Merlini, anxious to make up for lost time, wanted to skip breakfast altogether, but I persuaded him to stop at a lunch wagon long enough for orange juice, roll, and coffee. I made an attempt at conversation, but he would have none of it. “Eat,” he said, “and be quick about it.”
It wasn’t until we were some ten miles out on the road to Norwalk, following the arrow-marked poles, that he spoke again.
“Ross,” he commanded, “stop the car. I want out.”
He spoke so suddenly and urgently that I obeyed automatically, jamming on the brakes with an abruptness that made the tires screech.
“Hannum poster on a pole we just passed,” he said, getting out. “I want it for my collection. I won’t be a minute.”
I watched him as he ran back and started to detach the brightly colored “one-sheet” from the telephone pole. He carefully lifted two corners free from the tacks that held them; then, unaccountably, seemed to change his mind. For a space of half a dozen seconds he stood as motionless as a wooden Indian. Slowly he replaced the poster as it had been. He turned, and, suddenly all action, sprinted for the car. He jumped in, slammed the door violently, and barked at me:
“That crossroad just ahead, Ross. Turn right, and step on it!” He sounded as if he meant it.
I let the clutch in and trod heavily on the gas.
For once he explained without prompting. “There’s an arrow chalked on that pole beneath the poster, but the bill-posting crew travels a good ten days ahead of the show, and the arrows are placed the morning the show moves. It isn’t possible.”
“Perhaps some other show”
“No. The arrow is a nice fresh one.”
“But if it’s covered by the poster—”
“It means — and for once I use the phrase quite literally — it means dirty work at the crossroads.”
The car took a corner on two wheels. Mentally I did the same, wondering all at once if the fact had any significance that this road, like the one on which the Major had been found, was a little-used side road. The macadam, in contrast to the smooth concrete of the highway we had just left, was bumpy and the unbanked curves were sharp and numerous. I trod still harder on the accelerator, and we flew, bouncing and swerving like a roller coaster running wild.
I had no time to speculate on what we might find — I was too busy steering a course; but I knew the moment we sighted the roadster and its attached trailer that it was what we hunted. It was parked by the roadside in a lonely spot that offered no apparent reason for stopping, a broad empty meadow stretching away on one side and a wooded hillside sloping sharply up from the road’s edge on the other.
“Queer place to stop,” I said, pulling off the road just ahead of the roadster and applying the brakes, “unless it’s a picnic or a breakdown.”
Merlini had our door open and was out and gone before we stopped rolling. I saw that the driver’s seat was empty, and I heard Merlini knock briskly on the trailer door as I cut the ignition and jumped after him. He waited a moment, knocked again, and then tried the door. It opened, and he stepped in.
He looked around and, as I entered, said, “Nobody home.”
The interior was similar to that of the Major’s trailer, but simpler and without the custom-built features. The table between the two facing seats at the rear had been folded away and the seats pulled out to form a bed. It had been slept in and was still unmade.
Quickly I jerked open one of the two wardrobe doors on my right.
“Looking for something?” Merlini asked.
I looked in the second cupboard. “Bodies,” I said. “Or maybe Joy Pattison. Wouldn’t surprise me.”
The cupboards contained nothing at all but a dozen or so wire coat hangers.
Doubtfully Merlini said, “It could be a breakdown. Suppose you investigate, Ross. Look at the gas gauge, and see if the engine is in running order.”
“That’s a job for you, isn’t it?” I asked. “I can’t pick the ignition lock, and the keys certainly won’t be—”
“They are, though,” he replied. “I saw them on the dashboard. Look for traces of another car alongside, too. We met no one on foot, and the next town’s ten miles on.”
I hurried out. Though lacking bodies, the layout was still promisingly odd. Trailer door unlocked, keys in the dashboard, and, as I discovered at once, an almost full tank of gas and an engine that perked as soon as I put my foot on the starter. I picked up a pair of dark sunglasses that lay on the floor of the car and then examined the roadside. If another car had stopped, it hadn’t left the roadway; the only marks in the soft shoulder that bordered the road were those made by the roadster, the trailer, and our own car.
I went back and found Merlini squatting on his heels contemplating the trailer floor just inside the door. I made my report and exhibited the sunglasses. He nodded in a preoccupied way.
“What do you make of that?” he asked. The linoleum-covered floor was somewhat worn except for a 2x3-foot rectangle that was perceptibly brighter and newer.
I took a closer look. “That’s easy,” I deduced. “A missing rug.” I pointed to several tack holes around the oblong’s edge. “Tacked down to keep it from sliding around en route. Owner leaves car keys but takes rug. Magic carpet maybe. And he flew away on it.”
“She, Ross, not he,” said Merlini. “I found a blond hairpin and some hair combings to match in the waste-basket. When I saw that the wardrobe cupboards were as bare as Mother Hubbard’s, I got nosy. Sinkful of dirty dishes. Orange juice, coffee, buttered toast are indicated. The alarm clock was set for six. There’s a good supply of groceries, a well-stocked refrigerator, plenty of pots, pans, silverware, dishes, bed and table linen. All normal enough. But those drawers beneath the mirror there, where I’d expect to find toilet articles, underwear, and the like, are all quite empty. There’s not a thing in the place that could be called a personal article.” Merlini paused briefly, took a final puff at his cigarette, and dropped it in an ash receiver that stood on the floor near by. “She did more than just step out to borrow a cup of flour. She packed for an extended stay.”
“It’s a Buick roadster,” I said. “A ’35 model. And a Roamer trailer, dark-green paint job. If it hadn’t been so blamed dark on the lot last night, we might know who—” I looked curiously around, wrinkling my nose. I was conscious of a faint disagreeable odor that grew stronger — the smell of burning rubber.
Merlini too sniffed, then pulled open a door beneath the sink and extracted a crumpled square of brown wrapping paper from the built-in trash container on the door’s back. He spread it quickly on the floor, picked up the ash receiver, and started to empty the contents of its neck onto the paper. The still-lighted cigarette butt he had discarded a moment earlier dropped out, but nothing else, although there was a metallic rattle within the ash tray’s base. Merlini turned it right side up again, reached in with two long fingers, and removed the obstruction — a rubber glove.
He reached in again and found another. He upended the ash receiver once more, and this time the contents descended amid a dusty cloud of ash. The receiver was a treasure chest of clues. The metallic object that had rattled proved to be a cheap dime-store glass cutter.
Merlini poked at the remaining debris and collected several torn bits of white paper. One of these he passed across to me. “Clues by the gross,” he said. “No. 1, Extra Fancy, hand-sorted and government inspected. Nothing but the best.”
The scrap of paper was the torn corner of an envelope, and it bore part of a printed return address—The Magic Sh— and below that 1479 Broadw—. It was Merlini’s own business stationery, apparently the envelope in which last night he had placed the fragments of glass that he had found on the floor of the Major’s trailer.