart seems sound enough, but damned if we can hear it. And there’s no pulse. I agree with the eminent Dr. Vogle. She should get to a hospital fast.”
“With the Chief’s permission,” said Vogle suavely, arising and extending his card, “I’d be glad to take her to my sanitarium.”
Gentry nodded vaguely, then signaled a nearby officer to call an ambulance. Aside, he muttered to Shayne, “That leaves the marine.”
Shayne grinned. “It’s the other way around, Will. Probably the marine has left us. Better call the base and have the shore patrol pick him up. Corporal Burton Adams.”
As Gentry shouted the order, a red-faced, heavyset man with graying temples tapped him on the shoulder. “I’m Mack Eiler,” he said in a raspy voice, “manager of the Arena and president of the Showman’s League. I’d have been back sooner if it hadn’t been for that crazy mob.”
Gentry turned and puffed hard at his cigar, frowning into the cloud of smoke. “Tell me, Eiler, know anything about Voltane’s stooges? The men he got to shoot at him?”
“He didn’t use stooges, Chief. Each one was a legitimate volunteer and known to me personally. I contacted them myself and briefed them according to Voltane’s instructions every night — he only did the tricks nights, you know — and they brought their own rifles and bullets. That’s what made it so sensational. He even had the magicians half off their rockers trying to figure it out.”
“Did you know the marine?”
“No,” replied Eiler thoughtfully. “He was a stranger to me. I wondered about it at the time, don’t think I didn’t. I had a friend of mine all set, and then, at the last minute, Voltane sends out an assistant to tell me he’s got somebody else.”
“Who did he send?”
“Willie Kling.”
“Know anything about Kling?”
“Only that he used to be an escape artist. He worked for me in the old days when I had my own big carny. Nothing Houdini did that he couldn’t do better. Only he couldn’t sell it. It made him bitter. He hated everybody.”
Shayne cut in pointedly. “Eiler, did you see the act tonight?”
Eiler shuddered. “I did. I watched that damn trick every night. I’ve done a bit of magic in my day, but this really had me stumped,”
Shayne regarded him closely.
“Think carefully. Did you notice anything that departed from the usual stage procedure tonight? Anything added or omitted, any change, no matter how slight?”
The showman’s weather-beaten face furrowed in concentration. “I almost know the presentation by heart,” he said, “from the pitch right up to where he catches the bullet in his teeth and the mark is identified by the man who made it. Outside of the marine seeming a little too well rehearsed, I’d swear everything was just the same.”
“Thanks, Eiler,” grumbled Gentry, then hurled himself valiantly at the wilted members of Voltane’s company. He was getting nowhere fast when a detective appeared and handed him the marked bullet. “Found it on the floor near the back wall, Chief. I traced it through a hole in the asbestos backdrop — eight inches thick.”