“Later when we arrived on the lot O’Halloran was all set to announce his identity and carry on, but I perversely refrained from making any general announcement of having found an empty trailer, and he couldn’t without arousing suspicion, quiz me on the subject. Then, while he was impatiently champing at the bit, Captain Schafer and his minions arrived with a boy who had heard the shot; I announced that the Headless Lady had not vanished, but was murdered — and the fat is in the fire, sizzling like anything!
“Paula’s body hidden in his car was more dangerous than the sword that threatened Damocles. O’Halloran couldn’t do a thing but hope like hell that darkness would fall before the troopers started a search. His luck held that far, and when nearly everyone was in the cookhouse he got his chance to swipe the Swede’s sword. In the darkness behind the side-show top he hacked off Paula’s head and transferred the body and other things to my car. You’ll remember that his car was parked right next to mine.”
“And,” I added, “he placed the money in the mummy because it wasn’t likely that a search would include the interior of a corpse on exhibition.”
“But he didn’t put the head there,” Schafer said. “And my men are out there now trying to find it. They haven’t uncovered it yet, or I’d have heard about it. I wish you’d look into your crystal, Merlini, and give me the answer to that one.”
Merlini replied, “I rather think that tomorrow, after the show moves, if you’ll do a little excavating you may find it. I don’t think he put the head in the mummy because it was just possible that someone might stumble on that hiding place accidentally. O’Halloran would rather take a chance on losing the money than have Paula’s head found and lose his own. He cut off the head because he didn’t have the time nor tools to bury the whole body, and even so he couldn’t have done it without leaving too many traces. The head was less of a problem; he could manage to bury — wait, that’s bad too. Burial is better than the mummy, though there’d still be some danger of accidental discovery. It’s not perfect enough, and O’Halloran was a perfectionist. I don’t think he’d have let the head leave his possession until he’d removed that bullet. It must still be in his car.”
“But we searched it,” Schafer said. “Besides, if there were a hiding place in the car for the head, he’d have put the money there too.”
“You may have something there, Captain,” Merlini said. “The first time you searched the car you didn’t know what you were looking for. Look again. Look for a place where he could have put the head, but one in which it would be inadvisable to put the paper money.”
“I’ll be damned,” Schafer said. He strode to the door and put his head out. “Stevens!” he called. “Beat it in to town. O’Halloran’s car is parked in front of the jail. Give it a good going over — and look under the hood![10]
“O’Halloran,” Gavigan commented, “was certainly efficient enough. He got rid of the body and got you jailed all at one and the same time. Then, since he couldn’t follow his plan of chasing after Paula, he dealt another hand and tried to work the same stunt using the Duke. O’Halloran probably intended to warn the Duke to lam so he could appear to go chasing after him as soon as he’d lifted the money from the mummy again. But the Duke, who had taken a powder, gets himself caught and leaves O’Halloran high and dry.”
Merlini nodded. “Yes, and even then he still thought he was pretty safe because he only knew about one of the boners he had made — the gloves. Harte and I barged in on him in the Sheriff’s office when we were escaping and found him examining those paraffin molds. I suspect he was wondering if he could fake some blue specks on the right-hand mold and scrape them off the other. That was our tough luck. If he’d had time to attempt that we’d have had him.”
Keith said, “And at the finish he swiped a leaf from your book, Merlini, and desperately tried misdirection to make us think someone else had crowned him. He told us someone had taken his gun and fired, because once again there was a telltale bullet in the victim’s head.”
“Yes, and the blood on his face was from a self-inflicted cut. The case of the Headless Lady had two headless women and a headless man. But the murderer had a head and used it nearly every minute.”
“If guillotining,” Gavigan added, “was used hereabouts rather than electrocution, the case would end with a headless murderer after all.”
“And that,” Merlini said, “reminds me of a story Earl Chapin May tells. The Mabie Bros. show was playing through Texas, season of 1857. A booted, spurred, large-hatted sheriff came to the ticket wagon one afternoon and said. ‘See heah, sah. I’ve got a triple hangin’ on today. They’s a heap of folks driv into town from as much as fohty miles aroun’. They’s fond of hangin’s like they is of circuses. ’Less you give tickets to me and my prisoners, I’ll have my hangin’ when you open yoh dawes and I’ll get the crowd. I know my people!’
“The ticket agent was a practical psychologist too. The sheriff and his prisoners saw the performance, but the management wasn’t passing out paper for nothing. Near the end of the show when the concert was announced, ‘tickets for which will be sold by the gentlemanly agents who will pass among you,’ the announcer added: ‘Ladeez and gen-tul-men, immediately following our after-show the hanging will take place at the first big tree to the right as you pass out of our tent!’
“They all stayed for the concert and the hanging was held as advertised!”
“Getting back to a more cheerful subject and speaking again of heads,” Keith said, “I’m reminded of the fact that two are better than one — or, for that matter, none — and does anyone know where I can find a Justice of the Peace at this time of night?”
“Captain,” Merlini smiled, “can you produce one from thin air? It’s a conjuring trick you troopers always seem to be able to do whenever you make an arrest for speeding. It’s amazed me more than once.”
“I guess,” Schafer admitted, “that it can be arranged.”
A half-hour later in the only tent that still remained standing, the menagerie top, the personnel of the Mighty Hannum Combined Shows attended a wedding. Lohengrin was supplied by a band whose repertoire no longer included Suppé’s “Cavalry March,” and incidental sound effects were furnished by the “strange and wonderful congress of curious jungle beasts and zoological wonders” who paced their cages nervously, still apprehensive of the now-diminishing storm outside.
Once, when it was the bride’s cue to say “l do,” Rubber, the smallest elephant, lifted her trunk and answered for Joy. On circus lots they still ask Keith it he’s quite sure which of them he married.
10
Schafer’s suspicion proved correct. The head, containing a bullet that matched O’Halloran’s gun, was found beneath the hood. Gavigan’s guess that the bullet might possibly have ricocheted inside the skull also proved good. The bullet, entering the right temple at an oblique angle, had made a nearly complete semi-circle inside the skull over the vertex, producing a gutter on the surface of the cerebral hemispheres, tearing the dura, and perforating the longitudinal sinus. The bullet was found in the petrous portion of the left temporal bone with its base upward.