Merlini grinned. “I couldn’t let the lady down, Mac. That was a night, wasn’t it?”
“It was. The bulls stampeded into the next county, and when the attachments and damage suits began to come in, the show folded then and there. Don’t know what either of us was doing on it. It was a traveling crash-pile anyhow.”
“Remember the mountaineer boy who showed up in Hillsvale, Kentucky, wanting a job?” asked. Merlini.
Wiley grinned all over. “Will I ever forget him,” he said, chuckling. “Tell them about it.”
Merlini addressed Atterbury and myself. “Old man Hagen had bought a lion from the Robbins show at the start of the season, sight unseen. They guaranteed him to be as gentle as a lamb. That was an exaggeration; he was as mild as a full-grown typhoon. The cat would hardly let an animal man on the lot get near enough to the cage to feed him. When the hillbilly arrived asking for a job, Hagen, whose practical jokes were famous, said, ‘Why, yes. Guess I could use a young fellow like you. Tell you what. You go over and clean out that lion’s cage. If you do a good job, I’ll put you on.’ The kid went off and then — nothing happened at all. Finally Hagen began to worry. He was afraid that perhaps the kid had tried to enter the cage. So he investigated. He found the boy actually in the cage, and calmly doing a good workmanlike job of cleaning it out. But the door was wide open and the lion was gone!”
“Luckily we cornered the cat,” Wiley added, “before it chewed anybody, though we had to shoot it to get it. Hagen didn’t as much as think of another practical joke for nearly a month. Reminds me of the time—”
For the next five minutes Merlini and Wiley, ignoring Atterbury and myself, exchanged a rapid barrage and counter-barrage of reminiscences. It was interesting, but largely historical; and there were several times when, in spite of the glossary of circus terms Merlini had already shoved at me, I got completely lost. Finally, their cavalcade of memory returned to the current date, and Merlini asked, “Good show this year, Mac?”
“I dunno. Ask Keith. He’s the P.A. I haven’t seen anything but small pieces of a circus performance in fifteen years.” He glanced at me, saw the incredulous look on my face, and added, grinning, “Nothing odd about that. I knew a clown once who never saw a complete show until after he retired at seventy-three.”
A neatly dressed stoutish man came in from the midway and approached us with a smile. “I just picked up a couple of dandies, Keith,” he said. “Seam-squirrels and circus-bees. Nice.”
Mac grinned. “I’d say they were lousy myself. When you hunt for them it’s called ‘reading your shirt’” Mac turned to us. “This is Mr. Stuart Towne, a First-of-May visiting author. He’s spending a week or two with the show. Says he’s going to do a circus murder mystery, but he spends most of his time collecting words. The man with the high pockets, Towne, is the Great Merlini in person, and this is his friend, Ross Harte.”
Towne acknowledged the introduction and then turned back to Mac. “The words will come in handy,” he said, “but I’ve been picking up murder material too. That single-edged grub-hoe the working men use would be a nice original weapon. Never saw it used in fiction.”
“I’ve seen it used in real life though,” Mac said. He rattled off an account of a circus murder by a drunken prop-man while I noticed that Towne, like many another author, didn’t look the part. He was middle-aged, blue of chin, and altogether too ordinary looking. You wouldn’t have given him a second glance in a crowd, though once you had talked to him you did just that. Behind the commonplace, rather trite face, you soon detected the busy clockwork of a clever and active brain. His character at first seemed as colorless as his face; but as I came to know him, I found that it had an annoying chameleonlike way of appearing to change, as soon as you were on the point of defining it, into something quite different. He chewed gum incessantly.
When Mac had finished, Merlini, whose interest in murder since he went in for a sideline of crime has been boundless, said, “The grub-hoe’s a weapon, Mr. Towne. And here’s a method. You can use it nicely on a clown. Clown white, a preparation of pre-Elizabethan origin, is a mixture of zinc oxide, lard, and tincture of benzoin, dusted over with talcum. The great Humpty-Dumpty pantomimist, George L. Fox, and others are said to have died because they mistakenly used bismuth in place of benzoin. Use any poison that can be absorbed through the skin, and there you are. No charge.” (Merlini’s formula for clown-white dates from his own circus days; it now is usually compounded of zinc oxide, olive oil, and glycerine.)
“Thanks,” Towne said. “There’s another thing you could give me, if it’s etiquette to ask. I saw you vanish an elephant at the old Hippodrome ten years ago, and I’ve been annoyed ever since. I might be able to use the method to vanish a murderer sometime.”
“That trick was designed to vanish an elephant,” Merlini smiled evasively. “Vanishing a murderer by that particular method would be like killing a fly with a sledge hammer. And besides, you do pretty well on your own. You got off a very neat vanish of a corpse in The Empty Coffin.”
“He gave me an autographed copy of that,” Mac put in. “I’m looking forward to reading it this winter. There’s a circus saying, Mr. Towne, that circus people do their sleeping in the winter. That goes for reading, too. There never seems to be time for it on the road.”
“By the way, Mac,” Merlini put in, “that book title reminds me. What is this that I hear about the Major?”
Mac sobered a bit. “Auto smashup. Tough break for the show. Happened last night just outside of Kings Falls; his car hit a bridge abutment. Pretty bad smash. He was dead when they found him.”
The fat ticket taker behind Mac, engaged in counting a pile of ticket stubs, muttered something half under his breath. Mac turned.
“Oh, sorry, Cal. Merlini, this is Everett Lovejoy, better known as ‘Calamity.’ Our front-door superintendent. Pay no attention to him at all. He thinks the show is jinxed — as always. Every cloud has a black border.”
“Well,” Calamity scowled, “what would you call it? First it’s mine strikes, then the Major and now — you hear that band in the big top? Suppé’s ‘Light Cavalry March,’ for God sakes! Where has that boss windjammer been all his life? You know as well as I do, first time that was played on a circus lot they had a train wreck and sixteen people killed. Merle Evans played it once on the Miller Bros. 101 Ranch Outfit. I was there. We had a blowdown and thirty-eight killed. He played it just once after that, and a cornet player died soon’s he’d finished. I got a damn good notion to blow right now.”
“Forget it,” Mac said heavily. “You’re twice as superstitious as a tribe of Ubangis.” He frowned. “That is a little thick, though. Our bandmaster’s a Johnny-Come-Lately. Maybe he doesn’t know. I’ll speak to him. Some of the performers are apt to get a mite nervous.”
“Sure, that’s just it,” added Calamity. “And break their necks. Accidents always come in threes. We’ve had the first. That leaves two to go.” He scowled, then said almost inaudibly, “If it was an accident.”
Mac caught it, though. “What,” he said with a sudden sharp bite in his voice, “do you mean by that?”
There was a short uneasy silence until Calamity answered, “Oh, nothin’ at all. I just don’t understand why the Major left the lot at that time of night with a blow comin’ on, where the hell he could have been goin’, and why he piled up — a cautious fussbudget like him. With that bum ticker of his he never drove faster than a trot, and he was so afraid he’d scratch the cream-colored paint job on that new sixteen-cylinder Cadillac, he moved it around like he was truckin’ a load of eggs. He musta been goin’ sixty-five to—”