“Swindle sheet is right,” Merlini replied. “The tie came off Gimbel’s dollar counter. I had just sold a customer a trick pair of scissors with only one blade. Magicians use them for a laugh, handing them to a spectator who’s assisting on stage and asking him to cut the rope the performer will later restore again. The scissors look all right and sound all right, but they don’t cut. I demonstrated them, and then, because my customer was a little tight and I suspected he’d go right to work with them, as a joke I secretly switched them for a good pair. And he cut the tie that was worn by the dick that worked for O’Halloran who called him off and left me without an alibi on account of which I landed in the jail that the Çhief built!”
“And now,” I objected, “you’re delaying the next installment. What happened while we were driving to Albany Friday night? You said hell broke loose.”
“Paula Starr,” O’Halloran explained, “dusted the D.A.’s men off her tail with a vanishing trick of her own. Those two gals should be billed as the Vanishing Twins. That half-dollar of yours doesn’t do any better. She popped in at the stage door of El Algiers a few minutes before her act was due on. Knowing she’d be busy giving the customers an eyeful for the next twenty minutes or so, the boys relaxed a bit. And Paula dolls herself up in an ermine wrap and a prop tiara, picks up Tommy Mannering at the bar for color, and slithers out the front door as if she was the current No. 1 glamour girl. She had her nose so high in the air even the news photographer out front who got a shot of them didn’t realize who it was until he’d developed his film. She led Mannering to the Crystal Club, knowing that the powder room there has two entrances. Powder rooms seem to be her specialty. Mannering hasn’t seen her since, except in the papers. Saturday morning every sheet in town had her publicity leg art all over the front pages — those they could run and still send the edition through the mails. Here”—O’Halloran pulled a clipping from his pocket—“this is a sample of the text that went with ’em.”
He shoved it at me and I read it aloud. “Wilbur Wilton — On the Main Stem.”
“Cops and Robbers—We knew it would happen. The Dicktracys from the D.A.’s office are still holding the sack down at El Algiers, café society’s smartest hotspot. Duke (Ten Grand) Miller’s ever loving mamma, Paula Starr, the Nightspot Queen, topped her near nude dancing routine with the neatest trick yet when she turned her beauteous self inside out and disappeared as completely as vaudeville… Chief Inspector Gavigan invented some new cuss words (naughty naughty) and transferred two not so bright-eyed sleuths to the back side of Staten Island.
“The boys have been living in hopes our Paula would lead them to the missing Duke, the liquidated Maxie Weissman’s hotshot mouthpiece. She has been stripteasing the force for three weeks, and, just when they decided to pinch her (!) and find out what she was hiding, she does a fadeout… The D.A. had kittens all up and down Centre Street — the cutest things!
“Tommy Mannering, nitery addict and blonde fiend, was also stood up. Rumor has it that he is still waiting outside the powder room at the swank Crystal Club, and there is some talk of applying gilt and keeping him on as a permanent exhibit … Your correspondent also hears that the Duke was the finger man in the matter of his boss’s late demise via the Chicago typewriter route with Bo Lepkewitz cast as the trigger man.
“Things we won’t know until tomorrow: How does Paula hope to hide the phiz that launched a thousand champagne buckets? … Has she joined the Duke, and where? … What happened to Maxie’s do-re-mi, and why have two of Gavigan’s pet gumshoes been living at Bridgeport in the house where Maxie got it in the neck? … And will the D.A. recover?”
When I had finished, O’Halloran added, “Wilbur is still wondering how Paula expected to be able to hide out without being recognized. Her face has been on the cover of every picture magazine in town more than once, and a couple of years back she was in Hollywood. Her shape had so much oomph that it took the producers three pictures to find out she couldn’t act. But as soon as I hit the show I knew the answer. Somebody was using his head and she was minus hers. She was the Headless Lady. And when she was off duty and had a head, she wore blinders; and—”
“And,” Merlini interrupted, “she’d done a color change from brunette to blonde. She’d bleached her hair. Why, if you told Schafer this story, was he so upset when he discovered the corpse was a brunette?”
O’Halloran said, “I’m afraid I didn’t tell the Captain everything. I told him I was following a hunch of my own on the Duke. I told him I’d discovered he used to be with a circus, and I thought it was this one. Now I know where the Duke is; and, after all the spade work I’ve done, I don’t see why Schafer and Hooper should reach out and grab a fistful of that reward.”
“The Duke, then—” Merlini started.
“Now wait,” O’Halloran objected. “Let me get on with my story. I found Paula, and then I discovered that the show’s route had been juggled around, that nobody seemed to know why, and that they all thought it looked queer. Knowing what I did, I thought I saw some sense in it. The show has been heading in one hell of a hurry for Canada. By the quickest route; that explains the long jumps and the fact that they’ve been dating some towns that are way too small. It looked a hell of a lot as if the Duke might have gotten out of the country; and that Paula, with her Dad’s help, was on her way to join him. I decided to tag along, nab him when she connected, and collect the reward. But it didn’t pan out that way. Next thing I knew the Major dies in what everyone thinks is a car smash. Then you two guys show up and things really do begin to happen.”
“You didn’t suspect the accident was a phony?” Merlini asked.
“No. Why should I? I wasn’t interested in the Major particularly. I was busy keeping both eyes on the Headless Lady. But your arrival had me worried. I’d discovered that circus people practically never look at a newspaper and that Paula, with a little care getting to and from her trailer, could probably pull it off and reach the Duke in Canada before she was recognized. When you showed up I wasn’t so sure. I didn’t know that you two hadn’t read the papers either. And I was still wondering what Pauline had gone to your place for. I see now I should have figured it was the Headless Lady apparatus, but at the time I didn’t get it. So I gave you some attention, hoping you’d drop a hint that would give me a lead.
“You ducked out on me after we had seen Pauline and Joy do their tight-wire act, and so I trailed along in the background, keeping my eyes and ears open. I saw you meet Keith, overheard part of what he told you about his suspicions, and was right behind you when you broke into the Major’s trailer. When you found that broken windowpane you almost found me too, because I was just outside getting an earful. Then, when I heard you decide that the Major had been bumped off, I figured Paula for the rap, though I couldn’t see much motive unless maybe the old man had renigged on helping her and was going to turn her in. And when Pauline said that what she had to tell would hit the front pages of every paper in the country, I knew she was thinking of Paula and had picked the same horse. When she went out for her perch act and somebody cut the lights, it looked like Paula more than ever. Particularly since she had no alibi. She was apparently working in the Headless Lady apparatus, but there was no way of proving it was her and not someone doubling for her.”
“And you didn’t arrest Paula then because you were still hoping she’d lead you to the reward?” Merlini asked. “That makes you an accessory after the fact, doesn’t it? You concealed the fact that you had reasonable grounds to believe her guilty.”