Death from Nowhere (12 page)

As he said that Don Diavolo acted. He stepped backward into the trailer and slammed the door. Inspector Church, hearing that, was reminded of the sound a certain elevator door had made that afternoon when it slammed.

“Surround that car!” he roared. “Hurry, dammit!”

The detectives jumped, but as they did so they heard the crash of breaking glass that came from a window on the trailer's other side. They split into two groups and rounded the trailer on both sides. They heard the footsteps before them, running wildly.

“He's making for the car!” Butterfield's voice shouted.

The detectives ran, cursing as they connected with the guyropes and tentpegs that tripped them in the dark. Ahead of them someone cried, “I've got him! I—” the voice stopped abruptly. When the pursuers reached the man he was on his knees, holding his head.

“That way!” he said, pointing, then fell face down on the grass.

Then, from ahead, close by the sideshow tent came the roar of a starting motor. Two bright headlights shot out across the ground as the car plunged forward, turned and curved toward the street.

A half dozen revolver shots cut the dark with flashes of orange flame. Another motor roared and a police car leaped forward, then a second.

Inspector Church lagged behind his men. He had learned by now that it was wise to be skeptical were Diavolo was concerned. He had not circled the trailer with his men but had remained behind a moment suspiciously eyeing the trailer door. It wasn't until he heard the breaking window and the running footsteps that he followed, still somewhat doubtfully after them. He broke into a run when he heard the car start and saw its headlights move. But then he stopped dead. He saw the man who had tried to stop the quarry and who had been knocked out, get quickly up from his prone position on the grass and start to move off.

Church, thinking he recognized the figure, dove for him in a flying tackle. Both men went down together. The Inspector who knew what he was about when it came to this sort of thing rolled free and drew his gun. But his opponent made no move to resist him.

Instead his voice said, “That wasn't necessary, Inspector. I never argue with a cop.”

It was The Horseshoe Kid.

“I thought so,” Church growled. “Brophy, Gianelli, Schultz!”

Chief Butterfield, who had done an expert but unexpected forward flip from feet to fanny over a guyrope nearby, picked himself up and answered Church's call for help.

Church howled, “Watch this guy!” Then he turned and raced back toward the trailer.

He found the closed door open, the trailer empty.

Church knew then how the hocus pocus had been worked. The mind reading routine again. Church remembered that Pat Collins had been in the crowd by the trailer — and Chan and Horseshoe. One of Diavolo's feature tricks was the apparent way he was able to transmit his thoughts to Pat Collins. Church hadn't the vaguest idea what sort of trickery was used, but he knew Diavolo could do it — he'd seen it happen before now.

The magician must have cued her somehow that he was going to make a break and added a hint as to the assistance he wanted. She had relayed it to Horseshoe, who had slipped away, stationed himself behind the trailer, and on the signal of the broken window, ran like hell as noisily as possible. The man who drove the car Church was willing to bet a week's pay, was Chan Chandar Manchu.

The Inspector's deductions were correct enough. Don Diavolo, at that moment, was watching the Inspector from the darkness a dozen yards away.

He saw two detectives return, men who had taken headers like Chief Butterfield and who hadn't reached the police cars before they roared off the lot. He heard the Inspector's angry orders and knew that in another few minutes, with the aid of the Lakewego police, Church would have a cordon of men around the lot and would be conducting an efficient search through it.

Don could leave, he knew, in the meantime; but once the Inspector had his reinforcements he might have trouble getting back on the lot again and that was going to be necessary. There was one thing that shouted for investigation, one thing that might yet pull the chestnuts from the fire. He had to find some way to evade the Inspector's search — and find it fast.

He could do that for some time yet just by keeping on the move. But the big show had been over fifteen minutes now and the Wild West after-show was nearly finished.

Church would examine every member of that audience as it left the lot and then begin on the performers and working-men. After that he'd take the trailers and trucks. Diavolo knew how thorough the man was. He could visualize the Inspector searching the menagerie and eyeing even the monkeys with dark suspicion.

A stolen clown costume and some makeup would get by but not for long enough. The other clowns would dash up and change once the show was over. One lone clown wandering about in his working clothes an hour or so after the performance was over would be far too suspicious a character. No — but wait. There was one clown.…

Don chuckled, turned on his heel and hurried quickly along behind the line of trailers keeping back where the darkness was deep. He found the truck fitted inside with double decker berths that served on a truck show like this as clown alley. It was at the moment, deserted, one or two of the Joeys were still working in the concert, the others had hurried up front to investigate the excitement and the shooting.

Hastily Don searched among the costumes inside until at last he found one that might serve. He donned it and grabbed a jar of makeup. His practiced fingers smeared the white over his face in record time, and then, with red and black grease pencils, he added the enormous grin, the high arched eyebrows, the flaming red nose that were identical with those a certain other clown had been wearing, a clown that Don was fairly certain was now in a police car chasing Chan!

Then he stepped out of the truck and went boldly in search of Inspector Church. He found him, by the trailer, issuing orders now to Doc Whipple and Schneider. “—men you can trust,” he was saying. “I want this place surrounded until Butterfield's men can get here.”

Diavolo circled and approached from the direction of the sideshow tent. And when he spoke his brisk official tone exactly matched the voice of the Federal dick, Mike Hailey.

“I collided with a tentpeg,” he said disgustedly. “I'm afraid he got away.”

Church snapped at him. “You get out front on that main entrance. Don't let anyone leave until I've given them the once over. Chief Butterfield will be back in a moment with men to help you.”

Don Diavolo said, “Yes, sir,” and left at once.

It was two hours before the last of the audience trickled through the tight police lines. The Inspector caught two fish in his net, Pat and Mickey Collins.

He growled at them ill-temperedly, gave them a quick questioning, and got a lot of “I don't know” answers.

“For two bright looking young ladies,” he said, “you sure act awful dumb. How would you like a few days in jail?”

“We don't know,” Pat said again.

“You'll know after this,” Church growled. “Butterfield. Have some of your boys take them in.”

Two more hours went by as Church, Butterfield and his men, and a certain Mike Hailey, vainly examined the circus people and searched the trucks, trailers and tents. It was three A.M. when the Inspector finally gave up and admitted to himself that Don Diavolo must have left the lot in the interval before the reinforcements arrived.

He left and returned with Chief Butterfield to the latter's headquarters to direct, by wire and phone, the widening search for the magician. He was so busy at this that it wasn't for yet another hour that he noticed Mike Hailey's absence. A lot of water had gone under the bridge in that hour — and something else too.

It was just after Church had searched the menagerie tent that the clown assistant he thought was the Federal detective had disappeared. He had lagged behind as the searching party left and, except for one of the elephants no one saw him as he ducked beneath the lion's cage and settled down to wait.

The minutes dragged slowly by in the dark tent. The bull boss came in a little later and rolled up for the night in a blanket near his elephants. But Diavolo remained awake, his ears alert for the slightest sound. He watched the cage of the black leopard two cars away. He could hear the animal moving restlessly as his padded feet paced the floor of the barred enclosure. Above Don's head the lion snored. Finally it happened.

He glimpsed the dark silhouettes of the two men that slipped in silently and he heard the soft thud as one of them blackjacked the sleeping animal trainer.

Diavolo waited. Presently a small pencil of light from a pocket flash appeared before the leopard's cage. The magician peered cautiously out. He saw the sudden thrust of a man's hand as it threw something between the bars. He heard the sudden quick leap of the jungle cat and the beginning of a snarl — then silence.

Don Diavolo knew that the thrown object had been Schneider's missing sixth arrow!

In a moment he heard a metallic creak as the cage door opened. Don Diavolo moved silently, the clown white on his face shining ghost-like in the dark.

He edged across the space between the lion's cage and the sidewall, lifted the canvas and rolled under. He wasn't going to tangle with those boys in the dark, not when one of them might still have the clawed, poisoned weapon that had caused three other deaths. The thing to do now was call out the marines, quickly, quietly.

But that plan failed. There is no defense for a quick, hard blow that strikes from the dark at the back of a man's head.

As he fell he realized that there had been a third man on watch outside the tent.

That, however, was his only thought before he lost consciousness.

A half hour after that a speeding car slowed on a bridge ten miles out of Lakewego toward New York.

One of the two men in the front seat said, “This would be a good place to get rid of uncle.”
6

His companion nodded. The car stopped. The limp body of a white-faced clown lay on the back seat, tied hand and foot. The two men lifted it out, swung it between them up on to the bridge rail, and gave it a push. They grinned when the sound of the splash came back from the Norwalk River, thirty feet below.

5
Gow: Dope. Snow: Cocaine. Junk: Morphine. Witch hazel: Heroin. Piece: 1 ounce. C: $100.

6
Uncle: Underworld argot for a Federal Narcotics agent. Sometimes called “whiskers” or “gazer.”

C
HAPTER
XV

Loose Ends Tangled

I
NSPECTOR CHURCH
had just started to wonder about the missing Mike Hailey when he got the report that sent him scurrying back to the circus lot. He took a look at the dead leopard, the poisoned arrow, and the empty secret compartment beneath the floor of the leopard cage. He questioned the two wounded policemen who had tried and failed, amid a shower of bullets, to stop the car that had roared, speeding, off the lot.

It was four
A.M.
and after but when Inspector Church decides he wants to ask questions like the ones that plagued him then, the time of day is of little account. He returned to the city jail at the head of a procession of cars that carried a good share of the circus personnel.

Dawn was breaking and the Inspector's inquisition was in full swing when a car stopped before the jail and deposited on its steps a sorry looking object, a man whose clothes dripped water and whose face was strangely streaked.

The detectives inside stared for a moment and then pounced like a dozen cats all after the same mouse. Don Diavolo made no resistance.

“Go easy, boys.” he said. “And relax. I'm all out of vanishes at the moment. Where's Church?”

They told him. In fact, they took him — at once.

The Inspector was in Butterfield's office firing questions at Colonel Van Orman whom the police had traced and routed from his bed in a nearby hotel.

Church took one look at Don Diavolo and his face beamed like the rising sun outside.

“Good work boys. Where did you find it?”

Lieutenant Brophy answered, his voice puzzled. “He walked in and gave himself up.”

Diavolo shook his head. “I walked in, but I haven't given up. I came to get Pat, Woody and Horseshoe out of hock. Any news of Chan?”

“Yeah. He was picked up about an hour ago, halfway to Vermont.” Church scowled. “But you don't
get
them; you
join
them.”

“Vermont?” Don laughed. “When Chan goes in for misdirection he does it up brown.”

Church was saying, “Brophy, I want three men on every door and window in this room. I want—”

“You still think I'm it?” Diavolo asked.

“You're going to have one sweet time proving that you're not.” Church replied defiantly.

“Okay. Shall we begin now?”