Then a red-coated man with a whistle on a cord around his neck and a harassed look on his face popped out and spoke rapidly to Steve. The latter turned and hurried past me to the trailer, pushed through the group, and knocked at the door.
“Tex Mayo,” he called when the door had opened, “can you come now? Walter wants to run your announcement in next.”
Tex stepped out, his face grim, and walked with Steve across to where his pony had been tethered to a stake near the entrance. Keith came through the door after him, looked around searchingly, and then hurried toward me.
“What’s the verdict?” I asked.
“Not so good. Concussion. Weak from loss of blood. Still unconscious. Have you seen Joy?”
“No,” I told him. “Do you think—”
But he dashed off, running back along the line of trailers to one at the end.
I went into the big top, where the elephants in the center ring were standing on their heads. I half expected to see Merlini out there between the rings where Pauline had fallen, searching the ground for clues; but he was not there, nor, as far as I could see, anywhere within the tent, unless he had taken a seat in the stands with the crowd.
I watched the elephants take their final bow and lumber out. As the man at the mike made an announcement concerning the Wild West after-show, several cowboys rode madly in, circled the hippodrome track, and came to attention, lined up on the opposite side facing the reserved seats. “And now,” the announcer went on, “the Mighty Hannum Combined Shows take pleasure in presenting that world-famous western screen star, TEX MAYO, in person, with his wonder pony, BLAZE!”
Bugles blared, and Tex made a dashing entrance, standing in his stirrups. He circled the arena once, and then waited in the center ring.
“Tex Mayo,” the announcer blared, “with his cowboys and cowgirls will appear in the Mighty Hannum Wild West Rodeo, presented in this arena immediately after the big show is over! The ticket sellers will now pass among you with tickets for this sensational, scintillating cavalcade of daredevil roughriders, world-renowned rodeo champions, trick ropers, sharpshooters, and whip-crackers in a kaleidoscopic panorama of thrills and chills — a fast-riding, sharpshooting re-creation of the Old West. Tickets are fifteen cents to all!”
I didn’t hear the rest of it because I was watching two performers who had come in, passed me, and were walking out on the track toward the end ring on the right — Steve and Joy Pattison, who was now dressed like Steve in blue tights. They left their slop-shoes at the ringside, stepped to the center of the ring, waited as the Wild West aggregation thundered off; and then, hand over hand, climbed a rope toward a double trapeze that hung above. A second pair of performers did the same in the other end ring. An attendant on the ground below pulled at a rope that set the apparatus swinging, just as Keith Atterbury hurried past me and seemed about to run out after them. But he stopped and watched with a white face.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I tried to find Joy to ask her to cut this traps act. I looked all over. Where did she come from? Did you see?”
“No. They came in together just a moment ago. But what—”
“That damned swinging ankle-drop. I don’t think after what’s happened that either Steve or Joy are in any condition—” His voice trailed off as he watched them intently, nervously.
Steve hung from his knees, gripping Joy’s ankles. The trapeze swung in a wide arc back and forth. The bass drum in the band boomed; and Joy dropped, on an outward swing, twenty feet through space! And then the coiled rope that streamed after her, attached to one ankle, pulled her up short. She swung back in a much longer arc, her head just clearing the ground.
Keith relaxed, and simultaneously I jumped. Merlini’s voice came suddenly from over my shoulder. “A murderer running wild,” he said, “and things like that scheduled twice daily. Ross, it gives me cold shivers. Murder on a circus, as I’m beginning to realize, is as easy as breathing and damned hard to prove. A minor alteration in the rigging, a half-cut rope, this matter of the lights—”
“Where,” I demanded, “did you disappear to?”
“Oh, I’ve been around. Discovering things. Come outside where we can talk. There’s much too much band music here,”
I followed him outside, side-stepping a troupe of clowns that was on its way in. I had several questions all loaded and aimed, but he fired first. And he scored a bull’s-eye.
“Quickly!” he said. “How soon after the accident did Joy Pattison put in an appearance?”
I blinked at that one. “Just how,” I asked, “do you happen to know that that is the whopping big question that’s before the house?”
“Answer me!” he commanded impatiently. “She’ll be out here in a minute.”
“She didn’t show up until just before she went out there for that traps act. And Keith was buzzing around excitedly hunting for her, wanting, so he says, to persuade her to skip it. He still seems to think she’s on the spot, though it looks to me as if he was calling his shots wrong. He predicted that Pauline would have a try for Joy, and instead of that—”
I stopped. Keith and Joy came from the tent, and Merlini beckoned to them.
“Miss Pattison,” he said, going straight to the point, “I’m conducting a little private census of my own. Will you please tell me just where you were when the lights went out?”
Joy’s arm was linked in Keith’s, and when that question hit her she jumped. He felt it, and his head jerked quickly toward her, his eyes startled.
“You are a magician, aren’t you?” Joy said, striving to make her voice steady. “What makes you ask that?”
Merlini frowned down at her. “I’m asking that of a lot of people, starting now. I didn’t expect results so soon.”
Joy hesitated a moment. “I might as well confess,” she said. “I’m afraid I was in another trailer again where I shouldn’t have been. Pauline’s.”
“Oh, damn!” Keith said. “You were looking for that will!”
“Yes, I was. I still think it’s there, too.”
“But you still haven’t found it?” Merlini asked.
She shook her head. “I didn’t have time. I went to my trailer after I left you and changed. Then I saw Pauline go on for her perch act, and — well, I thought if I could find that will, we’d have some evidence she and Mac would have a hard time explaining away. I knew I had a good seven or eight minutes, but — I’m a lousy burglar, I guess. I got caught there too. I heard some shouting outside, and then someone pulled the door open. I just had time to make the wardrobe closet again before Tex carried Pauline in. Then everybody came. Keith brought a doctor, and Mac came in, and I had to stick there until they had gone. I kept the door open a crack and finally, after Mac left — I had to take a chance; I was due to go on and would be missed — I stepped out.”
“The doctor saw you?” Keith scowled.
“Yes, but I think I misled him. He was working on Pauline at the bed. I put one hand on the knob of the outside door, slammed the wardrobe door and, as he turned, said, ‘Oh, excuse me,’ and backed out as if I had walked into the wrong trailer.”
Keith groaned. “That tears it,” he said. “When that doctor—”
“No, Keith,” Merlini said, “that doesn’t tear it. If the doctor wasn’t fooled it gives Joy an alibi.” He turned to Joy. “There’s another thing I want to ask. After you had left the Major’s trailer and just before Pauline left, she said some very odd things. She said, for instance, that she had something to tell the Sheriff, something that would make an investigation of her father’s death unnecessary and would put the Sheriff’s name in every paper in the country. Can you tell me what she meant, particularly by that last statement?”