Death from Nowhere (10 page)

4
Paper: circus posters.

C
HAPTER
XI

Poison Most Foul

T
HE
whirling figure of the performer thudded against the sawdust ring. It bounced slightly and then lay still.

A clown who had been standing just within the entrance by the bandstand raced toward the ring, his clumsy-footed comical gait for once forgotten. Woody Haines was close behind him.

The two men bent above the still figure. The eyes were closed, the face white, but the man still breathed. Woody grasped him beneath the arms; the clown took his feet. They bore him quickly from the arena.

Schneider stood in the entrance and, as they came, he barked at the crowd of performers who peered in, blocking the entrance. “Back! All of you.”

Woody saw Doc Whipple swing an arm toward him and heard his voice. “This way. Trailer.” He saw Don Diavolo running toward the nearest of the lighted trailers that were parked in a long line facing the arena entrance.

They put the body on the trailer bed. Doc Whipple had shed his coat and rolled up his sleeves. He suddenly took command. The crisp, sure way he gave each of them their orders told Diavolo that his nickname of Doc had once meant just that.

“You,” he told the clown, “get me a first-aid kit. See Miss Powers. Snap into it.” He looked at Woody. “Have somebody tell that announcer to find out if there's a doctor in the audience, and you” — he gestured at Don — “keep the rest of that crowd out of here.”

He bent above Belmonte and his fingers, moving quickly and deftly, began a rapid tactile examination of the body.

Don Diavolo stepped outside. He stood on the trailer steps for a moment and looked down at the silent, apprehensive crowd of performers and working-men that clustered around the trailer door, at Woody Haines as he hurried toward the big top, and at the two police officers who were talking excitedly to Captain Schneider.

He knew now that he had come to the right place to look for the murderer — and he knew that Belmonte, the only man without an alibi, was innocent.

He had seen the dark smear on the sole of the tight walker's foot and he had touched it with his finger. Belmonte's wire had been greased.

Then, suddenly, the cops who were talking to Schneider turned and strode rapidly toward him. Don watched them come desperately, knowing what they were after as certainly as if he had seen the teletype alarm Church had broadcast. And he also knew that once these men found that Belmonte's fall was no accident, his chances of getting away with any free-lance investigation were shot higher than a kite.

They would call reinforcements, surround the lot, wire the Inspector, and hold everything pending his arrival. And that would be that. It was probably the ultimate end of this nightmare of a case in any event.

The taller of the two officials, a bulky, scowling man, stopped before Diavolo and gave him a cold suspicious stare. Don didn't like his looks. On occasion, Inspector Church could be obstinate as a Missouri mule but Don had a hunch that this cop could be that way all the time.

There remained one last way to stall for time, little though it might be. Don Diavolo staked everything and took it.

The policeman snapped, “Your name Haines?”

Don nodded. “You're Chief Butterfield, aren't you?”

The Chief was asking questions apparently, not answering them. “Let's see some identification,” he said.

Don said, “Of course.”

He rummaged through the pockets of Woody's suit, found and handed over Woody's press card and driver's license. Out of the tail of his eye he saw Woody himself hurrying back from the big top, leading a short, brisk little man who wore horn-rimmed glasses and a professional manner.

Quickly Don said, “Did you get a wire from Inspector Church of the New York Homicide Squad asking you to watch for and pick up a dark-haired man, six foot one, weight about one eighty, dressed in a white linen suit and blue shirt. Name: Don Diavolo?”

The Chief's eyes narrowed. “How did you know that?”

“I've been trailing him myself,” Don answered. “Look what's coming this way.” He jerked his head toward the unsuspecting Woody.

Butterfield looked and his eyes bulged.

A split second later Woody Haines found himself blinking at the handcuffs that linked his wrists. “Sweeny,” Butterfield ordered. “Frisk him.”

Sweeny was already doing it. He found some papers in Woody's coat pocket. He gave them a quick glance.

“It's him all right, Chief!”

Over Butterfield's shoulder Don caught Woody's eye. He winked broadly and his lips silently framed the words, “Steady. Hold it.”

And then Woody realized why he shouldn't have made that earlier crack about not wanting to be in Don's shoes when the cops caught up with them. He gave Diavolo a look that could have been framed and titled: “Vesuvius erupts with great loss of life.”

Chief Butterfield was so excited he turned and marched his prisoner rapidly off toward the nearest cell without even remembering to thank his informer.

Diavolo heard The Horseshoe Kid's voice in his ear, “So that's what they mean by throwing somebody to the wolves.”

“Yes,” Don replied. “But it had to be done. And it's just about our last card. If we don't get a new deal soon the guy across the table gets all the chips. If Belmonte will come out of it long enough to talk, we may be able.…”

The voice behind them said, “I'm afraid Belmonte won't talk. He's dead.”

They jerked around. Doc Whipple stepped down from the trailer doorway. His face looked drawn and tired.

The doctor Woody had brought from the audience came out after him. “Not only that,” he said. “The man was murdered. I thought I heard Chief Butterfield out here. Where is he?”

“Oh, murdered,” Don said. “You noticed that, too?”

The little doctor looked surprised — and suspicious. “You don't mean that
you
knew—”

“I saw the grease on his feet.” Diavolo held up his forefinger on which a smear of it still remained. “Someone gaffed his high wire.” He looked at Whipple. “Get Schneider to send someone up and check that, will you? And maybe he can find out who was monkeying around in that rigging between five and eight o'clock, after the matinee and before the show started tonight.”

The little doctor ducked back into the trailer for a moment. When he came out he said, “He's right. There is grease there.”

Don Diavolo stared at him. “You didn't see that? Then how did you know he was murdered?”

“The man didn't die from his fall,” came the answer. “His shirt is ripped and there are surface cuts on his back. Though how they got there I don't know. I was watching the act and, if I'm right about what killed him, those cuts couldn't possibly have been there when he climbed up to his platform. He hit nothing that might have made them as he fell; yet there they are.”

Diavolo shook his head dazedly. This was too much. “Five neat parallel scratches, I suppose?” he asked.

“Yes. And how did you know that?”

“I've seen them twice before this afternoon, on other bodies. Did I hear you say you thought you knew what killed him? Certainly those surface cuts, if they're like the others, couldn't have—”

“They did though,” the doctor replied. “Because the instrument that made them, whatever it was, was poisoned!”

Don was finding out now how Inspector Church felt when one surprise after another kicked him in the face.

“And the poison?” he asked.

“I haven't made any tests,” the doctor said. “But I once spent a few years in Brazil. I've seen men die the way this one did, symptoms of paralysis and asphyxia. It was the arrow poison, curare.”

Diavolo turned to Doc Whipple. “You agree?”

Whipple said, “I wouldn't know. I've never seen a case of curare poisoning before. It's not exactly common. It sounds reasonable.”

He hesitated, then glanced across at Schneider who stood near by. “I think, Captain,” he said slowly, “that we'd better have a look at that arrow collection of yours.”

C
HAPTER
XII

The Listening Clown

S
OCHNEIDER
frowned. Then he said, “Yes. I think maybe we had.” He turned and started off, limping slightly on his game leg. The others quickly moved after him.

As they came opposite the arena entrance a half dozen girls in aerialist's tights hurried out. One of them, a tall dark girl with a full quota of good looks, detached herself from the group, took Schneider's arm and walked with him.

“Belmonte,” she asked. “Is he bad?”

Don turned to Whipple. “Would that be Miss Powers?”

Doc nodded. “It would.”

Diavolo moved up and fell into step beside her.

“I've been wondering where you were,” he said. “There's a question I've been wanting to ask you.”

She gave him a nervous worried look. “Yes?”

“You were in New York this morning. You saw Hagenbaugh in his office. Why?”

Captain Schneider cut in. “Skip it, Lillian. He's a reporter.” He faced Diavolo. “I'm not too satisfied about you. I'd like it a lot better if the police were asking the questions. Suppose we hold that one until then?”

“You'll get that wish,” Don said. “They'll be here all too soon. You had some cop trouble this afternoon. It won't be anything to what will happen when the New York police land on this outfit with a full-dress murder investigation. You own a piece of the show, Miss Powers. It's to your advantage to avoid that. I know the Inspector who will be in charge. If you play ball with me, perhaps my influence.…”

Woody, Don knew, would have snorted at that one. But Miss Powers wasn't aware just how well he knew the Inspector. She hesitated a moment and then started to speak. Schneider gripped her arm. “No,” he said flatly. “We'll wait for the police.”

“Okay,” Diavolo said. “Sorry.” He let them go on ahead and dropped back beside Doc Whipple. “She didn't get along too well with R.J., did she, Doc?”

“Not many people did,” Whipple replied. “They scrapped considerable about the way the show was run. Hagenbaugh bought into the outfit just after her father died a few years back when the show had heavy going one season. She thinks he gave her Dad a raw deal and lately — well, Schneider has supplied some dough and she's been trying to buy R.J. out.”

“He wouldn't sell.”

Whipple nodded. “That's it.”

The interior of the Captain's trailer contained ample evidence that the man had spent little, if any, of his time at home with a book. It was decorated with mementoes, primitive weapons mostly, from every corner of the globe — Zulu assegai, Philippine bolos, Australian boomerangs, a dozen types of bows.

Schneider opened a cupboard and brought forth a cardboard box. He removed its lid and tipped the contents out onto the table — five slender, feather tipped arrows.

He looked at them and swore. Then he bent above them and made a quick examination of their points.

When he stood up again there was a dark angry light in his eyes. “These arrows had poison on them,” he said. “Two of them have been scraped.” He paused. “And there were six. One is missing!”

Schneider seemed surprised and off guard. Quickly, before the man could decide again that he wasn't talking, Diavolo asked, “Where did you pick these up? South America?”

“No. India.”

“But the doctor said curare. That's South American, not Indian.”

“The doctor was wrong. But most of the arrow poisons work on a similar principle. They paralyze.”

The same thought was in more than one mind. Diavolo put it into words. “Do the Nagas use this sort of thing by any chance?”

Schneider nodded. “That happens to be where these came from.”

Diavolo said, “I think it is high time I got a few answers from our friend the Leopard Man.”

“I hope you can understand them,” the Captain put in. “The Naga dialect is tough going.”

“Oh. No English?”

Schneider shook his head. “No. But he'd have no reason to do anything like this and besides he's alibied. He's been on that platform of his out there all day. He couldn't have—”

“Perhaps he wouldn't need to.”

“What do you mean by that?” Schneider rapped.

Diavolo said, “It's obvious, isn't it? I thought he claimed to be a leopard man. He could be on his platform all day but the leopard into which he had projected his soul—”

Schneider broke in irritably. “That would make a nice newspaper story. But any way you slice it, it's still—”

“Bologna,” Don said. “Or possibly red herring. Someone—” He stopped abruptly. “Excuse me a minute.” Don yanked at the trailer door, pulled it open and was gone almost before the others realized what was happening. They stared at the doorway and then crowded out after him.

Horseshoe and Chan followed him around into the darkness beyond the end of the trailer — and nearly ran him down. Don was standing by the half-open window in the trailer's end. They heard his thumbnail flick across a match and saw the small glow of a flame that sprang up as he bent to examine the ground beneath the window.

“He got away,” the magician said. “Someone was getting himself an earful at this window. I saw—”

Horseshoe touched Don's shoulder. “Look,” he said. “Up here just under the window edge.” He pointed to a small smudgy streak of white on the trailer side.

Don rubbed his finger across it, looked closely at his finger end, then turned quickly and went back to the trailer doorway where the light was better.

He recognized the substance and his heart sank. The Horseshoe Kid saw what it was too.

“Clown white!” he said, staring at it.