Merlini consulted his watch. “Not long. But you can reach me at my home until about eight o’clock.”
“Thanks.” She put the bills in her purse, turned and strode through the door into the shop. We heard her footsteps cross the floor beyond, heard the buzzer as the outer door began to open, and then heard it gently close again. She came back at once. Merlini smiled — but only temporarily.
Miss Christine was agitated. “Is there a rear exit here?” she asked. “I’d rather not—”
Then she saw the open window and the fire escape beyond. She took half a dozen steps, put one hand on the window sill, and went through the opening with the fluid grace of an acrobat. Before any of us had recovered enough to speak, she had gone. It was rather like one of Merlini’s tricks.
Merlini raised an eyebrow at me and then moved quickly to his desk in the corner, picked an envelope from a pigeonhole; sealed it, and scaled it at Burt. “Take this out and drop it in the mail chute. Keep both eyes open. And report back as to the nature of the menace that seems to be lurking in our corridor.”
Burt asked, “Why pick on me?” But he went.
The back issues of Billboard Magazine, the showman’s bible, were stacked high on the filing cabinets by the desk. Merlini took down the top half-dozen copies, separated one, and flipped through it rapidly as if he knew what he wanted.
I crossed to the window, leaned out, and looked down. Mildred Christine was just vanishing through another window four flights below.
“Can’t I do something?” I asked. “Tail the gal, perhaps?”
Merlini was preoccupied. “What?” he said.
I repeated my question.
He gazed thoughtfully at his magazine for a moment, and said, “No. That won’t be necessary.” He removed the page that had caught his interest, folded it carefully, and placed it in his billfold. “I think I know — yes, Burt?”
“Corridor peaceful and deserted,” the latter reported, “except for the guy that ducked into the men’s washroom down the hall just as I went out. The door didn’t quite close behind him, so I figured maybe I was being watched. I proceeded to go powder my nose, but he took cover just as I got there. So I didn’t get a look at much except his feet. Number nines or thereabouts. I don’t suppose that’s a lot of help?”
“It’s a beginning,” Merlini said. “We’ll go on from there, and we’ll give him something to think about. We’ll close up shop — nearly time anyhow. Burt will go first, wait in the lobby downstairs, and sit tight. Ross and I will stall a few minutes, then lock up and follow after. That will give him a vanishing lady to worry about. Burt will see what he does about it. Tail him when he comes down.”
Burt put on his tie and went out. Merlini and I locked up and followed a few minutes later. I glanced along the corridor out of the corner of one eye. The washroom door was suspiciously ajar. Merlini didn’t appear to notice, but he gave me a wink and said, for the benefit of any listening ears. “That vanishing cabinet will have to be worked over. It’s impractical as it stands. We put the girl in; she disappears and then doesn’t come back. Won’t do at all. Can’t use a new girl every time. It’ll have to work both ways …”
He kept that up until the elevator door had closed behind us.
We took a taxi, made a stop at my apartment on East 41st Street while I packed a toothbrush, and then went on to Merlini’s at 13 ½ Washington Square North. The schedule we planned consisted of a cold shower apiece, a change of clothes, cocktail, dinner.
Merlini was in the shower, and I was working with the cocktail shaker when the phone rang. I took it.
The phone said, “Burt speaking. Ask the boss what I do now. I’m at the drugstore, Eighth and Fifth, just around the corner. The subject tailed you and I tailed him. All we lacked coming down Fifth Avenue in our three taxis was a parade permit, confetti, and a band. He’s in the park across from you.”
“Hold everything.” I put the phone down, stepped to the window without going too near, and peered out between the curtains. The running splash of the shower had stopped, and Merlini asked, “Yes, Ross?”
Across the street, not directly opposite, but somewhat, to the left, a man sat on a park bench. He held a newspaper spread before him that concealed all the upper part of his body except the dark felt hat that projected above its top edge. I suspected that his eyes were not on the print, but rather were aimed in my direction, surveying the house through the narrow space between the paper’s top and the lower edge of the hat’s brim.
I told Merlini what Burt had reported and what I saw.
“Perhaps he thinks we cut the girl up in little pieces,” Merlini said, “and brought her—”
I interrupted, jumping for the phone. “He’s shoving off. Want Burt to carry on?”
Merlini hurried from the bathroom, toweling himself and leaving wet tracks across the carpet. He looked out the window. “Yes,” he said, “have him do that.”
“Step on it, Burt. He’s coming your way.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” Burt said. The receiver clicked.
A half-hour later, as we were about to leave in search of a restaurant, our special investigator phoned again. “Operative Q-X9 reporting,” he said. “The subject proceeded to 19 West 31st Street. Business building. Small. The lobby directory lists the following: The Sylph Brassière Co.; Gerald L. Kaufman, Architect; A. Shapiro, Dresses; and The Acme Detective Agency, Martin O’Halloran, Prop. Tell Merlini I think so, too.”
I relayed that and added, “Burt thinks our man is a brassière salesman. Now what?”
“Tell him to eat and then wait for us at the shop. As soon as we’ve dined, we’ll pick up the car, load the luggage, and head for Albany.”
That wasn’t at all what I expected. Merlini saw it on my face. “Go on, tell him,” he repeated.
I did.
Burt didn’t get it either. “Doesn’t sound right to me;” he commented. “Merlini not feeling well?”
“Too well. He’s master-minding again, pretending he’s way ahead of us. Wants us to think he’s solved the curious case of the Vanishing Lady and the Disappointed Shadow. But don’t believe all the rumors you hear. We’ll be seeing you.”
Merlini grinned. “Your tactics are crude. I’ll tell you one thing, though. I’ll tell you who the real Millie Christine was. Knowing that, you may be able to figure out who Miss H is. I did.”
“Well?” I said suspiciously, afraid with good reason that any information he gave away free at this point was going to be cryptic.
“The real Millie Christine,” he said, “was one person who would have had a really practical use for a Headless Lady Illusion. She was a freak in Barnum’s Museum — a two-headed girl. Come on. I’m starved.”[1]
It wasn’t until dinner was over and we had started uptown in Merlini’s car that I was able successfully to get him back on the subject.
“Why don’t you send Burt to the convention with your bag of tricks?” I said. “We’ll stay here and snoop.”
“I thought you wanted those proofs checked?”
“Hell with ’em,” I said. “I want to know—”
“So do I,” he grinned. “Convention first. Check proofs on Monday. And Tuesday we snoop. In Waterboro, New York.”
“Waterboro, New York. Oh, I see.”
Merlini grinned again. “You do not,” he contradicted.
We parked the car and went on up to the shop and the remaining surprise that lay in wait for us that night. Burt supplied it the moment we entered.
“Thriving little business we have here,” he said. “It flourishes even while we sleep. Like an automat.”
“What,” Merlini asked, “does that mean?”
1
Millie-Christine (1851–1912) were really two Negro girls, Siamese twins of the ordinary Chang and Eng type, whose manager always spoke of them and often advertised them as one girl with two heads. They were given musical instruction, one girl singing alto, the other soprano; and their vocal duets and performances upon musical instruments were, from all accounts, quite creditable. They also appeared in side shows with Adam Forepaugh’s, Coup’s, Batcheller & Doris’, Barnum’s, and other circuses, as well as making a European tour.
The closest nature has ever come to a freak having two heads on one body, which lived and was on exhibition, was the Locano prodigy, Johann and Jacob Tocci, born in 1881, in Turin, Italy. They had one body, one pair of legs; but above the sixth rib the body became double with two heads and two pairs of arms.