Merlini took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, offered me one, and took one himself. He tapped it slowly against the back of his hand. “Ross,” he said thoughtfully, “when we heard that music change and we ran from the Major’s trailer tonight, I left first. Who came through that door next? You or Keith?”
“I did.”
“And did he follow right behind you?”
“Yes. I think so. Why?”
Merlini frowned at me. “You couldn’t swear that he did, then?”
“Well, no. Not exactly. He wasn’t far behind me, though. He was in the back yard here just a few seconds after I arrived.”
“A few seconds is too much,” Merlini said unhappily. “That complicates matters no end. Come on. I want a word with that doctor.”
I grabbed at his arm and issued an ultimatum. “Not so fast,” I growled. “I want to know about this. Now! And what, for Pete’s sake, is this hocus-pocus about not informing the law? I didn’t promise Wiley not to give the Sheriff an earful, and if you don’t talk, I’ll damned well—”
“I don’t think so,” Merlini said. “You can’t. Mac’s quite right. The evidence we’ve got isn’t worth a plugged nickel.”
I suddenly felt as if I’d just been stepped on by a full-grown elephant. “But the hat,” I protested weakly. “The photo, the broken spectacle pieces, the prints on the windowpane, the elephant hook.”
“The bull-hook,” Merlini said, “is not evidence. We’ve no proof that it was used as a murder weapon. And those other things — hm, well — as soon as I saw that Pauline had fallen, I investigated the lights. I was there perhaps five minutes; and then, remembering that we had left it unlocked, I went back to the Major’s trailer. Hat, glass, prints, and photo—” Merlini made a swift smooth gesture and the glowing cigarette he held vanished “—have disappeared!”
Chapter Eight
Eavesdropper
Dr. Leonidas Tripp nodded in answer to Merlini’s query and replied in a dry, precise voice, “Why, yes. I believe I did see a young woman in blue tights. She came into the trailer while I was busy with my patient. She seemed somewhat excited and had apparently made an error. She excused herself and withdrew rather hurriedly.” He frowned. “Now that I think of it, it does seem odd that, being a performer, she shouldn’t know—”
“By what door did she enter, doctor? Do you remember?”
“Door?” Dr. Tripp asked. He turned and scowled at the trailer. “But the trailer only has one, doesn’t it? I don’t see—”
“Thank you very much.”
Before the doctor could turn again to face us, Merlini had gone, myself after him. Merlini headed for the big-top entrance. “We’re getting action for our money,” he said. “Not ten minutes ago I was afraid I had too many alibis. Two of them are already dust and ashes.”
“Alibis for the monkey business with the lights and for the stolen evidence?”
“Yes. Mac Wiley is in the clear on both counts; he was hobnobbing with Sheriff Weatherby. Keith, when the lights went out, was with us; but he left the trailer after we did and, from all you can tell me, could have wiped those prints from the windowpane and scooped up hat, photo, and envelope of glass particles on his way out. Joy—”
“Here, here,” I objected. “Keith’s the white-haired boy who put the match to those fireworks. He started this investigation.”
“Yes, I know,” Merlini said. He magically produced two dimes, bought two bags of peanuts, handed me one, and found seats on the lowest tier before the center ring. “But I seem to remember a case or two — one that we were mixed up in — where the murderer did just that.”
“Okay,” I admitted. “That’s your point. And Joy?”
“Joy Pattison,” Merlini said, thoughtfully cracking a peanut, “deposes that she was engaged in her curious hobby of hiding in a wardrobe cupboard. And further states that she tried to make the doctor think that she had entered the trailer from the outside. For all he knows that is what she did do. And consequently it’s not impossible that that is just what she did.”
“But why?” I asked.
“Why?” he said. “Why what?”
“Well, if she pulled the light plug and swiped the evidence, why should she go stick her nose in at Pauline’s trailer, pretend she’d made a mistake, and back out again? Sounds silly to me.”
“A magician, in performing a trick, often does the exact opposite of what he says he is doing. She may have done that. She said she entered from the wardrobe and tried to deceive the doctor into believing she had come from outside. But suppose that she did enter from outside, and was trying to make him believe that she came from the wardrobe. If she could do that, she’d have an alibi.”
I shook my head. “I don’t follow. If she wants it established that she was in the wardrobe, why, in God’s name, did she tell us she came from outside?”
“Because she hadn’t put it over. The doctor turned too quickly, before she could get the wardrobe door open, and she realized she hadn’t fooled him.”
“No, dammit,” I objected heatedly. “You’re assuming that her mind works like yours, like a trick calculating-machine. And besides, what if she had put it over? What if she did fool the doctor into thinking she had been hiding in the wardrobe? He’d ask Mac or Pauline: Who was that lady I seen hiding in the cupboard? How would she explain that?”
“Same explanation she gave us. She was hunting for the will. The charge would be attempted burglary, not attempted murder.”
I thought about that for a moment, but I still didn’t like it. “Why,” I asked, “are you trying so hard to pin this on Joy — and Keith. There are others we might ask for alibis. Lots of them. What about Irma King, for instance? It was her elephant hook. And Tex Mayo?”
“I’ve seen to that. I talked to Deep-Sea Ed, the elephant boss.[2] I met him when he was on the Big Show a few seasons back. The acts that were scheduled to follow Pauline’s perch act were: Tex Mayo’s announcement and then the bulls, in that order. Tex, Ed says, was on his horse at the entrance when the lights failed, waiting to go on. And Ed, with Irma King, was lining up the bulls to follow Tex.”
“You have been busy,” I admitted. “But there are plenty of other people on this lot. Performers, working-men, ticket takers, ushers, side-show freaks, pop-sellers, and half a tentful of audience. It would take Inspector Gavigan and half a dozen squads of detectives working all night to check them. And I hate to think how many wouldn’t have alibis.”
Merlini scowled at the menage horses, who were bowing and prancing through a musical ride. “That, Ross,” he said, “is exactly what is giving me gray hairs. You see, at the moment it looks as if every last one of those people do have alibis!”
He paused, and I swallowed hard trying to get the dizzy feeling out of my ears. “Say that again,” I demanded.
“You heard me. Alibis for everyone except Keith and Joy. If you’ll relax and think about it for as much as two minutes, you’ll see why. That’ll give you something to do while I meditate on a course of action. When you get the answer raise your hand, but don’t interrupt me… Boy! This way with that pop.”
Two minutes was an underestimate. When the chariot races thundered around the hippodrome track and brought the performance to a close, the three-ring circus under my hat was still in full swing. The answer to the alibi riddle, obvious as it turned out to be, still eluded me. As I got up to go I made a suggestion.
“That photo,” I said. “We could get another print, couldn’t we?”
2
His nickname derives from the fact that he once owned a deep-sea show, an exhibition of marine monsters. Ed is a man of various talents and wide experience. He also once specialized in window-sleeps, a stock type of exhibition in which the performer goes into a trance in a local store window and apparently remains there motionless for a week or two without food or water.