“Her arms always return to their former position,” the lecturer explained, “because, having been in this condition now for nearly two years, Mademoiselle Christine’s muscles have become set to a certain extent. If any of you have any questions to ask I will be happy to try to answer them for you.” He stepped forward and drew the curtain to behind him.
“Do you have any questions?” I asked Merlini.
“Yes,” he said, “I do; but I doubt if the lecturer is the man to ask. I still want to know who the girl is. I’ve a feeling in my bones that this Millie Christine is not the one we had the pleasure of meeting. Did you like the illusion?”
“If I didn’t know it as an illusion, and if I failed to realize, as many of this audience seem to, that no bona-fide scientific marvel of this caliber would ever be on tour in a side show, it would give me the creeps, the fantods, and the willies. Look at that woman over there. She’s a kind, sympathetic soul; and it’s obvious that she is feeling sorry as hell for poor Miss Christine. It’s a bit thick, isn’t it?”
“I know,” Merlini said. “He played it straight from start to finish. The illusion is so perfect that it would still be a socko draw if it were announced as an illusion instead of as the real thing. But the lecturer is a circus man and a showman. The townspeople, to him, are chumps, linguistically and literally. It hasn’t occurred to him that he’s doing his bit toward making science our modern superstition. If it did, he’d say, ‘What the hell! My job is to pack ’em in.’ He has, of course, a notable precedent in Phineas Taylor Barnum. I think, however, that I will tell the Major that the Carrel-Lindbergh patter is not only a little too far over the edge, but quite unnecessary as well.”
Gus, who stood beside us, said, “Then I was right. You haven’t heard. Farmer started to tell you a few minutes ago that you won’t be seeing Major Hannum this trip — or any other.”
Merlini turned on his heel, sharply. “Why not?” His words were definitely apprehensive.
Gus said, “They shipped his body back to Indiana this afternoon. He was killed last night. He—”
The lecturer led the crowd in our direction. He spoke to Gus. “Let’s go. You’re next.”
“Right,” Gus said, and to us, “Sorry. See you later.”
“The woman who sees all, knows all, and tells all,” Merlini commented thoughtfully. “I do wish that wasn’t just another snare and delusion.”
Chapter Three
Gun Talk
“If he’s old enough to enjoy the show, lady — he’s old enough to need a ticket.”
Merlini watched Gus mount the low platform before the mitt camp and stand waiting beside his wife as the lecturer rattled off his introductory talk. “Ross,” he said after a moment, “the Mighty Hannum Shows have attractions that aren’t mentioned in the advertising.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “The way things are shaping up, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised but what I’ll have to report to your wife that you’ve run off and joined a circus for the duration of the summer.”
“That’s quite possible,” he said seriously. “The side show could use a magician. And you can sign on as a punk around the elephants. Come on. Let’s go ask questions.” (A punk is anything young, as a boy.)
We turned toward the entrance and went out just as Gus tied a blindfold over his wife’s eyes and launched into the second-sight act that sold Madame Stella as a seer and preceded the later request for “the small sum of twenty-five cents more that entitles each and every one of you to a personal horoscope, a private reading, and a full and complete answer to any question concerning the Future, Love, Travel, Business—”
Before the side-show top and the line of violently colored, somewhat Dali-esque banners that pictured a “positively unequaled display of Believe-It-or-Not freaks and oddities from the four corners of the earth” stood a raised platform, flanked on either side by an umbrella-covered ticket box. A talker walked back and forth on the platform, mopping his brow with a damp handkerchief and trying with little success to get a reaction from the scattered groups of townsfolk who stood stolidly watching him.
“Lot-lice,” Merlini said. “Folks who stand around with their hands in their pockets and don’t buy.”
On the opposite side of the midway, reading from left to right, were a frozen custard stand, a grab joint, the ticket wagon, a grease joint, and a juice joint. In the center of the midway on the left a pitchman was selling balloons, whips, and replicas of Charlie McCarthy. We turned right, toward the canopied marquee above which, in ornately serifed letters, were the words, Main Entrance, THE MIGHTY HANNUM COMBINED SHOWS.
“This,” Merlini said, determined to see that I was properly educated, “is the front door. And the performer’s section of the lot behind the big top is called the back yard.”
As we came up to the entrance, we were accosted by a short and extremely wide man who had been constructed, through some error, according to architectural specifications intended for a hippopotamus. He held out a large hairy paw and said, “Tickets, please. You’ll have to hurry. The big show is now going on.”
“Is Mac Wiley around?” Merlini asked.
The hippopotamus gave us a sour and speculative once-over.
“No,” Merlini said, apparently reading the man’s mind, “no attachments, no damage suits, no shakedowns. I just want—”
One of the two men sitting inside the enclosure on folding camp chairs suddenly hopped to his feet and stepped briskly forward, hand out. “Well, you old son of a gun! Come in! Come in! Been wondering why you hadn’t showed up before now.” He took Merlini’s hand in both of his own and pumped at it enthusiastically.
He was a lean, wiry individual with graying, brittle hair and bushy black eyebrows that jutted out with a Mephistophelean twist above a knowing and extraordinarily penetrating pair of small bright eyes. The hard muscles of his face were covered with a tough and weatherbeaten hide that had seldom been indoors, the leathery tan of which was spotted with an overlapping accumulation of darker freckles. A limp felt hat was pushed far back on his head.
“You couldn’t keep me away, Mac,” said Merlini. “How are you? Meet a good friend of mine, Ross Harte. This is J. MacAllister Wiley, legal adjuster extraordinary technically known as the fixer, or the patch.”
“Glad to know you. Any friend of Merlini’s—” Mac nodded at the other man, who had risen from his chair, a hatless young man with a rumpled thatch of sandy hair and an intelligent, worried face that I noticed grew suddenly intent at that first mention of Merlini’s name.
“Don’t think you know Atterbury here, do you?” Mac said. “Keith Atterbury, press agent on the lot. Young squirt. Since your time. But he writes a nice notice. Sit down, Merlini, and tell me about yourself. It’s been years.”
Atterbury acknowledged the introductions somewhat perfunctorily and pulled up two more chairs. He lit a fresh cigarette from the end of the butt he held and watched Merlini with a nervous and calculating air.
“Last time I saw you—” Mac pattered rapidly. “Wait. I know. Night of the blowdown on the Hagen show.” His thin-lipped mouth spread in a wide grin, and he addressed me. “The Great Merlini was working the kid-show and the blow hit us before the boys could finish double-staking. The top came down while Merlini was floating a lady in midair. One of the customers that I had to argue out of a damage suit — he got conked by a falling quarter pole — said afterward, ‘Why in hell didn’t that damned magician use some levitation on the tent?’ Ho! Ho!”