With the traditional gesture of the conjurer when he exhibits the magical cabinet that has previously been shown empty, Merlini turned the latch and swung the door wide. Just as with the conjurer’s cabinet, this time too, there was a young lady inside, a girl with golden hair and round, frightened blue eyes. She stood there, crouched back against the clothing on the hangers. She had a flashlight in one hand, and in the other, half upraised, a curious but familiar weapon, a heavy, rounded, three-foot length of wood that ended in a steel-pointed combination of prod and hook. I recognized it as an elephant goad. When the girl saw Keith, the bull-hook dropped from her fingers and fell with a solid thud to the floor.
Then she stepped from the wardrobe, and the light shone scarlet on the bolero vest and flaring trousers of her wire-act costume. She blinked in the light, the fear in her alert eyes replaced now by relief and, as she looked at Merlini and myself, by curiosity.
Keith said one word, “Joy!”
He stepped forward and grasped her arm. “What are you doing here?”
Joy’s eyes sought the door through which we had come. “The door, Keith. It was locked. How did you—”
Merlini jingled the picklocks on the key ring and dropped them back in his pocket. “Locks are made to be picked, Miss Pattison. Aren’t you going to introduce us, Keith?”
Atterbury was still looking at the girl with a completely bewildered expression. Still watching her, he said, “This is Merlini, Joy. You remember, Sigrid told us about him. And his friend, Ross Harte. But why— what were you doing here? Did you climb in at the window?”
Joy’s voice had a cool liquid quality that was easy on the ears. “Yes,” she said. “I was looking for the Major’s will.” Her statement was simple, matter of fact.
Merlini went toward the open window. “Wasn’t this one locked like the others?” he asked.
“Yes,” she replied, “but there’s a hole in the pane. I reached in and turned the catch.”
Merlini examined the neat semicircular opening from which a section of glass had been removed.
“You used a glass cutter?” he asked.
She shook her head. “No. I found the pane that way. I noticed it this afternoon. So tonight, after the wire act, when Pauline told me the Major hadn’t made a will, I—”
“Pauline said that?” Keith asked sharply.
“Yes. And she said that he wouldn’t have left me anything in any case.”
Keith turned quickly to Merlini. Excitedly he said, “So that’s the gaff. I should have thought of it. There won’t have to be another murder after all; this is just as good. Pauline simply destroyed the will!” (A gaff is a secret device. In carnival games, the unseen gadget which sets the layout so the player cannot win. In conjuring, a “gimmick” serves the same purpose.)
“No other relatives, then?” Merlini asked. “The Major dies intestate and Pauline gets it all? Like that?”
Keith nodded. Joy was staring at him. “Murder?” Her eyes were wide. “Another murder? Keith, what do you—”
“Easy, kid,” Keith said, his arm around her. “I didn’t mean to blurt it out like that. The Major’s auto smash—” His voice trailed off; his eyes had fastened on the ten-gallon cowboy hat that lay near the desk on a chair. “Merlini,” he said slowly, “the Major always wore a hat. One of those. Sensitive about his baldness. I suspect he wore one to bed. But there was none with the body or in his car. I forgot to tell you that. And this is the one the Major was wearing last night.”
Joy paid no attention to the hat. She insisted, her voice thin and tight, “What about the accident?”
Keith turned to her and told her what he had told us. I watched Merlini pick up the hat.
“Gaudy,” he said, half to himself, “but not too neat.”
There were more than the usual number of dents in the hat’s crown, and a smudge of dirt on its gray surface. Merlini turned the hat in his hands and looked inside the crown. For a brief second he hesitated, motionless, saw me watching him, and then said, a shade too calmly, “Size seven and three-eighths.” He placed the hat carefully back upon the chair as he had found it.
Merlini began investigating cupboards and drawers. Suddenly he interrupted Keith’s recital. “Miss Pattison, you said you, were looking for a will. Did you find one?”
“No. I had just started to look when I heard you outside.”
“Sure that was all you were looking for?”
Her eyes narrowed slightly. “Why, yes. O£ course.”
“What were you intending to do with that bull-hook?”
“The bull-hook? I–I don’t know. I was frightened. I saw the three of you outside, watching the trailer. I couldn’t see who you were. Then I heard you at the door. I’d noticed the hook lying on the desk, and I picked it up almost without thinking as I started for the wardrobe.”
Merlini took it from the floor. “It’s not yours, then? Is it the Major’s?”
“No,” said Joy, “it’s Irma King’s. I don’t know why it should be—”
Keith said, “I do. Pauline had it when she came in here with the Major last night. I saw her.”
“Um,” Merlini said meaninglessly. Then to Joy, “Just where did you look for this will besides in the desk there?”
“No place,” she answered at once. “I’d just started on that when you—”
She stopped, seeing that Merlini had stopped paying attention. He had suddenly dropped on his knees to examine some shiny particles that sparkled in the light on the linoleum floor. He looked up at Keith and Joy.
“Did Major Hannum wear glasses?”
Keith said, “Reading glasses. Pair of horn-rimmed ones. Carried them in his breast pocket. Why?”
Without answering, Merlini took one of his business envelopes from his pocket and carefully brushed the dozen or so small bits of broken glass into it. He folded down the flap without sealing it and placed it on the desk top. He took Joy’s flashlight from her, went to the window with the cut pane, and snapped the light on. He held it at an oblique angle and peered closely at the window glass, moving his head slowly from side to side.
“Miss Pattison,” he asked, “where were you last night between ten-thirty and eleven o’clock?”
Keith started to say, “Now look here, Merlini. What do you mean by—”
“Act your age, Keith,” Merlini cut in. “You’ll hear that question fired at a lot of people from now on. Well, Miss Pattison?”
She frowned. “That would be during the concert. I was in my trailer getting ready for bed. We had a long jump this morning, and nearly everyone turned in as soon as they could. Then at one o’clock when we heard about the Major—”
The latch on the trailer door behind us clicked over.
We all started with guilty apprehension as the door slammed inward. A girl came through. She wore a white satin cloak over pink tights. Merlini and I immediately recognized an old friend, our determined lady of mystery — Miss Mildred Christine.
Mac Wiley, behind her, stopped halfway through the door, one hand on the jamb, staring at us.
Joy’s startled half-whisper said, “Pauline!”
Mildred Christine-Pauline’s words shot at us like a rapid staccato burst of machine-gun fire.
“What does this mean? What are you two—”
Only Joy and Keith had registered on her consciousness until then. Now she saw Merlini, and it stopped her cold.
Mac came to life briefly. “What the hell goes on here?” he blurted. “This trailer is supposed to be locked. What — why—” He bogged down.
“I’m afraid I owe you an apology, Miss — Christine,” Merlini said gravely. “We’re guilty of an illegal entry, a custom that is, unfortunately, all too common.”