Death from Nowhere (8 page)

Simultaneously with Pat she gave the reporter a bright welcoming smile and said, “Hello, darling!” Then she turned toward Pat just as the latter faced her. Their voices came together, both using exactly the same words in the same tone of injured surprise.

“Mickey! Just whose boy friend do you think he—”

“The old, gag,” Woody said. “I'll attend to you two later. Business comes before pleasure.” He left them, running for a phone.

“Chan,” Don demanded. “Who are all these people? We're not going on a picnic. I'm a fugitive from a chain gang.”

“Sorry,” Chan apologized. “I was surrounded by superior forces. Car captured by Blitzkrieg. Now reinforcements have arrived — shall we throw them overboard, sir?”

Mickey, the dark one this time as Woody found later, said, “But on the phone, Woody said you were going to a circus.”

Pat added, “Fugitive from a chain gang? What do you mean?”

The Horseshoe Kid said, “Oh-oh. Trouble. Now what?”

He looked pleased.

“Move over, Chan,” Diavolo ordered. “I'm driving.” Then rapidly he gave them an earful. But it only convinced the girls more than ever.

“Just try to run out on us now,” Pat said. “You'll need a whole detachment of assistant detectives. We could — well, we could vamp the Inspector, couldn't we?”

“He's married,” Don objected.

“So what?” Mickey shot back. “That's a minor detail. Let's go.”

Woody hurried back just then and Don Diavolo threw in the clutch and stepped on the gas. “I haven't got time to argue with you now,” he said. “But if you all spend the night in jail don't say I didn't warn you.” The big car roared up the ramp at 49th Street on to the elevated highway.

Dubiously Woody said, “I don't see how you can get away with it, Don. Church will be so close on your tail that—”

He broke off.

Diavolo gave the car more gas. “Maybe,” he said. “On the other hand he's so sure I'm the guilty party he may not look for me where we're going. He'll watch the trains, boats and airports expecting me to flee the country — for a while at least. He'll be busy for another hour or so searching the Emperor Theater Building. Then, when he finds I'm not there, he'll rush around like mad putting out the dragnet. Finally, when he sits down and takes time to think he'll begin to get wise. But that should give us a few hours.

“And what you need,” Horseshoe added gloomily “is a couple of weeks.”

“I know it,” Diavolo replied. “But with luck we might manage to make Church doubtful. I do have this.” The magician made the mystic gesture that usually produced a coin or lighted cigarette from midair. This time he got a folder of paper matches. He gave them to Horseshoe. “That's the clue Church didn't realize was one. It's the match folder he found in the pockets of the second corpse. If it means what I think it does it may be a lead.”

The Kid and Chan scowled at the still damp match folder. Woody and the girls leaned across from the back seat and did the same.

“Mr. X, our mystery corpse,” Woody hazarded, “might have been in Canada recently. That's all I get. Does it tell you who he is?”

“Oh no,” Diavolo said. “I know who he is. The match folder doesn't have anything to do with the unidentified body.”

“But what does it have something to do with?” Mickey asked. “I don't see—”

“You wanted to be a detective,” Don told her. “Let's see you detect.”

She subsided.

“Okay, mastermind,” Woody said. “But I certainly hope you've got something. I'd hate to be in your shoes when the Inspector catches up with you.”

The magician grinned widely. “That,” he said in a tone that Woody wasn't at all sure he liked, “
is
an idea. It might work too.”

“Hey!” Woody demanded uneasily. “What do you mean?”

But before Diavolo could answer, Chan exploded his bomb. Ever since Diavolo had told them about the bare footprint, the leopard and the scratches on the two bodies, Chan's brown forehead had been creased in a scowl.

Now he said, “I think I have a clue too. Billboard Magazine this week lists acts now working in Hagenbaugh-Powers sideshow. In view of current events one act seems distinctly ominous. Possibly will solve case.”

Don said, “Huh?” And then, “Chan, what do you have up your wily Oriental sleeve? Out with it!”

“Feature attraction with sideshow is a Leopard Man!”

They all blinked. Woody said, “Wow!”

“Leopard man?” Pat asked. “But what—”

Don laughed, “Chan has been reading
Weird Horror Tales Magazine
or maybe
Fantastic Jungle Stories.
A sideshow Leopard Man hasn't anything to do with the case. They're nothing more sinister than negroes with a skin disease —
vitiglio.
It bleaches them in an irregular spotty fashion, and so some of them dress up in leopard skins, practice a wild look in their eye, and hire out to circus sideshows.”

Chan preferred to believe the worst. “In India, in the Naga Hills between Assam and Burma, the leopard men are not sufferers from a skin disease.”

If the rest weren't interested, Woody was. This would make a swell story. “And what sort of leopard men do they grow there, Chan?”

“Headhunters,” the boy replied.

This got him some attention.

“They believe,” he added, “that when a man is killed he becomes the slave of the slayer after death. The more people they kill the more slaves they have to serve them in the hereafter.”

“A wholesale motive for murder,” Don said. “But why are they called leopard men?”

“Because they are,” Chan said simply. “They practice lycanthropy.”

Don Diavolo gave the boy a sharp look. The Horseshoe Kid now found Chan using words he didn't understand. “What's that?” he wanted to know. “I don't like the sound of it.”

“It means werewolves,” Don said, “or, in this case I suspect, wereleopards. Right, Chan?”

Chan nodded. “In the Naga hill country, when you shoot a leopard, you may be killing a man too. The Naga hillsmen do not hunt the leopard. They might find they had killed a friend or relative whose soul had left his body to enter that of a leopard. Many of the Naga witch doctors claim to be able to project their souls in this way at will.”

“Just the same,” Don Diavolo said, “I'll bet you that the Leopard Man in Hagenbaugh's sideshow will turn out to be the common garden variety — a negro with
vitiglio.
”

Chan should have taken that bet.

… Leatherlung Mike, at that very moment, was striding back and forth on the bally platform before the Hagenbaugh-Powers sideshow top. His stentorian voice rose above the lights and music of the midway.

“Hurry! Hurry!
Hurry!
The last complete performance before the Big Show begins. Just starting now! See the weirdest, most amazing congress of strange people and curious oddities ever assembled under one canvas! All alive and all on the one ticket! See Bobo, the Dogfaced boy! See Bella, the fattest woman alive! See the Oriental dancing girls! And don't fail to see
Naga
and his collection of human heads! Naga, witch doctor of the headhunting Leopard Men from India!! Thrills! Chills! And amazement! Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!”

The Hagenbaugh-Powers Leopard Man was the real thing.

C
HAPTER
X

Death in the Air

T
HE
tires of the big car screeched along the pavement as Don Diavolo brought it to a sliding stop before a gas station on the outskirts of Lakeside.

The Horseshoe Kid allowed himself a sigh of relief and slowly relaxed. “Does beat all,” he said, “how these city fellers do burn up the roads!”

Diavolo glanced at the clock on the dashboard. “Eight-thirty sharp,” he said. “Seventy-five minutes from Broadway.” Then he turned to Horseshoe. “See that drugstore across the street?” he asked. “Get over there on the doublequick and bring back one bottle of their best black hair dye. Come on, Woody. Washroom. You and I are going to do a quick change act.”

Woody Haines blinked. “We're what?”

His voice was shaky.

“You heard me,” Don replied. “You're changing clothes with me, and when we hit that circus I'm going to be introduced as J. Haywood Haines and you're going to be Don Diavolo.”

“No, you don't,” Woody objected. “Not if I know it. Some other time — but not when there's a murder rap about to land on you with both feet at any minute. Do I look as simple-minded as all—”

“Do you want a story?” Diavolo demanded. “Or don't you? Do you want to know who killed Hagenbaugh? Do you want to get the exclusive inside dope on how the vanishing murderer disappeared from Hagenbaugh's office? Do you want—”

“Sure,” Woody said. “All of that. But I'm not leaping before I look. What's the idea? Why—”

“A trap for the murderer,” Don said. “He knows what I look like. And he went through my pockets after he knocked me out. I've got a driver's license in my billfold; he knows who I am. If any of the people we're going to meet in the next few minutes catch wise to our little act, if someone knows that you're me and vice versa, we'll know he's our man. We may not have time to collect a lot of alibis and make a batch of fancy deductions this trip. We've got to trap our man into making an error and we've got to work fast.”

Pat and Mike prodded the reporter. “If you don't,” they threatened, “we'll never speak to you again.”

Woody gave in. “Okay. But I still don't like it.”

When the car pulled away ten minutes later Woody was driving. He wore Don's clothes. His blond hair was black. He was still objecting.

Don ignored him. He spoke rapidly to The Horseshoe Kid. “The Great Belmonte, Captain Schneider, Lillian Powers,” he said. “Do you know any of them? We need an in. You've worked that three-shell game of yours on half the circuses in the country.”

“Leatherlung Mike,” Horseshoe said. “He did the kidshow bally last year. If he's still with them—”

Chan spoke up. “He is. Remember that name from Billboard story. Practically impossible to forget.”

Five minutes later Woody drove the car on to the lot and parked it behind the sideshow top. As they got out they heard a voice from within the tent, “—a member, ladies and gentlemen, of one of the world's few remaining tribes of real dyed-in-the-wool headhunters. Naga, leopard man of India! And his unequaled collection of bona fide human heads, each and every one a trophy of savage vengeance!”

“
Vitiglio?
”
Chan asked quietly.

Diavolo frowned. “Looks as if you win, Chan,” he said. “This complicates matters, and Church isn't going to be happy about it at all.”

“That's Mike's voice,” the Kid said. “He must be doing the inside lecture, too. Come on.” He lifted the canvas sidewall and ducked under.

On the inside, arranged at intervals around the tent, were a dozen low platforms on each of which sat a “strange person” or a “curious oddity.” A broad-shouldered man who stood by a ticket box just inside the entrance saw The Horseshoe Kid and the procession that followed him as they made their unorthodox entry.

“Hey!” he yelled and suddenly sprinted toward them. “What do you think this is? A public highway? Get the—”

Calmly Horseshoe said, “Take it easy, big boy. We're with it. Or we will be as soon as I see Mike.”

The ticket taker gave him a suspicious scowl, noted that Horseshoe's green-checked suit looked like something a circus man might wear, and then glanced toward the Leopard Man's platform where Mike was lecturing the group of customers gathered around him. Mike, who had also seen the parade as it came under the sidewall and who, by now, had recognized The Horseshoe Kid, threw the ticket taker a nod of assent. Mike's booming voice filled the tent. “When the Leopard Men of India go on the warpath they assume the costume which you see Naga wearing — the leopard mask and the leopard claws.”

Naga, a slender brown-skinned man, wore a leopard skin loin cloth. His head was encased in a mask that represented the leering, sharp-fanged head of a snarling black leopard. In one hand he held a short, broad-bladed spear; the other wore a glove which with its sharp curved claws resembled a leopard's paw. A half dozen grisly shrunken objects were displayed on a rack at his side — human heads hanging by their hair.

Chan whispered in Don's ear. “Heads very probably manufactured in this country. Also suspect mask and claws. The Nagas don't dress as leopards. They wouldn't think it was necessary. Not when they think they can be leopards.”

Leatherlung Mike finished his talk and directed the attention of his audience to the stage at the far end of the tent. “The next attraction offered for your edification and amusement will be the oldtime Plantation Revue, a syncopating extravaganza of mirth and melody. Take it away, boys!”