"We'd had our share of carnivals and fairs in Northmont," old Dr. Sam

Hawthorne said as he poured two glasses of sherry and passed one to his visitor, "but it was the summer of 'thirty-three when the first really big circus came to town. It sorta put Northmont on the map that July, drawing visitors from as far away as Hartford and Providence and Springfield . . ."

It was some quirk of scheduling (Dr. Sam continued), something about a new fairgrounds in one of the cities not being ready on time, that brought the Bigger & Brothers Circus to Northmont for their mid-July dates, on the theory that increasing auto travel made it an easily accessible location for all of southern New England. Sheriff Lens learned of it only a month in advance, when the signs and billboards started going up.

Bigger & Brothers, one of the first circuses to travel by rail rather than wagon, needed several acres of land near a railroad siding. Pop Wharton's farm seemed the ideal location, especially since it had been standing idle since his hospitalization. Pop was a patient of mine, a man in his late sixties who'd led a vigorous, productive life until severe rheumatism laid him low. His son Mike wasn't interested in farming the land, and he'd persuaded Pop to accept the circus offer and earn a little money while the farm was standing idle.

The circus train rolled in during the small hours of Monday morning, and at seven o'clock I'd promised to go see it with Teddy Lens, the sheriff's eight-year-old nephew who was visiting from Boston. His father was unemployed, a victim of the Depression, and I figured with the sheriff and his wife tending to Teddy for the summer there was one less mouth for them to feed back home. He was all boy, a lively kid who'd been looking forward to the circus since his arrival in Northmont.

"Is it in yet?" he asked me, clambering into my sporty roadster.

"Supposed to be. Let's go see."

"This is a neat car, Dr. Sam."

"Thank you." I grinned as I drove out toward the Wharton farm. The idea of elephants and acrobats excited me almost as much as Teddy. I felt as if I was playing hooky from my practice.

We weren't disappointed. The first thing we spotted as the car topped the last hill was a pair of elephants helping to put up the main tent. There must have been close to a hundred people working around, unloading railroad cars, positioning the animals' cages, erecting tents and banners. I parked the car and took Teddy firmly by the hand, not wanting him to run off in front of one of those big bull elephants.

"What have we here?" a jolly man with a walrus moustache and wearing a leather jacket asked, spotting us and coming forward. "Brought your son to see the big top going up?"

"Well, he's not my son, but that's what we're here for. I'm Dr. Sam Hawthorne. I have a practice in Northmont. This is Teddy Lens, the sheriff's nephew."

Teddy shook the man's hand.

"I'm George Bigger," the man said, shaking hands. "This is my circus." He beamed down at Teddy.

"I'm pleased to meet you, sir. Will I get to meet Mr. Brothers, too?"

The man laughed. "There is no Mr. Brothers, son. That's the Flying Lampizi Brothers. You'll see them at the show—all five of them." He pointed at one of the big circus banners going up. It showed five darkhaired young men swinging and spinning through the air high above the sawdust rings. In the painting one had just released his grip on the trapeze and was heading for a catcher who hung by his knees from another trapeze.

"Wow!" Teddy exclaimed. "Are there clowns, too?"

"Are there clowns?" Bigger glanced around and called out to a slim man nearby. "Harvey, this boy wants to know if we've got clowns!"

The man turned toward us and approached, his face already covered with clown makeup. Silently, he whisked a hand into one baggy sleeve and produced a bouquet of paper flowers he presented to Teddy, then duplicated the trick with his other sleeve, bringing forth a live baby rabbit. He gave Teddy the rabbit, then bowed to us with a grin and moved on.

"That's Harvey the Clown," George Bigger explained. "He never talks, but he makes people happy."

"He sure made me happy!" Teddy exclaimed, stroking the fuzzy little rabbit. "Can I keep him, Dr. Sam?"

"You'll have to ask your aunt and uncle," I replied, amused at the thought of Sheriff Lens confronting a pet rabbit.

"You're our first visitors, so here's something else for you," Bigger said, handing me two tickets to the afternoon performance. "I hope we'll see you both right down front."

"We'll be there," I promised. Until that moment I hadn't planned to bring Teddy to the circus that afternoon, but seeing the joy on his face there was no way I could back out.

A tall woman, quite lovely, with glistening black hair that reached halfway down her back, came up to join Bigger. "This is my wife Hilda," he told us. "You'll see her riding bareback."

Hilda gave us a perfunctory nod and told him, "You'd better come,

George. They're having some trouble unloading one of the tiger cages." "All right. Duty calls, folks. I'll see you later."

Teddy and I looked at the animals and watched the tents going up for a while, then I took Teddy home to prepare for his big afternoon.

Sheriff Lens and his wife Vera decided to attend the circus that afternoon, too. They got seats farther back, at one end, and we waved to them from our fourth-row vantage point. They weren't really seats at all—only marked-off sections of wooden bleachers—but that didn't matter to Teddy, who was having the time of his young life. First came the circus parade, with animals and performers trooping past us—with Hilda, the bareback rider, and the five Lampizi Brothers in their spangled tights and sad-faced Harvey the Clown tooting a little horn like Harpo Marx.

After the last of the animals and performers had departed, George Bigger took the spotlight in traditional ringmaster's attire, doffing his top hat and bowing with a sweeping gesture to announce, "Welcome! Welcome to Bigger and Brothers Circus, the greatest show under a tent! We'll amaze and electrify you, confound and surprise you, tickle and delight you for the next two hours. Keep your eyes open, because there will often be action in all three rings and in the air above your heads. We'll begin with the Amazing Hilda, queen of bareback riders, and her death-defying stunts on a pair of wild horses!"

Hilda made her grand entrance balanced astride two grey horses that galloped side by side. Teddy was wide-eyed at the spectacle. I was a bit wide-eyed myself, since Hilda Bigger showed off a great deal of her lovely body in the brief sequined costume she wore. She did a number of acrobatic tricks, including a somersault on horseback that had the crowd cheering and applauding.

Then the colored spotlights shifted to the entryway once again as a ragtag band of clowns, headed by Harvey, made a stumbling, slapstick entrance.

"There's Harvey!" Teddy shouted in recognition, tugging on my sleeve.

"That's him, all right."

Harvey produced a live duck from inside his baggy jacket, then pretended to fall down in amazement as the other clowns pummeled him. He seemed to remember us from that morning and came up a short way into the stands to award Teddy a colorful cardboard medal. Then he returned to the sawdust as another clown batted him with a rubber club.

There was a sudden blare of trumpets from the circus band, and while the clown brigade still held forth the spotlights picked out the five acrobats running into the center ring where a net had been pulled into place. From somewhere unseen, Bigger's voice boomed over a loudspeaker. "Ladies and gentlemen, the stars of our show—the five Flying Lampizi Brothers!"

The five dark-haired young men bowed and gyrated, letting the spotlights catch the glitter of their spangled tights. Each costume was a different color —white, pink, blue, yellow, and green—and the five certainly looked enough alike to be brothers. Bigger went on to introduce them. "That's Arturo in white, Nunzio in pink, Giuseppe in blue. Ignazio is in green and Pietro in yellow. Let's give them a great big hand!"

Then the brothers went into their act, briskly climbing the rope ladders to the highest reaches of the great tent and stepping onto the wooden platforms. Arturo was the first to swing, his great leap into space carrying him to a firm grasp of the trapeze. The crowd cheered, and the other brothers followed him with a dazzling display of aerial gymnastics. They seemed so sure of themselves that once during a particularly tricky maneuver when Nunzio and Arturo fell to the net, the spectators laughed and cheered, assuming it was part of the act. Perhaps it was—Harvey and his clowns frolicked around the fallen men as if in a carefully rehearsed routine. Meanwhile, up above, the remaining three brothers kept up their acrobatics without missing a beat.

The spotlight followed Nunzio as he climbed the ladder to rejoin his brothers. The colored lights were dazzling now, shifting around the tent with a maddening irregularity. I watched Giuseppe and Pietro link up on one trapeze, then swing back as Pietro caught Ignazio in midair. Arturo, who seemed to be in charge, was now up and waiting on the platform as the empty trapeze swung back toward him. He caught it easily and launched himself after his brothers.

It took me a few moments to realize that something was wrong, and then the thought only dawned on me gradually. The colored lights, the cheers and gasps of the crowd, the swinging, hurtling bodies—suddenly, instead of five brothers, there seemed to be only four. I counted again, checking the colors. Blue, yellow, white, green. The brother in pink was missing.

Nunzio.

"Do you see the brother in pink?" I asked Teddy.

"No. Where is he?"

"I don't know. Maybe he fell in the net." But I knew that wasn't true. There had only been the one fall.

Now the brothers themselves seemed aware Nunzio was missing. They were huddled in conversation on one of the wooden platforms. Down below, George Bigger had reappeared in his ringmaster's costume. "Let's have a great big hand for the Flying Lampizi Brothers!" he shouted.

The four swung out on the trapezes and dropped gracefully into the safety net, one after the other. Giuseppe, Pietro, Arturo, and Ignazio. No mention was made of Nunzio, and as the brothers ran off to the cheers of the crowd the lion and tiger cages were already being wheeled in for the animal- training act.

"Will you be all right here alone for a few minutes?" I asked Teddy.

"Sure, Dr. Sam. Where you goin'?"

"Just outside. Don't wander away—stay right here." I knew Sheriff Lens and his wife could see him from where they sat, so I wasn't too worried about leaving him.

I made my way down to the sawdust-covered ground and out the wide entryway through which the acts appeared and departed. George Bigger was standing with his hat off, talking heatedly with the four brothers. "What happened?" I asked Arturo. "Where's your brother?"

"He is gone," Arturo said simply, spreading his hands wide. "He was there and then he was gone."

Sheriff Lens had seen me leave my seat and had followed me out.

"What's up here?"

"One of the acrobats seems to have disappeared."

"I thought there were five at the beginning."

Bigger's wife Hilda came running up in her glistening costume. "He's not in the sleeping wagon."

"It looks like we've got a problem," Bigger said with a frown.

"The man couldn't just vanish," I insisted. I'd known a few who had, over the years, but not without the assistance of some elaborate trickery. "When did you notice he was gone?"

"I'd just done my flying double somersault," Ignazio said. "Nunzio was supposed to follow me. I looked around on the platform and he wasn't there."

"Could he have fallen into the net?" I asked.

Arturo, the senior brother, replied. "He did fall, earlier. I fell with him. But we both climbed back up."

"I know. I saw him." I turned to Sheriff Lens. "You must have seen him climb back up, too, Sheriff."

"I remember seeing this fella going up the ladder," he replied, nodding to

Arturo. "Don't know about the other one."

"Well, I saw him. I saw him go up, but I can't be certain I saw him afterward. The trapeze area is fairly dim when the lights aren't on it."

"There's nowhere he could have gone," Bigger insisted. "Unless he climbed through the top of the tent."

"Might he have done that?" I walked far enough outside the tent so I could see the top. There was certainly no one on it now.

"No, I just said that," Bigger explained. "The canvas fits snugly around the poles supporting it. You don't want water coming in if it rains. Besides, the acrobat platforms are about ten feet below the canvas. He couldn't have climbed higher without someone noticing."

"Whatever happened to him, somebody musta seen it," the sheriff said. "You got several hundred people inside there."

"He'll turn up." Hilda didn't sound too certain.

They were all standing there, not knowing what to do, so I decided to go back to Teddy. Sheriff Lens followed along. "Circus people are odd ones," he said. "I remember once—" "Sheriff!" I stopped.

"What is it?"

His eyes were on the cage where a lion tamer with whip and gun was keeping the big cats on their pedestals. But I was looking upward, toward the top of the tent. There was no one to be seen up among the ropes and pulleys, and no one on the platforms, but an empty trapeze was swinging back and forth, as if supporting the weight of an invisible acrobat.

Giuseppe and Pietro climbed the rope ladder to investigate the swinging trapeze, but when they returned to the ground they could tell us nothing. "Perhaps a little breeze," Pietro speculated.

"I don't think so. It was too regular for a breeze. Besides, I just heard how tightly the canvas fits." I had checked to see that Teddy was all right and then come back outside with the four Lampizi Brothers. Harvey and the other clowns had appeared from somewhere, ready to make a reappearance as the animal act ended.

"Did you see anything of Nunzio?" Bigger asked Harvey. The sad-faced clown shook his head. I still didn't know whether he was actually able to talk or not.

Sheriff Lens had gone back to his seat, mumbling that there was nothing to investigate, but the strange disappearance of Nunzio Lampizi bothered me. "Enjoying the circus?" I asked Teddy as I returned to my seat.

"It's super, Dr. Sam! That lion tamer had a tiger jumping through a hoop! And then he set the hoop on fire and the tiger jumped through it again— right through the flames!"

My eyes had wandered back to the trapeze overhead. It seemed to be moving again. A few moments later, when the brothers reappeared for the final part of their act, I could see they noticed it, too. As Arturo led the way up the ladder, perhaps not as briskly this time, he turned to watch the errant trapeze. For most of the spectators, those who noticed it at all, this seemed to be part of the show. But I knew something weird was happening.

Then Pietro swung out on one of the other trapezes, transferring to the ghostly, swinging one without mishap, and from then on the act proceeded normally. When it ended, with no mention of the missing Nunzio, Hilda reappeared on horseback to lead the show's finale, a noisy charge of cowboys firing blank cartridges into the air.

Then George Bigger's voice came over the loudspeaker, telling us that the performance was over and to spread the word about it. The show had run barely one hour and forty minutes, some twenty minutes shy of the promised two hours, and I wondered if that much had been cut because of Nunzio's disappearance.

As we left, I spoke to some of the people around Teddy and me, trying to confirm what I had seen. Yes, there had been five brothers at the beginning and no one seemed certain what had happened to the fifth one. Everyone noticed he'd disappeared along the way, and expressed curiosity about it. One woman suggested he'd injured himself when he fell into the net, but an older man assured her he'd climbed back up after that. Several people agreed that the one in the pink tights had climbed back up to the platform after falling.

And Sheriff Lens and Vera both swore that Arturo had gone back up, too. They'd had an excellent view from their seats at the end of the tent.

I pondered over it and came to no real conclusion. "Five brothers went up originally. Two fell down into the net, but those two both went back up. Three were still up there, and two joined them. Three plus two equal— four?"

"It's some sort of publicity stunt," Sheriff Lens grumbled. "Let's just forget about it."

As the four of us walked across the dusty parking lot toward my roadster and the sheriff's sedan, I saw a man in clown makeup heading away from the circus grounds, out across the field toward the Wharton house. "Look at that," I told the sheriff. "Seems a bit odd."

"Stop there a minute!" Sheriff Lens bellowed. "Come back here!"

The clown broke into a fast run and I was after him. I was still in my midthirties back then, and in pretty good shape. Over the rough ground I caught him quickly, knocking him off-balance so that we both went down. "What's your hurry?" I asked, keeping a grip on him.

"I didn't do nothin'," he said. "Lemme go!"

Sheriff Lens came running up. "Are you one of the circus clowns?"

He stood up, brushing himself off. "No, I ain't."

"Then you can be arrested for trespassing."

"Like hell I can!" he shot back, and suddenly I realized who was beneath the clown makeup. "I'm Mike Wharton. My dad owns this land."

Sheriff Lens gaped in genuine amazement. "Suppose you explain what you're doing here in a clown getup," I suggested. Although I knew his father, I didn't know young Wharton very well.

His shoulders drooped a bit as he pulled off the red-rubber nose and wiped some of the greasepaint from his face with a cloth from his pocket. "I —I don't know. It's something I always wanted to do. I told Bigger I'd lease him the farm for a week on the condition that he let me perform as a clown with the circus."

"Now I've heard everything," the sheriff muttered.

"I suppose clowning is a noble calling," I said to Mike Wharton. "But why were you running away just now?"

"I didn't want to get involved," he said.

"Involved in what?"

"That acrobat who disappeared. I figured the cops would be questioning people. I seen Sheriff Lens here nosin' around already. I didn't want my old man to find out I was bein' a clown. He'd say it was stupid."

"How'd you know about the acrobat?"

"I heard Harvey tellin' about it."

"I'm glad to know he can talk when he wants to."

"So I just lit out before anyone questioned me."

"Did you know Nunzio, the missing man?"

Wharton shrugged. "They all look alike to me. I seen 'em all. I talked to 'em, but I don't know which is which." He was obviously eager to get away.

"Go on," Sheriff Lens said. "We know where to find you if we got any more questions."

"Okay," Wharton said and ran off across the field like a fox suddenly freed from a trap.

"Do you think he knows anything about it?" I asked the sheriff.

"Naw, the kid barely knows the time of day. Pop Wharton sure got blessed with a pair of losers." I knew he was referring to the Wharton daughter, Isabelle, who'd run off years before with a bootlegger and was never heard from again.

I stared across the field at the vacant farmhouse, wondering whether anyone would ever live there again. Mike had taken a room in town months ago, apparently not wanting the burden of the farm once his father was hospitalized. Now the old place stood empty, with no one inside to hear the circus music or the laughter of children.

I went back to the house with the sheriff, Vera, and Teddy and was persuaded to stay for a light supper. Teddy was full of talk about the circus, unaware that he'd seen anything out of the ordinary. I was beginning to think I hadn't, either. The missing Nunzio would probably reappear in the next town. For all I knew, he might repeat his vanishing stunt at each performance.

But a bit later that evening, when I returned to my apartment, a reporter named Jeff Slattery was parked outside waiting for me. "I'm from the Springfield paper," he explained, showing his press card. "Someone called in a report that one of the circus acrobats disappeared during the

performance of the Bigger & Brothers Circus here today." "Why are you coming to me about it?" I asked.

"I already spoke to George Bigger at the circus. He confirmed that it happened and gave me your name as a witness. He says the sheriff saw it, too."

I studied the young man more closely. He wore his fedora back on his head and his tie was loose at the knot, probably in imitation of the way bigcity reporters were supposed to dress. I was surprised there wasn't a press pass tucked into his hatband. I started to tell him what I had seen.

"Bigger says the empty trapeze was actually swinging, as if the missing acrobat was still there, but invisible. Did you see that?"

"Yes, I saw it. A stiff breeze might have caused it."

"The air was pretty calm today."

I shrugged. "Look, go ahead and write the story any way you want."

"They say you've had some experience solving mysteries."

"A little."

"You gonna solve this one?"

"I haven't been asked. And I'm not sure it is a mystery."

"Seems pretty mysterious to me."

As he was leaving, I thought of a question for him. "Who phoned in the story? Did they give a name?"

"Nope. Just said they were at the circus and saw it happen. A man's voice.

I figured it was worth a trip down here."

"Was it?"

"Well, this fellow Nunzio Lampizi sure is missing. That's good enough for me."

I left him and went in the house, thinking that whatever was going on, it needn't concern me.

The telephone was ringing as I entered the apartment. It was my nurse, April, wondering how my day had been. "Did Teddy enjoy the animals?" "The animals and the clowns and everything. He was delighted with it all. Were there any emergencies?"

"Nothing important. Mrs. Mitchell has her usual trouble. I told her you'd be out to see her in the morning."

"Fine."

"Sam—"

"What?"

"On the way home tonight, I passed the Wharton place just as it was getting dark. There was a light in Pop Wharton's bedroom."

"Isn't he still in the hospital?"

"Of course. That's why the light struck me as odd."

"Probably that son of his. Maybe he's letting some of the circus people use the house or he's using it himself while the circus is here."

"Will you be going right out to Mrs. Mitchell's in the morning or stopping by the office first?"

"I'll come in first. Thanks for calling, April."

"Good night, Sam."

I hung up, trying to remember when it was she'd stopped calling me Doctor Sam.

In the morning I was up early. I decided to swing by the Wharton farm, for no good reason except curiosity. When I reached the old frame house, I could see a light still burning in the upstairs bedroom. Even in the morning brightness the naked glow of the ceiling bulb could be seen through the lace curtains. Beyond the house, across the fields, the circus tents stood like desert sentinals. I thought I heard the distant trumpeting of a bull elephant, but here all was quiet.

Too quiet, I decided.

People in Northmont didn't leave bedroom lights burning all night.

The knob of the front door turned at my touch and I pushed it open. "Mike!" I called out. "Mike Wharton! Are you here? It's Dr. Hawthorne."

There was something red lying on the stairs to the second floor. It was Mike's rubber nose. No answer had come to my shouts. I picked up the nose and started up the stairs. The lighted master bedroom was empty, the smooth spread on the bed untouched. I moved down the hall to the next room and opened the door.

As I snapped on the light I was assaulted by a rainbow of garish color. The pink walls were covered with paintings and photographs, many clipped from magazines, all of them of clowns—circus clowns, movie clowns, even a picture of Caruso in his role as Punchinello. And on the floor in the center of it was what I first thought was a crumpled dummy in a clown costume— but then I saw it was a man, lying face down on a large stain of dried blood.

"Mike," I heard myself say and I bent to turn over the body, searching instinctively for any sign of life.

But it wasn't Mike Wharton in the clown costume this time. I was pretty certain it was someone I'd only seen at a distance before—the missing acrobat, Nunzio Lampizi.

After Sheriff Lens and the state police finished with the crime scene, I waited around until the other Lampizi Brothers were brought over to identify the body. Arturo cursed and Giuseppe cried, and all agreed it was their missing brother. Death had been caused by a half dozen stab wounds to the chest area, at least one of which had penetrated the heart. There was no sign of the weapon.

"I would guess he died early last evening," I told the sheriff. "We'll know better after the autopsy, but the blood is pretty well dried into this rug and

April saw a light on here when she was driving home from the office."

"That woulda been soon after he disappeared."

"Makes sense," I said. "He's still wearing the pink tights under that baggy clown's suit."

"But how'd he disappear from the top of that tent, Doc? We saw him climb up there and he never came down."

"I've got some ideas," I said. "Right now you'd better put out an alarm for Mike Wharton. He seems to be the number one suspect."

"Why would he kill Nunzio? He couldn't have met him before yesterday."

"I don't know. The fact that Nunzio came here to this empty house with his killer might imply some sort of sexual liaison."

"You mean young Wharton and Nunzio?"

"I don't know what I mean, Sheriff. I've got to call on Mrs. Mitchell. Then I might drop by the hospital and visit Pop Wharton."

It was just noon when I reached Pilgrim Memorial Hospital. I checked in with April in the office wing and then went down to check on Pop Wharton. He was alone in the room, a frail man who seemed much older than his sixty-nine years. I glanced through his charts, then sat down beside him and asked how he was feeling.

"Some days are better than others," he replied, his voice thin and wispy.

"If only I could get the arms and legs to work."

"Has Mike been in to see you?"

"Not in a couple of days. I suppose he's all taken up with the circus out at the farm."

"Mike always liked circuses, didn't he?"

His eyes clouded over with memory. "All kids like circuses—the animals, the clowns, the acrobats. It's noisy and colorful. Both the kids loved the circus. I guess it got to be an obsession after a while, especially the part about the clowns."

"I saw all the clown pictures in the room at your house."

His eyes met mine. "Crazy, isn't it? But there was no mother to look after them, there was only me. I guess I didn't always know the right thing to do. Sometimes when Mike was bad I'd lock him in his bedroom, but he'd jump out the window and be gone on me. I just wasn't strict enough. I figured losing a mother was enough punishment for a child."

"Do you think the clowns became some kind of mother substitute?"

"I don't know. I know there was something strange about it, not quite normal." There were tears at the corners of his eyes. "It's a terrible thing to lose a child."

Back in the office, April showed me the afternoon newspaper from Springfield. "The reporter fellow, Jeff Slattery, was just in here and dropped it off," she said. The headline read:

MISSING ACROBAT FOUND SLAIN IN BIZARRE CLOWN RITE

"That should sell some papers," I said. "Maybe I'll take it to show George

Bigger."

"You're going back out to the circus?"

"It's the only place to be. If I hurry I can catch the afternoon performance."

The show had just started and the parking lot around the big circus tent was jammed with cars and wagons. The news of Nunzio Lampizi's disappearance and subsequent murder had done nothing to damage business. I'd planned to confront Bigger at once, but on the way in I encountered Arturo, the senior brother. I was surprised to see him in his spangled tights, obviously ready to perform.

"The show goes on," he said simply in response to my question. "They come to see the Lampizi Brothers, after all."

"Tell me a little about your brother, Arturo. What sort of man was he?" "More a boy than a man. He was barely twenty." "Did he have girl friends?" I asked.

"Sure! Lots of girl friends."

"In the towns?"

"Sometimes. He had one in the circus, too. He was just like me at that age."

Harvey and the other clowns came running off and George Bigger appeared in his ringmaster's outfit. "No time to talk now," he said as I approached him. "See me after the performance."

"Just a quick question. How did you happen to pick Northmont for the circus?"

"Somebody here in the circus knew about it and thought it would be a good place—I forget who. Step aside, will you, Doc? Hilda's coming through on her horses."

I watched the horse act and got my first good look at the lion tamer's performance. Then I concentrated on the Lampizi Brothers, watching the way the lights played on them as they flew through the air. When they took their bows, the spectators went wild.

"Are you waiting for my husband?" Hilda asked as the performance ended.

"That's right."

She seemed worried. "Look, we don't want trouble."

"Seems like you've got it already. Murder is always trouble."

"I don't mean the murder. I mean—"

Suddenly George Bigger was at her side. "Shut up, Hilda," he said. "You talk too much." The spectators were filing out and a few came over to get Hilda's autograph on their programs.

I pulled her husband aside. "This is a murder investigation, Mr. Bigger.

Sooner or later the truth is going to come out."

"The truth about what?"

"About the disappearance of Nunzio Lampizi being a publicity stunt, just as Sheriff Lens thought from the beginning."

"You're crazy." His eyes took on a frightened look. "What kind of publicity stunt is murder?"

"I'm not talking about the murder right now. That's something else. I know how Nunzio disappeared. When he and Arturo fell into the net, the gang of clowns swarmed around and helped them down. One of them slipped a baggy clown suit onto Nunzio and he went out with them." "Everyone saw him climb back to the platform," Bigger protested.

"No, not everyone. I saw him and Teddy saw him, and a lot of people sitting in our area saw him. But Sheriff Lens and some others in the end seats spoke of seeing only Arturo climbing back up. With so much happening to divert us, it was hard to keep track of whether there were four or five brothers performing. I asked myself how I knew I'd seen Nunzio climb back up, with the brothers all looking somewhat alike and of course I'd never met any of them before. It was the color of their tights, of course. That was the only clue I had to their identities. From my seat, the pink spotlight on Arturo's white tights made me think he was Nunzio. Sheriff Lens, seeing the same acrobat from a different angle, knew it was Arturo."

George Bigger tried to stare me down, but finally he said, "All right, so we wanted a little publicity. What's wrong with that?"

"The empty trapeze swung later because it was pulled by a little black thread, like magicians use."

"Yeah, yeah."

"And you phoned that reporter in Springfield."

"Why not? We phoned 'em in Providence and Hartford, too, but he's the only one who came."

"Who killed the boy, Bigger? Were you afraid he'd tell the truth to the press?"

"Nunzio was like a son to me. I wouldn't have harmed a hair on his head."

We stood uncomfortably as I thought about it, inclined to believe Bigger. It was the clowns who had helped work the trick and spirit Nunzio out of the ring after he fell to the net. The clowns must be the key to it. And Mike Wharton had been dressed as a clown.

I saw the silent Harvey standing nearby and called him. But instead of coming forward, he retreated into the big tent, now virtually empty of spectators. That was when I realized the truth.

I took off after the running figure. "I know who you are!" I shouted. "You can't get away!"

Harvey was headed toward the opposite exit, but Sheriff Lens had appeared there, accompanied by Jeff Slattery. Harvey looked around, his clown face twisted in panic, and suddenly he started climbing the rope ladder that led to the trapeze platform. I took a deep breath and went after him.

"Doc!" Sheriff Lens yelled. "Don't go up there! Are you crazy?"

Harvey climbed faster, and when he reached the platform he turned and looked down at me, pulling a knife from the folds of the costume. The sheriff was right—I'd been crazy to follow him.

"Come on, Harvey," I said softly, climbing onto the platform to face him. "You've killed one person already. You don't want another death."

The knife was steady as he faced me, and when I took a careful step forward, the blade sliced the air inches from my chest. Whatever was happening on the ground, I couldn't see or hear it. At that moment I was entirely alone with Harvey the Clown.

"You killed Nunzio in your old room at home," I said quietly. "Why did you do that?"

The knife sliced air again, holding me at bay.

"Why did you do that?"

And then Harvey the Clown spoke, in a voice that was barely a whisper. "I'm not Mike Wharton."

"I know," I said, flinging myself forward, hitting the clown around the waist and carrying us both off the platform. Then I was falling through the air, falling for a terrifying eternity until we hit the net.

Harvey the Clown was Mike Wharton's sister Isabelle, the one who'd run away from home years before. "Ran away to join the circus," as I told Sheriff Lens later. "Obsessed by the clowns whose pictures covered her bedroom walls."

"I thought that was Mike's room."

"Mike only dressed as a clown to be near his sister for a brief time. The murder room had pink walls—and that should have told us it belonged to Isabelle rather than Mike. Pop Wharton must have left it untouched, either too weak physically to do the work or hoping she'd come back someday. And she did. Bigger told me someone at the circus suggested they come to Northmont. I have no doubt it was Isabelle. And that the reason she never talked in her role as Harvey the Clown was so that nobody would realize she was a woman."

"Maybe Mike used his sister's room," the sheriff said.

I shook my head. "Pop Wharton told me Mike used to jump out the bedroom window when Pop locked him in his room. Mike's bedroom was on the first floor."

"Why would she stab Nunzio?"

"Arturo said he had a girl friend with the circus. That had to be Isabelle. When she took him to her house and brought him to that room with clowns all over the walls, something might have snapped inside her—something to do with whatever had driven her from that house in the first place. Or it may have been pure jealousy. Arturo said Nunzio sometimes took up with

other girls in the towns they passed through."

Sheriff Lens shook his head sadly. "This isn't going to do Pop any good."

"The sheriff was right," Dr. Sam concluded. "There was talk of a trial, but before it happened Isabelle's mind went and Pop died. Mike hung around, not much help to either of them, and then he, too, ran away. I've never heard what happened to him after he left town. I don't know what happened to the remaining four Lampizi Brothers, either. But I guess George Bigger had his fill of publicity stunts. I know I'd had my fill of diving into acrobats' nets.

"If you come by this way again soon, I'll tell you what happened when a business tycoon tried to grow tobacco near Northmont and make everyone rich. His dream wasn't the only thing that went up in smoke. But that's for next time."