Originally published in Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, December 1972.
Lieutenant Randall thought there was something fishy about the whole thing right from the beginning when Captain Forbes, his superior, told him on Wednesday morning to go out to Capucino’s Carnival and get the facts about the death of one Ram Singh. A call had just come in; an ambulance and the medical examiner were already on their way.
“An Indian?” Randall asked.
“A Hindu I suppose, with a name like that,” said Captain Forbes acidly. “He was the snake charmer in the side show.”
“How’d he die?” Randall asked.
“The man who called said his snake bit him.”
Randall, already on his way out, paused. “Snake-bit? Then where do we come in? Why the Homicide Bureau?”
“How do I know?” Forbes growled at him. “Don’t stand there asking me questions. Get out and ask the Carnival boss, Capucino.”
Capucino, owner and manager of Capucino’s Carnival, was a short, beefy, bushy-browed specimen with the fast-paced talking habits of a circus barker. Randall found him on the lot.
“It was the worst shock ever I had,” Capucino said as he led Randall toward a small house trailer that was parked behind the deserted side show tent. Randall could see the police ambulance standing beside the trailer. “I go into Whitey’s trailer half an hour ago, to see why he don’t show up for breakfast, and I practically stumble over him. He’s lying there on the floor right next to the basket where he keeps King, and he’s dead as a last year’s hollyhock!”
“I thought the guy was a Hindu,” Randall said. “Name of Ram Singh.”
“Whitey Whitaker was his real name. He just put on a body stain and a turban and a beard for his snake-charming act, see? He was an American, Whitey was. But we billed him as The Great Ram Singh, Ruler of Reptiles.”
“Oh,” said Randall. They were approaching the trailer. “And I gather that King, who lives in a basket in Whitey’s trailer, is his snake?”
“Sure, sure.” Capucino nodded. “King’s his snake.” They reached the trailer. “Only one he had.”
They went into the trailer. Christy Huneker, the M. E., was just getting up from a squatting position beside Whitey’s body.
“Ah, Randall,” Huneker said pleasantly. “Nothing here for you, I’m afraid. This guy died of snake bite.”
“What kind of snake?” Randall asked curiously.
“Cobra,” Capucino said. He pointed. “He’s in there.”
Their eyes went to a shallow, pot-bellied, covered basket of woven straw that stood in one corner of the room.
Randall asked, “Isn’t there some kind of serum you can take when you’re bitten by a snake, Doc?”
The doctor nodded. “Antivenin. But you’ve got to have it handy when needed. How about that, Mr. Capucino? Wouldn’t a man who handled a poisonous snake keep a supply of antivenin handy, just in case?”
“Yes,” Capucino said. “I’m sure Whitey had it around some place. Andy always did, I know. And Whitey took over from Andy.”
Capucino went to a small wall cabinet above the bed and rooted through it.
“Here’s the serum,” he said, holding up a sealed phial, “and the hypodermic to inject it with.”
“Probably too drunk to use it when the snake bit him,” the doctor said. “He’d been drinking. You can still smell it on him.” He tipped a hand to Randall. “I’ve got to get back to town. You coming?”
Randall said, “Not for a minute. I’ll call you later to verify, Doc.” The ambulance men came in and carried Whitaker’s body from the room on a stretcher. Dr. Huneker left, too.
“Let’s see the snake,” Randall said.
Capucino approached the basket in the corner, cautiously reached out a hand and took the weighted cover off. He jumped back. Nothing happened immediately, although Randall could hear a dry stirring, as though of disturbed leaves, in the basket. Then a nightmare triangular head emerged sleepily from the basket, and two yellow, lidless eyes regarded them solemnly, while a black forked tongue flicked questingly in and out of the armored mouth.
Randall, whose own eyes were the joke of the department because they were of a strange, sulphur-yellow color and seemed seldom to blink, was stared down immediately by the snake. It was no contest at all.
“Put the lid on, Capucino,” he said in a nervous voice, “before the damn snake bites us.”
“Call me Cap,” the carnival man said. “Everybody does.” He took a long pole from another corner of the room, slid it through the loop on the basket lid, gingerly reached out and dropped the lid down over the basket opening. The snake’s head disappeared. Capucino came back and sat down on the unmade bed.
“Look, Lieutenant,” he said in a neutral voice, “I called you because I think there’s more to this than a snake biting a guy who’s had too much booze. Whitey always drank a good deal when he went to bed. Every night. He claimed it helped him sleep. He had an old bayonet wound in his gut from Korea that ached him pretty bad, and the whiskey eased it up, he said.”
“What’s on your mind then?” Randall asked.
“The snake,” Capucino said, leaning forward and putting his elbows on his knees. “King’s on my mind. King couldn’t have bit Whitey and killed him.”
Randall slowly lowered himself into a straight chair. “Give me that again,” he said.
“King couldn’t have bit Whitey,” Capucino repeated doggedly. “It sounds nutty as hell, but it’s true. I think that’s another snake over there in the basket, Lieutenant. Another snake entirely.”
“What!” Randall stared.
“King couldn’t have bit Whitey. He was de-fanged.”
“He was what?”
“De-fanged. Had his fangs pulled by a vet. Like you go to a dentist and have your wisdom teeth pulled out. Sort of the same thing.”
Randall felt suddenly out of his depth. “You mean Whitey’s snake didn’t have any fangs left to bite with?”
“He still had teeth, understand. So he could eat the rats and mice and things that Whitey fed him, but his poison fangs was gone. So he was harmless, see?”
Randall looked at the snake basket in the corner. “Can you tell if it’s a different snake from its appearance?”
“Not me. I’m no snake expert. And I ain’t about to examine him close-up. Hell, I never had a snake act in my show at all until two years ago, and now I wish I never had one.”
“Isn’t there anybody around here can tell for sure whether that’s King over there in the basket?”
Capucino hesitated. “I can’t think of anybody much,” he said, “now that Whitey’s gone. Gloriana, maybe. Or Andy Grissom. But he’s not around any more, either.”
“Who’s this Gloriana?”
“One of my tumblers. Acrobat. A great kid, Lieutenant. Pretty as hell, and built like a brick outhouse. I never could get to first base with her, though.” He sighed, profoundly saddened by his memories. “First it was Andy, and then Whitey that she went for. But just let me, the boss, make a pass, and it was ‘aren’t you ashamed of yourself, Mr. Capucino!’ You know how that goes?”
Randall grinned. “Not me,” he said. “I got a wife and two kids.”
Capucino said with dignity, “So have I. But that don’t mean I can’t like an acrobat, too.”
“You say Gloriana spent a lot of time with Whitey?”
“Yeah. They played house a good bit in his trailer here.”
“And this other fellow, Andy Grissom. Was he Whitey’s predecessor?”
“Yeah, he used to be our snake charmer before Whitey. Andy was the original Ram Singh, the first snake act we ever had in the show. And King was his snake. Andy’s, I mean. Andy trained him, and worked up the act and I hired them for my side show a coupla years back. It wasn’t much of an act, really, but the marks went for it big.
“Andy dressed up like a Hindu and squatted down in front of King’s basket on the platform, and tottled a little tune on a whistle he had. When he played on the pipe, King sticks his head up out of the basket and blows out his hood like he’s mad, and kind of waves himself around like dancing. And every once in a while, he tries to strike at Andy, but he never gets out of the basket. It’s a smash with the yokels, Lieutenant, a real draw.”
“And this is the same act that Whitey has been doing?” Randall asked.
“Sure. Same thing. Andy taught Whitey the routine before he left.”
“Left?”
“Andy left the show. But he turned over his snake and his act to Whitey, so we’d still have a Ram Singh.”
“Pretty big-hearted, wasn’t he? Was Whitey a good friend of his?”
“Not exactly. Whitey was just an ambitious helper on my Ferris wheel when Andy gave him his chance to be snake charmer.”
“Then how come he picked out Whitey for the job?”
Capucino blinked several times and shrugged. “Because of Gloriana, maybe.”
“Gloriana was Andy’s girl friend before she was Whitey’s?”
“Yep. Whitey kind of took her away from Andy.” He grinned. “She changed trailers, you might say. You know the way girls are. She decided she’d rather play house with Whitey than Andy. Perfectly simple, Lieutenant. Happens all the time. Even with married folks.” He squinted at Randall.
“And how did Andy Grissom take that?”
“Oh, normal, I’d say. He was pretty burned at first, but he got over it quick. It broke up his little family.” Capucino chuckled at his own euphemism. “Some family,” he said raising his bushy eyebrows humorously. “A snake and an acrobat, and a fake Hindu.”
Randall said, “He didn’t seem specially sore at Whitey Whitaker?”
“Naw.”
“But Andy could have had it in for Whitey all the same. Maybe he just kept it hidden,” Randall said.
Capucino shook his head. “The hell with that. What you want to know, Lieutenant, is who changed the snakes in Whitey’s basket over there.”
“Tell me some more about this de-fanging deal. If a vet did it, he ought to be able to identify King, and be able to testify that this is a different snake, oughtn’t he?”
“Sure.”
“So who’s the vet?”
“I never heard his name. And he’s five hundred miles away, anyhow. In Indianapolis. That’s where my Carnival was playing when Andy took King to be de-fanged.”
Randall brooded. Capucino said, “Damn, I wish Andy hadn’t give his snake to Whitey and didn’t leave the show at all. Or I wish he’d of taken the snake with him. Poor Whitey. He was a good kid, coming along fine, going to be a real carny hand before long. I liked him:”
Capucino lit a cigarette with a kitchen match and flicked the match stick toward the snake basket. Randall stared at the little wall cabinet where Whitey had kept his antivenin.
“He kept his antivenin in that cabinet,” Randall said. “Only a few feet from where he collapsed. Seems funny he wouldn’t have been able to make it just those few feet and give himself the shot.”
“Not if you remember Whitey was a little tanked. And maybe he didn’t even realize he’d been bit. Or maybe the poison paralyzed him too quick.”
“Cobra venom paralyzes you quick, does it?”
“Don’t ask me. I’m only telling you what Andy used to say. Cobra bites go after your nerve centers. Rattlesnake bites go to work on your blood corpuscles and are slower. Maybe Whitey never even thought of the antivenin when King bit him. Drunk and excited and all, like he was.”
“If he’s a snake charmer and knows his business, the antivenin would be the first thing he’d think of, Cap.”
“He didn’t know his business so damn good,” Capucino said. “He was still pretty new at it. He’d only been doing the Ram Singh bit for a few days, remember.”
Randall’s yellow eyes narrowed. “What!” He sat forward in his chair.
“Sure. I told you. When Andy left the show last week—”
“You didn’t say last week!”
“In Indianapolis, I said. Last week. Where Andy had King de-fanged. Didn’t I tell you that?”
“Never mind,” said Randall. “You told me now.” He looked at Capucino curiously. To Capucino, the passage of time expressed itself only in the places where his traveling Carnival played. To him, Indianapolis meant last week. And Terre Haute probably meant the second week of August.
“Sure,” Cap was saying, “that’s when Whitey took over as Ram Singh. Last week in Indianapolis. That’s why Andy got King de-fanged there, see?”
“Wait a minute.” Randall tried to keep his irritation from showing. “You mean King has been de-fanged only since last week?”
“Sure. What did you think?”
“I thought Andy had him de-fanged when he started to train him, naturally. To make him safe to handle. Before he even joined your show.”
Capucino laughed. “Oh, no. Andy didn’t need him de-fanged. Andy always milked him. He had him de-fanged to protect Whitey when he took over the act.”
Randall had the curious feeling that he was slowly sinking out of sight in a morass of irrational facts that refused to allow him a secure hold on any of them. He made an effort and inquired, “Andy milked King?”
“Sure. Andy knew how to force King’s jaws open and press out the poison from his poison sacs into a saucer, so he’d be without poison for long enough to be safe during the afternoon and evening performances. That’s all milking is, drawing out the poison.”
“That I know,” said Randall sardonically. “But it’s the only damn thing I do know about this whole mess, so far.”
“Andy was a real snake man,” Capucino said. “He milked the poison out of King every day instead of having him de-fanged, because he thought the sight of those big fangs in the front of King’s mouth made the act that much better for the marks. They get a kind of morbid jolt out of seeing the fangs.”
“So why didn’t Andy show Whitey how to milk King when he took over?”
Capucino shrugged. “Too dangerous for the kid, he said.”
“You’re sure King really was de-fanged when Andy said so?”
Capucino stared at him, startled. “Why, I think so. You want to be absolutely sure, whyn’t you ask Gloriana?”
“I will,” Randall said.
Gloriana’s trailer was an altogether different proposition from Whitey’s. It was larger. Its interior was as frilly and feminine as the frosting on a pink birthday cake. When she wasn’t visiting with Whitey, Gloriana shared it with three other female members of the Carnival troupe. And when Capucino led Randall up the steps and into the trailer, Gloriana’s roommates were variously engaged in trying to comfort the grief-stricken acrobat.
Randall stood in the doorway while Capucino introduced, him. He picked out Gloriana instantly, and after his first inclusive glance, he had eyes for no-one else. She was worth looking at. Even Capucino’s enthusiastic description had failed to do her justice. She had tear stains on her cheeks; her face, innocent of make-up, had the clean, scrubbed look of a little girl’s after a hot bath. Her short blonde hair was in disarray, her pale blue skirt was twisted over her swelling hips, and her pullover sweater had come adrift from its moorings at her waist, exposing an inch-wide gap of milky white flesh. She was one of the most breathtakingly provocative women Randall had ever met.
At his request, her trailer-mates withdrew with Capucino, leaving him alone with Gloriana. She sat down on the daybed. Randall took a chair against the wall, trying not to look at the girl’s legs.
“Mr. Capucino told me you might be able to give me a little information, Gloriana,” he began. “You were pretty friendly with Ram Singh, the snake charmer, he tells me.”
She nodded un-selfconsciously. “Yeah. Whitey and I got along.” Her voice was breathless music.
“Capucino says there was a little more to it than just ‘getting along.’ Is that right?”
“That’s right. Whitey was a doll. Is it a crime?” She was quickly defensive.
“No.” He smiled at her. “I don’t blame Whitey and you a bit.”
She softened. “He was wonderful, Mr. Randall,” she said. “I feel terrible to think he’s gone. And how could it have happened? King had no fangs.”
“Do you know he had no fangs? For sure, I mean?”
“Of course. Andy brought King home from the vet’s and showed King’s mouth to both Whitey and me that same afternoon, so we’d know King was harmless.”
“Why did Andy have King’s fangs drawn?”
“So Whitey’d be safe putting on the act with King. Whitey was real new at the snake business. He was a Ferris wheel operator before—” Her voice trailed off miserably and her eyes filled.
“I know all about that,” Randall said hastily. “Did Whitey take care of King himself?”
“Yes. Andy always did, and he recommended Whitey do it, too. The snake will do his act better for the man who feeds him and takes care of him, Andy said.”
Randall cleared his throat. “When you changed your affections from Grissom to Whitey, what did Grissom think about it?”
She waggled one incredibly graceful shoulder. “What did he think? He thought I was giving him a dirty deal at first.”
“And weren’t you?”
“Look here, Mr. Randall.” The tears were out of her eyes now, replaced by a flash of independence. “I pick out my own boy friends. And who I pick out is nobody’s business but mine. Andy had his time with me before I met Whitey.”
“And he didn’t carry a grudge when you left him?”
“Not after his first jealousy wore off.”
“When did you shift from Andy to Whitey?”
“About three weeks ago, I guess. In Fort Wayne, it was.”
“Only three weeks? Then it’s perfectly possible, isn’t it, that your change of boy friends had something to do with Andy’s deciding to leave the Carnival?”
“It’s possible, I suppose. But he’d been talking about leaving for a long time before I met Whitey. He wanted to get into something more dignified.”
Randall said, watching her, “You’d be pretty hard to let go of, once a fellow had you.”
“Thanks,” she said, “if that’s supposed to be a compliment.”
“You say Andy didn’t carry a grudge. How do you know?”
“He gave Whitey his snake, didn’t he? For free? King was Andy’s favorite possession, next to me.” She giggled. “He told me he liked Whitey and that’s why he wanted Whitey to take over his act when he loft. He said if Whitey had a good job in the Carnival like that, maybe Whitey and me could get married.”
“I see.” Randall fidgeted in his chair. “When was the last time you saw Whitey alive?”
“Last night, just after the last side show performance. About eleven o’clock. I was going into the city for awhile, and I stopped off in the side show tent to tell Whitey about it.”
“And you didn’t go to his trailer after you got back from town?”
“No. It was pretty late. And Whitey needs his sleep. He usually takes a big dose of whiskey.”
“Cap told me about that.” Randall considered silently. On a hunch, he asked, “Did Grissom happen to tell you the name of the vet in Indianapolis who pulled King’s fangs?”
Surprisingly, she nodded. “Yeah. A Dr. Sachs.”
Randall wrote it down in a little notebook.
“How about Andy Grissom? Did he leave any address with you?”
“Sure,” she said. “He’s right here in this city, Mr. Randall. I had a date with him last night.”
Randall, who thought he was used to surprises by now, almost did a double-take on this one. “You had a date with Grissom? Last night?”
“Why not? This is his home town. It’s where he decided to settle down when he quit the Carnival last week. He’s living at a boarding house on Spruce Street he told me. Mrs. Marion’s.”
“How come you have a date with him when you’re Whitey’s girl now?”
“I didn’t want to,” she said solemnly. “But he called up yesterday morning and asked me to come in and have a late supper with him after the show last night, just for old time’s sake. What he really wanted, I found out, was to ask me how Whitey was getting along with King, and how I was getting along with Whitey.” She looked deprecatingly at Randall, staring into his yellow eyes as innocent as a three-year-old in the Sunday school pageant.
“And you went?”
“Sure. I couldn’t refuse him a little thing like that. He’d been nice to me, you know. And I still like him, for heaven’s sake!”
In two days time, Randall thought morosely, she’ll have forgotten all about Whitey. He wrote in his book: Mrs. Marion’s. Spruce Street.
He got out of his chair. “Would you recognize King from any other snake?” he asked.
She shook her blonde head. “He’s just a snake. I didn’t look at him any more than I had to!”
Randall hesitated. “You’ve been very helpful,” he said.
She rose from the daybed with the undulant grace of the acrobat she was. “And you’re kind of sweet for a policeman, Mr. Randall. You know that?” She moved toward him, every curve an invitation.
“Thanks,” said Randall in confusion. He backed out the door.
He returned at once to Headquarters. By three-thirty that afternoon, he had accumulated these facts.
From Dr. Huncker, after post mortem examination: that Whitey Whitaker had, in fact, died of a snake bite on his right hand; that the snake almost certainly was a cobra, since the victim’s symptoms were all neurotoxic; that Whitey had been bitten between midnight and one o’clock in the morning.
From the police laboratory: that the snake putatively guilty of biting Whitey—brought from the Carnival lot to the lab, cooled to torpidity in the cold chamber, and then examined very gingerly by a technician—did, indeed, possess poison fangs capable of inflicting the fatal bite.
By long distance telephone: that Andy Grissom had paid an Indianapolis vet named Dr. K. L. Sachs to draw the fangs of a cobra called King, in order, as he made plain to the vet, to protect a new snake charmer who would be handling the snake.
From a Tri-state police broadcast: that no cobra had been reported lost, strayed or stolen within the past three days in the Tri-state area.
And from personal interviews: that Andy Grissom did, in fact, reside at the boarding house on Spruce Street; was planning to enter college in the Fall; had indubitably spent the hours between eleven and two A.M. the preceding night in a place called The Purple Angel, where he had met at eleven-thirty and had eaten supper with a girl enthusiastically described as “blonde, beautiful and stacked.”
Contemplating this meager information without, pleasure. Randall swore and lit a black cigar whose bitter taste and evil odor suited his mood. At 3:35 he left his office and walked two blocks to the public library.
There, for the first time, he became convinced beyond doubt that he was dealing with murder.
At four o’clock, he was asking Mrs. Marion, at the front door of her boarding house on Spruce Street, whether her lodger, Andy Grissom, was in. She said he was in his bedroom, would the gentleman like to go up? The gentleman would.
He found Grissom in a small cheerful room on the second floor. The former Ram Singh was, surprisingly, a slender, small-boned man with a thin, almost ascetic face, level blue eyes, a gentle voice, and an unruly shock of black hair. He was younger than Randall had pictured him, too—not more than twenty-six or seven.
Randall introduced himself. “May I come in, Mr. Grissom? I’d like to talk to you.”
“What about?” asked Andy Grissom. He was cool.
“Your snake, King,” Randall said.
“King!” In concern, Grissom held his door wider immediately, and Randall walked in. “Last night, Gloriana, a girl I know from the Carnival, said King was fine.”
Randall sat down without invitation. “Nothing’s happened to King, Mr. Grissom. But something kind of permanent has happened to your friend. Whitey Whitaker.”
Grissom shut the door and leaned back against it. “Whitey? Gloriana said he was great, too.”
“He was. Until last night. Then your old buddy King bit him, and Whitey couldn’t seem to keep from dying of it.”
For a moment, Grissom seemed struck dumb. He stared at Randall with shock and incredulity in his level blue eyes. Randall, who was watching him closely, had to admit that incredulity seemed to predominate. Grissom finally sputtered, after several unsuccessful efforts to speak, “Whitey’s dead?” He swallowed. “And King bit him? What are you trying to hand me, Lieutenant?”
“Nothing but the truth. Gloriana told Whitey she was coming in town to see you last night, Grissom. So after the show, he went to the trailer with your snake, put the basket down in its regular corner and turned in, feeling a little sorry for himself, no doubt. He took his usual jolt of whiskey, maybe more than usual to forget Gloriana’s absence. But before he sacked out for good, he decided to say goodnight to the only companion he had left, your snake. He lifted off the basket lid and King stuck his head out and struck at Whitey like in the climax of your act. Only this time Whitey’s reactions are slowed down by liquor. He’s standing too close to the snake, too, probably. Anyway, King bites him in the hand.”
Grissom was slowly shaking his head. “Not King,” he said in a positive voice. “Poor Whitey. He was a nice kid.”
“Wasn’t he? Nice enough to sweet-talk Gloriana away from your trailer to his. And you hated him for that, didn’t you?”
“No. He took Gloriana away from me, sure. But I never did kid myself I was a permanent fixture with her. Evidently you’ve seen her, so you must know—”
“I have.”
“So nuts,” Grissom said. “What I want to tell you is that King couldn’t have bitten Whitey. It was impossible. King doesn’t have any fangs.”
“Here we go again,” Randall said ironically. “I know the touching story of how you took King to the vet’s and had him de-fanged for Whitey’s protection. I’ve talked to Dr. Sach’s office about it on the phone.”
“Well, then, you know I’m telling the truth. King couldn’t bite.” Grissom sat down quietly on the edge of his neatly-made bed. “Were you asking Mrs. Marion about me earlier this afternoon?”
Randall nodded. “Yeah. And I know you weren’t anywhere near the Carnival lot last night. When King bit Whitey.”
“You keep saying King bit Whitey. Do you suspect that I had something to do with Whitey’s death?”
“Maybe.”
“Well, I’ll be damned!” Grissom laughed, a gentle cascade of amusement. “Why didn’t you say so? Aren’t you reaching pretty far, Lieutenant? I did everything possible to protect Whitey. You’ve proved it. I made him a present of my girl and my snake and my act. And I had an alibi, it seems, for the time some strange snake bit Whitey and killed him.” His eyes widened. “Say! How about my antivenin? I gave it to Whitey with the snake.”
Randall’s yellow eyes blazed briefly at Grissom. “Why didn’t you teach Whitey to milk King, the way you did, instead of having him de-fanged?”
“Too dangerous for the kid. There’s a trick to it. And the snake doesn’t relish it much, of course.”
Randall stood up, feeling defeated. “Will you come down to Headquarters and take a look at the snake that bit Whitey?”
“Sure, Lieutenant,” Grissom agreed readily. “I’d like to see him. But I’m warning you in advance that it won’t be King.” At the police laboratory in the basement of Headquarters building, Randall gestured toward the pot-bellied basket the lab men had consigned to the farthest corner of the big room. The lid was wired down.
Grissom put on heavy leather gauntlets offered him by the lab man. “I wouldn’t need these if it was King,” he apologized. “He knows me. But with a strange snake—”
Without hesitation, he unwrapped the wire that held down the basket lid. Then he lifted the lid with one hand, stepped back, and began to whistle a shrill tune, trying to imitate the flute sound, Randall guessed.
Nothing happened.
“Still sluggish,” the lab man hazarded, “from our cold treatment.”
Grissom nodded and bent over the basket. With a sudden stab, he reached into the basket and brought out a foot and a half of snake, thick-bodied, dully shining, the evil head held away from him by a tight grip on the back of the snake’s neck. Randall could see the reptile making a half-hearted attempt to expand his hood, but he was very sluggish.
Grissom turned the snake; this way and that, examining his markings. He looked up at Randall then, startled and bewildered.
“This is the snake that bit Whitey?” he asked tensely.
Randall nodded.
“But this is King!” Grissom exclaimed then, almost shouting. “This is my snake, Lieutenant! Fie couldn’t have bitten Whitey!”
Grissom dropped the basket lid on the floor and brought his other hand around forcing open the snake’s jaws. Plain to be seen were the two needle-like fangs, incurving, set at the forward end of the upper jawbone.
“I told you,” said the lab man to Randall. “Fangs.”
But Randall wasn’t watching the snake’s fangs. He was watching Grissom. And as Grissom exposed King’s fangs to view, Randall could have sworn a Bible oath that the only sign of emotion detectable in the snake charmer’s gentle blue eyes was a glimmer of amusement. Amusement.
Grissom dropped the snake back in the basket and clapped on the lid. He turned accusingly to Randall, then said in a heavy, dumfounded kind of way, “For God’s sake, what is this. Lieutenant?” He held out a hand in appeal.
“I’ll tell you,” Lieutenant Randall said “Come on up to my office.”
They went to Randall’s office on the third floor and sat down, Randall behind his scarred desk, Grissom on the edge of a straight chair opposite him. With a negligent movement of his hand behind the desk top, Randall switched on the little tape recorder he had arranged. Its mike was concealed very cleverly in the paper-piled “out-going” basket not far from Grissom’s lips.
“I’ll tell you what it is,” Randall went on as though he had never paused at all. “You murdered Whitey, Grissom. Because he took Gloriana away from you. And you did it with a brand new weapon. Ignorance.”
Grissom stared uncomprehendingly. “You said King killed him, Lieutenant.”
“King did kill him. But only because you kept Whitey in ignorance of one little fact about poisonous snakes. A fact that hardly anybody but a herpetologist, or a snake charmer, would know. Not even the city veterinarian who takes care of dogs and cats for the most part. It was very clever of you.” He waited.
Grissom was the picture of injured innocence. He said, “I don’t need to sit here and take this kind of talk from you, Lieutenant. And you know it. But I want to know how King could bite Whitey when I had him de-fanged.”
“I’ll tell you that, too. I didn’t know it myself until an hour ago, but any poisonous snake has a number of extra fangs in reserve in ease he breaks off a fang in capturing his prey.” Randall’s voice rose grimly “Or in case his good-hearted owner takes him to a vet and has his fangs pulled out to protect a trusting fool like Whitey.
“I can remember what the book said, Grissom, word for word: ‘by the side of each functional fang is a series of new ones in different stages of development, hidden in special pockets of the mouth lining. As soon as a fang is lost or broken, one of the successional series moves into its place and is fused to the jawbone.’” He turned his yellow eyes on Grissom’s blue ones. “You get the picture, don’t you, Grissom?”
Grissom’s mobile face expressed horrified disbelief. “You’re kidding, Lieutenant!”
“Like King was kidding when he bit Whitey. Yeah.”
“But that’s fantastic! I can’t believe it. You mean that after I had King’s fangs drawn last week and told Whitey King was harmless, another new set of fangs grew in right away?”
Randall’s tone was bitter. “Having King de-fanged was a deliberate deception on your part. You did it to give Whitey and Gloriana a false sense of security with the snake, set them up for the kill. And you didn’t give a damn whether it was Whitey or Gloriana that King bit after he got his new fangs. You hated them both. Didn’t you?”
Grissom didn’t seem to hear him. He dropped his face into his hands. “My God!” he said, agonized. “And I thought I was making sure Whitey couldn’t get hurt!”
“You didn’t know anything about this extra fang business, is that it?”
“Of course I didn’t, man! What do you take me for?”
“A murderer,” said Randall simply. “What else? By remote control you murdered the guy that stole your girl.” If I’m ever going to get anything damaging out of him, he thought, this is about the time.
But Grissom merely shook his head, his face still covered by his hands. He wouldn’t look at Randall. At length he mumbled, just above a whisper, “I didn’t know, Lieutenant Randall. I give you my solemn word I didn’t know that snakes can replace their fangs.”
Randall lit one of his black cigars viciously. Did the guy know there was a recorder in the room?
He puffed his cigar. Then he gave it one more try, thinking he might prod Grissom into admitting something by insulting him. He said in a quiet voice, “You knew about the fang replacement, Grissom. And you also know there’s no way in the world I can prove it. So get out of my office, will you? You’re stinking it up, scum. You’re all yellow. I’m not a bit surprised that you arranged for a dumb, dirty brainless snake to do your killing for you. Get out Grissom, before I lose my temper and feed you to your own snake!”
Grissom’s eyes were still mild, still bland, still contrite-looking. But Randall was sure he saw that spark of sardonic amusement in them again. Grissom stood up.
“If that’s the way you feel, I’ll go,” he said mildly. “I’ve got to get in touch with Gloriana, anyway. She must be feeling pretty low about poor Whitey.”
He put on his hat and turned toward the door. “And thanks for the snake lecture, Lieutenant. It’s to learn exactly that kind of thing that I’m entering college this Fall. I don’t want to be a square all my life, you know, like you.”
He went out.
Randall blew acrid smoke from his mouth and slapped the tape-recorder switch shut in a fury.
Then he reached for his telephone. Capucino was eating dinner in the restaurant tent on the carny lot, but he came to the phone at once. “Any news. Lieutenant?” he asked, his voice sounding very cheerful.
“What are you so happy about?” Randall barked at him.
Capucino chuckled. “I kinda tried my luck with Gloriana again after you left this morning,” he said in his fast, fruity voice. “With Whitey gone, and Andy gone and all, I thought maybe she might be in a better mood, you know? And guess what?”
Randall sighed. “What?”
“She was. In a softer mood, I mean.”
“Well, well. Congratulations, Cap. But watch yourself. Except for her, Whitey would still be alive.”
“What’s that?” Capucino said. “How come?”
Randall told him. Capucino listened in amazed silence. “I been in the carny business all my life,” he finally said, “and I never heard that about a snake before.”
“Neither did Grissom,” said Randall. “He says.”
“Don’t you believe him!” Capucino was incensed. “He’s a snake man! A specialist. He knew it, for sure. If he didn’t it’s funny as hell!”
“It’s funny, all right,” said Randall sourly. “Can’t you hear me laughing?”